In his role as chaplain, Father Quickley ministered to the Lincoln Center campus community until September 2020. Erin Hoffman, director of campus ministry at Lincoln Center, called him a role model and a friend who could often be heard singing and snapping his fingers along with whatever he was saying. 

“He was so authentic and joyful and brought out the best in others. He had an inner peace and freedom that was contagious,” she said, noting that his deep spirituality grounded him and gave him the confidence and humility that fed such a freedom.  

Carol Gibney, director of campus ministry, solidarity, and leadership, remembered Father Quickley as a “joy-filled soul” who once brought a small group of faculty and staff to tears with a heart-wrenching rendition of the song Amazing Grace.

“He had a thick faith that he wore like a comfortable, comforting shawl and shared with everyone that he met, and his warmth and joy were infectious,” she said. 

“Those of us that were blessed to know and work with him will remember him fondly and close our eyes and hear his deep, powerful voice and imagine him singing with the choirs of all the angels in heaven.”

A native of Baltimore who converted to Catholicism in 1962, Father Quickley entered the Society of Jesus in 1974, studied at Fordham in 1977, and was ordained a priest in 1980. After serving as assistant pastor at St. Aloysius in Washington D.C., he taught subjects such as Latin, religion, and English at Gonzaga College High School and Mackin Catholic High School in D.C. He completed his final vows in 1995.

From 1989 to 1996, he served as the Catholic chaplain for Lorton Reformatory, a prison system outside in Lorton, Virginia. In 1996, he moved to Nigeria, where he served in multiple roles, including Provincial for the Society of Jesus Northwest Africa Province from 2005 to 2011.

When he returned from Africa he lived at Fordham during a yearlong sabbatical. In June 2012, he left to take an assignment as pastor at St. Patrick’s in Oakland. He served on Fordham’s Board of Trustees from 2014 until 2018. In 2019, he assumed the title of chaplain for the Lincoln Center campus and took up residence in McMahon Hall. 

Father Quickley made an impact on many students, including Roxanne Cubero, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who interviewed him in 2019 for an article in The Observer newspaper. In the Q&A, he talked about his passion for singing and what it was like to be in Nigeria during 9/11.

“Interviewing Father Quickley is one of my favorite things that I’ve ever done for The Observer and I was greatly saddened when I heard of his passing,” Cubero said.

The infectious energy that Father Quickley brought to everyday interactions was matched by a fierce determination to expose racism. In a 2012 interview with Patrick Ryan, S.J., for the series Jesuits in Conversation, he shared how in 1964 he spoke at length with a Jesuit about joining the Society of Jesus. The priest informed him that to be admitted to seminary, he’d have to have been a Catholic for three years. Father Quickley had only left the Presbyterian faith two years prior. But he sensed there was more to it than that.

“I had the impression that he was saying to me, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ And I don’t remember him taking my phone number,” he said.

The next decade was a tumultuous one for both the country and for Father Quickley, who grew so disillusioned with racism he experienced in the church that he dropped out of a diocesan seminary he’d entered and taught special education at a public school for three years. 

“But this desire for priesthood never ever went away. So, after a long teacher strike that went on for well over a month, I began to think, ‘Is this what God is calling me to?’” he said.

In 1974, he was accepted at the Novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues, in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. He spoke to two other Black men who were studying there.  

“My biggest question for them was, are you at home in this congregation? And they were both very positive,” he said.

Several people recalled Father Quickley’s influence as a Black Jesuit at Fordham.

For Gibney, an 8 p.m. Mass that he presided over at St. Paul the Apostle Church in March 2012 is a particularly vivid memory for her.

“He walked up the long aisle of the church wearing a hoodie under his priest’s robes and chasuble, and when he got up to the altar, he asked the congregation if they knew that even up there on the altar, wearing a hoodie, he could still get shot, simply because he was a Black man,” Gibney said. 

“In the recent aftermath of the killing of Trayvon Martin, his words were chilling. And when he spoke about the tragedy of this young man’s death and his own experience as a Black man in America being profiled multiple times, he opened the eyes and hearts of many of the students that attended that Mass that evening to the racism experienced by so many people of color in the world.”

Hoffman agreed that Father Quickley had a profound influence in his short time on campus.

