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Suzanne Hockel, back row, is pictured to the right of then-pastor Msgr. James E. O’Malley in this 1983 photo of the St. Kevin Liturgy Committee. The combined group included lay and clergy members, among them future Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice. (Courtesy photo)
Jan. 10, 2020
Christina Gray
Catholic San FranciscoIn a Dec. 27 Facebook post, St. Kevin Parish in San Francisco announced a sad chapter in its nearly 98-year history.
Suzanne Hockel, who served the Bernal Heights neighborhood parish for 28 years and was one of the parish leaders who helped translate the spirituality of the Second Vatican Council to all aspects of parish life, died of pneumonia on Christmas Eve.
“When the legend of Suzanne Hockel is recounted generations from now, she will be remembered for doing what she could to bring those who fell into her orbit stronger in faith and closer to God,” said Catalino Echiverri, a student in Hockel’s 1974 first Communion class and current chairman of the St. Kevin pastoral council.
Hockel was born in 1935 and entered the novitiate for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur at 17. She spent the next 31 years teaching in Catholic schools throughout California.
Echiverri said that Hockel’s ministry at St. Kevin Parish where she was the Sister Superior began in 1972 at “the cutting edge of church history.”
An energized group of religious and lay team members at St. Kevin including Hockel worked together to implement the transformative ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council which met between 1962-1965.
Within that context the parish leaders also addressed the changing needs of the Bernal Heights community, which saw an influx of African American, Hispanic and Asian families.
“They guided an hierarchical church into an age of collaborative leadership with the laity,” Echiverri wrote. “They had an idea as to what Vatican II envisioned but, at the parish-level, they were in uncharted waters. But like early explorers, they plodded on.”
With no roadmap to guide them, they embarked on programs to involve parishioners in lay ministries and provided sound adult catechesis. Hockel helped bolster religious education programs and then formed spiritual support groups to assist growth in faith.
“It was so alive and vibrant, so filled with possibility,” said Hockel of those years.
She left the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1984 but her devotion to the church remained unchanged.
“She once told me that she professed personal vows to (former pastor Msgr. James E.) O'Malley for service to St. Kevin Church after leaving the order,” Echiverri said.
Hockel was also choir director for the St. Brigid School Honor Choir, and for almost two decades, music director at St. Thomas More Parish in San Francisco.
She continued on as the pastoral associate at St. Kevin until her retirement in 1998 but continued to play the organ at the 8 a.m. Mass and lead the RCIA program.
Dan Rosen, a former deacon at St. Kevin, described Hockel as a “spiritual lighthouse.”
“She was the light for so many,” said Rosen. “You came to believe you had a part to play in the mission of the church, in the building of a community of believers. You were part of something bigger when you walked in her light.”
Hockel’s life will be celebrated Jan. 24 at a 7 p.m. vigil at St. Kevin Church, 704 Cortland Ave., in San Francisco, and at the 10:30 a.m. Mass on Saturday, Jan. 25.