Remembering M*A*S*H’s Father Mulcahy

William Christopher, the actor who played Father Francis Mulcahy for 11 seasons on M*A*S*H in the 1970s and ’80s, died New Year’s Eve. He was 84.

In the series, Mulcahy was a Catholic priest, a former amateur boxer, and a chaplain assigned to M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) Unit No. 4077 during the Korean War.

Christopher ensured the role was almost always handled with respect and restraint.

“As it grew and as I had a chance to do more things with Mulcahy, I felt there was a lot of responsibility because there weren’t too many primetime clergymen,” Christopher said.

In real life, Christopher wasn’t even Catholic. He was Methodist.

“I wanted to have Mulcahy say something, if he could, that was honest about what it was like to be a priest,” Christopher said. “I met with a lot of priests and talked to a lot of priests. … I felt pretty humble just being a pretend priest myself.”

Mulcahy rarely expounded Scriptures or celebrated Holy Communion—that might have been a bit too much for a secular entertainment program. But he portrayed the chaplain as one who, by the grace of God, loved people sacrificially, whether they were the children in the nearby orphanage or the often incorrigible colleagues in his unit. And for wounded soldiers, he engaged in the ministry of presence.

Years later, Christopher talked about that ministry in an online video produced by the HealthCare Chaplaincy Network.

“Mulcahy’s presence is a help,” he said. “They know he’s not a doctor, but they know he’s an ear that they can bend and that they can count on.” And yet it was not uncommon in the series for Mulcahy to ponder, somewhat dejectedly, whether he was any practical help to anyone.

Perhaps the most memorable M*A*S*H moment for Mulcahy came as the result of a line Christopher improvised in the 1976 episode “The Interview.” That particular program, filmed in black and white, was done as a documentary. A “news reporter” interviewed the doctors and staff at the M*A*S*H unit about their work and the war.

All the actors ad-libbed their responses in character. The reporter asked Mulcahy what it was like in the makeshift operating room as the surgeons treated the wounded who had just been rushed to the hospital from combat areas.

“When the doctors cut into a patient, and it’s cold, you know, when it snows, steam rises from the body,” Christopher said as Mulcahy. “And the doctor will warm himself over the open wound. Could anyone look on that and not feel changed?”

Christopher and his wife, Barbara, were married for 59 years, until his death from cancer. In the 1960s, the couple adopted two sons, one later diagnosed with autism. In 1989, the Christophers published a book, Mixed Blessings, about the challenges and joys of raising their autistic son.

Listen to Joseph Slife’s complete report on William Christopher on the Jan. 4 edition of The World and Everything in It.