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Como, Denis R. (Father)

August 14, 2018

Jesuit Father Denis R. Como died on Aug. 14, 2018, at Campion Center, Weston, Massachusetts.

Como, Denis R.

Jesuit Father Denis R. Como died on Aug. 14, 2018, at Campion Center, Weston, Massachusetts.

Fr. Como was born on Jan. 3, 1936, in Beverly, Massachusetts, a coastal town north of Boston. He was the only boy among the three children of Edward and Marjorie (Linehan) Como. Fr. Como went to the local Catholic grammar school and then to B.C. High, often taking the train to Boston with his father and his older sister Anne, who was studying nursing at Boston College. He had long thought about becoming a priest but it was Maryknoll and its missions in China that appealed to him, until his much admired uncle persuaded him that Jesuits were missionaries too and that they did other things besides studying.

He entered the Society of Jesus on Aug. 14, 1953, at Shadowbrook, Lenox, Massachusetts. After philosophy studies at Weston (1957-1960), he was sent for regency to Baghdad to teach in the college there and to study the Arabic language. In 1963, he returned to Weston for theology studies and was ordained a priest there on May 30, 1966, in the Eastern rite, with a view to spending the rest of his life in the Middle East.

After tertianship, in India, Fr. Como’s Jesuit life fell into three parts, shaped by his talent for languages and the pastoral instincts that led him to identify closely with the lives of the people he worked with. In 1968, he returned to Baghdad College, just in time for the expulsion of all the American Jesuits from Iraq. This led to an assignment to the Jesuit Center in Alexandria, Egypt, a residence for university students where he was a chaplain and taught in two colleges.

He returned to the U.S and for three years he was a student chaplain at Fairfield University; pastoral involvements beyond the campus led to his working for eight years at the state prison in nearby Bridgeport, interrupted by a year giving retreats in Kenya.

In 1986, Fr. Como was asked to take over the chaplaincy at Boston City Hospital where the formidable “General” Larry Brock was retiring. He lived at the Immaculate Conception community and was drafted by the superior there to help with some of the consequences of the high school’s move to the south of the city. There too he got involved with the ministry to gay Catholics at the Immaculate church community. Boston’s Chinatown was nearby, and Fr. Como began studying the language. This led to an invitation to spend the better part of two years visiting southern China to help Catholics establish schools there.

He pronounced his Final Vows on May 30, 1989, at the Jesuit Urban Center in Boston.

In 1991, he returned to Boston, to pastoral work in South Boston and to further study of Chinese. From 1993 to 2003, he was the archdiocese’s official pastor of the Chinese-speaking community. In 2004, the provincial suggested he might like to return to the Middle East, so for five years he worked in Amman, where New England Jesuits had established a catechetical center and a parish for English-speaking residents.

In 2009, he was assigned to Campion Center where he worked as chaplain in the Health Center and got involved at the nearby state prison. In 2015, he moved into the Health Center itself.