Rev. James Manning, SMM - RIP Dec. 14, 2025

 

Litchfield, 1954 

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photo below

On Gaudete Sunday, December 14, 2025, Father James Manning, S.M.M., 95 years of age, quietly passed over to his Lord. As the reading of that day proclaimed: “Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; they will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee.” ( Is.35)  Born November 7, 1930 in Brooklyn, NY, to James and Catherine Manning, he was baptized in St. Thomas Parish. As a young boy, he was stricken with Polio, and was a patient at St. Charles Children’s Hospital in Port Jefferson, under the watchful care of the Daughters of Wisdom. Perhaps it is impossible to know the full impact of being so ill at such an early age, but it set the stage for a life of courageously overcoming obstacles, of truly dying and rising over again by the grace of God.

In 1949, Jim entered Montfort Preparatory Seminary and College at Bay Shore. He professed his first vows as a Montfortian at the Novitiate in Hartford City, Indiana on August 15, 1952. Completing his studies in philosophy and theology in Litchfield, CT, he was ordained a priest March 1, 1958. Throughout some 67 years of priestly ministry, Fr. Jim shared his focus and gifts between teaching and parish, pastoral ministry, and also between assignments in the East and in the Midwest. He began in Port Jefferson, then went to Litchfield to teach from 1959-61. After a brief time at St. Andrew’s Parish in Fort Wayne, IN, he began a major part of his life’s work – teaching at Montfort Seminary in Bay Shore, from 1962-70. His influence is still deeply felt in the lives of his former students, some priests, many fathers and grandfathers.

He was again in parish work, at Infant Jesus, from 1971-74; then he went to Washington, DC as formator and Novice Master from 1975-77. Fr. Jim returned to the Midwest, to our parish in Noblesville, IN from 1979-84. Coming back East, he began a fruitful ministry at our Shrines, first at Our Lady of the Island in Manorville, then at Lourdes in Litchfield, from 1993-96. Fr. Jim focused on preaching, based in Bay Shore till 1999, when he moved to the Daughters of Wisdom Community in Sound Beach as chaplain to the sisters. He served them – who had cared for him as a child at St. Charles – until 2015. It was then that his own health began its slow but steady decline. He resided first in our Montfort Retirement Community at Bay Shore, and then from 2022-25 at Maria Regina Nursing Home in Brentwood.

Gregarious, with a spontaneous and lighthearted sense of humor, Fr. Jim always enlivened any community he lived in or visited! But he also had a very serious gift for studying and reading, for quiet prayer and contemplation. As a preacher, a teacher, a confrere, a friend, Fr. Jim touched the lives of countless men and women in the course of his 95 years. Trying to say Goodbye to him, one thinks of the words in the prophet Daniel:

“But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament,

and those who lead the many to justice  shall be like the stars forever.”

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Front Row: Marty Curley, John Breslin, Ted Murphy, John (Doc) McCann, Sal Costagliola;
Second Row: Andy Hoynes, Bill Bennison, Franklin Darling,  Jim Manning. Ed Dilgen, Dick Thienel;
Third Row: George Werner, Al Ryan, Joe Fazzina
Top (going up) Hugh Munro, Ray Drohan, Willie Farrell and (maybe) Bob Canuel. 

Missing: Pat Berkery