Salesian Father Curran was a blessing to St. Rosalie

    Salesian Father James B. Curran, pastor of St. Rosalie Church in Harvey from 1983-95 and parochial vicar there from 2003-10, died Sept. 3 at St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla.
    Father Curran was 91 and had been a Salesian for 71 years. He had been recovering from major surgery.
    A native of County Kerry, Ireland, Father Curran, entered the Salesian high school seminary at Shrigley (Cheshire), England in 1935, entered the novitiate in 1940 and professed first vows in 1941. He earned a bachelor of arts degree at London University in 1946, majoring in English, British and European history and Latin. He professed perpetual vows on Aug. 14, 1947. He was ordained in England on July 15, 1951, by Bishop Joseph Rudderham of Clifton.
    Father Curran was a teacher and vocation director and later became religious superior of the Salesian Preparatory School and the Salesian community in Cedar Lake, Ind. In 1970 he became an American citizen.
    He was appointed the provincial delegate for the Salesian Cooperators, serving until 1983. From 1979 to 1983 Father Curran was director of Sacred Heart Retreat House in Ipswich, Mass.
    In 1983 he was named pastor of St. Rosalie Church in Harvey. As pastor for 12 years, he worked diligently with the Dominican nuns who staffed the parochial school and helped the school earn its first Blue Ribbon for Excellence from the federal Department of Education.
    He returned to St. Rosalie in 2003 as assistant pastor, serving successively with Salesian Fathers Thomas Ruekert and Jonathan Parks. After Father Parks died in July 2010, Father Curran administered the parish for several months.
    “Father Jim Curran exemplified the best in Salesian commitment to the good people and in a particular way to the young at St. Rosalie on the West Bank,” said former Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes. “God grant him mercy and the reward of his pastoral labors.”
    The funeral arrangements included wakes and Masses of Christian Burial at St. Jude’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg and at the Marian Shrine in Haverstraw-Stony Point, N.Y. At the Marian Shrine on Sept. 7-8 Salesian Father Thomas Dunne, provincial, presided, and Father Thomas Brennan preached.