Fr. David Kevin O'Rourke O.P.

Fr. David Kevin O'Rourke, OP
July 16, 1933 - July 16, 2025
Fr. David O'Rourke celebrated his last Mass at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Point
Richmond on his 92 nd birthday and died in his sleep later that day. Thus ended the very full and
productive life of a devoted Dominican friar and priest.
Hugh Dillon O'Rourke, an immigrant from County Kerry, Ireland, and his wife, Pauline Alice
(Woods) O'Rourke, welcomed their youngest son to their home in West New York, NJ. He grew
up in a family that prized education and that encouraged a life of service. After graduating from
Yale in 1955, the young David traveled to France for further study. He entered the Dominican
novitiate in Kentfield, CA, in 1957 and made profession in the Order of Friars Preachers the
following year.
After his ordination in 1962, Fr. David was sent to Washington, DC, to complete a Licentiate in
Sacred Theology. He then studied as a NIMH Fellow at the Division of Family Study in the
University of Pennsylvania Medical School, where he earned a certificate in marriage counseling,
and clinical membership in the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. His
interests included counseling, the sacraments of marriage and holy orders, as well as linguistics.
He was a gifted watercolor artist.
Fr. David's published works include four volumes in the Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and
Semiotics series, including, Demons by Definition: Social Idealism, Religious Nationalism, and
the Demonizing of Dissent, published in 1998. He also wrote books on the first year of
priesthood, the Holy Land at the time of Christ, the process of conversion, the effect of British
and Spanish colonial policies and practices on contemporary American family life, and the
development and acceptance of slavery in the U.S. He also published many articles on marriage
and annulments, family life, sacramental practice, and priestly ministry.
In his over sixty years of priesthood, he was a lector at the Dominican School of Philosophy &
Theology, Berkeley, and eventually the director of its pastoral theology program. He was the
pastor at St. Mary Magdalene Church, Berkeley, and St. Dominic Church, Benicia, and served as
prior of the Berkeley Priory. He was instrumental in establishing the Catholic Marriage
Encounter program in the state of California in the early 1970s and later worked as the editor of
the National Pastoral Life Center's Church magazine. He regularly wrote catechetical articles for
the Catholic News Service's Faith Alive series. He served for several decades as a defender of the
marriage bond in the marriage tribunal of the Diocese of Oakland and finally spent the last
twenty years of his life serving the parishioners at Our Lady of Mercy, Point Richmond.
At the age of sixty-six, he sent a letter to his major superior proposing to become a missionary in
Lithuania, whose Catholic communities were slowly reviving after fifty years of communist
suppression. That began an exciting, unexpected new chapter in his life. Fr. David utilized his
thirty-five years of experience in marriage and family life to set up model, parish-based family
support and marriage preparation programs in Vilnius and around the country. He taught a
course in family therapy at Vilnius University. Because the KGB headquarters in Vilnius were
directly across from the ancient Dominican priory where he lived, he began to explore the
trauma of systematic terror endured by the people he met, and heard the stories of their friends,
colleagues and family who disappeared in the night. This led to the Tatra Project
(www.tatraproject.org), a documentary educational resource about life under Soviet occupation
featuring first-person interviews. With fellow Dominican and film maker Fr. Kenneth Gumbert,
he wrote and produced a documentary film about the Lithuanian resistance to Soviet occupation
from 1939-1991 titled, Red Terror on the Amber Coast, which was released in 2008 and was
shown on PBS stations in the U.S. and on Lithuanian national television.
A letter from a parishioner captures Fr. David's legacy. She wrote, "his example meant to me that
it was possible to be (or try to be) a faithful Roman Catholic and an intellectually self-respecting,
well-educated, young professional."
A vigil will be held at the chapel of the St. Dominic Catholic Church, 475 E. I St., Benicia, CA,
on Monday, July 28 at 7:30 PM. A funeral Mass will be held at the same location Tuesday, July
29, at 10:30 AM. Burial will follow at St. Dominic's cemetery in Benicia. A memorial fund has
been established to honor Fr. David. Gifts will support the education of Fr. David's Dominican
brothers still in formation. Please donate online at https://opwest.org/frdavidorourke