Gulf Pine Catholic
•
September 9, 2016
15
Father Murphy
From page 14
“I think she was very much aware that she was
dying,” he said. “She didn’t say a word. She was just
present for the Mass. I handled it as best I could under
the circumstances.
“Looking back at that point in my life -- and I prob-
ably didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have --
with my mother dying and my getting on a plane for
Mississippi within a month or so of her death, I’d say I
left my father very, very, very lonely and very sad, but
it wasn’t anything he ever imposed on me. But I often
look back and think that I probably wasn’t as aware as
I should have been of what effect it was having on
him.”
Mississippi Bound
Young Father Murphy arrived in Mississippi in
August 1966.
His first pastor was Monsignor Thomas Williams,
an old Irishman, who he remembers as being very
tough and demanding.
“I remember my first encounter with him. He was
napping and, Connie, the housekeeper, welcomed me at
the door and told me to sit down. So I sat down with my
little suitcase at my feet and Tommy came down and
said, ‘Now you’ll be doing 8 o’clock Mass in the morn-
ing,’” Father Murphy said.
“That was a Sunday morning and I have a real
memory of going over to the church and trying to find
the sacristy. This big man came into the room that I was
in and said to me, ‘Father, you’re in the wrong sacristy.
This is the altar boy’s sacristy.’ It was Gus Alfonso, a
very nice and gracious man. I’ll never forget Gus look-
ing at me like, ‘Don’t you know what you are doing?’”
In 1967, Msgr. Williams was reassigned to Our
Lady of Fatima Parish in Biloxi and was succeeded by
Msgr. Michael Campbell, who came from the same part
of Ireland as Father Murphy and had actually encour-
aged him to come to Mississippi.
“Certainly, Campbell was a different kettle of fish
altogether because he was much more ready to include
you in the pastoral program and agenda,” Father
Murphy said.
Msgr. Campbell’s arrival coincided with the imple-
mentation of the Second Vatican Council.
“I remember Msgr. Josiah Chatham made a series of
visitations to the parishes in the state of Mississippi,
introducing people as best he could, to the renewal of
Vatican II. I remember that very distinctly and it was a
great work on the part of Msgr. Chatham,” Father
Murphy said.
“Campbell, when he came, would have already
been in touch with the implementation of Vatican II.
Part of that would have been for him to include his
priests.”
15 Minutes of Fame
In 1968, Father Murphy was assigned to St. Michael
Parish in Biloxi, where his boss was none other than
Father Morgan Kavanagh.
A year later, Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi
Gulf Coast and Father Murphy achieved what he would
refer to as his “15 minutes of fame.”
“My 15 minutes of fame lasted nearly 40 years,
until Katrina came,” he said. “Katrina wiped out my 15
minutes of Fame because, up until that point, Camille
was the standard.”
On the night of Camille, Father Murphy and Father
Kavanagh had holed up in the rectory, next door to the
church. At that time, there were houses on all sides of
the church, as well as factories and a bowling alley.
“We were going to stay in the house. Nobody came
by and told us to get out,” he said. “We made the deci-
sion -- it was the hand of God again -- to leave the rec-
tory and go over to the church. I don’t know why, but
obviously we thought it would be safer. We decided to
go into the church and see if we could lie on the floor
on the nice carpet. I brought my pajamas, praise the
Lord, so I got into my pajamas and stretched out with a
blanket ready for the night.
“I have a very vivid memory of, all of a sudden, all
hell breaking loose. The front doors of the church just
slammed open and this ferocity of something coming
in. The next thing you know, bowling pins began to
come into the church. I remember myself and Kavanagh
thinking something bad is happening.”
The two priests made the decision to retreat to
higher ground because the storm surge was rapidly ris-
ing. At first, they climbed up on the altar. However,
when the altar started to float, they decided to call, or
rather crawl, on Mary and Joseph for guidance.
“The water kept rising and we couldn’t hold the
altar,” he said.
