The Rev. William T. O’Mara capped more than 60 years of Catholic ministry by serving as pastor of St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Orland Hills for 16 years and more than a dozen years as chaplain at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights.
O’Mara was St. Elizabeth Seton’s first pastor, hired as the church spun off from another burgeoning suburban parish and began holding Mass at a Tinley Park high school in 1987, while designing a permanent building.
During his time at the helm, O’Mara oversaw a collaboration between four southwest suburban parishes to construct what became a regional Catholic elementary school, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Catholic School in Orland Hills, which was the first newly built school by the Archdiocese of Chicago in 34 years.
Later, as chaplain at Marian Catholic during his retirement years, O’Mara was a fixture at the school, regularly holding Mass and remaining ever-present at school events, including basketball games.
“Father Bill O’Mara was the heart and soul of Marian Catholic for all the years that he was there,” said former Principal Steve Tortorello. “He was a lot more than chaplain — he was omnipresent. He was everywhere at Marian.”
Tortorello said O’Mara would say Mass in the morning with the sisters, the students and staff, and also presided over the large, all-school masses and the Kairos retreats.
“But he was at almost every major sporting event — so much so that there is a spot in the bleachers dedicated to him,” Tortorello said. “He was always there, always present and really supportive of kids and of staff.”
O’Mara, 94, died May 27, according to a release from the Archdiocese of Chicago. He had been living in the Mercy Circle retirement community in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood and previously was a Frankfort resident.
Born in Chicago in 1932, O’Mara attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary and the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein. He later earned a postgraduate degree from Loyola University Chicago.
Retired archdiocesan priest Roger Caplis, 93, was a classmate of O’Mara for 12 years. He recalled the two of them playing baseball and basketball together — “he was a better baseball player than a basketball player,” Caplis said with a laugh — before the two were ordained.
“Bill was a wonderful guy to know,” Caplis said. “He was always exceptional at his ministry to young people.”
O’Mara was ordained in April 1958, and became assistant pastor at Infant Jesus of Prague Parish in Flossmoor, where he worked from 1958 until 1964. He then taught from 1964 until 1977 at Quigley Preparatory South, where he also coached hockey and was athletic director.
Later, O’Mara worked in Tyler, Texas, as the principal of a Catholic high school from 1978 until 1986.
In 1987, O’Mara was named pastor of the newly formed St. Elizabeth Seton Parish, which serves families in Orland Hills, Orland Park and Tinley Park. St. Elizabeth Seton initially met at Andrew High School in Tinley Park for services before building its own $3.2 million building in Orland Hills, which opened in 1991. It was the first time O’Mara ever had led a congregation.
“It’s exciting — I love it,” he told the Tribune in 1991, referring to lead a congregation. “With a new parish, you can go into a new place and you can set the tone. There is no one to say, ‘That’s not how we used to do things.’”
O’Mara was at the forefront of an unusual dynamic in the late 1990s. The archdiocese regularly had been closing city Catholic schools but simultaneously was experiencing strong population growth at its outer suburban edges, creating a need for more schools in some suburbs.
O’Mara assumed a leadership position in his region, advocating for a new regional Catholic elementary school and collaborating with leaders of three neighboring parishes to gain funding.
“Building a school here makes sense, because that is where the Catholic population is right now,” he told the Tribune in 1998.
The result was the $10.5 million, 97,000-square-foot Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Catholic School, which opened at 94th Avenue and 166th Street in Orland Hills in 2000. Upon the building’s opening, O’Mara told the Tribune “you bet I feel proud of the school, but I share that pride with the hundreds of parishioners at St. Elizabeth Seton and the other three parishes whose generosity to the school building fund made it all possible.”
After retiring from St. Elizabeth Seton in the early 2000s, O’Mara remained active. In 2008, he began as chaplain at Marian Catholic, in something approaching full circle for him. O’Mara had been the first priest to celebrate Mass at Marian Catholic upon its founding in 1958.
“You couldn’t turn around without running into Father Bill being present and helping people,” Tortorello said. “He was just truly like a paragon of the community. With all his travels and work, to choose to spend his retirement time with kids and staff in a school tells you everything you need to know about him.”
In 2022, Marian Catholic celebrated O’Mara’s 90th birthday by naming him an honorary assistant boys basketball coach for one game. Marian Catholic defeated DePaul Prep 40-39 in that game.
In a 2022 interview with Chicago Catholic magazine, O’Mara dismissed the notion that he was doing a lot for Marian Catholic, joking that “otherwise I’d be sitting home knitting.”
After clarifying that he didn’t actually knit, O’Mara added that “really, I’ve been involved in high school education for a long time.”
O’Mara also praised young people today, noting that despite struggles, “they’re much more involved in service than we ever were growing up. They might be less religious in terms of going to church, but they are very service-oriented.”
O’Mara is survived by several nieces and nephews.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
