Every day the 83-year-old parish priest at O’Connor says Mass, comforts the sick and dying at Clare Holland hospice and calls in at St Joseph’s primary school.

Ten years ago two retired doctors were among St Vincent de Paul volunteers at a fortnightly meeting Father Kennedy never missed, in a room adjoining the church.

A tall young man approached, asking them for money and became aggressive.

So the parish priest left the meeting and led him onto the steps outside. Before he could offer money, Father Kennedy’s palate and jaw were broken. His nose was broken in two places, one eye socket was damaged and both eyes were left blackened.

The smack of the 74 year-old’s head hitting the concrete brought the volunteers to their feet. Later Father Kennedy asked for more information.

‘‘I said to the doctor, ‘If those two doctors hadn’t been there and people who heard that scuffle hadn’t come out and picked me up, what would have happened?’.

‘‘He said ‘Oh well, you would have died’.’’

After plastic surgery to reconstruct much of his face, re-alignment of his teeth and a steel plate inserted above his mouth, he was able to continue preaching.

His face around the plate and screws remains numb. Continual talking is painful.

Regaining his strength, Father Kennedy returned to his home town of Crookwell and asked the parish priest to anoint him.

‘‘People often refer to this as last rites, of course that’s a misnomer in a way, it’s meant to be received when a person is sick or injured or infirm or aged,’’ he said.

He was baptised at St Mary’s in Crookwell, a beautiful stone church where he learnt the Latin Mass as an altar boy, made his first confession, received his first Communion, was confirmed and ordained a priest.

A decade after that bashing, when the clock inside St Joseph’s church chimes 6pm each Saturday, the organist begins playing and Father Kennedy leads his congregation in Hail Redeemer, King Divine.

A regular visitor at Morshead Home and Kankinya Aged Care means he confronts his own mortality more often than most people, and thanks God for reasonable health. He makes a point of calling at Clare Holland every day.

‘‘It means I can be right up to date with people who are sick, some of them are there for half a day, some for two weeks or a month,’’ he said.

‘‘I call in and see them and meet their family. I get called occasionally of a night time when families are there. Someone has died and they like to have a priest with them.’’

Nineteen years as Kambah’s parish priest, from 1975 to 1994, where he baptised 1750 babies while overseeing building of a new parish, has left a happy legacy of being asked to marry many of them decades later.

‘‘That’s a lot of babies. They were all joyful, wonderful occasions. And there were marriages there, and visiting people, establishing the new parish.’’

He served at Young, Cootamundra, Murrumburrah, Braidwood and Braddon.

On the feast day of Mary MacKillop in August, 2007, an arsonist set fire to St Joseph’s church.

‘‘I might have retired at that stage,’’ he says. ‘‘In fact in the back of my mind, that was the idea. Once the church was burnt down, I thought I have got to stay here. I had all the original plans of the original church.’’

Retirement is not on his radar. He reads about history, layers of Australian, Catholic and Kennedy history rising through pages of books which nearly touch the ceiling of his study.

He’s reading ABC presenter Caroline Jones' book Through a Glass Darkly: a journey of love and grief with my Father which links her father to his father, Patrick, and Ben Chifley, at Crookwell.

Then Treasurer and Member for Macquarie, Chifley would call on storekeeper Patrick Kennedy before heading off to the Commercial Hotel where her father Brian James was the publican.

Patrick Kennedy’s father, William, was 18 when he came in 1859 from Tipperary to Crookwell with five brothers to find the climate as cold and at times as wet as Ireland’s and soil as suited for potato growing.

Irish Catholics encouraged a son to join the priesthood.

One of three children, young William went to St Patrick’s College in Goulburn, then worked for five years for the Commonwealth Bank at Yass, Kogarah and Hurstville before a parish priest asked if the 20-year-old had considered the priesthood.

‘‘I was very happy with my work, I was in a big branch at Hurstville, I had to make a decision.

‘‘I lead a happy life. I am not worried or depressed in any way. I always feel I am doing something for people.

‘‘And that was my idea, when I decided to leave my good job in the Commonwealth Bank; the idea was in trying out for the priesthood at least.’’

He studied at St Columba’s seminary at Springwood and St Patrick’s seminary at Manly before being ordained on his 30th birthday.

Coming from generations that revered their parish priests, Father Kennedy is saddened today to see his beloved church singled out and reviled for the paedophiles it harboured.

‘‘Paedophilia is a crime; it has to be dealt with by civil authorities,’’ he said.

The crime had afflicted several institutions. The Catholic Church was no different from the others.

‘‘Jesus didn’t say anyone who is in the Catholic Church is immediately perfect,’’ Father Kennedy said. ‘‘Not at all. In fact He said the opposite. He said, ‘You will need my help every day of your life’.’’