Jesuit Father Bernard F. Cassidy, who first worked in Hawaii as a young electrical engineer returning later as a priest to serve in hospital and hospice ministry for 23 years, died Sept. 15 in Regis Infirmary at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, Calif. A Jesuit since 1954, he celebrated his 50th anniversary of priestly ordination in June. He was 96.
Jesuit Father Randy Roche, who was director of the Newman Center/Holy Spirit Parish when Father Cassidy was in Hawaii, remembers his fellow Jesuit as having a delightful sense of humor, and who showed “great joy” in his priestly calling.
“Sometimes I would be presiding at Mass at Newman Center Holy Spirit parish and Father Bernie would sit in the congregation,” Father Roche recalled. “At some point during my homily, he would ask, ‘Is this a Catholic Church?’ Everyone knew him and loved him, so we all laughed, and it enabled me to make a special point of Catholic faith right on the spot.”
According the Father Roche, who is now at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Father Cassidy used to bring cheer to his hospice patients with simple mechanical toys.
“We all took much joy in recognizing the great faith he had, even as his patients faced eminent death,” he said. “Their dignity as humans was enhanced by being able to laugh at such a silly thing as a hopping frog or a little car going in a circle.”
It was “quite touching,” he said.
Father Cassidy was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 9, 1917, the son of a police officer and a nurse. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University in 1940 and went on to work for the U.S. Army and Air Force as a civilian electrical engineer. He was involved in the design, installation, repair and instruction in the use of electrical and electronic systems at military bases in Hawaii and Sandia, N.M.
He entered the Jesuits’ Alma College seminary in Los Gatos in 1954. He was ordained a priest by Cardinal Timothy Manning in Los Angeles on June 12, 1963.
After his ordination, Father Cassidy taught theology and served as student chaplain at Loyola Marymount University for two years. Then from 1966 to 1981, he served in parish assignments at Blessed Sacrament Church, Hollywood; Christ the King Church, San Diego; and Holy Family Church, San Jose.
After a year at Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco, he returned to Hawaii in 1982 to serve as the director of spiritual services at St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu. After retiring in 1992, he remained in Hawaii as a hospice chaplain until 2005, when he retired again to Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.
Father Cassidy was active in both the Marriage Encounter and the Cursillo Movement while in San Diego. He was also in the forefront of the post-Vatican II liturgical renewal.
No stranger to controversy, he joined in antiwar protests during the Vietnam War and offered his church as a sanctuary for those refusing deployment. Christ the King Church, with its predominately African-American congregation, was a focal point of local civil rights activity while he was there in the 1960s and ‘70s. During his five decades of ministry he touched the lives of countless students, parishioners and hospital patients.
Father Roche remembers the occasional evening “Father Bernie” talks at the UH’s Newman Center.
“No matter what the subject, there were always some people who just loved to be present with him because of the great joy he exhibited as a priest,” he said.
Father Cassidy’s funeral was Sept. 19 in Los Gatos. He is buried in the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery.
Donations in Father Cassidy’s memory may be made to the California Province of the Society of Jesus, P.O. Box 68, Los Gatos, CA 95031 or to a charity of your choice.
