WORCESTER—Mary Dowd said her brother, Father Walter Riley, had the gift of comforting people in times of grief.
“And believe me, we could use him right now,” she said. “I keep praying to him, ‘Please guide us through this because this is such a terrible loss for us and we’re really feeling this pain.’”
Many are mourning the sudden passing of Father Riley on Friday. The pastor at St. Anne Parish in Shrewsbury died at age 63 at his brother Rich’s home in West Boylston where he spent most of days off. He hadn’t been feeling well lately, but his death shocked everyone, including his large family.
Fr. Riley was one of 16 Riley siblings, and two other children who were welcomed into the family. They grew up on all three floors of a three-decker on Paine Street behind St. Bernard Church. He went on to touch the lives of countless people after being ordained as a priest in 2006, first as associate pastor at Christ the King Parish and then as pastor at Immaculate Conception Parish beginning in 2010, as pastor at St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Westborough in 2021, and as pastor at St. Anne Parish since 2022.
He also served as chaplain of the Worcester Fire Department from 2007-2021.
An overflow crowd is expected at his wake and funeral, both of which will be held at St. Bernard Church of Our Lady of Providence Parish.
“That’s wonderful,” Dowd said. “It just shows the impact he’s had on people through his very short life, but he was such a private person and very quiet. I’m sure he’s up there saying, ‘What are you making such a fuss about this for?’”
The wake will be from 3-7 p.m. Friday, followed by a vigil service, and his funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, followed by burial at St. John Cemetery. The funeral will be livestreamed in the St. Bernard gym, at St. Anne Parish, and online at olpworcester.tv.
Dowd said God was most dear to her brother’s heart, followed by family, the Civil War, the Red Sox and golf.
Fr. Riley kept plenty of Civil War memorabilia at his brother Rich’s home and he visited the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania often, including the week before he died. He kept a locker at a friend’s home in Gettysburg and Dowd said the family was surprised to hear that he had cleaned it out during his last visit. Dowd wonders if he felt he might not return.
Fr. Riley’s Feb. 4 letter in the St. Anne Parish bulletin just a few days before he died was also telling. The letter began with the question, “So, what will it be like to stand before God at the moment of our death? The best way any of us can answer this question is, ‘Don’t ask me. I have no idea.’”
“Now he knows,” Fr. Paul O’Connell told the congregation at the 4 p.m. Saturday Mass at St. Anne the day after Riley died.
“It’s almost a premonition,” Fr. O’Connell told the Worcester Guardian, “that he would write about meeting God at the point of death.”
Fr. O’Connell, a senior priest at St. Anne, estimated that 70-80 Riley family members and friends attended that Saturday Mass.
“It was very moving,” Fr. O’Connell said. “To be at the same altar where he had celebrated Mass and shared the Eucharist and gospel with people was very moving for me. Having the family there was deeply moving because they’re all people who have lived out the Catholic faith well.”
Fr. Riley was an avid baseball fan who mentioned the Red Sox often in his homilies and he was an accomplished golfer who played in Massachusetts Golf Association events.
“He was a very dedicated priest,” Fr. O’Connell said. “He was also a great man and enjoyed the things of the world—his golfing and his friends and his big family. But he was also deeply committed to promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ in our midst. He also lived it out himself very deeply and the people of St. Anne’s have been deeply impacted by his ministry.”
“It was unexpected so it’s been very difficult,” Rich Riley said of his brother’s death, “but we’ve been leaning on one another. With so many siblings in the family, there’s always somebody you can connect with during this time of grief.”
Ann-Marie Sheehan is a longtime family friend who dined many times with Fr. Riley and others at Wright’s Farm Restaurant in Burrillville, R.I.
“If somebody needed something,” Sheehan said, “they could go to him and he’d work behind the scenes to help them and nobody else would even know about it.”
Sheehan said he could also be a lot of fun with his dry sense of humor.
Terry Dunn grew up with Fr. Riley and was a good friend for 50 years and a golfing buddy. When Dunn was 18, his mother allowed him to go out at night on the condition that Walter would be there to keep everyone out of trouble.
“He was our guardian angel for many, many years,” Dunn said.
Riley entered the priesthood after working for UPS for 22 years. He liked to tell people that God told him he looked great in brown, but he’d look even better in black.
Dunn will never forget the day Riley was ordained.
“It was like I was getting ordained, too,” he said. “I was so proud.”
Fr. Riley was too busy as a priest to play a lot of golf, but Dunn said he was still competitive because he was such a great athlete. As a junior in 1977, he helped the St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic High School baseball team win the Division 1 state title. His teammates included his brother David, and Rich Gedman, the future Boston Red Sox catcher and current coach for the Worcester Red Sox, and J.P. Ricciardi, former general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays and current executive with the San Francisco Giants.
When Dunn’s wife Chrissy recently found a lump on her neck, he called Fr. Riley to ask for his prayers. The doctor eventually called to tell Chrissy that the lump wasn’t cancerous and he urged her to put her mind to rest. She texted the good news to Fr. Riley and his return message ended by saying, “Now you can grow old gracefully.”
He died the next morning.
Kevin Stiles helped Father Riley celebrate Mass at Immaculate Conception and St. Anne as an acolyte, lector and Eucharistic minister. They also played golf together. When they were paired up with golfers who didn’t know him, Father Riley told Stiles not to tell them that he was a priest.
“He wanted people to be themselves,” Stiles said.
With a hole or two left, he would instruct Stiles to refer to him as “Father Riley” so he could chuckle at the surprised reaction of their playing partners.
“He was a very, extremely humble individual,” Stiles said, “and I loved that about him.”
This reporter knew Father Riley. When I played golf with him many years ago, I asked him while he stood over a 5-foot putt if he ever prayed that he’d make it.
“Oh no,” I remember him replying without hesitation. “That would be cheating.”
When Dowd heard that story, she said, “He had the best sense of humor. He had that quick wit.”
It’s one of his many traits that will be missed.
“It’s devastating that he’s young and that this was so sudden,” Fr. O’Connell said. “There was very little indication that he was really sick. So it’s tragic and it impacts people. It all makes us feel that this is part of life and we take each day as it comes.”
Fr. O’Connell remembers what the late Fr. Ed Connors, the former longtime pastor at Immaculate Conception, used to say.
“He had a favorite saying, ‘You live every day as if it was your last and some day you’ll be right,’” Fr. O’Connell recalled.
Stiles remembers Father Riley telling him that he was looking forward to seeing the face of Jesus and putting his arms around him. Stiles believes that is exactly what he’s doing now.
Bill Doyle has been a professional journalist for 47 years, most of them as a sports writer for the Telegram & Gazette. He covered the Boston Celtics for 25 years and has written extensively about golf, boxing and local high school and college sports. He also worked for the campus newspaper when he attended UMass-Amherst. He can be reached at billdoyle1515@gmail.com
