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Sullivan, William M. (Father)

August 3, 2018

Jesuit Father William M. Sullivan died on Aug. 3, 2018, at Murray-Weigel Hall in the Bronx, New York.

Sullivan, William M.

Jesuit Father William M. Sullivan died on Aug. 3, 2018, at Murray-Weigel Hall in the Bronx, New York.

He was born on April 21, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Brooklyn Prep in 1953 and entered the Society of Jesus at St. Andrew-on-Hudson in Poughkeepsie, New York, on July 30 that year.

He spent juniorate at Bellarmine College in Plattsburgh before philosophy at Shrub Oak in New York, then regency in the Philippines for three years. At the Ateneo and Xavier universities in Manila, he taught Latin, English and religion. He completed theology at Woodstock, Maryland, where he ran a film seminar for his fellow theologians at Woodstock College in the woods outside Baltimore. He was ordained on June 9, 1966, at Fordham University in the Bronx.

He studied anthropology at Columbia University from 1968 to 1972 and became assistant dean at Fordham College until 1975. He pronounced his final vows on Aug. 15, 1975, at Fordham.

He next went to Fordham Prep to teach anthropology and English. Next came the high point, 1982-1986, of teaching his favorite subject: film, plus theology and English at Canisius High School in Buffalo.

His next move was pastoral —three years in campus ministry at Canisius College, followed by the job as minister at St. Andrew Hall in Syracuse and a flight across the Pacific to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands where he would be chaplain at the military test site, plus pastor of a great variety of men and women in need of God’s presence.

He spent 12 years as chaplain on Kwajalein Island [where he] did all the tasks of a parish priest from Catechism lessons to children to preparing the older ones for first communion and confirmation. He loved his years on Kwajalein.

Upon returning home he continued weekend ministry at various parishes before a debilitating stroke forced him to join the community at Murray-Weigel Hall.

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