They first met at seminary in Dublin, two bright country lads with a vocation that offered spiritual sustenance, intellectual challenge and adventure.
Their school, All Hallows College, had been founded more than a century before with the task of training priests to administer to the bedraggled Catholic multitudes then escaping to America, Australia and other outposts of the Irish diaspora.
More than two decades have passed since David O'Connell and Jarlath "Jay" Cunnane first crossed paths en route to a common destiny: Both former farm boys are pastors in densely populated, largely Latino immigrant parishes in Los Angeles. And both devote themselves to the vision of an activist Catholic Church.
"What relevance does our faith have when we see poverty, we see injustice, we see people suffering because of a lack of education, or because their civil rights are being abused?" asks Father O'Connell, pastor of two South Los Angeles parishes: St. Frances X. Cabrini and Ascension. "Christ himself would have been in that struggle for people to have a better life, and to struggle against starvation of children, against disease, against poverty."
Adds Father Cunnane, pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle parish in the Pico-Union district, "There has to be a social dimension to faith, a social dimension to church life. . . . That is what I think we have been trying to foster here."
Relying on Each Other's Instincts
The two 48-year-old priests remain fast friends and collaborators. They usually check in before the Sunday homily, gauging each other's thoughts on community events. Time and experience have taught them to rely on each other's instincts.
"There's an awful lot we have to do, and it helps to think it out together," said O'Connell as the two gathered recently in the Cabrini rectory library, off busy Imperial Highway. "It means an awful lot to me that Jarlath is up there."
Cunnane initially appears more outgoing than O'Connell, the lively farmer at the crossroads compared to O'Connell's reserved schoolmaster. But both men exhibit easy laughs and quick wits. Topics of conversations shift effortlessly from Scripture to Irish history, from discussions of Vatican doctrine to their passionate support for amnesty for the masses lacking legal status.
"So many of our people are here; they're working, but they're being taken advantage of, living in a kind of shadow world," says Cunnane on recent day that included a conference of Central American community leaders calling for a renewed push for legalization.
