The Rev. James Callan, Renegade Catholic Priest, Dies at 77

New York|The Rev. James Callan, Renegade Catholic Priest, Dies at 77

The Rev. James B. Callan, a renegade priest who was excommunicated in 1999 after he offered holy communion to non-Catholics, allowed women to celebrate Mass and blessed same-sex unions — and who then helped establish an independent Catholic church that is thriving a quarter-century later — died on Friday in Rochester, N.Y. He was 77.

His death, in a hospice affiliated with the University of Rochester Medical Center, was announced by the Rev. Myra Brown, the lead pastor of that church, Spiritus Christi, where Father Callan had been assistant pastor. She said the cause was complications of tongue cancer.

In 1999, Father Callan had been the pastor of Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, on the east side of Rochester, for 22 years. In his time there he transformed it from a poor parish, sapped by white flight and doomed to be shuttered, into a flourishing one with a multiracial, ecumenical and progressive congregation that grew from fewer than 200 people to nearly 3,000.

“He was one of the first local religious leaders to welcome people with AIDS as parishioners and helped destigmatize H.I.V.,” Dr. William Valenti, a founder and staff physician of Trillium Health in Rochester, said in a phone interview. “He was a man of faith, a man of action and a man of humanity.”

The break between the Rochester diocese and Father Callan, which he said was initiated by the Vatican, was regarded as less about doctrine than about disciplining unruly priests who were not showing proper obeisance to their bishops.

The bishop of the Rochester diocese at the time, Matthew H. Clark, was a moderate in the American Catholic hierarchy who didn’t necessarily disagree with some of Father Callan’s positions. He himself had taken flak for holding a Mass for gay people.