Father Thaddeus Kennedy (1927-2020)

KENNEDY

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/4/2020 at 20:39:16

Fr. Thaddeus Kennedy, age 86, of New Melleray Abbey, Peosta, IA., passed away at 8:40 a.m. on May
27, 2014. A private service will be held at 5:15 p.m., Friday, May 30, 2014, at New Melleray Abbey. Burial will be in New Melleray Abbey Cemetery.

Fr. Thaddeus was born November 21, 1927 in Chicago, IL., Fr. Thaddeus Kennedy, monk and priest of New Melleray Abbey, Peosta, Iowa, passed away at 8:40 a.m., an hour and a half after concelebrating at the community Eucharist from his powered wheelchair, as has been his practice for a number of years.Fr. Thaddeus was raised in Chicago, IL, and after serving in the US Marine Corps in China, John entered New Melleray and took the name Thaddeus. Fr. Thaddeus, like many of his generation, saw Ecclesial order and regulation not as authoritarian but as a theological and practical means of living out a specific and unique monastic vocation in Roman Catholicism. Being highly inured personally in habit and structure, Fr. Thaddeus served wholeheartedly as Assistant Novice Director and Subprior, yet he preferred the more solitary tasks of Bellringer and Senior Corn-Dryer Operator, rising at Midnight to begin his shift during the harvest. When his shift was over he celebrated the Eucharist privately. Even during the final years of his life, when illness limited his mobility, he regularly came to community prayers, meetings, and meals. His interest in everything was only surpassed by his unwavering cheerfulness and lovely smile.

Fr. Thaddeus is survived by his sister, Marie Ronan.