Pattaya Thailand:
Father Raymond Brennan, the American Roman Catholic priest who cared for many homeless and abandoned Thai children at the Pattaya orphanage he founded 31 years ago in Thailand, has died of heart failure at the age of 70.

Father Brennan was the spiritual father to more than 750 Thai children, this Catholic Redemptorists priest, with the face of a boxer, has changed more baby nappies and mixed more children food in his life than many mothers.

Father Brennan, was born into a devout Irish Catholic family in a very poor neighborhood of Chicago in the United States. Raymond Brennan was a highly respected figure in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya where he had lived and worked since the year 1972 for children and many other impoverished Thai people. Pattaya beach is 70 miles south of Bangkok.

Warmly known as Father Ray, Raymond Brennan joined the Redemptorists missionary and was ordained on 2 July 1959, a year before he was send to Thailand, where he expected to only stay for maximum 1 or 2 years.

Father Brennan liked to narrate his mother's reaction on the news of his new post in Thailand: "I always knew God had his reasons, you are the only one of my children who likes to eat rice," his mother always said.

After serving in the North of Thailand during the height of the Vietnam War, ministering both to the Thais of his parish and the American troops stationed nearby, Father Brennan was sent to Pattaya in 1972 as a temporary replacement for the parish priest.

The war in Vietnam was raging, and the Gulf of Siam and Pattaya had become a popular destination for US troops on leave in Thailand. With the arrival of those American soldiers on holiday in Pattaya beach, the commercial sex industry started up.

So that soon after his arrival in Pattaya, Father Brennan found an abandoned American-Thai baby on his doorsteps. With help from some parishioners, he kept the child and within weeks, several more babies were left with him. By 1978 he had 58 abandoned Thai children to look after. As a result the Pattaya Orphanage was officially born.

Today, the Pattaya Orphanage in Thailand is home to 750 children.
The Pattaya orphanage was soon followed by other projects, namely: the Old People's Home; The School for the Blind and Deaf children; A Vocational School; A Job Placement Agency for the graduates of the Pattaya Orphanage school's and the Home for Street Children. In all, 750 Thai children and youngsters are nowadays in the care of the various establishments Father Brennan set up in Pattaya Thailand some 31 years ago. Tens of thousands of Thai children have been educated and passed through the Pattaya Orphanage.

As Father Brennan's work with the Pattaya Orphanage and the different school's was becoming such a huge enterprise to run, it was separated from the Roman Catholic parish of Pattaya in the year 2002 and changed to become the "Father Ray Foundation" to which Father Brennan became a consultant.

Father Brennan's last year of life was upset by a very unpleasant controversy over a British tabloid newspaper's allegation that he arranged meetings between wealthy pedophiles and children in his care. Father Brennan denied the report in the weekly tabloid The People in January and expressed sadness, as this sensation seeking article would not only harm his reputation, but most of all hurt the lives of the Thai children at the Pattaya Orphanage.

"I have never been involved in, or arranged any pedophile rendezvous during my entire life. I condemn all pedophiles totally," Brennan said at the time.

The British tabloid newspaper's report was not taken seriously in Thailand, especially in Pattaya, where the reputation of Father Brennan has always remained intact.

Father Raymond Brennan will be buried on the grounds of St. Niklaus Church next to the Pattaya Orphanage in Thailand on Thursday 21 August 2003.