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John A. Donahue, the executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, died on November 17 of lung cancer at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center. He was 64 years old.

A lifelong activist who dedicated himself to the poor and their causes, Donahue was a former Catholic priest who became Vicar of the Archdiocese of Panama in 1971. Known by his parishioners here as “Juancho,” he lived in and ministered to the metro area’s squatter settlements. In 1979 he left the priesthood, married his wife Chelin and moved to Chicago.

He came back to Panama in 1987 for three years to work with Agro Bia Mundi Yala, a sustainable agriculture project in this country’s impoverished indigenous areas. He then returned to Chicago, and for the last five years of his life worked with the city’s homeless. While in the Windy City he stuck up a friendship with renowned journalist and oral historian Studs Terkel, who told the Chicago Tribune that Donahue “did so much, not simply for the homeless but for all the dispossessed."

Donahue was survived by his wife, four daughters, one son, six sisters and one brother.


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Activist ex-priest John A. Donahue dies

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