Auxiliary Bishop Patrick V. Ahern

Auxiliary Bishop Patrick V. Ahern, a retired archdiocesan pastor and administrator known for his irrepressible joy, his love for the Church and the priesthood and his devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, died March 19 at Mary Manning Walsh Home in Manhattan. He was 92.

A longtime advocate for special-needs children and their families, he founded the Seton Foundation for Learning on Staten Island, a group of schools that educate developmentally disabled children from nursery school through high school and beyond.

Archbishop Dolan is to celebrate the Funeral Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Thursday, March 24, at 11 a.m. The homilist will be Msgr. Thomas P. Leonard, administrator and former pastor of Holy Trinity parish in Manhattan.

Cardinal Egan was to celebrate the Mass of the Holy Eucharist at the Mary Manning Walsh Home Chapel March 23 at 7:30 p.m. The homilist was to be Msgr. Robert M. Trainor, senior priest at Sacred Heart parish in the Bronx and former pastor of St. Ann’s and Our Lady of Angels, both in the Bronx.

Before moving to Mary Manning Walsh, Bishop Ahern had been in residence at St. Thomas More parish in Manhattan. A Memorial Mass is to be celebrated at St. Thomas More Church, 65 E. 89th St., Tuesday, March 29, at 6 p.m.

The date of Bishop Ahern’s death was the 41st anniversary of his ordination as a bishop. He had been a priest for 66 years.

Msgr. Trainor said in an interview that Bishop Ahern possessed “a cheerfulness beyond anybody you have ever met—not only in public but at table, in the car, anyplace.”

“He had a tremendous outlook on things,” he said.

When Bishop Ahern was pastor of Our Lady of Angels, he asked Msgr. Trainor to be his administrator there. It was ‘the greatest of experiences,” Msgr. Trainor said, and it revealed Bishop Ahern as “first of all a very spiritual man” who spent an hour and a half in chapel every morning before breakfast.

Msgr. Leonard told CNY that Bishop Ahern will be remembered for “his joyfulness, his enthusiasm for the priesthood and his great devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux.” That devotion began when Bishop Ahern was a seminarian. Throughout his life he spoke about St. Thérèse and her spirituality, and he wrote a book, “Maurice and Thérèse: The Story of a Love,” published in 1998, about the spiritual friendship and correspondence between the cloistered St. Thérèse and Father Maurice Bellière, a French missionary to Algiers.

Bishop Ahern held key posts in the archdiocese for many years, including his roles as secretary to Cardinal Francis Spellman and as the first vicar for development. He was episcopal vicar of Staten Island, and of the Bronx and later the Northwest Bronx, and was a pastor in both vicariates. He was a founder of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition.

Msgr. Trainor noted that Bishop Ahern was very active in the pro-life cause and always participated in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 22.

Bishop Ahern also will be remembered for his work on behalf of developmentally disabled children and young adults.

“The Seton Foundation will be one of the bishop’s greatest legacies,” said its executive director, Diane Cunningham. She added, “His charismatic personality drew parents to him, and his unconditional love for them and their children.” He used to visit the schools, she added, “and he always had a smile.”

“The kids would see him and go, ‘Bishop!’ and run to him,” Ms. Cunningham recalled. “He’d hug them and pick them up.”

The bishop established the Seton Foundation in the 1980s while he was pastor of Blessed Sacrament on Staten Island. Ms. Cunningham said that a group of parents of special-needs children used to meet at the parish, and discovered that “they had one thing in common: they were dissatisfied with the programs for their children in the public setting.” They met with the bishop, she added, and asked that the archdiocese start a program for their children.

When Bishop Ahern found out that there was no funding available, he raised funds himself.

“He pulled together people he knew in the Staten Island community: attorneys, hospital administrators, parents,” Ms. Cunningham said. “He put together a board of directors…He knew people on Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, he went to foundations. He was a man on the move. He did all of the legwork himself in the beginning.”

She said that he had a way with potential donors.

“He could look at your pocket, and the money danced out,” Ms. Cunningham said.

Today the Seton Foundation comprises Bishop Patrick V. Ahern High School for ages 15 to 21; Mother Franceska Elementary School, ages 5-14; Joan Ann Kennedy Memorial Preschool, ages 3-5; and the Thérèse Program, ages 5 to 14 with autistic spectrum disorders. Total enrollment is 124; students come from Staten Island and Brooklyn.

Bishop Ahern related easily to people of all backgrounds, and he loved parish work. In January 1970, when he celebrated his 25th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood, he said, “The natural habitat of the diocesan priest is the parish. The pastor’s role is to help people stay close to the heart of the Church, but that works both ways. A pastor draws his priestly strength from his parishioners, and they help to keep him close to the heart of the Church.”

After serving for nine years as Cardinal Spellman’s secretary, he was named pastor of Our Lady of Angels in the Bronx in 1967. He was ordained a bishop on March 19, 1970, and two months later became episcopal vicar of the Bronx. When the vicariate was divided in 1976, he became vicar of the Northwest Bronx.

In 1980 he was named vicar of Staten Island and pastor of Blessed Sacrament. He served until 1990, when he was appointed the first archdiocesan vicar for development by Cardinal John O’Connor. In his new role he oversaw the fund-raising activities of the archdiocese and made personal appeals to individuals, corporations and foundations for funds to support Church programs and charities, including archdiocesan schools.

“I have no hesitancy to beg, as long as I’m not begging for myself,” he told CNY at the time. “It’s a privilege to beg for others.”

A compelling speaker, writer and homilist, Bishop Ahern had been professor of apologetics and homiletics at St. Joseph’s Seminary from 1955 to 1958; Msgr. Trainor said he was “the most popular member of the faculty.” He served from 1947 to 1954 with the New York Apostolate, a mission band composed of archdiocesan priests who presented parish missions. As a parochial vicar he served at St. Helena’s in the Bronx, 1945-1947, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1954-1955.

He was named a monsignor in 1958 and received the titles of domestic prelate in 1960 and prothonotary apostolic in 1964. He was appointed to the archdiocesan Liturgical Commission in 1964 and was named a diocesan consultor in 1967.

He retired as vicar for development in 1994.

Bishop Ahern was born in Manhattan, the son of Irish immigrants from County Longford and County Cork. He grew up on Manhattan’s West Side and attended Blessed Sacrament School and St. Agnes Boys High School. He studied for the priesthood at Cathedral College and St. Joseph’s Seminary and was ordained by Cardinal Spellman on Jan. 27, 1945.

It was soon after entering the seminary that he read “The Story of a Soul,” the spiritual autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It influenced him profoundly.

“It seemed to me to hold the answers to all my questions,” he once told a reporter. He added that St. Thérèse “is of cosmic significance for our time, because she offers the answer to all our anxieties through total trust in God’s merciful love.”

Bishop Ahern was among those who strongly promoted St. Thérèse for the title Doctor of the Church. In 1993 he addressed a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and asked his fellow bishops to vote in favor of the proposal that would give the title. He cited Thérèse’s early struggles with a nervous disorder and scrupulosity, and the sufferings she endured, physically from tuberculosis and spiritually from a time of deep interior darkness and lack of consolation in faith.

“We need a new Doctor, one who speaks today’s language and addresses the age of terrible anxiety through which we are living…We are asking for a contemporary Doctor…a teacher who walks the journey with us and makes us feel her presence,” Bishop Ahern wrote.

The title was conferred by Pope John Paul II in 1997.

Msgr. Trainor remarked that Bishop Ahern died peacefully on the feast of St. Joseph, patron of a happy death.

“It was an ideal ending to a beautiful priestly life,” he said.

Bishop Ahern will be buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla.