December 11, 2020
Art, imagination, and Catholic spirituality shaped Paulist Fr. Tom Holahan from a young age. Throughout his life, he’s encouraged others to feed their creative souls as well.
Whether he’s leading art tours abroad or gathering poets monthly in the Paulists’ Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan, it’s all ministry.
“Art is the way into religion–even art that does not have religion as its topic,” Fr. Tom says. “People that are interested in art are open to a lot of outside influences, a lot of forces…Art is calling out to the soul.”
Fr. Tom particularly finds inspiration for his own poetry in nature.
“I was over at the gym, and I’m always looking out at this tree. I’ve been looking at this tree for about six months,” he says. “It had scaffolding on it and it’s chipped. The bark is torn off of it. But the leaves have come out. ‘Well,’ I’m saying as I am on these machines, ‘I am actually doing the same thing the tree is doing. I’m resisting the forces of life.’”
Fr. Tom’s creativity has deep roots. As an only child, he created a huge imaginary world to entertain himself independently. He explored the creative world outside his mind as well–he recalls riding the bus as a high school sophomore from his home in Yonkers to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens.
He was even a bit younger when he thought about a life of ministry.
Fr. Tom says he had a happy home life and is “grateful for being brought up in a religious household.”
“I experienced it as something positive,” he says about his faith. “I know a lot about piety and Catholic spirituality and I find that really enriches you as the years go by. But it doesn’t have to limit you either.”
In Catholic school, as he learned about priests and religious, Fr. Tom says he was “intrigued” to learn about people “devoted to this kind of work.”
Fr. Tom’s mom died of diabetes complications when he was in the eighth grade. Surprisingly, this would open the door for Fr. Tom’s own father to pursue religious life. In high school, Fr. Tom entered seminary with the Capuchin Franciscans. Later, his dad followed. But the order wasn’t a fit for the younger man.
Fr. Tom knew about the Paulist community from a few sources. He watched a TV show by Paulist Productions called Insight. Fr. Tom’s grandfather knew the Paulists because he worked on a passenger ship that docked and departed near the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. But he wasn’t sure how to reach the Paulists–so he flipped through 10 years of the Jesuit magazine Amerzica until he found an ad that led him to the community.
When Fr. Tom was ordained in 1977, writers covering this second-generation priest had some fun. One story began: “Not since the Middle Ages when priests could marry….”
Fr. Tom started his life with the Paulists in campus ministry at the University of California, Berkeley, a role he also took on later in Boulder, Colorado. He studied communications management at the University of Southern California and went on to work for several dioceses in communications for 15 years.
Working as a creative consultant for Paulist Productions (a job title about which he impishly jokes “covers a multitude of sins”), he says that he had a “distinct honor.” That is, he was the only Paulist who got an unsolicited script produced. The show, called Little Miseries, focused on forgiveness. It was syndicated.
Fr. Tom’s priesthood also led him to serve as chaplain in Marymount International School while he was stationed at the American church in Rome.
“That kind of service is very rewarding because we all know what it means to be a little bit, just not quite home yet,” he says. The Paulists “were a place, an anchor, for people who were working in a different country.”
While Fr. Tom entered senior ministry status in 2018, he returns to Rome and travels other spots around the world giving art tours, and working as a cruise ship chaplain.
One work that’s become a big draw for art pilgrims, he says, is Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Besides the artistic elements, Fr. Tom points out other facets of the painting.
“He was a tax collector,” Fr. Tom says of St. Matthew.” So people who come to it they can see themselves in that. That’s just an ordinary profession and it wasn’t a prized profession. But Jesus is pointing to him.”
In an adjacent work, St. Matthew is being martyred. Fr. Tom says: “You see a transition– someone converting and completely dedicating themselves.”
For Fr. Tom, life hasn’t felt like one of martyrdom.
Asked what is most difficult about the priesthood, Fr. Tom says, “I honestly don’t see it as difficult. I see it as completely enriching. it’s not for everyone.”
Fr. Tom often asks himself and others, “What have you done for your creativity lately?”
The Paulist Fathers, he says, have allowed him to answer that question with his life.
“They respect people for doing projects that are unknown, that are creative, that are in a, you know, a different sphere completely,” he says of the Paulists. “They were not necessarily going to be there to go with you and lick the envelopes but they were there in a spiritual way so that if whatever happened needed to be rethought they were going to welcome you back and you could reestablish yourself and go out again. And that was–that was very freeing.”