Father Donald McAllister

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Father Donald McAllister, who died Sunday August 26, 2018, at St. Ann Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Dover, New Hampshire. He was 85.

Father McAllister was born in the town of Norway, Maine, on August 21, 1933, the son of Donald F. and Mildred (Oberg) McAllister. He was a 1955 graduate of the University of Maine, received an MA at Tufts University in 1956, an MS in American Literature at Columbia College, studied at University of Helsinki in Finland where he earned his PhD, and earned a MS in clinical psychology from Villanova University and a MS in theology at Washington Theological Coalition.

After teaching social studies for a year at Ellsworth High School, he served in the U.S. Army.  While stationed at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, he began attending Mass with several of his fellow soldiers, which resulted in his conversion to Catholicism. After the Army, he returned to Maine and taught at Milo High School and then at Wilbur Lynch High School in Amsterdam, New York. It was then that he discerned he might have a vocation to the priesthood. He began his novitiate with the Augustinian Fathers in 1965 and was ordained on his 38th birthday in 1971.

After his ordination, he went to San Francisco where he became chaplain at St. Mary Hospital. He then served at the Catherine McAuley Health Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and while there, also taught medical ethics at the University of Michigan Medical School and at a nursing program.

Father McAllister returned to Maine in 1988 and became chaplain at Mercy Hospital in Portland. He was formally welcomed as a member of the clergy of the Diocese of Portland in 1993. After retirement in 2003, he moved to Dover, New Hampshire, and resided and assisted at St. Mary Church and served as chaplain in residence at St. Ann Rehabilitation and Nursing Center for about 10 years.

A Mass of Thanksgiving was celebrated on Wednesday, September 5, at the Parish of the Assumption, St. Mary Church, corner of Chestnut & Third Sts., Dover, NH. The following day, Thursday, September 6, Bishop Robert Deeley celebrated a Memorial Mass at noon at St. Catherine of Sienna Church in Norway. Father Robert D. Lariviere was the homilist.