The Rev. William Brennan, who marched every year and was a staunch supporter of immigration rights, is wheeled in a wheelchair down 5th St. during the annual May Day march for immigration reform on May 1, 2013. The group marched from the Voces de la Frontera site on S. 5th St. to Pere Marquette Park. Credit: Mike De Sisti

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The Rev. William J. Brennan — "Father Bill" — was a regular at protests supporting immigrants, laborers, the poor — his activism born of 17 years spent working in Honduras. He was a Jesuit for nearly 75 years, but it was a question that he could not stop asking, and what he did about it, that cost him dearly.

"Why is celebrating Mass and preaching an exclusive male privilege? Where do we get that, and isn't it worth discussing?" he asked, according to Barb Messerknecht, a friend and fellow peace activist.

And so in 2012, at 92, Brennan made a daring move. He said Mass with a female priest. His co-celebrant was the Rev. Janice Sevre-Duszynska, during an annual protest at what was historically known as the School of the Americas at Fort Benning near Columbus, Ga.

He paid for it three weeks later, sanctioned by the Jesuits and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Brennan was ordered not to celebrate the Eucharist or other sacraments publicly, or to present himself publicly as a priest. His response at the time: "Sometimes in our lives we have to trust our conscience and bring about the consequences," he said. "I wasn't trying to show off for the ladies."

Brennan died Aug. 11 of natural causes at St. Camillus in Wauwatosa. He was 94.

"Father Bill Brennan's whole life was about action for justice and equality," Messerknecht said. She noted that, as word of his death spread, friends and acquaintances called him many things — "beloved Father Bill," "powerful advocate for the poor," "dear friend." Her favorite: "saintly instigator among us."

William J. Brennan was born in Wauwatosa and grew up in Whitefish Bay, one of sevenchildren of Martin J. and Kitty Killorin Brennan. His father was an attorney. His mother was a stay-at-home mom who impressed on her son how important it was that women had won the right to vote, how critical it was that they be heard. His brother Terry Brennan was a football coach at the University of Notre Dame. His brother James Brennan served as Milwaukee's city attorney, as a state senator and U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Like all the Brennans, he was competitive and was good at golf, said his brother James.

Once he entered Marquette High School, his decision on what he'd do with his life was set. "He loved the Jesuits," James said.

In 1938, Brennan graduated from Marquette University High School — where he would later teach — and began his Jesuit studies at St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant, Mo. He was ordained in 1951 and took his final vows in 1954.

He was smart and intellectual, excellent at playing chess and telling stories. He was drawn to the contemplative life of the Jesuits, said niece Kitty Brennan, a Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge.

His missionary work took him to Honduras, where a lifelong dedication to causes of social justice would take seed.

A 1958 story on his return to Milwaukee noted that he demonstrated to his family how he rode a donkey. He told how he got an idea while watching "Captain Kangaroo" to put on puppet plays for the Hondurans, more than 70% of them illiterate then.

Nuns in Milwaukee helped by making puppets for him to take back to Honduras, where he lived in a small village and traveled hundreds of miles to visit other villages, where he offered Mass in small adobe churches, schools or mud houses. At night, he slept in a hammock slung in the home of a villager.

Brennan also learned an unlikely new skill. The Jesuits asked him to run a coffee plantation, said his niece.

"This is a kid who grew up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin," she said. "But he did it. He did it because it was economic development for the people down there, so he learned how. I love the fact that there's this brainy, cerebral guy learning how to run a coffee plantation down there."

His years there led to his involvement in Central American politics, she said.

There was his parents' visit to Honduras in the late 1950s, when tensions were growing between the U.S. government and the government there. When he took them to the airport to leave, the U.S. bombed the airstrip.

"He told me he couldn't understand why his government was attacking his adopted country," Kitty Brennan said. "Bill was radicalized by that experience, partly because his parents were there, and partly because of the wrong it portrayed."

There was the 1980 rape and murder of three nuns and a lay worker — Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford and Dorothy Kazel — in El Salvador.

And in 1989, his friend and fellow Jesuit, Father Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, was among the six priests and their housekeeper and her daughter who were slain in El Salvador. Lopez had taught Brennan how to speak Spanish, and Brennan had taught him English.

Many of those believed responsible for the 1989 attack were trained at what was then the School of the Americas.

After his years in Honduras, Brennan served Latino parishes in New Mexico, Texas, California and Wisconsin, including St. Patrick Parish on the south side.

He taught English and humanities at Marquette University High School from 1968 to 1979.

Brennan lived and worked with the poor at Casa Maria, a Catholic Worker Movement house for the homeless in Milwaukee, in the early 1980s.

He was involved with Lanterns for Peace with Peace Action Wisconsin, and Voces de la Frontera, a Wisconsin immigrant rights group. He protested against war and the presence of ROTC at Marquette University.

For more than 15 years he participated in protests at what was once the School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a U.S. Department of Defense education facility.

He was especially recognizable in recent years, "walking with his walker, prayer book in the basket, reaching out to meet people," Messer-knecht said.

"He wanted to be a voice for the voiceless," she said. He believed that "it was that our tax money going to pay for training these soldiers, and they go back and commit these horrific acts," she said.

In 2010, by then using a wheelchair, the then-90-year-old Brennan attended the annual SOA Watch vigil. He was fined $50 for blocking traffic while he sat in his wheelchair as part of the protest.

Brennan knew his decision in 2012 to celebrate Mass with Sevre-Duszynska, who had been ordained in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, would be controversial.

At the time, he said his action did not come from some "wild-eyed liberal" protest or heady theological research.

Rather, he said, it came from his deep admiration for his own mother.

He recalled as a child of age 9 hearing his older brother tease her, suggesting that "for a woman she was pretty intelligent."

"I'll never forget the look on my mother's face," Brennan said.

The sanction was tough on him, his niece said.

"He didn't do well after that. Losing his priestly powers at the end was a terrible price to pay. He felt a sadness for it," she said, "but he did not regret his choice and he didn't begrudge anybody who felt otherwise."

And he kept fighting.

"He was protesting up until the end," Kitty Brennan said. "On his wall in his room at the time of his death was an Andy Warhol-type picture of Che Guevara and an artist's rendering of the El Salvador nuns who were murdered. There was a picture of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker Movement pioneer.

"And then he had a picture of his mom and dad."

Besides his brother James, Brennan is survived by sisters Kathleen Brennan and Eileen McCullough, his brother Terry and other relatives.

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The Rev. William

J. Brennan

Visitation will be held at 6 p.m. Monday at San Camillo Chapel, 10200 W. Blue Mound Road, Wauwatosa, with a funeral Mass to follow at 7 p.m. Memorials to the Jesuit Partnership, 3400 W. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53208, are suggested.