With the death of the Rev. Jim Sunderland, Denver lost a tireless champion for peace, uncompromisingly committed to the concept that human life is sacred.
Father Jim’s disarming smile and gentle manner did not diminish the fervor of his opposition to capital punishment.
Days before the Oct. 13, 1997, execution of convicted murderer Gary Davis, Sunderland wrote in The Post, “Killing people is violence, and violence never solves any problem. It only begets more violence. Tough-on-crime politicians build bigger and better prisons, thinking that it will stop crime. Preventing crime by building more prisons is akin to building more cemeteries to prevent AIDS.”
He said, “Soulless societies and soulless selves are hardly bothered by the extermination of human beings, but we are basically good people. … Should the media and posturing politicians and secular ethics continue to beguile us into thinking that nothing lessens our humanity when the state poisons a person to death by so-called ‘lethal injection’?”
Davis, convicted of the murder of farm wife Ginny May, is the only person executed in Colorado since 1967.
Sunderland died at 81. He was a Denver native and graduate of Regis Jesuit High. He won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point but later entered a Jesuit seminary and earned degrees from St. Louis University and a theology degree from St. Mary’s College.
Sunderland eventually returned to Denver as chaplain at Mercy and St. Joseph hospitals and jail chaplain for Denver and nearby counties until 1998. He was a tireless advocate of prison reform.
Using money he received for performing weddings and funerals, he helped youngsters go to college or took religious items to inmates. Father Jim’s life was dedicated to awakening our consciences, and for that we are grateful.
