Father James Farrell shows Christ’s compassion in 50 years of ministry

Father James Farrell preaches a homily during a June 4 Mass for the Benedictine sisters at Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

When Father James Farrell looks back upon his 50 years of priestly life and ministry, he remembers many “Gospel moments” as the highlights of his service to the people of God in central and southern Indiana.

The priest, commonly known across the archdiocese as “Father Jim,” describes these as times “when God is obviously present and working.”

One happened when Father Farrell met a man who just learned he had a terminal illness that would soon end his life. The man told the priest with quiet confidence, “You know, Father, you’ve got to die before you can live.”

Another was when he visited a husband spending time with his wife and their six children as she lay dying. Father Farrell recalled the faith-filled husband telling him, “You know, Father, God loves her more than we do.”

“People’s faith is just amazing, outstanding,” recalled Father Farrell in an interview with The Criterion.

Ordained an archdiocesan priest by St. Paul VI on June 29, 1975, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Father Farrell will celebrate the 50th anniversary of ordination during a July 13 Mass at St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower) Church in Indianapolis.

‘I think I want to do this’

It was at Little Flower Parish that the seeds of Father Farrell’s priestly vocation were planted and first blossomed.

When he graduated from the eighth grade in the parish’s school in 1963, the faith community had more than 20 young men who were archdiocesan seminarians. Six boys from his eighth-grade class became high school seminarians at the Latin School of Indianapolis, the archdiocese’s high school seminary at the time.

“I served at Mass as a young boy,” Father Farrell recalled. “And I had a great relationship with the priests at the parish. Between watching the general routine of a priest’s life and seeing how nice the clergy were, how accessible and available they were, I just felt very comfortable and I thought, ‘I think I want to do this.’ ”

The camaraderie among his peers in the parish who were open to the priesthood also helped him in his discernment.

After being ordained 12 years after his eighth-grade graduation, Father Farrell soon learned how his life at Little Flower contributed to his priestly formation.

He and other high school seminarians helped out at the parish on a regular basis.

“We had a lot of exposure to parish life,” Father Farrell said. “We spent a lot of time in the rectory. We’d answer phones and the door.”

So, even though he had spent the better part of four years in Rome during his last years of formation, returning to ordinary parish ministry in the archdiocese was not a difficult adjustment for him.

“I was comfortable with the routine because I had been exposed to it previously,” Father Farrell said.

‘Just being with people’

Not that his time in Rome was unimportant. Soon after arriving in Rome in 1971 as a recent college seminary graduate, Father Farrell attended a general audience of Pope Paul VI.

He was impressed by how the pontiff spoke in several languages to Catholics from around the world who had come to the Vatican. Then, at the end of the audience, all present chanted the creed together.

“We had just spent about an hour underscoring our diversity—diverse languages, ways of life and culture, prayer—and now we’re singing something that we can all agree on,” Father Farrell remembered. “Then I saw the unity and the diversity. I was sold.”

After returning to the archdiocese after his ordination, Father Farrell served for periods as associate pastor of the Indianapolis parishes of St. Pius X and St. Barnabas, both of which he would later lead as pastor.

Other parishes he’s led include St. Andrew the Apostle and Our Lady of Lourdes, both in Indianapolis, and Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. Augustine, both in Jeffersonville.

Father Farrell said that “just being with people” is how he has found fulfillment in priestly life and ministry.

“I would use any avenue that I could to understand who they were, what was going on in their lives, and to offer support in whatever way I could,” Father Farrell said. “That connection to people in their journey of faith became something that I really enjoyed.”

That connection often became more intense when parishioners were close to death.

“That was where people need to hear words of faith and inspiration,” Father Farrell said. “People need to be reminded as they’re dying that Jesus died for them and that they can put their hope in Jesus. Being with people at those moments is life-giving.”

‘We’re called to love our people’

Father John McCaslin, pastor of St. Monica Parish in Indianapolis, was a newly ordained priest when he began ministry in 2002 as the associate pastor of St. Barnabas Parish in Indianapolis under Father Farrell.

While appreciating the Father Farrell’s compassion for those who were suffering, Father McCaslin was particularly impressed by how he made himself available to them at any time.

“If there was a call in the middle of the night, we went,” Father McCaslin said. “There was a real sense of responsiveness and obligation out of our pastoral charity and our own call as priests.”

He said this witness of priestly life and ministry from Father Farrell has influenced him.

“Nobody wants to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and go to a hospital,” Father McCaslin said. “But if we just embrace that as part of the way in which we’re called to love our people, then we do it out of love. ...”

Deacon Richard Wagner has been shaped by Father Farrell’s witness for much of his life. He was a teenager at St. Pius when Father Farrell served there as a newly ordained priest.

Viewing him as a mentor, Deacon Wagner said that the priest’s caring pastoral ministry to parishioners helped him “to find ways to be more compassionate, loving and pastoral” in seeking “to be the best husband and father I could be.”

That influence became more focused on ministry when Deacon Wagner served at St. Pius after his ordination in 2012. Father Farrell was pastor there at the time, leading the faith community until his retirement in 2021.

“I was ready to be a sponge,” said Deacon Wagner, “because I knew I was going to learn so much just by watching and listening.”

One aspect of Father Farrell’s approach to pastoral ministry that Deacon Wagner admires but is still striving to emulate is the priest’s memory.

“He just remembers people, their situations, the names of their family members, how he knows them,” Deacon Wagner said. “I’ve always kind of been in awe of that. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that level, but it makes me wonder how I could be more attentive to people as they are sharing with me.”

‘The gift of being a priest’

Father Farrell’s attentiveness to others has been a highlight of his leading days of reflection, retreats and parish missions, which he started just months after he was ordained.

Much of that has happened at Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House in Indianapolis, where he served as director from 2008-16.

Although distinct from serving as a parish priest, Father Farrell said leading such spiritual events flows from his experiences in serving his parishioners.

“It’s deepened my faith and my prayer,” he said. “When I walk into a retreat center on a Friday night, I am coming from where I have been over the past several months ministerially.”

The demands of parish ministry, though, can sometimes make preparing for retreats difficult. That reality has led Father Farrell to grow in his trust of the Holy Spirit.

“The Holy Spirit supplies,” he said. “[I’ve] grown in faith and in the awareness that I’m not alone operating as an independent agent. I’m operating as a minister of the Gospel in concert with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, inspiring me and providing the words.”

Father Farrell has also grown close to Christ in his 50 years of priestly life and ministry, describing him as “my companion.”

“I’m here because of him,” he said. “I am interested in being faithful to him and helping other people to experience his presence, not only the real presence in the Eucharist, but also his presence in our midst, in the poor, in the assembly who gather to pray.”

For men considering if God might be calling them to priestly life and ministry, Father Farrell offered this encouragement.

“The gift of being a priest is entering into people’s lives at those sacred moments—birth, death, faith, pursuing where God is in their lives, all of the questions that come from life,” he said. “What could be more rewarding than being with people when they discover the unconditional love of God when they approach death, helping them cross over into the hands of a merciful Father?”
 

(For more information about a vocation to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, visit HearGodsCall.com.) †