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| Monsignor John Scully |
Monsignor John Scully was a pioneer priest. In six decades of service, he launched several Catholic schools and started parishes across the Tampa Bay area.
Monsignor Scully died Friday morning while celebrating Mass at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Valrico. The 86-year-old collapsed while consecrating the bread and wine.
Longtime friends and parishioners were saddened by his passing, but awed by the way it happened.
He "died with his boots on," said St. Stephen's Father Bill Swengros.
"There's something, as a priest, very beautiful in the way he passed," Father Len Plazewski said.
Bishop Robert Lynch wrote on his blog: "I have just received word that Monsignor John Scully, a priest for sixty-two years of this diocese (and St. Augustine for twenty years prior to our formation) died this morning while concelebrating the morning Mass at St. Stephen’s parish in Valrico. The exact moment of his death occurred during the Institution prayers of the Mass or the “consecration” of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. It was precisely how he wished to go and would have scripted it had we any power over the time of our death."
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