Seminary rector to retire
Sulpician Father Gerald L. Brown, rector and president of St. Patrick Seminary and University in Menlo Park, announced March 23 that he would retire from this position effective July 1.
At the same time, the Provincial Council of the U.S. Province of the Society of St. Sulpice, which staffs the seminary, appointed Sulpician Father James L. McKearney to be the new rector and president. The appointment was made with the approval of the San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer, who is Chancellor of St. Patrick's.
In a letter to the St. Patrick community, Father Brown said he had made his request to retire "after several weeks of careful consultation, discernment and prudent planning."
Archbishop Niederauer said Father Brown, 70, would remain in residence and on the faculty at St. Patrick Seminary. Archbishop Niederauer thanked Father Brown for "his excellent leadership and enthusiastic, generous service to the work of priestly formation in the Bay area."
Sulpician Provincial Father Thomas R. Ulshafer said, "Father Brown brought a wealth of experience and a clear vision to his duties as president and rector."
Immediately before coming to St. Patrick's in 2004, Father Brown was rector of Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, Texas. From 1985 to 1997 he served as Provincial Superior of the U.S. Province of the Sulpicians.
Father Ulshafer praised the appointment of Father McKearney, saying, "Father McKearney is deeply dedicated to the priesthood and to priestly formation. His fine education in theology, his professional training as a musician and his pastoral sensitivity will serve him well as leader of St. Patrick's."
Father McKearney, 46, was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Hartford in 1995 and he became a Sulpician in 2001. An alumnus of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut, and St. Mary's Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland, Father McKearney holds an S.T.D. from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He first joined the faculty of St. Patrick's in 1999 and was appointed Vice-Rector in 2007. In addition, Father McKearney has been the Director of Music and Dean of Students at St. Patrick's and has taught homiletics there for many years.
St. Patrick's Seminary and University, under the auspices of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has been staffed by the Sulpicians for more than a century and maintains as its primary purpose the initial and ongoing formation of Roman Catholic priests in a contemporary multicultural world, especially for dioceses within the Western United States and the Pacific Rim.
Founded in 1641 in Paris, the Society of St. Sulpice is a community of diocesan priests dedicated to the formation and education of Catholic priests and seminarians.
From March 27, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
