The Rev. Bryan Jones, a longtime priest of the Diocese of Los Angeles, died Feb. 3, while hospitalized following a series of illnesses. He was 72 and retired.
Survivors include his wife, the Rev. Amy Pringle, and his children — Derek (Jessi), Sean, Jenni and Kate O’Reilly-Jones — and three grandchildren, Willa, Genevieve, and Corbin.
A celebration of Jones’s life and ministry is set for 11 a.m. on Feb. 16 at St. Luke’s of the Mountains Church, Foothill Blvd., La Crescenta, where he was vicar from 2009 to 2014. Lunch will follow the service.
After retiring from St. Luke’s, Jones was active at All Saints’, Beverly Hills, assisting with the parish’s AS2 community. Before serving as vicar at St. Luke’s, Jones was rector of St. Thomas of Canterbury, Long Beach, from 2002 to 2009. He also served at St. Aidan’s, Malibu, in 2000-2002.
From 1987 to 1995, Jones was director of public policy of the Mental Health Association of Los Angeles County, notably advocating for healthcare insurance reform. During those years he also assisted at St. Athanasius, Echo Park, was active in the chaplaincy program at L.A. County-USC Hospital, and in 1988 served as priest-in-charge of the former Parish of Reconciliation, Los Angeles.
Jones began ministry in the diocese in 1982 when he and his former wife, the Rev. Canon Patricia O’Reilly, were elected co-rectors of Epiphany, East Los Angeles, where they served until 1987. In 1984 Jones was elected executive vice president of the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), seeking community improvements representing some 93,000 families in 15 Eastside Roman Catholic and Episcopal parishes.
Previously, in Massachusetts, Jones served in 1981-82 at St. Stephen’s, Boston, and in 1980-81 at Christ Church, Swansea. Earlier, he was priest-in-charge of St. John’s, Logan, in the Diocese of Utah, where he was ordained to the priesthood in 1979.
Born in Salt Lake City in 1953, Jones was a youth delegate to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention. He held degrees from the University of Utah and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
Jones’s family has designated that memorial gifts, in lieu of flowers, be made to the diocesan Sacred Resistance immigration justice ministry.