(7 May 1905 - 18 May 1978)
SWANTON– Bishop-elect James R. Hoffmann offered a funeral Mass Monday in St. Richard Church for Msgr. Matthew E. Clancy, 75, who was pastor here from 1946 until his retirement in 1970.
Burial, at his request, was on the church grounds, behind the wayside crucifixion shrine. Msgr. Clancy was found dead last week Thursday in his annex apartment near the church. He had been working in his rose garden earlier in the day.
When Msgr. Clancy was assigned to St. Richard’s, the parish had a small church and rectory on Walnut St. In 1955 he started a parish development program with $100,000 fund drive that topped its goal and purchase of a 22-acre site north of Brookside Dr. near the Ohio turnpike.
A hall (recently renamed in Msgr. Clancy’s honor), school, convent, rectory, and equipment building with janitor’s apartment were built first.
The hall was used for Mass until the colonial style church was completed in 1966.
Msgr. Clancy seeded the property himself, and planted some 150 bushes and trees.
Hybridizing roses had been a hobby of Msgr. Clancy’s before he was assigned to Swanton. Since his retirement he had been able to devote more time to his roses.
He had never marked his roses, but he once told a Chronicle reporter that he had had some success in developing strains resistant to disease and “sufficiently winterized so they could grow like normal shrubs, without pampering.”
He had been a member of the American Rose Society for 37 years and of the Rose Hybridizers Association for the past 10 years.
With retirement Msgr. Clancy also was able to devote more time to writing. “Book of Faith”, a 236-page volume of his biblically-oriented poetry was published in 1974. “The Promise Land” was published earlier this year. And he had recently completed work on a third book, “How Very Wonderful He Is.”
Msgr. Clancy said that he chose poetic form for his first book because poetry embodies “preciseness and beauty of construction”. His reason for writing it, he said, was the “sad condition” of the modern world and the decline of faith. He said at the time of publication:
“The next generation is in grave danger of losing its patrimony, losing its hold on the old verities and certainties of life. Society today is sunk in a morass of misunderstanding and doubt.”
Msgr. Clancy had hoped to write a book related to a long-time interest—the Church’s missionary effort in China at the time of Marco Polo. He had an extensive collection of books from that era, but found that the extensive research involved was too much for him.
Msgr. Clancy was born in Lima and graduated from the former St. Rose High School in 1921. He attended St. Charles College, Catonsville, Md., and St. Gregory Seminary, Cincinnati.
He went to Rome for further study, earning a Ph.D. in 1927 and a doctorate in sacred theology in 1929. He was ordained in Rome in 1928.
Msgr. Clancy served as associate pastor of the Cathedral Chapel Parish from 1929 to 1941. He was pastor of St. Peter Parish, Huron, from 1941 to 1946, when he received his Swanton appointment.
He was a pro-synodal judge on the diocesan Tribunal from 1954 to 1961. He also served as a diocesan consultor in the 1960s. He was named a monsignor in 1963.
He leaves brothers, Redemptorist Father James D. Clancy, living in retirement at St. Gerard Parish, Lima, and Robert W. Clancy, and sisters, Mrs. Rose Murphy and Mrs. LuElla Recker. The family asked that any tributes take the form of contributions to the St. Richard School Fund.
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