John W. Lord; Priest Who Worked in AIDS Program Dies of Disease

An Orange County priest who had spearheaded local clergy response to AIDS patients has himself died of complications of AIDS after being quietly tended by his colleagues, friends said.

Father John W. Lord, 46, died Wednesday at the rectory of St. Columban Church in Garden Grove, the parish where he had lived the last six years and where he was known as a friendly and articulate priest, according to a spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Orange. Services for Lord were held Friday night at the church.

“Every loss of a priest is sad,” Diocese of Orange Bishop Norman F. McFarland said Friday. “There’s also a special sadness when a young man with a great potential dies.”

Lord was the first priest acknowledged to have died of acquired immune deficiency syndrome in the Diocese of Orange. Catholic officials said they did not know, nor were they concerned with, how Lord contracted AIDS.

McFarland said the diocese has no special policy for priests with AIDS--a sensitive topic for the church because most cases are related to homosexual contact or intravenous drug use. About 2% of AIDS cases are attributed to blood transfusions.

Drug Counselor

Lord had had blood transfusions more than seven years ago, said St. Columban pastor Eamon O’Gorman, Lord’s superior. He did not know the reason.

Diocesan officials said the nature of Lord’s disease was revealed to anyone who asked.

A native of Brookline, Mass., Lord was a substance abuse counselor and church worker in Alaska before beginning studies to become a Paulist father at age 34. From 1978 to 1980, he was chaplain at St. Mark’s Newman Center, serving students at UC Santa Barbara, then was a deacon at Good Shepherd Church in New York City for a year before moving west in 1981.

In 1986, before his condition was diagnosed, Lord helped spearhead the AIDS Ministry Ecumenical Network (AMEN), a loose-knit list of about a dozen clergy who volunteer to offer compassion and officiate at funerals of AIDS victims.

“There were very little resources in the county at the time,” said Nancy Radclyffe, director of the AIDS Response Program of Orange County. “There were probably two or three clergy heavily overworked in that area.”

He volunteered for a year until he became ill in 1987, she said.