Florida Catholic | 40 Years For Father Donlan

Pastor celebrates 40 years as a priest

Father Donlan celebrates milestone anniversary.

CARLOS BRICENO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC ST. PETERSBURG BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 09.28.07

Father Robert Donal greets a parishioner after a Mass celebrating 40 years of priesthood.

Father Robert Donlan, pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Brooksville, receives congratulations from a parishioner following a Sept. 23 Mass that celebrated the 40th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood.
DIANA REED | FC

BROOKSVILLE | After 40 years of being a priest, of course Father Robert Donlan has a regret. A big one, in fact. Who wouldn’t after so many years in the priesthood?

When asked what it was, he didn’t hesitate to answer, “I wish there were more hours in the day.”

The 65-year-old pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Brooksville celebrated the 40th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood Sept. 23 with a Mass which was attended by Bishop Robert N. Lynch.

In addition to being the only priest serving at the parish — retired priests help out from time to time — he visits a local hospital and four nursing homes, one of which includes a hospice. He estimates he works 55 to 60 hours a week.

But he said he loves his work and appreciated the many people he’s gotten to know in his various assignments. It is through them that he sees God at work, he said.

“I have learned so much from people,” he said. “They’ve been very forgiving, in spite of the mistakes one makes as pastor. Sometimes you make bad judgments or you wish you perhaps had done things differently in hindsight.”

His journey in his vocation started when he was young. He is known as “a lifer,” someone who entered the minor seminary during the ninth grade in high school. The seeds to his vocation were planted several years earlier. While growing up in Schenectady, N.Y., his family lived across the street from a Catholic hospital, where his mother worked as a nurse. He and his younger brother were asked to be altar servers at the hospital chapel. He observed the priest taking Communion to the sick and went with him on his rounds.

When he was in the seventh grade, he wrote to the Sacred Heart Fathers and Brothers, a religious order, asking for more information. He said he felt “attracted and drawn” to the vocation and felt it was part of “an inner call” from God. Joining the minor seminary during the ninth grade helped him in discerning his future vocation as a priest.

When he was ordained in 1967 in Milwaukee as a member of the Sacred Heart order — he left the order when he became incardinated into the Diocese of St. Petersburg as a diocesan priest in 1988 when he moved to Florida — times were different. There were more priests; Vatican II was starting to effect change. And priests, in general, acted differently, he said. They didn’t give people much of a sense of direction or leadership, and were seen as having a “cultic” style of priesthood, meaning they were seen as leaders of worship and dispensers of the sacraments, Father Donlan said.

“One of the most important qualities for a priest today is leadership,” he said. “That’s what people expect today. … (They expect the priest) to be a creative leader in the parish. The pastor has to be the catalyst. He has to help make things happen, but he has to do it in a collaborative context.”

One of the staff members at St. Anthony Parish, music director Suzanne Colon, said she appreciated Father Donlan’s leadership.

“He’s always looking out for people and finding places for people in the parish to fit in,” she said. “When we have a new member join, frequently he will call me and he’ll say, ‘I think we have somebody here. I think they would be good for the choir. Why don’t you give them a call?’ If someone is widowed, he picks up on that and tries to find a place for them to fit in. We have a great group of volunteers because of that.”

In Father Donlan’s view, the pastor has to be like an orchestra leader who calls people to develop their gifts and helps train them. As he puts it, “The priest today is the minister to the ministers.”

In a parish with 1,400 families, in an area of Hernando County that has new housing starts, the pastor needs all the help he can get from his parishioners.

And parishioner Jack Vigneau said one reason why Father Donlan is so successful as a pastor is because his leadership is “open to new ideas and to all people.” Add in the fact that he has a “great sense of humor” and is an excellent homilist, and you have someone who is a priest, but also “a great guy,” Vigneau said.

Father Donlan said he hopes to continue to work for many more years as a priest and even after 40 years as a priest, he said he wasn’t feeling nostalgic.

When asked if he was, he started laughing and replied, “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, there’s no way you can put it back in the tube again. I think change is good.”

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Pastor celebrates 40 years as a priest

Father Donlan celebrates milestone anniversary.

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