Slán* to an Angel: Father Mike Stepping Down at Santee Parish

The Rev. Michael Cunnane will greet any visitor with a kind smile, a warm handshake and a wealth of welcoming words in a rich, Irish lilt.

But even as he prepares to retire after serving 50 years as a priest—the past 25 at in Santee after a brief stint in La Mesa—Father Mike, as he’s known, is uncomfortable talking about himself.

It’s the one subject where he loses the gift of gab. He’d much rather discuss his beloved Chargers, golf, his church, the “wonderful” people he sees doing such good work or his 21 nieces and nephews.

“I don’t like to blow my own trumpet,” he says.

Yet plenty of people stand ready to play it like Louis Armstrong, belting out praise for a man they say has touched thousands of lives with his love and goodwill.

• “He’s probably one of the finest people I’ve met in my life,” says Debbie White, parish council president for the past 13 years. “He’s one of a kind, a dying breed. He cares more about people and parishioners than anyone I’ve ever met.”
• “Be sure to write about how wonderful he is,” says Vi Hoye, supervising chaplain at Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility in Santee, where Cunnane has been “a powerful influence” since he started making regular visits in the 1990s. “He’s changed lives around. There’s nobody like him.”
• “He’s so very well loved by his parishioners,” says Sister Mary Potter, who has worked with him for 20 years. “He’s very much a people person.”
• “I don’t know how anyone could say a negative word about him,” says Rick Melrose, a deacon at Guardian Angels. “If you look at what a shepherd does, the challenges he faces, he’s the consummate shepherd and pastor. He knows his flock and he accepts the challenges. He truly cares about his flock.”

Cunnane, 75, has heard the words, and he’s bound to hear many more—far more than he’s comfortable with—before his retirement celebration June 4 and his official final day, July 3.

He’s accepting them graciously but cautiously, saying he has “feet of clay” and is acutely aware of his failings.

“People say to me: You’re a great man, father, you’re a great man,” he says. “And I say to them, ‘So far.’ Because you don’t know. You don’t know.”

From a Little Town in Ireland

Santee is a long way from the little town of Knock in western Ireland, where Michael Cunnane was born to a schoolteacher mother and a farming father.

Knock—the site of the Marian Shrine, which draws Catholic pilgrims from around the world—was just a village of about 600 people back then, too small to have a secondary school. So when young Michael was done with grade school, he was sent off to boarding school about 40 miles distant.

He says he’s fortunate his parents were committed to education and determined to come up with the money— it was “a struggle,” he says—to send him, two brothers and three sisters to secondary school.

It was at secondary school that he decided to become a priest.

“I was brought up in a very devout family,” he says. “Prayer was the very center—church and prayer. And with the example of my parents, I loved God very much and I wanted to share that with others. And the best way to do that was by becoming a priest.”

Six years of seminary followed at St. Peter’s College in Wexford.

“When we were in seminary, we could decide what part of the English-speaking world we wanted to go to,” he recalls. “I had a first cousin, a priest in the Philippine islands and two other cousins in Scotland. The one in the Philippines, he only came home once every seven years and my mother said to me once, ‘It would be nice if you would be near home.’ So I decided to go to Scotland.”

He spent what he calls “16 happy years” in Scotland at Motherwell diocese, and might have never left Scotland but for his health.

“The climate wasn’t conducive to this old chest of mine,” he says, and he’d developed arthritis and rheumatism. So he talked to his bishop about transferring to the United States.

It was a dream destination, since so many relatives had come to live in the U.S.

“I always had a hankering for the States because I had so many cousins and uncles and two brothers in the United States,” he says. “Since I was a kid, we looked forward to the ‘Yanks’ coming home. It was a big thing, something really to look forward to. The packages we used to get from them. So the United States was always in the back of my mind.”

He arrived in San Diego in August 1977 and served at St. Martin of Tours in La Mesa for one year, St. Rose of Lima in Chula Vista for six and the Old Mission in Mission Valley for another two before his posting at Guardian Angels.

 “Fifty years a priest. Like that,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Amazing. Like nothing. I’ve been happy, I must say. My priesthood was a gift not only to the church, but my own spiritual relationship with God.”

