The death has occurred of former Dominican, John O’Keeffe. He died in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on Tuesday.
John was born in Cork on November 29, 1945. He began his noviciate in St Mary’s, Pope’s Quay, Cork in 1964, making profession in 1965 and was ordained a priest in July 1971.
Before joining the Dominicans John attended Newbridge College, where he was a boarder. After school he joined the Irish Army, spending a year in the cadette college on the Curragh. It was a close move from Newbridge College to the Army. It was from there that he joined the Dominicans.
After his priestly ordination he was assigned to St Mary’s Priory, Pope’s Quay, Cork and began his arts degree at University College Cork. While at UCC he was diagnosed with epilepsy. The illness interfered with his studies, which meant John never completed his degree.
It was during his time in Cork that he took leave of absence from the Order, which eventually led to his leaving the Irish Dominicans.
John was highly intelligent, a man of precision and exactitude. If he was a Christian, then he was a Christian with all its consequences and if an atheist, it followed he was the perfect atheist. He could never understand how people could be halfhearted in their faith or in their non-faith. John was in so many respects a perfectionist.
He was an avid reader, his specialities being history and philosopher and he also dabbled in theology. As a result of his lifelong interests he regularly visited the late Frs Henry Peel and Hugh Fenning and Fr Liam Walsh.
John O’Keeffe was quietly spoken, gentle in his disposition. He was to the end a person of total integrity, finding it difficult to understand how people could say one thing and do another.
On leaving the Order he kept up his contact with a number of Dominicans, indeed, he cherished their friendship.
He was a good man, who never did harm to anyone and took a grim view when people were unkind or cruel. John was a man of his word.
A prayer service takes place at 12.30 today at Corrigans’ funeral home in Dublin’s Camden Street.
Funeral Mass at 1pm on Saturday in St Patrick’s Church, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork followed by cremation at Island Crematorium, Rocky Island, Ringaskiddy.
May John rest in peace.
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