“We were lucky that there were two statutes of the
Virgin and St. Joseph on the side altars. They were
bolted onto steel girders, with the altar underneath. So,
to get to higher ground, the only thing we could look at
was maybe being able to shimmy up on those statutes
and hold onto them and see what would happen.”
So, after giving Father Kavanagh a boost onto the
statute of the Virgin Mary, Father Murphy shimmied up
St. Joseph and the two priests spent the night clinging
for dear life.
“Eventually, I lost all contact with him and he with
me because of just total darkness and water raging and
pews being torn up,” Father Murphy said.
After about five hours, the wind and the water sub-
sided and the two priests emerged unscathed, wet, but
unscathed.
“When I came down from that statute, the only
thing in the world that I owned was the pair of pajamas
I was wearing,” he said.
On the Move
After leaving St. Michael in 1972, Father Murphy
was reassigned to St. John the Evangelist Parish in
Gulfport as an associate pastor and, subsequently,
served as associate pastor of St. Paul Parish in
Vicksburg, under Msgr. Michael Glynn, an assignment
which he considers a real blessing because he got to
know Mississippi beyond the Gulf Coast. He also
spoke highly of Msgr. Glynn, who he called “a real
gentleman and a very, very good pastor.”
After leaving Vicksburg, Father Murphy took a one-
year sabbatical and spent a year in New Orleans work-
ing for Catholic Charities at Hope Haven, a residential
home for boys.
After being summoned back to Biloxi by Msgr.
Campbell, Father Murphy was appointed associate pas-
tor at St. Alphonsus Parish in Ocean Springs, under the
tutelage of Msgr. Eamon Mullen, before being named
pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Dedeaux and Spiritual
Director of Cursillo in 1980, succeeding his friend,
Father Bill Vollor.
“Father Vollor’s spirituality divorced him from the
material world, as it were,” he said. “He could live in
squalor and see it as a grace-filled moment and I never
doubted that for a moment, but I didn’t quite see it
exactly like that.”
Father Murphy recounted the story of an unwel-
come visitor who entered the rectory during one of his
first nights in Dedeaux.
“It was pitch black because there were no street-
lights out there,” he said. “So I’m in bed one night and
it’s raining like hell and I feel this thing in the bed
beside me. It was a dog. Windows in the rectory were
broken and screen doors were broken. You see, Bill just
didn’t get around to fixing things. That freaking dog!
I’ll never forget that. I remember thinking we’ve got to
fix these holes.”
From 1983 to 1994, Father Murphy served as direc-
tor of Catholic Social and Community Services.
“Every parish I served was a good experience and I
think it got better progressively as time marched on, but
I think the most productive period of my priesthood
was in Catholic Social Services,” he said. “I had a heck
of a team. I believe I was at my best in letting them be
who they needed to be. I wasn’t a degreed counselor or
social worker. I was more of an organizer, so I played
to their individual strengths.”
In 1995, Father Murphy returned to parish work,
becoming the pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in
Hattiesburg. His last assignment was as pastor of St.
Joseph Parish in Gulfport, where he served from 2004
until his retirement in 2016.
Father Murphy is grateful to the different religious
communities he’s worked with during his priestly min-
istry, including the Presentation Sisters and both the
American and Irish Mercy Sisters.
He hopes his priesthood has, in some way, personi-
fied the words of Pope Francis, who in his Prayer for
the Year of Mercy, wrote, “You willed that your minis-
ters would also be clothed in weakness in order that
they may feel compassion for those in ignorance and
error: let everyone who approaches them feel sought
after, loved, and forgiven by God.”
Father Murphy now resides in Long Beach, thanks
to the generosity of Ike andDawnThrash, of Hattiesburg,
for giving him a house there and Billy and Patty
Dorgan, owners of Krispy Kreme, for furnishing the
house.
Regardless of what the future may hold, Father
Murphy knows he’ll be led by the divine hand of
providence because, after all, God takes care of fools
and children.
And, he concluded, “You can put me in whatever
category you wish.”
