September 22, 2010

Father Dunn was first Capuchin to serve as Samaritan House chaplain

By Father Blaine Burkey

Anyone who offered a hand of fellowship to Capuchin Father Didacus Joseph Dunn in recent decades will probably remember encountering a 4-inch metal crucifix in the palm of his hand. With this came an invitation to unite oneself, as he put it, with “the Boss on the Cross.”

Father Dunn practiced what he preached in a special way since 2008 when he became confined to a wheelchair and later a bed at St. John’s Rest Home in Victoria, Kan. On the morning of Sept. 11, he finally went to meet his resurrected “Boss on the Cross.”

During his nearly 82 years, Father Dunn served a wide variety of ministries.

Ordained a priest in the National Shrine-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., in 1956, he served as associate pastor at St. Augustine Church, Pittsburgh, 1958-62, and assistant national director of the Archconfraternity of Christian Mothers 1959-62, a ministry which took him to parishes all across the country. 

Then in St. Louis, Father Dunn served as chaplain of the Hotel Alverne, a downtown home for the aged and public chapel, 1962-72, and guardian and pastor at St. Charles Borromeo Friary and Parish, 1972-77.

Northwest Kansas saw him next, 1977-82, as guardian and pastor of Sacred Heart Friary and Parish in Atwood, with its two mission churches.
Following a year as chaplain of St. Anthony’s Hospital, Hays, Kan., he worked two years in Denver as the first Capuchin chaplain at the then-recently founded Samaritan Shelter.

He served as pastor of Kansas churches in Munjor and Pfeifer, 1986-90, and Gorham and Walker, 1990-93. He then was chaplain of the Victoria rest home, 1993-95, and the Mount Carmel nursing home in Kearney, Neb., 1995-96.

Returning to St. Louis in 1996, he served 12 years as associate pastor at St. Matthias Church in Lemay. During that time he was very active in outreach to shut-ins and hospitalized members of the parish. When the Capuchins left St. Louis in 2008, “D.J.” as the friars knew him, moved to Hays, but shortly thereafter began his own special time with the “Boss on the Cross.”

Born in Karns City, Penn., in 1929, and raised in nearby Chicora, he began studies for the priesthood in 1943, and joined the Capuchin Franciscans in 1949. He made first profession in 1950, and studied in Herman, Penn., Cumberland, Md., and Washington, D.C.

A vigil service was celebrated at St. Joseph Church in Hays, Kan., on Sept. 13. The funeral Mass was in the same church the next day, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, with burial in the friars’ plot of the Hays Catholic cemetery.