NORTH KINGSTOWN — One local pastor has a knack for being a part of history and even making his own after 25 years of being a Catholic priest.
Father David Gaffney, 65, is the pastor of St. Bernard Church, located at the corner of Ten Rod and Tower Hill Roads in North Kingstown. Though he has only been assigned there five years, his parish is thriving more than ever. And on a personal level, he’s having one of his best years yet, as he travelled to Rome with 17 local parishioners at the exact right time.
As 2025 is a jubilee year for the church, the faithful gather in Rome from all over the world to go on a pilgrimage to some of the most significant basilicas in and around Vatican City. Father Gaffney and his parish planned to do the same, but he says that being present for Pope Leo XIV’s first Mass and audience were not part of the original itinerary.
“As we got closer to the time we were leaving, we realized that his installation Mass was going to be while we were there,” he said. “We left here on a Thursday, it was like a Thursday to Thursday trip. And that Sunday was the installation Mass.
“You don’t plan those things, they happen, and you just are grateful that it just coincided. People would say, how did you manage to do that? I said, it all just sort of happened.”
As you might expect, Father Gaffney and his parishioners were overjoyed at this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. One person in the group had an incredibly steady hand when it came to snapping pictures of the new pope.
At the front foyer of the church, you’ll notice a shelf on the right with several pictures of Pope Leo XIV, one of which where he’s waving and riding by in the Popemobile, very close to the camera. The shot, taken on the day of the first audience, is perfectly clear despite the movement and could be mistaken for something straight out of a professional publication. Without Father Gaffney, that once-in-a-lifetime shot would never have been taken.
Father Gaffney had quite a bit of prior experience in Rome. He lived there for five years while he was assigned to the Pontifical North American College, as a spiritual director.
“I was fortunate enough to be in St. Peter’s Square the night that Pope Francis came out onto the balcony,” Father Gaffney said.
Father Gaffney is an example of how it’s never too late to find your true calling. If you’ve done the math, you’ll notice he was ordained at 40 years old. Before that, he’d spent 18 years teaching high school students at La Salle Academy as a member of the De La Salle Christian Brothers, lay religious congregation focused on Catholic education. While his entire journey to discovering the priesthood took many years, the bottom line is that teaching and preaching go hand in hand in lots of ways.
Father Gaffney went on to attend Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass. which is geared toward “second career vocations.”
“Everyone was a little bit older,” he explained. “There were people who had been teachers, or lawyers, doctors, military, accountants. And it was people from all over the country.”
When you talk to Father Gaffney about the history of North Kingstown, you’d think he was the pastor at St. Bernard the whole time he’s been a priest. He knows just about everything about the old St. Bernard’s Church, now relegated to secular use, which dates all the way back to the 1870’s. In fact, the parish in general is one of the oldest existing in the state of Rhode Island, celebrating its 150th anniversary last year.
Due to the growing community and safety concerns, the new St. Bernard Church was built in 2009, and Father Gaffney can tell you all about that, too. The layout and exterior are a bit unusual for a church and parish hall, resembling a farmhouse-style home. But that was intentional, meant to honor the long history of the property it was built on.
According to a history pamphlet written by Norma LaSalle, PhD, the land at the intersection of Ten Rod Road and Tower Hill Road had been settled by colonists in 1709, and likely long before that by the Narragansett and Pequot tribes. However, many remember the site as the Davis family farm, owned by James C. Davis and his six children until the youngest, Virginia, passed away in 2001. By then, the immediate family had owned the farm for nearly 70 years. The Davis children were known to be prominent Catholics in the community as well.
To further honor the parish’s history, Father Gaffney recently helped salvage the Stations of the Cross images from the old church, which will soon be posted outside around the borders of the property. The wooden and painted images date back to when the church was first built and remain in near-perfect condition with vibrant greens, blues, and reds.
Father Gaffney loves that the parish he’s found himself in is vibrant in its own way. He describes the community as welcoming and receptive, especially regarding his goals of utilizing the abundance of space he’d been given with a new parish hall. There, they’ve celebrated birthdays, Christmas, hosted countless clubs and organizations, and of course, Father Gaffney’s 25th anniversary celebration.
“I would say [the community is] receptive in the sense of the kind of things we’ve tried or kind of asked them to do,” Father Gaffney said. “Since I’ve been here, we started a golf tournament and I’ve got a committee together, and people got behind it. I think the fifth annual one is coming up this fall. So there’s a receptivity to new initiatives and things like that.”
