Columban Father Kevin Connors RIP

Fr Michael Kevin Connors
(1928 - 2011)

Fr Kevin Connors was born on 28 July 1928 at Derrybrien, Gort, County Galway, Ireland,and educated in the National School there before going to St Joseph’s,Ballinasloe, for secondary education. He joined the Columbans in Dalgan Parkin 1946 and was ordained on 21 December 1952.

Father Kevin was assigned to Korea where three years of war were just coming to an end. The devastation and the deprivation caused by the war lasted another twenty years, especially in the northern Province of Kangwondo.  Situated along the border with North Korea, the Diocese of Chunchon was always a heavily militarized area, prone to frequent
invasion scares.

None of that ever seemed to worry Father Kevin as he served the Christian communities from Samchok on the coast, through the mountains from  Kangson in the east, to Hwachon and Chorwon on the western end of the ‘front line’.  

Rebuilding and relief projects were the order of the day in all his parishes at this time. Kevin enjoyed using the Army’s slogan of ‘serving the finest who serve along freedom’s frontier’  as he regularly extracted Korean and US Army equipment and supplies, for use in local communities and for Columbans in the area as well.

Father Kevin had the physical and mental stamina to cope with the isolation and  tension of living for many years in harsh
surroundings, but never lost his natural shyness or the warm personality that drew people to him no matter where he was living.

After more than thirty years of ‘washboard’ roads and bitterly cold winters, Father Kevin moved with the masses of people to the city of Seoul. Industrialisation caused Seoul to grow from four million to over twelve million in less than twenty years. He was part of the Columban effort to gather the displaced rural families into Christian communities on the edges of the city.

By the time Father Kevin left Korea in 1996, he had spent a further ten years in developing parishes in Tobong and Kuri areas of Seoul. Returning home to Gort, he enjoyed life with his family until illness forced him to come to the Nursing
Home in Dalgan.   He died suddenly in the Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, on the morning of 13 July 2011.

May he rest in peace.