Bishop O’Connell ‘still looking out for us’
Bishop O’Connell ‘still looking out for us’ one year after death, friends say
One year since the death of Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell, the shock over his murder has largely worn off, the tributes have died down, and the billboards that briefly lit up Los Angeles freeways flashing his smiling face are gone.
While a grieving city may have begun moving on, a portrait of “Bishop Dave,” as a priest and a man, has come more sharply into focus.
“He was a mystic in the sense of his love affair with Christ,” his friend Msgr. Timothy Dyer, pastor of St. Patrick and St. Stephen’s in South LA, said in his homily at a Feb. 24 memorial Mass marking a year since O’Connell’s death. “All that he did in the streets and people’s homes, all the places he went to when he was bishop, he was conscious of this love in Christ in his own life.”
His purpose in life, Dyer said, was “to bring that love to others.”