Gilgan, Father Edward

1944, October 23

Date of Birth: 1873, May 23

Paris
March 21, 1946

Fathers and Dear Confreres:

In October, 1944, an American Sulpician, Father Edward Gilgan, died. He had for several years been in retirement because of his poor health.

Edward Augustine Gilgan was born on May 23, 1873, in New York at Fishkill on the Hudson. He was still a child when his family left that area to settle in New Jersey. He made his first studies in Jersey City, where he was a pupil at Mary’s School.

Since he wished to become a priest, his parents sent him to our minor seminary, St. Charles, which at the time was still in the vicinity of Ellicott City, Maryland. From there he went on to the major seminary, St. Mary’s in Baltimore, where he always showed himself an excellent seminarian. He was still there when death claimed the great Superior of that house, Father Magnien, very much admired by the American clergy.

Because he had expressed the wish of entering the Society of St. Sulpice, Father Dyer sent him to finish his theological studies at the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris. He was ordained priest in the Church of St. Sulpice on June 29, 1905, by Bishop Jourdan de la Passardière.

In October he entered the Solitude at Issy. We – his confreres of the time – remember that priest with his bearing always so dignified, his serious yet likeable character. He must have been hurting on finding himself so far from his country, but he never let on. His mind was clear, his heart was loving and full of goodness, his will was strong. Hence, he was always working; his piety was always giving more than it let itself take. His regularity was unfailing; his simplicity was such that self-seeking was never detectable in it the least.

On his return to the United States, Father Gilgan entered the Catholic University in Washington to work for a degree in Theology. There he received the licentiate. Later he earned his doctorate from St. Mary’s University [i.e., St. Mary’s Seminary].

Here is an account of his career and of the functions he fulfilled in our Society. From 1908 to 1914 he taught Dogmatic Theology at St. Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park in the Diocese of San Francisco. Called back to Washington, he became Treasurer of the student-priests’ seminary in Caldwell Hall at the Catholic University. At the same time, he taught Dogmatic Theology at the Sulpician Seminary in the same city at Brookland Station, close to the university. In 1924, when Father Fenlon became Superior of the Sulpician Seminary, Father Gilgan succeeded him as Superior of the university-seminary at Caldwell Hall. In this role, he was rather fortunate to inaugurate an organization whose purpose was the financing of study for young Sulpicians – an idea he had had for some years. To him also must go, in very large part, the credit for the fine house which serves as convent for the nuns who take care of the Sulpician Seminary.

Except for the years of illness at the end of his life, Father Gilgan’s Sulpician career saw its close in Washington.

There, as elsewhere, he acted as he had always done – as a serious man, as a man of God.

Really, to become such, he did not wait for priesthood. In his minor seminary years, while he was in his last year at St. Charles, his teachers selected him to be Prefect of Discipline for the Juniors. He showed himself, recounts one of his fellow-students of the time, capable of maintaining discipline because he was first of all self-disciplined. Even then, he had a very high ideal of priesthood. A man of duty of state, he knew that he was where he was by God’s Providence. He tolerated no breach of discipline and he knew how to reprimand, with unquestioned authority, the slightest infraction.