Msgr. Joseph P. Meehan

Msgr. Joseph P. Meehan, who served as pastor of two large and busy parishes, died Dec. 18 at Ferncliff Nursing Home in Rhinebeck. He was 81.

He was pastor of Sacred Heart, Suffern, from 1990 until he retired in 2005, and he was pastor of St. Denis-St. Columba in Hopewell Junction, 1976-1989.

Archbishop Dolan offered the Funeral Mass Dec. 21 at St. Columba’s Church; the homilist was Msgr. Walter F. Kenny, pastor emeritus of St. Augustine’s parish in Larchmont and a seminary classmate of Msgr. Meehan’s.

Msgr. Meehan’s appointment to St. Denis, with St. Columba then being a mission church of the parish, came at a time of explosive population growth and new development in southern Dutchess County.

With parish enrollment heading toward 4,000 families, Msgr. Meehan enlarged St. Denis Church and undertook construction of a rectory and a new, larger St. Columba’s Church, which opened in 1987.

“It was fitting, somehow, that his funeral took place in the church he had built,” Msgr. Kenny said in an interview. He noted that the parish was so large during Msgr. Meehan’s pastorate that eventually it was split in three, with St. Columba’s becoming an independent parish in 1992 and another mission, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, becoming a parish in 2002.

“Later, he got the Suffern parish, another big parish,” Msgr. Kenny said. “He was a hard worker and he managed these parishes very well.

“At Sacred Heart (in Suffern), he took the little-used convent and turned it into a rectory with meeting rooms and offices,” he said. Even at an early assignment at Our Lady of the Rosary in Port Chester, where he was a parochial vicar from 1962 to 1976, “he was the rock of the parish,” Msgr. Kenny said.

“Pastors came and went and curates came and went, but he stayed there for 14 years,” he said.

“He was very kindly; he appealed to people,” Msgr. Kenny said. “People loved him. He had friends from all of these parishes, even from (St. Mary’s) in Newburgh, and that was 50 years ago.” Msgr. Meehan served at St. Mary’s from 1954 to 1962.

He also was devoted to his family and called his nieces and nephews frequently, Msgr. Kenny said, and he got together regularly to play golf and take vacations with a group of 14 priests in his seminary class.

Born in Yonkers, he studied for the priesthood at Cathedral Prep in Manhattan and St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, and was ordained in 1954.

“It was an early vocational choice. He decided he wanted to be a priest in the eighth grade,” Msgr. Kenny said.

Between his pastorates at St. Denis-St. Columba and Sacred Heart, he served briefly in 1990 as parochial vicar at St. Augustine’s in Larchmont, and as temporary administrator of Holy Trinity, Manhattan.

He earned a master’s degree at Iona College, and was made a monsignor in 1990.

He is survived by a sister, Eileen Tobin.

Burial was in St. Denis Cemetery, Hopewell Junction.