“I talked with many people of color since we learned of George’s death, and they have remarked on how impactful it was to have a Black Jesuit here on campus and how he helped empower them spiritually and otherwise,” she said.

Father Ryan, who like Father Quickley spent time living in Africa, said he felt honored the two were friends for 26 years. He attended the funeral Mass for his friend on Dec. 1. 

“In the last couple of years, George has been my spiritual director as well. I found his funeral at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Harlem very consoling. George was seven years younger than I, and he has gone before me. I now ask him in the presence of our risen Lord to guide me on the path to join him with Christ and all the saints,” he said.

In the 2012 interview, Father Ryan asked Father Quickley what it meant to be a Jesuit. Quickley cited Decree 26: “Conclusion: Characteristics of Our Way of Proceeding,” a description of eight Jesuit characteristics that the Society of Jesus adopted in 1995. 

“Men on a mission, men with a passion for excellence, men who are sinners but who recognize that they are loved by God, men who have a passion to be with the poor—for me, that’s the ideal,” he said.

“My work, although not in the university, has been intellectual. We are intellectuals. Whether we’re in the parish or working in a soup kitchen, there’s an intellectual dimension. It’s the insight, it’s the discernment that we bring to our work that uplifts the people of God.”

One of his last public acts was to welcome Fordham students back to campus in 2020 in a Fordham Magis Minute video. In the video, which was posted in August, he welcomed them, unsurprisingly, with song.

A recording of Father Quickley’s funeral can be found here. 

Notes of condolence can be sent to Father Quickley’s cousin, Veronda Pitchford, at 5320 North Sheridan Rd., Apt. 2505, Chicago, IL 60640.

“What Happened? Why? What Now? Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church” brought together experts in law, psychology, and theology to talk about new developments in the ongoing crisis, such the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s August report detailing how more than 300 Catholic priests there sexually abused children over seven decades and were protected by a hierarchy of church leaders.

It was the first in what organizers said will be a series of events dedicated to the crisis, and was preceded by a full minute of silence in honor of the victims.

The End of Piecemeal Reforms

Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D., professor of theological and social ethics and the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham, called the Pennsylvania revelations, as well as those relating to the abuse and cover up involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, “sexual abuse crisis 3.0.”

The first highly publicized incident of abuse, involving a Louisiana priest who was convicted of pedophilia in 1985, was dismissed as an aberration, Massingale said. Then in 2002, the Boston Globe published a report showing the abuse was more widespread, but it was still seen as an American phenomenon confined to wayward priests.

Now, he said, victims are coming forward from around the globe, which is proof that the whole church hierarchy is to blame. The entire process of priest formation needs to be reformed, he said, with less emphasis on the virtue of obedience.

“What we’re seeing is an interrogation of a monarchical system of power, where the people who have power in the church are not accountable to anyone except the person above them, and there are no women in the chain of command, and no lay people in the chain of command,” he said, noting that few outside the church believe church leaders are capable of policing themselves.

“We have reached the end of piecemeal reforms.”

M. Cathleen Kaveny, Ph.D., the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College, concurred, and said it’s important that the church submit itself to appropriate legal procedures and use secular best practices to make sure the abuse never happens again.

“At the same time, its extremely essential that we use and develop our own theological and ethical language to understand why this is a problem, not just for citizens in the secular society who are harming one other, but also for fellow members of the body of Christ, to see how that is harming us as church,” she said.

Time to Rethink Priest Formation

The relationship between priests and bishops was a major point of discussion. Father Massingale noted that at its best, the relationship takes on a benevolent father-son dynamic. At its worst, a priest can become psychologically dependent on the bishop, thus becoming vulnerable to being used to cover up for him or for others.

Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D., the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics, professor of psychology, and director of Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education, echoed Father Massingale’s strenuous assertion that homosexuality is not in any way connected to the abuse perpetrated by priests.

Men who molest young boys are immature heterosexuals who find themselves identifying more as a child than as an adult, she said. She noted that national studies have found that priests who have abused children do not display evidence of mental illness or urges associated with pedophilia.

And covering up the abuse, Fisher said, has only compounded and spread the pain further.

