The following story first appeared in the Winter 2004 Glenmary Challenge.
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Creator of Home Mission Images
By Father John S. Rausch

FACES: The eye of Father Pat O'Donnell (1919-2004) saw art; his viewfinder did the rest as he captured the faces of America's rural poor. This Appalachian family from Big Stone Gap., Va., was a 1963 Glenmary Challenge cover.

Recruiting posters, thank-yous to donors, even Glenmary stationery from the 1950s and early ’60s sported the oxcart logo. In one simple symbol, the oxcart captured the spirit of Glenmary steadfastly opening new territory and taking the Church to the American hinterland. Glenmary, a can-do outfit working among mountaineers in Appalachia and sharecroppers in Georgia, sent missioners to pioneer No Priest Land, USA, driving dirt roads and fording mountain streams.

Father Pat O’Donnell, known as “POD,” sketched that emblematic oxcart (below) and snapped the salient photos featured in Glenmary Challenge during the 30-plus years he worked with the magazine. And his photos continue to be used today in Glenmary publications and promotions, raising awareness of the home missions among Catholics all over America.

Glenmary and Father Pat’s images gave the term home missions a currency for bishops and lay people by highlighting the U.S. counties that lacked a resident priest, counties denied the grace of the sacraments and the depth of Catholic truth.

Establishing the Church in rural areas of the South represented a challenge and a long, drawn-out process. So, Glenmary’s symbolic oxcart plodded across posters and stationery reminding everyone that home missioners doggedly trudge forward bringing the beauty of the Catholic faith to neglected places awaiting the light of the Gospel.

Father Pat, a near-Renaissance man, could draw, design churches, write, play music, throw pottery and take award-winning photos. With his death this summer, a creative spirit passed from Glenmary. This is a retrospective of the images created by this remarkable man who dared to wrap the home missions—and the Glenmary spirit—in artful imagery.

Affirming Local Culture
As an undergraduate in art and photography Father Pat sharpened his critical eye at the Chicago Art Institute. As a hands-on missioner his art spoke through designs and drawings affirming local culture and using native materials.

In Grayson, Ky., for example, Father Pat designed Sts. John and Elizabeth Church and its interior to communicate religious lessons in glass and stone. Multifaceted stained-glass windows suggesting a trail of blood (that is, the Way of the Cross) wrap the perimeter of the building telling a clear story of the sufferings of Christ. The glasswork makes a bold proclamation of the Gospel in red and yellow chunks of opaque glass accented by the 14 crosses with a whitish translucency.

A column of copper plates linked together hanging above the altar symbolizes “prayers rising like incense to the Lord.” The altar itself was cut from native limestone quarried in nearby Olive Hill, while the church walls rose from native stone gathered by volunteers.

Letting Photos Tell the Story
The pages of Glenmary Challenge spread images of church-planting and rural parish ministry while also highlighting the people and places of the home missions. Father Pat, with a camera that seared into the soul of his subjects, captured faces of love and contemplation, faces black and white, eyes sparkling with joy and eyes longingly wondering about the future.

His film became the canvas imprinted with the image of God in the common humanity around the missions. The dozen or so “madonnas” featured as winter Challenge covers over the years are just one example. (See cover photo on homepage.)

Celebrating the ‘POD’ Legacy
Father Pat’s symbols and images helped Glenmary communicate to the American Church an overlooked and disregarded part of the country. He portrayed Glenmary missioners as blue collar, roll-up-your-sleeves men who labored diligently to share the faith with others. His images of Glenmarians consistently featured a smile or a contented expression of joy.

Perhaps Father Pat most of all wanted to show something he himself felt as a Glenmary priest—a deep satisfaction driving the oxcart through the home missions of America.