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In memoriam: Kieran McCarty (1925-2008).

Article Excerpt
[Eulogy delivered by Bernard L. Fontana at Mission San Xavier del Bac on Saturday, January 3, 2009, on the occasion of the funeral Mass for the Reverend Father Kieran McCarty, O.F.M.]

"Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fall from the sky to the earth" (Rev 9:1).

With Father Kieran's passing, a star has fallen from the sky, ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

In thinking about our friend, I'm reminded of what a friar once told me. "If you've met one Franciscan ... you've met one Franciscan."

If ever there were an examplar of that verity, it was Kieran Robert McCarty, a man known to his fellow friars and to his legion of friends as "Kiro." It was when he became a Franciscan that he assumed the name "Kieran" after a pair of sixth century Irish saints, monastics who, appropriately enough, strove to preserve religion and learning in some of the darkest of the Dark Ages.

Kiro was a person who compartmentalized his adult life. He was, above all, a Franciscan priest who felt deeply his fraternal calling. So was he an airplane pilot. A motorcycle driver. An accomplished musician who could fill a space with the sound of beautiful organ music. A back country adventurer who was completely at home in the seaside, foothill, and mountain villages of Sonora and Sinaloa where he sought...

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