On January 8, 1941, Father Thomas Augustine Daly, CSP, died in New York at the age of 77 after over 40 years in Paulist ministry. Born in County Kerry, Ireland, on July 23, 1864, he emigrated to America with his parents when he was 12 years old and settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He graduated from the Sulpician College at St. Charles, Maryland, in 1895. He was professed in the Paulist community on December 21, 1899, and was ordained a priest in New York on June 9, 1900.

During the early years of his ministry, Father Daly was involved in parish and mission work based in the parish of St. Paul the Apostle in New York. In 1909 he was chosen as a General Consultor of the Paulist community under Superior General John J. Hughes, who called him "a rock of common sense, independent, honest, and unselfish."

Three years later was named the first pastor of Good Shepherd parish in New York. "During his seven year pastorate," one friend remembered, "he never took a vacation even for a day, but was at the beck and call of his people from early morning until night. He had the pleasure of seeing the parish grow from 59 souls to about 2,000, everyone of whom he knew personally."

In 1919, he left parish work and returned to the mission circuit for most of the 1920s. During John B. Harney's term as Superior General in the 1930s, Fr Daly served as First Consultor and for a brief period was pastor at St. Paul the Apostle parish in New York before ill health forced him to resign in 1936.

A Paulist leader and long-time missionary, much of Father Daly's life was spent in the mission field, where he was considered one of the most effective and vibrant missionaries in America.

Daly's views about missions, his life and dedication as a priest, are best summed up in his own words: "The exercises of the missions are intended to throw back into wholesome and healthful working condition those who now are out of joint with the law of God; they are intended to arrest and elevate to a higher plane those who are over-immersed in worldly cares; they are meant to mortify and subdue the uprisings of disordered nature; they are calculated to lift and to mend the mental haziness which now obscures so many minds in order to enable them to perceive and to appreciate the blessedness of a clear vision of God's law and of God himself."