In an interview about his 60th anniversary as a priest – reflecting on the journey of his priestly vocation and down-to-earth experiences at parishes and also on his avocation of flying airplanes in the skies over Alaska and other states – Father Peter Sweeney several times used the word “Amazing!”
“Amazing is the word,” the 84-year-old priest said as he described how an Irish farm boy became a priest in Washington, D.C., serving at parishes throughout the area and later taking up flying. He noted that people in Scriptures who witnessed what Jesus did were amazed. “Amazing is a beautiful word in Scriptures,” he said, while expressing wonderment at some of his own experiences.
A native of County Kerry, Ireland, he grew up on a farm about two miles from the Atlantic Ocean, with mountains, rivers and lakes nearby. He was one of 11 children, as was his father.
While in minor seminary, he was inspired by visiting Irish missionary priests, who told about their experiences in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“The priests came back and they were very enthusiastic about their missions. They were great recruiters,” he said.
Peter Sweeney was not yet attached to a diocese and didn’t know where he should seek to serve as a priest. Then his sister Margaret who was then working in Boston told him she heard that they were very short of clergy in Washington, D.C.
“Then I applied here and was accepted,” he said. “As Scripture often says, I was amazed.”
Father Peter Sweeney was ordained to the priesthood in June 1961 at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Kilkenny, Ireland, and then he began serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of Washington, in a year when two prominent leaders in the nation’s capital had Irish roots – President John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president, and then-Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle.
The priest was assigned first as a parochial vicar at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Parish in Riverdale (now Riverdale Park), Maryland, which he said was a very sociable community, where people pitched in to help, including constructing parish buildings.
“It was just like home, just like the family I grew up in, always a lot of people, very social,” he said.
His next parish assignment was at St. Gabriel in Washington, which he said had many young professionals, and he remembers how parishioners brought food to people in need.
“I really enjoyed that place. They had a beautiful school. It was a lovely community,” he said.
He also served as a parochial vicar at Holy Family Parish in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.
His early years as a priest coincided with the Second Vatican Council, and the changes it ushered in the Church, including Masses celebrated in local languages and more opportunities for the participation of the laity in church life.
“We had major social changes, as well as church changes,” he said.
Father Sweeney served as director of the Propagation of the Faith for the archdiocese from 1974-81, after earlier serving as assistant director, and in that role he supported the work of missionaries and their missions, whose work had inspired his own calling to the priesthood years earlier.
From 1981 to 1989, he served as pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Landover (now Largo), Maryland, and he said the parishioners there had a similar spirit of helping out and being social like he had experienced at St. Bernard’s.
“They were magnificent,” he said, remembering the parish fish fries there, and also how during his time there, the church and adjoining classrooms got new roofs, and a new rectory and office was built there. Parishioners helped build and decorate the rectory themselves.
Then from 1989 to 2004, he was pastor of St. Paul’s Parish in Damascus, Maryland, where after years of planning, a new church was built in 2002 for that growing community. “We got it done,” he said, praising the generosity of families there.
After that, Father Sweeney served as pastor of Our Lady of Grace Parish in the Leisure World retirement community in Silver Spring, Maryland from 2004 to 2012.
“I loved them. They were all retired, from all over the United States… They all had great stories,” he said.
In 2012, Father Sweeney himself retired, and he found a home at St. John Neumann Parish in Gaithersburg, Maryland where he has lived and served since then, including this past year during the pandemic.
Father Stefan Yap, who became a parochial vicar there after his ordination last year, expressed admiration for the veteran priest, noting how Father Sweeney faithfully prays the breviary and rosary and reflects joy and fidelity to the priesthood as he continues serving people at that parish.
“After 60 years, his love for the Church hasn’t faltered, it’s gotten deeper,” the young priest said.
Father Sweeney said he has felt at home with the diverse parish communities he’s served over the years because the part of Ireland where he grew up drew tourists from around the world. Another way he felt at home in the Archdiocese of Washington was through a special kinship with other priests known jokingly as FBI – Foreign Born Irish. Those priests played golf together regularly, and Father Sweeney still plays golf each week with Msgr. Oliver McGready, a retired priest serving at St. Peter’s in Waldorf, Maryland.
In the 1970s, Father Sweeney got his pilot’s license. He had nephews in the air force and who worked in airlines. He was also inspired by the missionary priests who were pilots around the world.
“Growing up in the Second World War, we always had planes flying over the mountains and ocean,” he said, adding, “Aviation was an interesting reality.”
He recalled practicing stalls and spins, and also the thrill when is instructor got out of the airplane and said, “Take it up on your own.”
The priest became part of a group of four airplane aficionados in Frederick, Maryland who restored a 1937 Piper J-3 Cub. “It’s a museum piece now,” he said, adding that the group also built a ZODIAC 601 XL plane that he has flown many times.
Father Sweeney flew during two summers in Alaska with Father Jim Kelley, a retired Catholic chaplain for the Navy who is now deceased. “There’s no other way to get around (there). We celebrated Masses everywhere,” he said.
Most of his other flying has been with Father Michael Murray, another priest of the archdiocese who is a pilot.
“We’ve flown everywhere. We’ve flown up to Canada, up to Alaska, up to Denver, down to Texas, down to Florida,” Father Sweeney said.
At a recent Mass for local priests marking milestone anniversaries, Msgr. Robert Panke, the pastor of St. John Neumann, noted in his homily how Father Sweeney has summed up his priesthood by saying, “What a life!”
Asked what his 60th anniversary meant to him, Father Sweeney joked, “It means maybe the Lord has another 10 for me, to go from diamond to platinum!”
