CHICAGO (IL)
Reuters
May 30, 2013
(Spokeswoman says Greeley died early Thursday morning, not Wednesday night, paragraph three)
By Mary Wisniewski
May 30 (Reuters) – Father Andrew M. Greeley, an outspoken Roman Catholic priest who wrote more than 50 novels and was a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times until he suffered a brain injury in 2008, died at the age of 85 in his Chicago home, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
“Father Andrew Greeley was the most influential American Catholic sociologist of the 20th century,” said Father Tom Reese, a senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter. “He was the first to show how Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on birth control by Pope Paul VI, split the church and made the laity question church authority.”
Greeley died in his sleep early Thursday morning, according to his spokeswoman, June Rosner.
A proponent of reform within the Catholic Church, Greeley also wrote more than 100 works of non-fiction, including “Priests: A Calling in Crisis” and “The Catholic Revolution: New Wine in Old Wineskins and the Second Vatican Council.”
“He was first and foremost a parish priest … his parish were the people who read his columns and his books,” said his niece, Laura Durkin. “He was a priest and he loved the church.”
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