Father James McQuade, CSP, entered eternal life on Aug. 2 at the Mary Manning Walsh Home in New York City. He was 95.
Father McQuade, a priest for 68 years, was a parish priest, campus minister, Catholic Information Center staff member, and hospital chaplain.
He had a nearly lifelong relationship with the Paulist Fathers. He grew up in a Paulist parish and was a student in the Paulists’ one-time high school and junior-college seminary programs.
James Francis McQuade was born on July 17, 1929, in New York City, a son of John and Margaret Kiely McQuade. He was baptized at the Church of the Ascension in Manhattan.
Father McQuade attended the Inwood Good Shepherd Parish elementary school, where, he later wrote, he was “greatly influenced by the Paulist Fathers, the Sisters of Mercy, the De La Salle Christian Brothers, and an impressive list of lay teachers.” He was in the school marching band and the school orchestra.
He then entered the one-time Paulist high school seminary program at St. Charles College in Baltimore and continued into the Paulist junior seminary for his first years of college. On Aug. 29, 1949, he entered the Paulist novitiate in Oak Ridge, N.J.
He made his First Promises on Sept. 8, 1950, and his Final Promises on Sept. 8, 1953. He earned his undergraduate degree at St. Paul’s College, the Paulists’ former major seminary in Washington, D.C., which was then a degree-granting institution. Father McQuade later earned a master’s degree at the Institute for Religious Studies at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y.
He was ordained a priest on May 3, 1956, by Cardinal Francis Spellman at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City. He was one of 17 men ordained that day, the largest ordination class thus far in the missionary society’s history.
In his first priestly assignment, Father McQuade was an associate pastor at St. Paul’s in New York through August 1958. He then served on the staff of the Catholic Information Center in Grand Rapids, Mich., through 1962, when he became an associate pastor at Good Shepherd Church in Inwood.
In 1964, he moved to Austin, Texas, where he first served for one year as an associate pastor at St. Austin Church. From 1965 to 1974, Father McQuade was a chaplain at the Austin State Hospital. While there, he received training in the ecumenical clinical pastoral training program and was certified as a clinically trained chaplain supervisor by the National Catholic Chaplains Association. He would later certify other priests and religious sisters as trained chaplains.
From 1975 to 1977, Father McQuade assisted with the development of the Catholic parish in the Montbello neighborhood of Denver before again spending a year as an associate pastor at St. Paul’s in New York City.
In 1978, he moved to Morgantown, W.Va., where he was an associate pastor and campus minister at St. John’s University Parish at West Virginia University through 1983.
Father McQuade then served for two years as administrator and then pastor of St. Peter’s Church in Greeley, Colo.; one year on the staff of the Catholic Information Center in Grand Rapids, Mich.; and one year as an associate pastor at St. Peter’s Church and the Catholic Information Center in Toronto.
He returned to Catholic campus ministry in 1988 for three years as pastor of John XXIII University Parish at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
In 1991, Father McQuade moved to the Paulist Motherhouse in New York City and began a 24-year tenure as a devoted chaplain at Roosevelt Hospital on Manhattan’s West Side (today’s Mount Sinai West). He entered senior ministry in 2014. In his later years, he engaged in volunteer priestly ministries, including distributing ashes at St. Paul’s on Ash Wednesdays. He also was dedicated to sharing the history of the Paulists as well as the stories of historic Catholics and their associations with the Paulists. In July 2023, Father McQuade moved to the Mary Manning Walsh Home.
Father McQuade was preceded in death by his parents and his younger brother, Robert.
In addition to his Paulist brothers, he is survived by his nieces, Elizabeth and Nancy; his nephews, John and Terrence; his great-nieces, Nora and Kiely; and his great-nephew, Hugh.
A funeral Mass for Father McQuade was celebrated on Aug. 7 at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City. The principal celebrant of the Mass was Father René Constanza, CSP, president of the Paulist Fathers. The homily was shared by Father John Duffy, CSP.
A burial service in the Paulist section of St. Thomas Cemetery in Oak Ridge, N.J., followed the Mass.
