Edward Greene, OFM

1919 – 1998

Today, May 8th, is the anniversary of the death of Fr. Edward Greene, O.F.M., the pastor of St. George - St. Francis from from 1979 until his death in 1998

Fr. Edward Greene, OFM, was born in New York City on Jan. 12, 1919. He attended St. Joseph’s Seraphic Seminary in Callicoon, N.Y., as a candidate for the Franciscan Commissariat of the Holy Land, headquartered in Washington, D.C. He was received into St. John the Baptist Province on Aug. 15, 1941. He professed temporary vows Aug. 16, 1942, in Washington before Fr. Edmund Murphy, OFM, the commissary.

All theological studies and sacred orders were taken with the clerics of Holy Name Province, including solemn profession of vows on June 1, 1945, and priesthood, which was conferred in the monastery church on June 17, 1945.

Fr. Edward’s ministry began with a six-year missionary obedience to the Holy Land and concluded with an exceptional 19-year pastoral tenure in Jeffersonville, N.Y., where his mother was his housekeeper and companion until her death in 1994. His time in the Holy Land included service as a teacher in Nazareth and as an auxiliary chaplain with the British Army. Follwing a near-fatal jeep accident that left him unconscious for three months, Fr, Edward returned to the United States.

Back home and recovered, Fr. Edward needed wider challenges, so he transferred to Holy Name Province in 1951. He was assigned to the Paterson, N.J., novitiate community for two years, and to Buffalo’s Bishop Timon High School for seven. He switched to parochial ministry in 1960 with appointment to Holy Cross Parish in the Bronx, first as associate pastor and then, in 1963, as pastor and viar of the community for 10 years. From there, he moved to St. Stephen’s Friary on East 82nd Street in Manhattan, where he was an auxiliary pastor for six years before his final move to Jeffersonville in 1979.

Fr. Edward, longtime pastor of St. George Parish in Jeffersonville, St. Francis Parish in Youngsville, N.Y., and Episcopal Vicar of Sullivan County in the Archdiocese of New York, died in the friary on May 8, 1998, at the age of 79. He had been a professed Franciscan for 55 years, and was a priest for almost 52 years.