Illegal Priest Can Stay

Irish Voice News

Illegal Priest Can Stay

July 3, 2008

By April Drew

NOTHING short of a miracle happened on Tuesday, July 1 in a rural town in South Dakota. Father Cathal Gallagher, the Donegal-born priest who was recently told he would have to leave the country by July 1 because he was out of status, received a call from the Department of Homeland Security early Tuesday morning informing him that he had their permission to stay in the country.

“They kept repeating, ‘Do not leave the country, we want to resolve this in your favor,’” a delighted Gallagher, 58, told the Irish Voice on Tuesday.

“And I thought today was going to be my day in the doldrums,” he added.

Instead, Gallagher, who hails from Gweedore in Co. Donegal, received an early call from Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota with the good news.

Gallagher, who kept repeating how delighted he was, said that immigration officials warned him not to leave the country — not even for a vacation — because it could jeopardize his chances of a green card.

“They told me to go to Sioux Falls on July 14 for my fingerprinting and to bring a photograph,” he said.

Immigration officials also informed Gallagher that they were working closely with “senior officials in Washington,” and they said they hoped “to resolve the issue” in his favor.

Although Gallagher didn’t receive any promises that he would be getting a green card, he said, “They made if very clear that they are in it heart and soul.”

Gallagher said that through the years he always thou-ght of the Department of Homeland Security as lots of red tape and bureaucracy and unrepresentative of the people, but now he knows “they are good hearted people.”

Patti Ward, a close friend and lifelong parishioner of St. Thomas Aquinas par-ish where Gallagher is based, told the Irish Voice through floods of tears on Tuesday that immigration authorities read the 2,000 or so letters written to the Department of Homeland Security pleading with them to allow their beloved parish priest to stay in the country.

“Although we haven’t received a total yes or no it is very positive and we are absolutely delighted,” she said. “If Father was going to have to leave, I think I was going to die.”

Ward, who was one of the hundreds of parishioners who attended Gallagher’s final Mass on Sunday at St. Thomas, said that Bishop Paul Swain of the Diocese of Sioux Falls “lied through his teeth” on Monday evening when he gave an interview to a local television station.

“He said he knew early on in the year that this was going to happen and that they started to look for a replacement but they never told Father or us till May,” said Ward.

Swain told KSFY television station on Monday that after discovering Gallagher was undocumented, his lawyers “continued to try and figure out a way, and they informed us a little earlier this year that there was no way that that decision was going to be reversed,” Swain said.

He added that it was “quickly apparent” that a replacement needed to be found for Gallagher. He did not want to risk employing someone of illegal status.

Gallagher came to the U.S. in 1996 with the intention of returning to Japan, where he served as a priest for 22 years, but he soon fell in love with South Dakota and its people. He quickly settled into rural life in Sioux Falls.

For ten years he served as a pastor to the parishes of De Smet, Arlington and Iroquois. During this time he received two religious visas and eventually applied for his green card.

It wasn’t until May this year that he discovered he had been undocumented for some time. He was told a “technical error” had occurred.

Enlisting the efforts of Senators John Thune and Tim Johnson and Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Gallagher and his parishioners did everything in their power to try and resolve the issue.

In the meantime, Swain reassigned a 34-year-old Sioux Falls priest, Shane Stephens who was ordained in 2007, to take over the Gallagher’s parishes in Sioux Falls. Stephens officially took over on July 1.

Although currently, Gallagher’s three parishes are no longer his, he said, “You win a little, you lose a little.”

Ward feels nothing is impossible. “He can always be reassigned back there,” she said.

Swain, who described Gallagher in a recent letter as a “fine pastor,” said if the Department of Homeland Security did reverse their decision concerning Gallagher’s residence status then he will consider what options are available to him at that time, but he made it clear that reappointing Gallagher “to these parishes would not be among those options.”

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