11/19/2009
Priest, champion of refugees, dead at 84
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| Priest, champion of refugees, dead at 84 |
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Ed Langlois
BEAVERTON — Msgr. Morton Park, who invented Portland’s Catholic outreach to refugees, died Sunday at Maryville Nursing Home. The tall, amiable priest was 84.
A funeral is set for 11 a.m. Monday, Nov. 23, at St. Mary Cathedral.
As a new priest in 1956, Msgr. Park was appointed leader of Catholic Charities in Portland. He created an agency to welcome people escaping tribulation in other lands. The organization would help people from places like Cuba, Vietnam, Kosovo and Somalia. Families often took shelter in his rectory before permanent housing came through.
“He was very kind and good to many people and he was a good friend to those he served,” says Cecelia Baricevic, longtime refugee aid coordinator for Catholic Charities.
Dennis Keenan, executive director of Catholic Charities, says Msgr. Park has hero status in the agency. “He saved thousands of people’s lives,” Keenan says.
Father Park was raised in the farm town of Rosemont, east of Oregon City. The eldest of seven children, he helped harvest crops and paint barns. Family and friends affectionately called him “Bud.” After graduating from West Linn High, he attended the University of Portland. Discerning a call to serve as a priest, he attended Mount Angel Seminary and St. Edward Seminary in Kenmore, Wash. He was ordained by Archbishop Edward Howard on April 30, 1952.
After teaching at Central Catholic High School for two years, he was sent to the Catholic University of America to learn about social work. He returned with an advanced degree and a mandate to enliven church social services in Oregon.
In 1956, he joined Catholic Charities, an organization that he would lead in one way or another for more than 25 years. Resettling refugees became his passion.
Msgr. Park had an especially strong impact after the Vietnam War and is thought of highly by the Southeast Asian community.
Pham Nguyen, a member of Our Lady of Lavang Parish in Portland, credits the priest with bringing him out of a refugee’s funk, which endured “until one day when Father Park knocked on my door and said, ‘C’mon Phan, you need to get up, get out and get a job,’” Nguyen told the Sentinel in 2005.
Father Park played a large role in helping establish the Southeast Asian Vicariate in Portland.
For a group of Muslim Somali refugees in the 1990s, Msgr. Park provided a prayer area, complete with rug oriented to the east toward Mecca. Even into his 70s, the priest could be found lugging mattresses, couches and dressers up flights of stairs to provide a home for refugees.
During part of his retirement, he lived and ministered at Assumption Village assisted living community in North Portland. There, he not only presided at Mass, but led a bible study.
In 2008, Archbishop John Vlazny bestowed a papal honor on the priest, who then had the title monsignor.
Msgr. Park was also a parish priest, helping at St. Thomas More, the Madeleine, St. Peter’s and St. Pius X. He served as pastor of St. Frederic Parish in St. Helens and St. Anthony’s in Portland. In the mid-1980s, he became pastor of St. Mary Parish in Rockaway Beach. He served at Sacred Heart in Tillamook for several years before heading to St. Stephen’s in Portland in 1992.
“Father Park has brought in a lot of people because he opens his arms,” one parishioner said of his pastoring in 2000. “I’ve met people on the bus who praise him.”
When St. Stephen School began hitting financial trouble because of a demographics change, Father Park kept it going for several terms with money from his own savings.
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