This article was published in the spring 2025 issue of The Vincentian, the quarterly newsletter of the Congregation of the Mission Western Province.
Fr. Bernie Quinn looks back on a fulfilling life in ministry
Fr. Bernie Quinn, C.M., was born on the west side of Chicago in 1947, one of 10 children, the day his oldest sister left home to join the Daughters of Charity. Two other sisters would follow her into the Daughters, who ran the girls’ high school in his parish.
“We were included in the Vincentian family,” he said.
He caught the vocation bug while attending Loyola University and went into the seminary. He was ordained in 1972 in Lemont, IL, and began teaching in the seminary in San Fernando, CA, which he said, “may as well have been China.”
Fr. Bernie served as Parochial Vicar in Burundi for a few years and later was Provincial of the Province of the West from 1996 to 2002.
When the chance came in 2011 to take on the role of Novice Master with the Vincentian mission in Nairobi, he eagerly took it. He speaks fondly of the men he worked with there, including a young Edwin Mugwe, who currently serves as Visitor for the Kenyan Vice-Province. When he returned to the U.S. in 2015, he served as Director of the Daughters of Charity Province of the West for nine years.
“In a sense, the through line for me has been formation, starting with my own and then assisting others,” he said. “It has all come down to being available for whatever the province needed me to do. That is the Vincentian calling.”
Photo caption: Fr. Bernie Quinn, C.M., displays a prized photograph of one of his novitiate classes from his time teaching in Nairobi.