O'Connell spent more than 15 years at St. Frances X. Cabrini in South LA, where a garden in his honor was dedicated Feb. 9, 2025.

Even while Pope Francis is hospitalized, he still keeps in touch with a Roman Catholic parish in Gaza City, making near-nightly phone calls to the priest and congregation there.

At his introductory press conference in April 2019 on the morning when Pope Francis had named him as the new archbishop of ...