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June 18, 2009
Redemptorist Father Leo Dunn, a former missionary, parish priest, teacher, and retreat house director, died Friday, June 19, at Saratoga Springs Hospital in New York. He had been living at St. John Neumann Residence in Saratoga Springs since 2004 and was 92 at the time of his death.
The Funeral Mass and burial were held at Mount St. Alphonsus, Esopus, NY, on Monday, June 22.
A native of Rochester, NY, Father Dunn was born Oct. 1, 1916, the son of John and Mary O’Brien Dunn,. The family belonged to Immaculate Conception Parish.
After grammar school, he was accepted at the Redemptorists’s St. Mary’s Seminary in North East. PA., for a six-year course of studies. He spent his novitiate in Ilchester, MD, and made his first profession of vows in 1939. His final profession came in 1942. After completing his studies for the priesthood at Mount St. Alphonsus in Esopus, he was ordained there on June 18, 1944.
Father Dunn’s first 16 years of priestly ministry were spent in Brazil, where he served in Miranda, Aquadauana, Campo Grande, and Ponta Grossa. Father Giles Gardner, who still ministers in Brazil at the age of 96, recalled being stationed with Father Dunn at Ponta Grossa: "He had a serious exterior, but a big, warm heart and an awful lot of friends. He was very zealous in his Father Leo F. Dunn, C.SS.R. work and a very good community man too," he said.
When Father Dunn returned to the U.S. in 1961, he was assigned to St. Joseph Church in Rochester, where he not only ministered to the parishioners, but put a great deal of work into building a high school, teaching there, and guiding it in its early stages of development. Father Lawrence Lover, who at that time was serving at the seminary in North East, said that they used to visit together from time to time and see each other at regional meetings. "He was a very lively fellow, interesting and nice to visit," Father Lover said. "He was very heavily involved in getting that school built and going. Of course, in Brazil he had built chapels and churches and was more or less used to supervising construction. He very outgoing ,very welcoming, and had a good sense of humor"
His commitment to education came to the attention of the Diocese of Rochester and Father Dunn was asked to serve also as Assistant Superintendent of Diocesan Schools.
In 1970, he was asked to take on a new aspect of ministry — preaching retreats for lay people at Tobyhanna, PA. Two years later, he was named rector of the Redemptorist retreat house there. Father Dunn continued doing retreat work when he was named rector at Notre Dame Retreat House in Canandaigua, NY, in 1981. In a tribute to Father Dunn’s work at Tobyhanna, a confrere wrote:
"The mountain man — as strong as iron
Whose work is never done
From Tobyhanna and its environ
The tireless Leo Dunn."He models his thought on the Summa
His preaching as solid as rock
And if you care for some humor
He’s got plenty of that in stock."