President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) attended a memorial in Tainan yesterday for Father Brendan O’Connell (甘惠忠), a Catholic priest who died at the age of 84 in New York on Tuesday last week after spending more than 50 years developing special education services in Taiwan.
At a ceremony hosted by O’Connell’s Bethlehem Foundation, which was attended by Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) and Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲), Tsai praised O’Connell as an “authentic Taiwanese” and issued a presidential order of commendation in his honor.
O’Connell arrived in Taiwan at a young age and set about learning not only Mandarin, but also Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Hakka and Atayal, Tsai said.
After seeing that many parents with developmentally challenged children were having trouble caring for them, he devoted himself to special education, founding the Leren Center in Kaohsiung and the St Teresa Opportunity Center in Tainan, she said.
He later established the Bethlehem Foundation in Tainan, which became one of the nation’s earliest proponents of inclusive education for children with special needs, she said.
“Through these efforts, you lit up the lives of countless children with developmental disabilities,” Tsai said.
After the government’s amendment of the Nationality Act (國籍法) in 2016, O’Connell became the first foreign national to receive Taiwanese citizenship without having to renounce his original citizenship, Tsai said.
He was awarded a national identity card in 2017 by then-premier Lin Chuan (林全).
O’Connell would always be remembered in Taiwan for his years of contributions to children with developmental challenges, Tsai added.
O’Connell was born in New York in 1936 and was ordained as a priest in the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a Catholic missionary society.
In 1963, at the age of 27, he was sent to Taiwan and settled in Miaoli County. In total, O’Connell spent 54 years in the country.
Bethlehem Foundation Executive secretary Chen Cheng-lin (陳正霖) said that O’Connell had been living in the US in the past few years due to health problems.
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