Fr. John Raymond Donahue, S.J.

Rev. John R. Donahue., SJ, was born on July 3, 1933, in Baltimore, MD. He attended Loyola Blakefield High School and entered the Society of Jesus at the Novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues in Wernersville, PA, on July 30, 1951. He earned both an M.A. and a Licentiate in Philosophy from Loyola Seminary in Shrub Oak, NY (Fordham University), and went on to receive a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from Woodstock College in Woodstock, MD, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Scripture from the University of Chicago. John was ordained a priest on June 14, 1964, at Woodstock College in Maryland. Fr. Donahue spent most of his Jesuit vocation as a professor of New Testament studies. After spending a couple years as a professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago and then of sacred scripture and Biblical languages at Woodstock College in New York, he taught New Testament studies for six years at Vanderbilt University. In 1980, he spent a year as a visiting professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome before returning to the States and serving for the next 20 years teaching New Testament studies, back and forth between the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, and the University of Notre Dame. In 2001, Fr. Donahue was named the Raymond E. Brown Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, MD, where he served for three years. In 2001, he also began what would be a 16-year tenure at Loyola University Maryland as a writer and professor emeritus. He also served Loyola for several of those years as a research professor in Theology. Fr. Donahue was a prolific writer, especially on the Gospel of Mark. He published three volumes of commentaries on the Sunday Readings, one of which won First Place in Professional Books from the Catholic Press Association. Other books included The Gospel of Mark; Are You the Christ: The Trial Narrative in the Gospel of Mark; Theology and Setting of Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark; What Does the Lord Require: A Bibliographical Essay on the Bible and Social Justice; and The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative and Theology in the Synoptic Gospels. From 1998–2001, he wrote the weekly “Word” column for America. In 2017, Fr. Donahue moved to the Colombiére Jesuit Community in Baltimore where he continued to write and serve in pastoral ministry. He died peacefully on October 28, 2024.

Fr. John Raymond Donahue, S.J.

July 3, 1933 - October 28, 2024