“People who are deeply religious are more likely to believe in the power of forgiveness, however the severity of harm perpetuated on children, the violation of the clerics’ position of trust and moral authority, repetition of abuse by individual clerics, and the past unwillingness of the church to recognize these problems is making forgiveness difficult for many Catholics,” she said.

Why Now?

To the question of why, David Gibson, director of Fordham’s Center of Religion and Culture, added, “Why now?” For starters, he noted that in 2002, American bishops went after the “low-lying fruit,” by focusing on priests and exempting themselves from scrutiny.

“I remember talking to a bishop I’ve known pretty for a pretty long time. I said, ‘What about you guys?’ And he said to me, ‘I don’t even know how you fire a bishop,’” he said.

Gibson said that the Pennsylvania grand jury report added narratives to what had previously been dry statistics, and their impact was heightened by the revelations of Cardinal McCarrick’s conduct that had come out just a month before. Just as important, Gibson noted, is that conservative Catholics have come out in favor of investigations they’d previously resisted, and law enforcement officials are no longer turning a blind eye.

Finally, he said, it’s become apparent that the problem is not confined to Anglophile countries such as the United States, Ireland and Australia.

“It turns out we were the leading edge of a wave of that’s now breaking around the world, in places like Chili, Guam, Mexico, Poland, and Italy,” he said.

“This is all emboldening victims, empowering them, and more of them are speaking out. And when victims speak out, that’s more effective than any media investigation or grand jury report.”

The panel was co-sponsored by Fordham’s Department of Theology, Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, and Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work.

On any given evening, however, small groups of students have chosen to press the pause button on all that hectic activity to spend some time in peaceful reflection, prayer, and community building.

These student-led groups, called Christian Life Communities (CLCs), are rooted in Ignatian spirituality, and they offer ways to help students connect their faith to their daily lives.

“A big part of Ignatian spirituality is finding God in everyday life,” said Mary Catherine Redmond, PBVM, the pastoral minister for CLCs at the Rose Hill campus. By drawing upon the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, CLCs can help students reflect upon their own identities and life decisions, she said.

A bedrock for spirituality

For Matthew Leone, a Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior, being involved with CLCs since he was a freshman has provided him with “a new bedrock” for his spirituality.

“It’s been kind of my life and blood for the last four years,” he said. “It’s a good place in your week to stop, reflect, relax, and find deeper meaning in things.”

CLCs at Fordham are part of a larger international movement, which began as a post-Vatican II initiative in the early 1970s. Their history goes back even further, however, beginning as the Sodality of Our Lady, founded in Rome in 1563 by a young Jesuit named John Leunis, S.J.

According to Erin Hoffman, associate director of Campus Ministry and the coordinator of CLCs at the Lincoln Center campus, the groups are “the closest thing we have to a kind of lay Ignatian community.”

Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Vanessa Rotondo was drawn to join a CLC as a sophomore because it provided an opportunity for deep spiritual inquiry in an environment of safety and acceptance.

“I’m someone who likes to engage in theological and philosophical thoughts and questions, but I always preferred to have them internally. Realizing that other people were doing the same thing, there really was a strong comfort and validation,” she said.

There are currently two undergraduate CLC groups at Lincoln Center and 10 groups at Rose Hill, including one for commuters and one for graduate students. Each CLC group of about six to 10 members meets for at least an hour once a week.

Pray, focus, mediate

All CLC sessions start with an opening prayer followed by check-ins with group members. The bulk of the meeting is then devoted to a focus exercise tailored to the needs and interests of each group. This could be a meditation based on the Ignatian Exercises, or a reflection on a song, poem, or scripture, said Hoffman.

CLCs began at Fordham in 2006, based on the three pillars of faith, community, and mission. Though they are firmly Christian in tradition, they are open to people of all faiths or levels of faith.

“It’s all rooted in our personal experience,” said Hoffman, “so everybody is an expert in their own experience. Inviting people to share from where they are enables us to welcome people who have been doing this for a long time or people who are just getting started.”

This approach of inclusivity and acceptance has nurtured loyal student CLC members.

“What I’ve noticed over the years is the sense of community that you build,” said Leone. “You really do develop a sense of trust and camaraderie.”

Rotondo has had a similar experience.

“There are definitely friendships that have emerged solely because we’ve agreed to bear our faith in this community,” she said.
–Nina Heidig