William Joseph “Joe” Connolly, 94, died April 27, 2026. Joe was preceded in death by his parents, Ferne and John Connolly Sr. and his eight brothers and sisters: John III, Bernard, Richard, Eleanor, Margaret, Rosemary, Marcella, and Mary Alice. He is survived by his beloved wife Charlene, his stepdaughter Elizabeth, son-in-law James, granddaughter Olivette, sisters-in-law Cathy, Michele, Mary Eileen, Pat, brother-in-law Charles, and many dear nephews, nieces, and friends. 

Joe was born July 17, 1931, in Des Moines, IA, and attended Holy Trinity Catholic Grade School and Dowling High School. He attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA, for two years. When praying the Stations of the Cross during a spring retreat in his sophomore year, Joe was so moved by Jesus’ love for us in His passion and crucifixion that by early summer he joined the Passionist order and later became a priest. 

While a priest, Joe founded a youth center in St. Louis and with other religious professionals offered retreats and workshops. Joe and Eileen Carney, a Maryknoll Sister who worked at the center, decided to pursue PhDs in psychology at the U.S. International University in San Diego and studied with psychologist Carl Rogers (author of On Becoming a Person). After earning their PhDs, Joe and Eileen left their religious orders, married, and designed and implemented national and international leadership programs for a better world for adults in the helping professions, so they could be more effective in their service to people. 

In the early 1980s, Eileen’s brother, Fr. Jim Carney, S.J. (Padre J. Guadalupe Carney) asked Joe to be his executor and power of attorney and to get his autobiography published if something happened to him. For 20 years Padre Guadalupe loved and served poor peasants in Honduras, helping develop more than 100 cooperatives and working with 80,000 campesinos of the National Peasant Union for Human Rights and Land Reform. Padre Guadalupe had been threatened, jailed, and exiled. In 1983, he “disappeared,” and Joe, Eileen, and her family undertook a years-long investigation into the Honduran army and government, the CIA, and the US Ambassador to Honduras to learn what happened to Jim. Joe helped keep the investigation alive in newspapers, and the BBC made a TV documentary on the family’s search for the truth surrounding Jim’s disappearance and won the Royal Television Society’s Current Affairs International Award in 1984. Joe got Harper and Row to publish Jim’s autobiography, To Be a Revolutionary, with Joe writing the prologue and epilogue for the family. After 10 years, Joe, Eileen, and the Carney family felt secure that Jim had died and was no longer being held and tortured. 

During the years when Joe and Eileen gave workshops and were investigating Fr Jim Carney’s disappearance, Joe invested in rental properties that provided homes for many. At the Hi-Pointe 18-unit apartment building, tenants gave him a “Best Landlord” t-shirt. His carefully researched and managed properties resulted in assets on which Joe was able to live for the remainder of his life. Joe’s friend John May said of Joe, “He could pull off things that others wouldn’t have been able to.” When asked what he did for a living, he said he lived by his wits. 

Joe’s wife Eileen died of cancer in 2001. For two years, Joe deeply grieved for her. Then he began dating. Charlene and Joe met at St. Cronan’s Church and dated for two years before marrying in 2005. Joe is cherished by his wife Charlene and many others he helped and loved. He wrote about himself that he was searching and growing most of his life in what it means to be an authentic human being and Christian and that he was known as a caring person who always struggled for more effective ways to love people. 

Joe deeply loved his family and friends and helping people; he was faithful, loyal, hospitable, generous, good. The gospel, he said, could be reduced to: Do good.

Joe will be buried in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines, IA. In lieu of flowers, please donate to St. Cronan’s St. Vincent DePaul Society or St. Vincent DePaul Hauling Ministry (here or www.stcronan.org, noting “Joe Connolly Memorial” in the notes). 

God bless you, Joe, and may eternal rest grant unto you, O Lord.