Why James Thomas O’Dowd is on this page

James Thomas O’Dowd (4 August 1907 – 4 February 1950) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco from 1948 until his death. Born in San Francisco, he was ordained to the priesthood for the archdiocese on 4 June 1932 by Archbishop John Joseph Mitty and went on to take a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

On 22 May 1948 Pope Pius XII appointed O’Dowd titular bishop of Cea and auxiliary bishop of San Francisco. He was consecrated at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption on 29 June 1948 by Archbishop Mitty, with Bishop Thomas Arthur Connolly of Seattle and Auxiliary Bishop Hugh Aloysius Donohoe of San Francisco as co-consecrators. Alongside his episcopal duties he served as pastor at Mission Dolores in San Francisco.

On 3 February 1950 O’Dowd was a passenger in a car driven by the Reverend Henry Lande. The vehicle stopped on a set of railway tracks and was struck by a freight train and dragged some three hundred feet. Lande died at the scene; O’Dowd was taken first to the Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base hospital and then to St Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco, where he died the following day of his injuries, aged forty-two. He was buried at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California. Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland is named in his memory and continues to bear the name today.

Sources

• Wikipedia — James Thomas O’Dowd.
• Wikidata Q11716799.

Heritage notes

Family root: diaspora-likely.

The directory threads James Thomas O’Dowd back to the O'Dubhda clan story via the surname-variants reality — the same family carried these spellings as it scattered. See the septs and the diaspora for the wider pattern, or the Clan DNA Project for the genetic connections being mapped now.