ELKTON, Maryland (CNS) – Oblate Fr John F Harvey, who founded an organisation for celibate Catholic homosexuals that now has more than 100 chapters worldwide, died on 27 December at Union Hospital in Elkton. He was 92.
His funeral Mass was scheduled for 31 December at St Anthony of Padua Church in Wilmington, Delaware, followed by interment in the Oblate Cemetery in Elkton.
An Oblate of St Francis de Sales for 73 years, Fr Harvey founded Courage, a spiritual support group for same-sex attracted people, in 1980 at the request of Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York and served as its national director until his death.
Today, Courage has chapters in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Poland, Mexico, Slovakia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Philippines and New Zealand.
“Fr Harvey’s commitment to pastoral care in the Church was tireless,” said Oblate Fr James J Greenfield, provincial of the Oblates’ Wilmington-Philadelphia province, in a statement. “Even in his later years, his travel would take him all over the country and world to offer a voice of compassion.”
Fr Harvey was instrumental in the founding of the De Sales Hall School of Theology in Washington, where he taught moral theology from 1949 to 1987 and was president from 1965 to 1977. The school closed in 1996. “His work in helping to found both the DeSales School of Theology and Courage were examples of his commitment to the Church that he loved so much,” Fr Greenfield added.
Born in Philadelphia in 1918, Fr Harvey entered the Oblate novitiate after high school and made his first profession of vows on 8 September 1937. He was ordained to the priesthood on 3 June 1944 at the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul in Philadelphia by Auxiliary Bishop Hugh Lamb of Philadelphia.
After earning his bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1941 from The Catholic University of America in Washington, Fr Harvey continued his studies, earning graduate degrees in psychology and theology, and completing a doctorate in moral theology there 10 years later.
He also taught moral theology at Dunbarton College of the Holy Cross in Washington, 1948-73, and was a professor of medical and sexual ethics at De Sales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, 1987-2009.
He retired to Annecy Hall in Childs, Maryland, in January 2010.
Fr Harvey had written more than 45 articles in professional theological and psychological journals on questions of human sexuality and counselling.
In addition to the members of his religious community, Fr Harvey is survived by his sister, Margaret Smith, and many nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews.