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Father William Maximus Murphy, C.S.B.
One of the first two Basilian Missionaries to Mexico went home to God
January 30, 2004
at the age of 86, after 60 years of service to Our Lord.

Pope John XXIII had a special concern for the Latin American people and this concern was shared by the Basilian Fathers. In the fall of 1961, Fathers Max Murphy and Frank Launtrie moved into Mexico on the outskirts of Mexico City at the invitation of the Archbishop. Their work began among the rural people who had migrated to the city and found only poverty, illiteracy, and a lack of religious training instead of the better life they had expected.

Father Murphy, a native of Rosebud, MI, attended Assumption College and received a Master of Education degree from Wayne State University. He was professed in the Basilian Community in 1939 and was ordained in 1944. He was sent to the Basilian missions in Texas the following year. At his death , he had been a priest 60 years.

Father Max served in a number of Texas mission parishes before going to Mexico. While assigned to Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Rosenberg, Father Max worked closely with the Missionary Catechist Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in developing a family catechism for Spanish speaking parishioners. When he and Father Launtrie went to Mexico, they introduced this program, Catechesis Familiar, which is still used in many places throughout the country today. The program, for adults, aims to help the user to enhance his own life as a Christian while taking a more active role in the religious formation of their children. While in Wharton, he established a baseball league for young men. Later, in appreciation of his priestly and civic endeavors, the city named a street in his honor.

In his final years in Mexico, Father Murphy became a confessor at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City where he heard Confessions for eight hours a day. He often said that those hours were some of the most spiritually rewarding days of his life.

At the age of eighty he was transferred to St. Joseph’s Center in Sugar Land and spent many weekends preaching for the Basilian Fathers Missions throughout the country. Only when he was no longer able to walk did he move to Toronto where he spent the remainder of his life, continuing his missionary work through his prayers. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Toronto.

The missionary work so ably begun in Mexico by Fathers Max and Frank continued at the invitation of other Bishops in some of the poorest areas. Today, the Basilian Fathers Missions have spread down the length of the country with their newest project, a house of formation, in Jalapa, Vera Cruz, on the southeast coast of the country. In 1962, in order to raise funds to support the mission work and to coordinate the Basilian mission activities, St. Joseph’s Center was opened in Sugar Land, Texas. Today, it is the hub for the Basilian Fathers Missions outreach. In 1987, Archbishop Pedro Rubiano Saenz of Cali, now Cardinal of Bogota, welcomed the Basilians to Colombia. In 1996, the Basilians answered a request of Bishop Dario Monsalve and began working in Medellin and in 1997 a house of studies for seminarians was opened in Bogota. In 1987, Father John Ruth accepted the invitation of Archbishop Kelvin Felix of Castries, St. Lucia, to work in the mission field of that island. Here the Basilians are assisted by a group of very active lay volunteers from Canada.