Monsignor John Scully was a pioneer priest. In six decades of service, he launched several Catholic schools and started parishes across the Tampa Bay area, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
Monsignor Scully died Friday morning while celebrating Mass at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Valrico. The 86-year-old collapsed while consecrating the bread and wine, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
He “died with his boots on,” St. Stephen’s Father Bill Swengros tod the St. Petersburg Times.
“There’s something, as a priest, very beautiful in the way he passed,” Father Len Plazewski told the St. Petersburg Times.
Bishop Robert Lynch blogged, “It was precisely how he wished to go.”
Starting in 1972, Monsignor Scully took annual mission trips to Africa. He was the founder of the Holy Family Parish in Nairobi, Kenya. He learned Swahili and Kikuyu, which he used to baptize and say Mass, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
He loved being a priest, and though he retired about a decade ago, leaving St. Theresa Catholic Church in Spring Hill, he still worked. He was a priest in residence at St. Stephen, where he
offered Mass and took confession, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
“He was really big on the Ten Commandments and he didn’t mind calling people out (in the confessional),” Father Swengros told the St. Petersburg Times. “He was a little tough. … He didn’t compromise.”
And the parish loved it.
Photo: St. Petersburgh staff photo 2003
In 2003, Monsignor John Scully, left, then of St. Michaels Church in Hudson, and Mukundha Sastry observe a moment of silence for the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia during a memorial service at the Hindu Temple of Florida.
