1898 – 1969 (July 13)
Thomas G. Delaney was born in Philadelphia on December 24, 1898, one of nine children of Michael Delaney and Mary Gilligan, and was baptized there in St. Monica’s Church on January 2, 1898. As a young boy he went to Ireland with his family where he received his primary and secondary education. After his return to the United States, he entered the novitiate at Villanova, on June 25, 1921, and made his profession of vows the following year on June 26, 1922. He pronounced solemn vows on June 21, 1925, and was ordained to the priesthood on August 2, 1925, at Villanova by Bishop Thomas Walsh of Trenton, New Jersey.
After ordination Father Delaney was assigned as student priest to the novitiate in New Hamburg, New York. In 1926, and for many years thereafter, Father Delaney served as assistant pastor in various parishes of the province: Saint Mary's in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where in 1931 he was appointed subprior; in 1938 he was assigned to St. Thomas of Villanova in Rosemont, and in 1942, was released as a chaplain for the United States Army. He later was sent to Saint Paul's in Mechanicville, New York, for several months, and then to Our Mother of Consolation, Chestnut Hill.
When the parish of Saint Genevieve in Flourtown, Pa., was erected in 1953 he was named its first pastor, a position which he held for nine years. At the Provincial Chapter of 1962, he was appointed prior at the parish of Our Mother of Good Counsel in Bryn Mawr, Pa. Because of failing health he retired to the Villanova Monastery in 1968.
Father Delaney died in the monastery at 8 PM on July 13, 1969. Vicar Provincial William Krupa was celebrant of his Funeral Mass and Father Robert Russell, O.S.A. preached. Father Delaney was buried in Saint Mary's Hall Cemetery, but his body was later transferred to the Augustinian Plot of Calvary Cemetery in West Conshohoken, Pa.
