My parish priest died in February. Leukemia, relatively quickly it seems based on his obituary. He wasn’t my most recent parish priest, but he was the first priest I knew when I first started attending church as a tiny thing that needed to stand on the kneelers in order to properly participate in mass.
He was the priest I associated with my parish for a long time before he moved to a rural parish. He was the first priest I altar served with. Before I altar served and spent mass time doing that, I’d attend a sort of Sunday school version during mass. Father used to announce at the beginning of mass that it was time for Children’s Liturgy, which offered a simplified version of the gospel and homily, and as I and the other children of the parish gathered around him he’d usually ask us some questions that would be related to the gospel before we followed our liturgy leader to the meeting area of the church. At the end of mass my dad, sister, and I would speak to Father, even if my sister and I had been altar serving and spoken to him already. If it was cold Father wore a black cloak outside when he said goodbye to his clergy.
Sarah O'Connor 