Irish American community celebrate 50 year jubilee with Father Colm Campbell

On Sunday, June 20, the Irish and Irish American community came together to celebrate Irish priest Father Colm Campbell’s golden jubilee at a reception held in his honor in the Holy Trinity Church in New York.

Campbell, 75, has served the Irish community in New York passionately and diligently for 18 years since his appointment as chaplain to Irish immigrants in New York in 1992.

“It was a very special day for me to have people I’ve worked with from the very beginning all together to help me celebrate my time here and my 50 years as a priest,” Campbell told the Irish Voice.

“I got to share the day with couples I married, kids I baptized who are now teenagers and hundreds of good friends and parishioners.”

Campbell, president of the board and acting executive director of the New York Irish Center in Long Island City, Queens, was born in Belfast in 1935. He worked there through the worst of the Troubles until his assignment to New York in 1992.

“There has been so many wonderful things about my time here in New York, but the highlight for me has been having my dream fulfilled, my dream to have an Irish center in New York,” said Campbell proudly.  “I just saw such a great need for it.”

Campbell saw the isolation hundreds of Irish immigrants were experiencing who came to New York between the 1960s and 1980s, and their desire for support and company. He also was acutely aware that the new immigrants of the 1980s and ‘90s needed a place to go that would provide them with help and advice in beginning and sustaining a life in New York.

“My dream was made possible by the kind heart of some wonderful people who backed the center -- the Irish of new corporate America I call them -- who put up money to see the center come to life,” he said.

Campbell is also very grateful for the support he received through the years from the Irish Consulate in New York.

“They’ve always been there supporting any work I’ve done, and it meant a lot to see some of the staff there on Sunday at the celebrations,” he added.

Campbell was the oldest child of J.J. and Josephine Campbell. He was raised in New Lodge, a working-class Catholic community on the northern edge of Belfast’s city center.

After high school, Campbell attended Queen’s University Belfast from 1953 to 1956 where he studied math, Irish history, Greek and Latin. He also earned a BA in scholastic philosophy.

At this time he entered St. Malachy’s Seminary to study for the priesthood.  After four years at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Campbell was ordained for the Diocese of Down and Connor in Northern Ireland on 19 June 1960.

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