Faces of Faith: The Rev. Joseph Noonan

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The Rev. Joseph Noonan at St. Damian Catholic Church in Oak Forest. | Joseph P. Meier~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 4, 2012 8:00AM

What does he do?

It wasn’t until he was 26 that Joseph Noonan decided to become a priest.

“I was working as a CPA (certified public accountant), renovating buildings downtown (in Chicago) and dating,” said Noonan, who last July was assigned to be the pastor of St. Damian Catholic Church at 5250 155th St. in Oak Forest.

How did he get into his job?

Born in Worth, Noonan was in third grade when his family moved to Frankfort, where in 1981 he graduated from Lincoln-Way Central High School.

Noonan then enrolled at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., where he graduated with a degree in accounting in 1985.

He entered the accounting field while also rehabbing buildings.

“I pretty much had followed my brothers and sisters,” Noonan said of his six siblings. “I went to college and wanted to get a good job. I had girlfriends on and off.”

Then in 1986, Noonan had a strong conversion, a deepening of his faith, as his parents invited him and his siblings and their spouses to go on a pilgrimage to what was then called Yugoslavia and today is Bosnia.

“The desire to help people replaced the desire to make money,” Noonan said. “I had internalized that to be successful you had to make a lot of money. But gradually, (the desire) to be wealthy and successful diminished. After feeling more the presence of God in my life that gauge of happiness or success changed.”

In the spring of 1990, when he was 26, Noonan and some of his siblings returned to Yugoslavia. “(That pilgrimage) was another profound deepening of my faith,” Noonan said. “It was a clear invitation to serve God, to serve the church. That was when I felt the call to be a priest.”

On his return, Noonan applied to enter a seminary and enrolled at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, where he earned his master of divinity degree in 1995. That same year he was ordained at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral in a ceremony presided over by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

After his ordination, Noonan served for six years as an associate pastor of a church on Chicago’s northwest side and 10 years as the vocation director with the Archdiocese of Chicago. Last July he was assigned to be the pastor of St. Damian.

What’s the best part of the job?

“There are many best parts of the job. I love working with people to help them deepen their faith and to open their hearts to the presence of God. I also enjoy teaching,” Noonan said.

What’s the worst part of the job?

“The challenging part is that you can only do so much, and if we try to do everything we tend to overextend ourselves. You have to watch out that you don’t come over responsible. It’s good to be engaged, but you need to pace yourself,” he said.

What does he do for fun?

“I love doing things with family and friends. I love to read, go to movies, to travel and to try to play golf. I love sports,” he said.

Noonan lives in the rectory next to St. Damian’s.