Rev. Thomas Conway; aided racial peace in city in ’70s

“O God . . . help our beloved city of Boston to maintain racial harmony, to reject all violence, to strive for understanding,’’ he said in his invocation prayer at a 1985 ethnic luncheon at Charlestown High School, the setting for some of Boston’s ugliest racial battles.

A year earlier, he had eased the transition for the first black families settling into an all-white public housing project in Charlestown. “We wanted to take time to tell the residents that these families were going to become a part of the community,’’ he said in a 1984 Globe article.

On Oct. 25, after 45 years of priesthood, Father Conway died of Alzheimer’s disease at St. Patrick’s Manor in Framingham. He was 75.

Thomas Conway grew up in Medford, the younger of John and Helen Conway’s two children. His father was a Salem vocational school principal.

As a child and Boy Scout, he loved the outdoors, earning Eagle Scout status. One of his badges required him to serve 150 Catholic Masses as an altar boy at St. Francis of Assisi, where he also was a morning janitor, said his sister, Fran Conway Welch of Charlotte, N.C.

He graduated from Malden Catholic High School in 1952 and headed to Boston College.

But after a year, he decided to become a priest and enrolled in St. John’s Seminary in Brighton. There, he earned an undergraduate degree in 1956 and a master’s in theology in 1960. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and assigned to the Immaculate Conception Parish in Marlborough, where he served for nine years.

In 1969, he moved to St. John the Baptist Parish in Haverhill.

A year later, he received a master’s in religious education from Emmanuel College in Boston. He would write three educational books for Sunday schools over the next decade.

In 1976, he was promoted to associate pastor at St. Patrick’s Parish in Lawrence. Five years later, he earned his first pastor position, at St. Catherine’s in Charlestown, where he served through the early 1980s.

“That was in the projects - a very busy area,’’ his sister said. “It was during the days of integration, so things could get really rough.’’

In a 1981 Globe article, he talked about ministering to three shooting victims, who scattered after being wounded near St. Catherine’s. Father Conway said he gave last rites to “three different guys in three different locations . . . While I was anointing the man, you could hear the echo of gunshots.’’

In 1983, he was thrust into the spotlight during a Charlestown murder trial. He was at the center of a debate over whether the pastor could testify on a suspect’s admission of guilt during a religious confession. The judge ultimately ruled he could.

In 1985, Father Conway became pastor at St. Margaret’s in Dorchester. Two years later, he was named the coordinator of prison ministry for the archdiocese, a position he held for 10 years.

“His gift was prison ministry,’’ said Nancy MacAllister, who worked with Father Conway for eight years at St. Athanasius Parish in Reading, where he was pastor. “The prisoners always had a great respect for him.’’

In his second year as the head prison chaplain, Cardinal Bernard Law granted him what he considered the “greatest experience’’ of his life, according to St. Athanasius staff members. He led Mother Teresa to three prisons around the state during her second visit to Massachusetts.

“He spent the entire day with her . . . he was just so moved,’’ MacAllister said. “Mother Teresa was his saint on earth . . . He idolized her and her whole message of Christian love.’’

Conway also served as a vicar forane, or priest coordinator for the archdiocese, from 1987 to 1997.

Father Conway served at St. Athanasius from 1997 until retiring as a senior priest in 2005.

“He was the kindest, gentlest soul,’’ said MacAllister, the religious education coordinator at St. Athanasius. “Tom would graciously give. He used to say, ‘Whatever you give, you get back onehundredfold.’. . .’’

He retired to a home on the Gloucester shore he owned with several other priests, and spent his later years golfing, reading, and watching sports. There was a chapel at the house, where the priests said Mass daily.

In addition to his sister, Father Conway leaves two nephews, Stephen Welch of Lawndale, N.C., and John Welch of Rockville, Md.; and one niece, Elizabeth Johnson of Lansing, Mich.

Services have been held.