Savannah's Monsignor O'Neill will be remembered as the person who forgot no one

Steve Williams knew of Monsignor William Oliver O’Neill before they had even crossed paths.

Stationed in Washington D.C. on active military duty, Williams heard from his mother, who was back home in Savannah, that a new priest had come to town. She really liked him, he recalled, and his name was O’Neill.

The year was 1988 and, more than a decade later, Williams returned home on St. Patrick’s Day. He saw a vacancy for the director of pastoral services in the Savannah Diocese, a position open to laypeople, and applied for the job. O’Neill, who was on the interview committee, recognized Williams.

“He asked me if I was kin to – and he mentioned my mother’s name – and I said yes,” said Williams. “He remembered her from being one of his parishioners.”

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That moment was a testament to O’Neill’s exacting memory, a feature by which nearly everyone remembers him. It was also the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Williams, one of many that would allow the Irishman's legacy to linger stateside for years to come.

“We hit it off,” said Williams, who appreciated O'Neill's devotion to causing mischief as well as the priest's love of the Catholic faith. “and that continued for the whole time he was at the cathedral and I was at the diocese.”

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O’Neill, 79, died in his home country of Ireland on Oct. 29 after being hospitalized with pneumonia. His life will be celebrated in a memorial Mass at 11 a.m., Friday at the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, where he served for 17 years.

O'Neill had served as rector at the cathedral from 1996 to 2013, a period defined by his meticulous oversight of a $11.7 million restoration project and a confrontation with an armed arsonist.

Prior to his cathedral tenure, O’Neill served as the pastor of Savannah's Blessed Sacrament Church and Holy Family Church in Columbus. He also served in pastoral roles in Augusta in the late 1960s to 1980s.

He was predeceased by his parents and his brothers P.J., Michael, and Owen Roe, and survived by his sister Nuala McGrath (Artie) of County Limerick, Ireland.

A character and a priest

The monsignor, a title bestowed to him by the pope for his contributions to the diocese, spoke in an Irish brogue that can be heard even in his written memoirs. “Stories from Ireland and America” (2020) and “More Irish and American Stories” (2021) are a collection of hundreds of short stories starting from his childhood in Tipperary town, Ireland and stretching through his retirement in Savannah, Georgia.

“Any grammar issues or sentences that go on far too long are intentional,” O’Neill wrote in the preface. “The voice you hear in these pages is uniquely my own.”

But these stories don't cover all that defined O'Neill, said Williams, who helped edit the memoirs. Williams maintains mere words cannot fully capture the life of his friend.

When O'Neill first settled in Savannah in 1988 at Blessed Sacrament, he wrote, “I did not know anyone, and I was totally unknown.” Over the next three decades, O’Neill made it his mission to change that.

“He would call himself a simple parish priest and in many ways he definitely was that, but he was a priest for everybody,” said Williams. “He saw the good in people; not that he couldn’t be cantankerous, that’s for sure...but he was a good person, a good priest.”

O'Neill became friends with the ministers of other churches outside of the Catholic faith as well, said Williams. “He was active even in the ecumenical ministries.”

O’Neill was devoted to people. Bishop Kevin Boland, who retired as the leader of the Savannah Diocese in 2011, recalls a time when O’Neill was on one of his home visits.

“He was visiting an elderly person who lived alone, to bring them holy communion. The door was locked on this particular day even though it usually was unlocked by the caretakers ... he walked around the whole house and apparently found a bathroom window and tried to get through it,” said Boland.

He got stuck, Boland continued, chuckling. “He called out to the lady ... the police came along and saw him.”

This was a story the bishop heard second-hand. He was not with O’Neill at the time. “Otherwise, that would not have happened,” he joked.

A love for people

Melanie Brooks, a longtime friend of O'Neill's, also recalls the monsignor's passion for others. “He loved to be out with the people. That could be somebody with lots of money or somebody who was homeless,” she said.

And sometimes he’d drop everything to go talk to a stranger.

In his later years, old age caught up to O’Neill, and he frequently made visits to the doctor. Brooks often drove him to these appointments and was with O’Neill during one particular x-ray.

“He’s talking with this tech and she said ‘You know, my father, he’s an old Jewish man and he has so many questions about the Catholic Church.’ And, monsignor said, ‘Oh, where can I find him?’,” recounted Brooks.

The next day, she said, O’Neill talked to that man for two hours.

Even in his last years, O’Neill’s fervor for life remained unchanged. Age slowly took away his eyesight, which hindered his favorite pastimes – reading and driving out to see people. But he kept to his reading, thanks to a specially made machine that compensated for his macular degeneration. He read an Irish newspaper every morning.

Brooks, whenever she’d pick him up for appointments or trips, would be greeted by a litany of things O’Neill needed to tell her.

“He’d get in the car and have a list ... anything that he could think of, nothing important you know, just life,” she said.

An impishness about O'Neill hung on until the very end.

“He enjoyed letting you on,” said Boland, “He’d smirk with a twinkle in his eyes as he told you something. You didn’t know whether to believe him or not.”

That included a story about him receiving a postcard from pop singer Lady Gaga and the time he uncovered an egg holder of one of the first bishops of the Savannah Diocese, Bishop John Barry, outside of his childhood home in Ireland.

“O’Neill always embellished the story, but there’s a possibility it might not be an exaggeration,” said Williams. “He never lost the mischievousness of youth.”

For years, O'Neill and Williams dined out every week together at the priest's favorite Savannah eats, barring the worst periods of the pandemic.

“I knew that I would miss him one day,” said Williams, “but I was surprised that it happened this quickly.”

O’Neill’s passing left “a mammoth-sized" hole he said, but he's glad he ended up in his home country of Ireland. Soon, his name will be inscribed on the obelisk in the Catholic Cemetery alongside the names of other priests and bishops who are buried elsewhere.

It’s the same obelisk that O’Neill, with his relentless memory, would tell the bishop what names were missing.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Bishop ... there’s four names missing now. When are we going to get them put on?’,” said Boland. ''I think I’d like to put his in big bold letters.”

Nancy Guan is the general assignment reporter covering Chatham County municipalities. Reach her at nguan@gannett.com or on Twitter @nancyguann.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah friends remember Monsignor O'Neill for his kindness and mischief