Letter regarding the death of Fr. Sebastian Brennan

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FATHER SEBASTIAN BRENNAN, O. M. Cap., ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE CAPUCHIN ORDER IN CALIFORNIA IS DEAD. with Jr. Marianus ban cap Father Sebastian Brennan co-founder, of the Capuchin branch of the Franciscan Order in the State of California and member of the Capuchin Monastery of St. Inez, Solvang, California died Friday evening at the advanced age of 76. May God rest his soul. "Show me a man who forgets himself and thinks of others and I'll show you one whom the world will not was soon nor willingly forget". To the people of Mendocino Co., California of every denomination and to his many other friends outside the State, Father Sebastian was such a man. In this vast rural region of four thousand square miles of California's rolling hills and fertile valleys this good man laboured for the space of over thirty three years. St. Francis had no more worthy son among the Pioneers Padres than he. He was a man of another and an older age and might be called as St. Francis himself was called, "the little man of God". In his later days this modern-day would became a mystery to him. Compelled as he was to live between the Cloister and the World he never departed from the closest observance of the mode of life he vowed to live when he doned the poor brown habit of St. Francis. The best eulogy that one could preach above hi silent and motionless remains today is that he was a faithful Priest and a real Capuchin Franciscan. No better proof of his Christ-like life can be given than his faithful administration of the duties of his priestly office and his untiring zeal and labor for the spiritual and material wellfare of his neighbor. The people of the County of Mendocino whom he so dearly loved can can and do give testimony and unstinted praise to his love for the poor and the sick. He was known thro the length and breath of the County as the little Father with the long white beard. When ever one of his younger Brother Priests meets a stranger in one of the towns or hamlets of the County there is invariably the familiar question, "Do you know Father Sebastian and where is he now?" He was beloved by the white man and the Indian. Pages of corespondence can be seen his records to prove his untiring determination to procure not only spiritual education but also secular education for the neglected Indian. In this work he had an unfailing friend in the late Arch-Bishop of the Arch-Diocese, the Most Reverend Archbishop Hanna, D.D. For these qualities of mind and heart he is a Priest that his friends, "will not soon or willingly forget Now that he is dead we can tell the praises of his attractive personality and character which during his lifetime would have sounded as inane flattery to his ears. His last visit to Ukiah was last spring when was celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of his Ordination to the Priesthood. He will come no more to the first field of his California labors, which he so laboriously and so carefully tended. Some of his pioneer companions lie sleepi…