He says his faith has grown exponentially in 50 years.

“From a practical sense, I know this God loves me unconditionally,” he says. “I just think of a mother’s love. Even though [her son] can be a rascal, she still loves him.”

A Personality for a Parish

Cunnane often says things like, “I’m no Rhodes scholar,” or “I’m no genius” or  “I won’t be going around giving lectures.”

Yet he’ll admit he has a gift—a welcoming personality and an ability to connect with anyone and everyone and remember the name of all (a testament, he says, to growing up in a large family and a small community where everyone knows everyone).

But it’s true, say those who’ve watched him for years. The parish reflects his personality.

“He’s very open,” says Sister Mary, the nun who oversees religious education at Guardian Angels. “He talks about everything, including politics. Everybody knows everything about him. There’s not a shy bone in his body. He’s an extrovert.”

White, the parish president, laughs and says “probably not” when asked if she’s learned any secrets working with him.

“He’s so open, everyone knows everything about him,” she says. “He is who he is and everybody knows who he is.”

It’s that texture at Guardian Angels he’s most proud of.

“Spiritual accomplishments,” he says. “I think we have a livelier congregation here, very involved with church. … We have a very good welcoming atmosphere.”

But he cites tangible accomplishments, too—a new parish center, a preschool, a food bank, a prospering fall festival and a congregation that’s grown to about 1,400 families.

And, says Melrose, Cunnane’s influence in Santee extends beyond the parish boundaries.

Never was that more evident than on March 5, 2001, when a student went on a shooting spree at Santana High, killing two and wounding 13 others.

Cunnane, along with other clergy and community members, did what he could to help—getting as close to the school as he could, talking with students, offering hugs and kind words. In the days and weeks that followed, he worked with traumatized students and families.

“There wasn’t much we could do, just be present for them,” he says.

He’s grateful, too, for his opportunity to work with the jailed women at Las Colinas, which he’ll continue to do.

 “You never retire from being a priest, right?,” he says. “You retire from being in charge.”

The policy in the diocese is for mandatory retirement at age 75, and Cunnane says he’s fine with it.

“It’s time,” he says.

After his last day at Guardian Angels, he’ll do what he does each summer. He’ll fly back to Ireland to spend time with his family and old friends, play some golf and take a side trip to Scotland to see the friends he made there.

Then he’ll return. He looks forward to continuing to work, but without the day-to-day duties he now has. (The Rev. Kevin Casey, his longtime associate pastor,  will take over the reins.)

He’ll have more time to read, root for his Bolts—“I’d love to see the Chargers winning the Super Bowl, but I think I’d have to pray, pray, pray,” Cunnane says—play golf at Carlton Oaks and take his regular walks around Santee Lakes.

He says his overall health is good, after a scare in the past year in which he at first was told he likely had cancer in one of his lungs. However, it turned out he had valley fever.

“So my health is pretty good,” he says. “Just the pains and aches of the golden years.”

A New Chapter in Priestly Life

Much has changed since he became a priest back in 1961.

Cunnane says people’s lives have gotten busier and more complex, and probably more materialistic, too. Church sometimes places second to youth sports on Sundays.

In general, he says, “People are not as committed to church as they used to be.”

In recent years, he’s also seen firsthand the pressure on families caused by the recession.

 “People are struggling,” he says. “Families are breaking up because finances cause problems.”

Also, the very church he’s committed his life to has come under scrutiny. He’s dealt with questions and comments from those inside and outside the parish in the wake of reported abuses by priests in cities across the nation.

“As priests, we’ve probably let [people] down a little, but that’s a small percentage,” he says. “But a small percentage is too many, you understand?”

So as the decades have passed, new challenges have come forward.

But the boy from Knock wouldn’t change a thing. He’d become a priest all over again.

“I probably would,” he says. “I know that I have given up a lot. But what I’ve given up is nothing in comparison to what I’ve gained.  I would have loved to have kids. A daughter, especially, I suppose.

“But you know, thank God for happiness with the Lord. That’s the end all and be all for me. It’s time, you know.”