MICHAEL O’CONNELL is a high school friend of Tom’s. Mike entered the seminary after high school and was ordained a priest in 1967. He was assistant pastor for Father Roach (St. Thomas’s headmaster) at Saint Cecelias (the parish of Tom’s dad when John was growing up in Minneapolis). Michael headed the St. Paul Archdiocese diaconate program under Father John Roach, who had become the Archbishop, and he eventually became the pastor of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. His last parish was the Ascension in North Minneapolis.
