Fr. William P. Kinane

Father Kinane died peacefully on Thursday 22 October 2026 at Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, in his 94th year. He was 93. No cause of death was given. His death was announced by the Diocese of Sacramento on 28 October and in an Irish death notice, which was picked up by Thurles Information.

He was mourned by his many nieces and nephews and their families, by Bishop Jaime Soto and Auxiliary Bishop Rey Bersabal, and by priests, deacons and parishioners of the diocese. A viewing and vigil were set for 9 November 2026 and the Mass of Christian Burial for 11 a.m. on Tuesday 10 November 2026 at St. John the Baptist Parish, Folsom, with Bishop Bersabal presiding. A funeral Mass and burial in Rossmore, County Tipperary, were to take place at a later date.

William Patrick Kinane was born on 2 November 1932 in Tipperary Town, Ireland, the tenth of eleven children, seven boys and four girls, of Michael Kinane and Margaret Sweeney. He was raised on the family farm at Toureen, Rossmore, County Tipperary, where the family kept crops, cows, horses, sheep, pigs and greyhounds, and he lived through the rationing of the Second World War years as a boy.

He started at Rossmore Primary School in 1938 and in 1946 went to Mount Melleray College in County Waterford, a school run by the Cistercian community, for five years. In 1950 Father Patrick Gleason, a priest of the Diocese of Sacramento who knew the family, visited while home on holiday, and his stories of Sacramento first drew the young man to California.

In September 1951 he entered the seminary at Thurles. He told its president he wanted to serve in Sacramento, even when he was encouraged to sign up for Great Falls, Montana. He was ordained on 16 June 1957 in the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, by Bishop Patrick Cleary, a missionary bishop recently freed from imprisonment in China.

Father Kinane left Cobh on 8 September 1957 aboard the Cunard liner Scythia and reached Sacramento later that month. His first assignment, given by Bishop Joseph McGucken in a letter written in Latin, was as assistant at St. Joseph Parish in Redding, where he spent four and a half years. In February 1962 he moved to St. Mel Parish in Fair Oaks.

On 1 October 1964, at the request of Bishop Alden Bell, he became Catholic chaplain at the state prison in Susanville. Three years later, on 1 October 1967, he succeeded Father Ronan Brennan as chaplain at Folsom State Prison, then California's only maximum security prison, with more than 3,000 inmates. He served there four years, during which Johnny Cash performed for the prisoners.

In October 1971 he became pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Anderson, and on 30 October 1973 pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in Folsom. Over 22 years there he led the parish through the rapid growth of the town: a parish hall was built in 1978, a fund drive in 1987 and 1988 raised the money for a new church, and the church opened for Christmas 1989 and was dedicated on 14 January 1990.

In 1995 Bishop William Weigand persuaded him to take St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Vallejo, where he served eight years. On 1 July 2003 he became pastor of St. Dominic Parish in Colfax, and he retired in March 2008, when he was named pastor emeritus. He also served on the diocese's Priests' Personnel Board.

Father Kinane came from a family with a strong religious calling. His brothers Fr. Roger Kinane, a Kiltegan missionary in Africa who died in 2007, and Fr. Phil Kinane were also priests, and his sister Sr. Kathleen Kinane, who died in 2019, was a religious sister. He outlived all ten of his brothers and sisters.

In retirement he lived at the Priests' Retirement Village in Citrus Heights, helped parishes across the diocese with Sunday Masses, went back to Ireland every year to see family, and played golf every week. Diocesan archivist Fr. John Boll wrote in 2014 that he was still one of the best golfers on the clerical circuit.

Father Kinane was one of the generation of Irish priests ordained for California dioceses in the 1950s. His nearly 70 years of ministry ran from prison chaplaincy at Susanville and Folsom to the building of the present St. John the Baptist Church in Folsom, which stands as the most visible mark of his 22 year pastorate there.