After a half-century of dedicated service, Catholic priest George Kitchin dies at 81
Across 54 years, Father George Kitchin was a prominent spiritual figure on the Gulf Coast. A dedicated priest, skilled homilist and patron of Catholic education, those who knew him remember him for his kind nature.
“There were several families that I know that he paid for their children to go to Resurrection High School. I know in one case, there was a young lady — her husband passed away, and she desperately wanted to try and get her husband back to Nigeria, where she was from. Father Kitchin reached into his pocket and paid the entire cost of her and the husband and the casket and everything else to be sent back to Nigeria. He was that kind of person,” said Robert Barr, an active parishioner of St. Mary Catholic Church in Gautier, where Kitchin was a pastor from 2014 until his retirement.
Kitchin, 81, passed away peacefully on July 5. He has left a legacy of gregariousness to clergy members and parishioners within the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi.
“He was a talker. And if you sat down and started talking with him, you had to be willing to give up an hour, hour and a half, two hours, he would talk to you right into the ground. But it was not like he went in circles or he was boring,” Barr said. “He just loved to impart information and history was a big deal to him. Several people would say, if you made the mistake after mass and you started a conversation with him, he would just kind of captivate you and keep you there until he ran out of words - and he had a lot of words.”
“Father George, fairly early in his life, met the Lord, met God. It was a moment for him to really begin to think about, ‘OK, Lord, we’re in relationship now, let me tell you about the Revolutionary War,’” Bishop of Biloxi Louis F. Kihneman III joked in his homily for Kitchin’s Mass of Christian Burial on July 15.
“There was a gentleness about Father George — there was a spirit of love that you met every time you met him. There was a real sense that he really did love God, and really did want to share the love of God especially,” Kihneman continued at Kitchin’s service at St. James Catholic Church in Gulfport.
Kitchin’s spiritual community remembers him for his profound homilies, a skill he practiced over thousands of Masses in his half-century of service. Barr said Kitchin easily related spiritual concepts to parishioners.
“During the Consecration, we always talk about the dew fall, when the grace of God falls on the Eucharist and the wine to turn it into the body and blood. And he said, ‘Think about dew. You never hear it. It doesn’t fall like rain. And it just kind of shows up. And that’s kind of like what grace is. It falls on you and it, you know, it surrounds you.’ That just stuck with you.” said Barr, a member of the Knights of Columbus with Kitchin.
Not just a speaker
Rev. Michael O’Connor, a pastor at Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church in Bay St. Louis, remembers Kitchin as not only a strong speaker but also an earnest listener. He clearly remembers his encounter with Kitchin decades ago, before O’Connor was a priest, after a breakup with a girlfriend.
“I was not a parishioner in his parish, and he just kind of noted that looked like I was moping quite a bit. And he asked me how I felt. It invited me to speak, and he and I ended up just kind of sitting down and having a two-hour-long conversation about life and blood and heartbreak and faith and all of that,” O’Connor said. “I was in my mid-20s at the time, and that was probably the first time I had spoken to a priest. And it was a good conversation, substantial and necessary.”
Kitchin was director of the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi Charismatic Renewal Program. The funeral was especially well attended and Kitchin has been interred at St. James Cemetery.
In life, Kitchin was a committed supporter of Catholic education and made frequent donations to local Catholic schools. In honor of his memory, the Kitchin family would prefer memorials be made to the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi Guardian Angel Program, which provides tuition assistance to Catholic school students.
Kitchin was born in Durham, North Carolina, and was raised in Greenwood. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 13, 1970, at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Greenwood. After his ordination, he was assigned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and remained in the Diocese of Biloxi until his death.
He served as associate pastor of Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church, Bay St. Louis, Sacred Heart Parish in Pascagoula, and Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Biloxi. In 1982, he was appointed as the founding pastor of St. Matthew the Apostle Catholic Church in White Cypress.
From 1988 to 2002, he was pastor of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Ocean Springs, from 2002 to 2014, pastor of St. James Catholic Church in Gulfport, and from 2014 until his retirement, pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Gautier.
Kitchin is survived by his siblings, Robert Kitchin, John Kitchin and Peggy Kitchin, and his nieces and nephews, Trey Pollard, Justin Cohen, Andrew Cohen, Paul Kitchin, David Kitchin, Joseph Kitchin, Clare Kitchin and Jonathan Kitchin.
The Riemann Family Funeral Home is serving the family and online condolences may be offered at www.riemannfamily.com.
