Rev. Sean Connolly’s transfer from Most Holy Redeemer leaves ‘a void’

BY MARY REINHOLZ | The Reverend Father Sean Connolly, a popular young priest who served as parochial administrator at Most Holy Redeemer-Nativity Catholic church in the East Village, was tapped last month by the New York Archdiocese to become pastor of St. Margaret of Cortona-St. Gabriel, a Bronx parish in upscale Riverdale.

His new assignment, scheduled to begin in early August, has left many of his Alphabet City flock feeling bereft without his presence at the baroque edifice and pilgrimage shrine with a bell tower at 173 E. Third St., between Avenues A and B.

“He did a lot of outreach in the neighborhood, visiting the sick and dying, doing all the things that parish priests do. He also fixed the bell tower, which wasn’t ringing,” said Valeria Kondratiev, a receptionist at Holy Redeemer who worked closely with Connolly, 35, at the historic church.

The parish was founded in 1842 by Redemptorist missionary priests to serve German immigrant Catholics. In 2015, the Church of the Nativity, then on Second Avenue, merged with Holy Redeemer, part of massive downsizing of parishes by the archdiocese.

These days, Holy Redeemer’s congregation is mainly Hispanic. Connolly, who comes from Ossining, New York, speaks fluent Spanish, as required of New York’s diocesan priests. He attended Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx and then the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he received a bachelor of arts in the classics. He next entered Saint Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, in Yonkers, to learn his priestly role for the archdiocese. He received a bachelor of sacred theology from the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a master of divinity and a master of arts from Dunwoodie. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2015.

As an administrator at Holy Redeemer, Connolly wore his credentials lightly and “really related to young people,” Kondratiev said, adding that, without him, “There’s a void.”

There’s no resident priest assigned to the parish.

While Connolly lived at nearby St. Brigid’s and St. Emeric’s, at E. Seventh Street and Avenue B, he traveled back and forth between both churches and served each of them separately as an administrator. He has been lauded for “doing what he could” to help the hundreds of asylum seekers who show up daily at St. Brigid’s seeking shelter through its closed school; the former school has been leased by the city as a “reticketing center” for undocumented immigrants who have overstayed the city’s housing limits for migrants — 30 days for single people; 60 days for families.

Connolly was not available for comment. His successor as administrator for the two Downtown churches is Monsignor Kevin J. Nelan, pastor at Immaculate Conception, at 414 E. 14th St., many blocks away from Holy Redeemer. He did not respond to requests for information from The Village Sun. But Nelan reportedly spoke to parishioners and told them the schedules for English and Spanish Masses would remain unchanged in church bulletins.

However, it’s unclear whether Nelan will continue traditional Latin Masses at Holy Redeemer, which Connolly introduced in 2022, complete with the release of incense and ringing communion bells, after petitioning the archdiocese for permission. Visiting priests celebrated the ancient rite at noon on the first Saturday of each month.

On Sun., July 21, The Reverend Father William Elder, one of several designated weekend priests for Holy Redeemer and its former pastor, celebrated an 11 a.m. English-language Mass. One of the congregants, who identified herself as Joanne Kennedy, acknowledged that Connolly’s departure had left her with a real sense of loss.

“There’s no one here now like Father Sean, who was very loving — no one to deal with deaths and baptisms, weddings and day-to-day events in the parish,” she said.

Kennedy is a member of the Catholic Worker Maryhouse community at 55 E. Third St. and managing editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper. She observed that Connolly’s three-year tenure at East Village churches seemed exceptionally brief, noting many priests who act as administrators sometimes stay up to seven years.

Joseph Zwilling, an archdiocese spokesperson, said six years is “normally the average term” for an administrator priest in a parish. “But an administrator is not assigned to a fixed term,” he added.

Zwilling said Father Connolly’s transfer to the aforementioned Bronx parish — after the retirement of its pastor — reflected the archdiocese’s need “to balance the resources of its clergy, which has become diminished in recent years.”

“The reality, unfortunately, is that we don’t have sufficient priests to have a resident priest in every parish,” Zwilling said, in a phone conversation. “We also have fewer congregants: Forty or 50 years ago there would be 750,000; now there are only 150,000. We have to use our resources as effectively as possible to meet the needs of Catholics in the archdiocese.”