Father Gerald F. Lovett: 1935–2015

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

— Tra­di­tion­al Irish blessing

We may still be in the midst of Lent as spring gets under­way, but the parish com­mu­ni­ty of St. Jude in Red­mond has rea­son tonight to cel­e­brate the mys­tery of the Res­ur­rec­tion ear­ly: its found­ing pas­tor, Ger­ald F. Lovett, was lift­ed up to God this morn­ing after a life­time of cheer­ful and com­pas­sion­ate service.

Nei­ther the parish nor the Arch­dio­cese of Seat­tle have made an offi­cial announce­ment yet, but St. Jude fam­i­lies have been shar­ing the news with each oth­er all day, and a few parish­ioners have post­ed fond remem­brances on Facebook.

Father Lovett was the pas­tor of St. Jude Catholic Church for some twen­ty-five years, begin­ning with the parish’s found­ing in 1978, before it had a per­ma­nent home at the cor­ner of NE 104th and NE 166th in woody north Redmond.

Appoint­ed by then-Arch­bish­op Ray­mond Hunthausen, Lovett brought ener­gy, vital­i­ty, and a much-appre­ci­at­ed Irish wit to the young parish community.

St. Jude’s found­ing fam­i­lies cel­e­brat­ed their first litur­gy on Sep­tem­ber 16th, 1978, at Red­mond Mid­dle School. Just three years and a month lat­er, the parish moved into its new build­ing, with Hunthausen join­ing Lovett for the ded­i­ca­tion of its altar.

Over the next two decades, Lovett would con­tin­ue to shep­herd the grow­ing parish as the City of Red­mond expe­ri­enced tremen­dous growth. He bap­tized quite a few of Red­mond’s Catholic mil­len­ni­als dur­ing those years — includ­ing yours truly.

Lovett was born in Kil­moy­ley Coun­ty, Ker­ry, Ire­land on Decem­ber 1st, 1935. One of twelve chil­dren, he hailed from a fam­i­ly that was very devot­ed to the Catholic Church. Accord­ing to a sto­ry on his retire­ment pub­lished by the Arch­dio­cese of Seat­tle, five of his nine sis­ters became women reli­gious. And he was not alone among his peers in decid­ing to take holy orders: thir­ty of his one hun­dred mem­ber high school grad­u­at­ing class chose to enter the seminary.

The afore­men­tioned sto­ry gives a good account of his ser­vice as a young priest:

Ordained for the Arch­dio­cese of Seat­tle at St. Mary’s Cathe­dral in Kilken­ny on May 31, 1959, Father Lovett was an assis­tant at St. James Cathe­dral Parish and then at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Seattle.

After earn­ing a mas­ter’s in social work from Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., he returned to the arch­dio­cese and served as assis­tant direc­tor of Catholic Char­i­ties (now Catholic Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices) for eight years, while also serv­ing sev­er­al of those years as pas­tor of St. Paul Parish in Seattle.

St. Jude would be Lovet­t’s final post­ing. By the Arch­dio­ce­se’s reck­on­ing, he start­ed out with a com­mu­ni­ty of about four hun­dred fam­i­lies. By the time he retired in mid-2003, more than 2,300 fam­i­lies belonged to the parish.

To say that Father Lovett was beloved by the fam­i­lies he served would be an under­state­ment. He had a great sense of empa­thy and con­nect­ed with every­body. He was also an excel­lent homilist. I can still vivid­ly remem­ber him end­ing one of his ser­mons with these words: “We are an East­er peo­ple — Alleluia, Alleluia!”

He also liked to say, “God’s crazy about you!”

Father had a great sense of humor and loved to joke with parish­ioners. In 1997, after return­ing to St. Jude after a spir­i­tu­al retreat in Ire­land, he respond­ed to a sil­ly Inter­net rumor about Bill Gates buy­ing the Catholic Church by quip­ping, “I was­n’t on sab­bat­i­cal. I was on a com­mit­tee nego­ti­at­ing with Microsoft over the takeover.”

Father remained in touch fol­low­ing his retire­ment from St. Jude.

On May 16th, 2005, he called and left me a voice­mail express­ing his sheer delight at hav­ing opened that morn­ing’s edi­tion of the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer to find a guest col­umn by me rebut­ting an obnox­ious Tim Eyman op-ed that had run in the paper only a few days pri­or. (It was my first op-ed in print.)

I’ll nev­er for­get lis­ten­ing to that con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage. Father was over­joyed that one of his flock was stand­ing up to defend Wash­ing­ton against Tim Eyman’s destruc­tive ini­tia­tives. I could tell the col­umn had real­ly res­onat­ed with him. He encour­aged me to keep on build­ing Per­ma­nent Defense and NPI — and I have.

I had the plea­sure of vis­it­ing with Father on his sev­en­ty-eighth birth­day back in 2013; that was the last time I saw him. When I greet­ed him, he remarked that I was very tall and asked me if my work with NPI was going well. (Hav­ing won a huge vic­to­ry with the defeat of Eyman’s I‑517 just a month pri­or, I assured him it was.)

Lat­er, while we were vis­it­ing, I asked him what he thought of Pope Fran­cis. Father smiled broad­ly and declared, “He should have come fifty years ago!”

Father was one of those peo­ple who could say a lot with­out actu­al­ly say­ing a lot. Even when he did­n’t have a homi­ly or ser­mon pre­pared, he would still speak with con­vic­tion. And when­ev­er he had some­thing to say, peo­ple listened.

A fel­low St. Jude parish­ioner cap­tured Father’s remarks on his sev­en­ty-fifth birth­day back in 2010 on video. Watch, and you’ll get a mea­sure of the man Father was.

It sad­dens me to think I’ll nev­er get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it with Father Lovett again. The Church has lost a good and gra­cious man, a kind and devot­ed shep­herd. But I am com­fort­ed in know­ing he is with the Lord now. East­er came ear­ly for him this year. Father spent a life­time preach­ing the Gospel and min­is­ter­ing to the peo­ple of the Pacif­ic North­west. Today, he got to share in Christ’s Res­ur­rec­tion himself.