The following story first appeared in the Winter 1999 issue of Glenmary Challenge.  
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Father Patrick O'Donnell
50 Years of Priesthood
By Jean Bach

It's not unusual to see Father Patrick O'Donnell sitting at a local diner sketching the portrait of someone at a nearby table on a paper napkin. He's been doing that for most of his 50 years as a Glenmary priest.

"It's a wonderful ice-breaker," he says. "I get to meet people. I have done a service for them and it opens them up to me. It's a wonderful way to use the gift God has given me."

God has given Father Pat many gifts which he has used in his ministry as priest, missionary, editor, photographer, artist, designer and much more.

But the ministry of priest is most important to Father Pat. "The priesthood has been the most wonderful part of the past 50 years," he says. "Working with souls and seeing the sinners who have come back...it doesn't make headlines but it's my work of priesthood."

That work of priesthood had its beginnings after Father Pat first heard about a "new" religious community working in the South using innovative missionary techniques. After meeting Father Joe Dean and Father William Howard Bishop, Father Pat decided to begin preparing for Glenmary priesthood.

Art has always held a very special place in Father Pat's life. Following World War II, he became a student at the Chicago Art Institute and worked as a journalist in Chicago. He later gained his master's degree in philosophy at Catholic University, writing his thesis under the guiding eye of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.

"When I joined Glenmary I could see the opportunities to design and build churches," he says, "giving reign to my artistic abilities. It's been the best I could have ever hoped for."

Throughout the years, he has helped build and design seven churches and has designed the stained glass at each church.

His ministry has always involved finding innovative ways to offer assistance to his parishioners. One such endeavor was the Appalachian Studios, a furniture design studio which helped provide jobs in the eastern Kentucky town of Vanceburg.

The organization built furniture for 112 churches in its 13-year history, with Father Pat serving as the in-house designer. The studio specialized in heavy walnut and cherry designs built from local timber.

"We could equip a church with nearly everything but vestments and parishioners," Father Pat says.

Another role he has held within Glenmary is that of photojournalist. His interest in photography began with a borrowed camera and six rolls of film. On the way home from a summer of working at a Glenmary mission in Georgia, he snapped a photo of three African-American girls walking down a road. The photo appeared on the cover of Glenmary Challenge and won Father Pat an award from the Catholic Press Association.

The rest, as they say, is history. Using these skills and his experience working as a journalist in Chicago, he became editor of Glenmary Challenge while continuing his work in missions in Kentucky and Ohio. Over his 30 years as editor, he garnered 11 more awards from the Catholic Press Association for his Challenge photographs.

In his "spare" time he has taken part in competitive fencing, and several times was chosen to compete in the Olympic trials. "It took a little conniving, but I would try to schedule Glenmary appeals in cities at the same time as tournaments were taking place," he remembers. He competed until his mid-50s.

Retirement, in its most formal sense, doesn't have a lot of meaning to Father Pat. "I have a full schedule here," he says, "it's a very active parish." In addition, he's working on sketching portraits of every member of the parish.

"It has been 50 years of serious fun," says Father Pat, like "releasing the bubbling fountain of goodness which flows from the hand of God when you are trying to serve him among his own kind of people, the very poor."