John Duryea

Who is John Duryea?

John Stillman Duryea was a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Trained at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California. He was ordained March 20, 1943 at St Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco by Archbishop John J. Mitty. He was an assigned in 1943 as assistant pastor at St. Matthew in San Mateo. Sent to Sacred Heart Church in Oakland from 1946 to 1950. Then assigned in 1950, as Catholic chaplain, first at San José State University and in 1961, Stanford University, where he became immensely popular and influential as the pastor of St. Ann's Chapel, Palo Alto.

According to the Palo Alto Weekly, he "became nationally famous, or infamous, for announcing on Jan. 18, 1976, in his sermon at St. Ann's Chapel in Palo Alto that he had 'done the one thing the institution will not tolerate. I have fallen in love.' " That spring, he married artist Eve De Bona and became stepfather to her two daughters, Leslie and Ariel Gore. On the same day, he received a letter from the Archbishop of San Francisco, Joseph T. McGucken, informing him that had been excommunicated by Pope Paul VI.