Bishop Walter Sullivan a Man of Peace

by Charles McGuigan 2006

 Walter Francis Sullivan served as the eleventh bishop of the Diocese of Richmond from 1974 to 2003. He passed away on December 11, 2012 at the age of 84. This story was written in 2006, three years after Bishop Sullivan’s retirement. 

I meet with Bishop Walter Sullivan just before Holy Week at his residence, a stone’s throw from St. Paul Catholic Church, and throughout the interview we can hear bells tolling. His three schnauzers are out in the back yard where there is a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi. Bishop Sullivan’s car, parked in the rear of the house, bears plates that read “PAX JUS”, which certainly reflects his stance on war. “Peace and justice,” he says. “The Latin for justice was just too long for the license plates.”

When I ask Bishop Sullivan if he had a road to Damascus moment that ushered him into the priesthood, he smiles and shakes his head. “I was going to say facetiously that I was the only boy growing up with three sisters—Patricia, Kathleen and Betty—and I just wanted to get away,” he says. “But that’s not it. I just liked what priests did. I don’t think it was any divine intervention. The Lord didn’t appear to me.”

Not long after ordination, Father Sullivan was assigned to St. Mary’s Star of the Sea in Fort Monroe. “I now look upon it as a great blessing being at For Monroe because I grew up with a real appreciation of the military,” he says. “And at various times people would say I’m anti-military, but that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”

In 1960 he was assigned to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond. Ten years later he was ordained auxiliary bishop, and enjoyed a close friendship with Bishop John J. Russell, the residing bishop at the time.  

This was at the height of the Vietnam War, and Bishop Sullivan was taking a position on the war that was anything but popular among hawkish Catholics.

 “I got into the peace movement,” says Bishop Sullivan. “I joined Pax Christi, the Catholic Peace Movement, but, I am not a pacifist and I get very irritated when people say I am a pacifist.” 

Sometime in the early 1970s, Bishop Sullivan was invited to speak to the Knights of Columbus in Northern Virginia. There were some 400 men in the audience and Bishop Sullivan said something that you would expect all Christians to embrace—“Christ is a peacemaker,”—but the Knights were up in arms the moment he uttered those words.

“They went wild because I talked about peace,” he remembers. “Peace was a very dirty word in those days. As they got madder I got hyper so I talked about conscientious objection to the war.”

As the Knights filed out of the banquet hall after the talk, Bishop Sullivan understood that every last one of them loathed him. Except for one. He was a clean-cut Marine sergeant, who waited near the door. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” thought Bishop Sullivan as he neared the man. “What’s this guy going to say?”

And the Marine said: “I want to thank you because my son goes to Canada tomorrow and I had to decide whether to disown my son. And you saved him for me.”

Says Bishop Sullivan after this recollection: “That was it, there was no turning back. That’s how I really got started in the peace movement.”

He mentions the casualties of the Vietnam War—more than 50,000—then says, “But did you know 58,000 Americans who fought in Vietnam are in prison today. I’ve always supported these poor guys and their battered lives. Their lives were ruined by that war.”

He tells me again that he opposes violence, but is by no means a pacifist. “I’m not sure there are moral wars at all,” he says. “But I have always believed that those in authority, namely government, have an obligation to protect the innocent.”

We talk about the current war. “I think the war in Iraq is a disaster,” says Bishop Sullivan. “We thought we were going to go in and in ten minutes win it all and get control of the oil. And there’s no question it was about oil. Even some of my very conservative friends have said, ‘Let’s be real it’s all about oil.’”

As I mull over his words, the bells from St. Paul’s begin tolling. “This new war has been tragic,” Bishop Sullivan says. “I read an interesting book called ‘The Sorrows of Empires’ and the author said there are four things that will result from this war. The U.S. will always be at war, we will never hear the complete truth, civil rights will be curtailed, and we’re going to go bankrupt.”

Not long ago, Bishop Sullivan started visiting one of the flesh and blood casualties of this war. He’s a young man who lost an arm, part of a leg, and much of his face. The government veils these men and women in secrecy as they are returned to their homeland. “What I found out is that they put him in a coma,” he says. “They do that with those who are wounded. When they’re flown in from Germany at two in the morning they ship them into Walter Reed Army Hospital so nobody sees them.”

The clandestine manner in which the wounded come back to the United States bothers the Bishop. “In the Vietnam War what created so much havoc were the body bags,” he says. “You don’t see them in this war. You don’t hear the truth about why we’re there in the first place. What are we hiding? Why do we have to lie? I think people have a right to conscientious objection and I don’t think there’s any such thing as a just war.”

He considers World War II. “I will say Hitler was a different case,” he says. “But we created Hitler. He was our man before we realized how awful he was. And we made Sadaam Hussein in the war against Iran. We gave him chemical weapons.”

From almost the time he became bishop in 1974, he has championed underdogs. “I firmly believe in order to make the Gospels real you have to touch the lives of people where they are,” says Bishop Sullivan. “People living in abject poverty. People deprived of the necessities of life. People think of me as being very liberal, but I was never a big flaming liberal. I was just following the Gospels.”

According to Bishop Sullivan, one of the biggest issues facing the country today is immigration. “Well we created that monster,” he says. “People fled oppression from Nicaragua, Guatemala, Central America areas where we supported the worst of dictators because it was to our interest. Everything is to our interest. We live in a greedy society. There are the haves and the have-nots.”

Not long ago he was giving a talk at the University of Richmond. During the question and answer portion of the talk, one student said: “The poor are undeserving.”

To which Bishop Sullivan said, “Well, what makes you deserving? You just happened to be born rich.”

When asked about Church doctrine concerning celibacy, Bishop Sullivan says, “From Scripture we know that Peter was married. I would hope that a change will come. And one of the reasons that it may come is that we have a shortage of priests.”

As far as having female priests, the Bishop has no problem with the idea. “It’s not going to be in my lifetime,” he says. “I’d be in favor of it if it happened tomorrow.” 

On the LGBTQ community, Bishop Sullivan says simply, “Sexuality is a fact of life. I’ve always contended that people are gay or lesbian or trans ab initio, from the beginning.” 

The bells of St. Paul’s toll again.

When I mention pedophilia, Bishop Sullivan shakes his head. “I remember going around the diocese meeting with all the priests and I said very simply, ‘If you do this I’ll see you in jail,’” he says. “It is an evil action because you’re ruining someone and I wouldn’t tolerate it.”

We retreat to the deck in his back yard and he tells me when the weather warms this is where he spends most of his free time. He looks fondly down on his three schnauzers. 

He regards the statue of St. Francis and his three children are gathered around it as if this concrete representation were about to preach. He tells me his middle name is Francis. The bells at St. Paul’s begin tolling again, their bronze throats resonant. “He was a man of peace,” says this living man of peace of the concrete statue below him.