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Originally from Co Fermanagh, the 62-year-old has spent much of his career on the streets of north Belfast.
There , he saw murders and suicides and played a key role in the Holy Cross dispute, which happened 25 years ago.
Fr Donegan is now celebrating 35 years since his ordination, but if you told his younger self that he’d follow the path he did he would have never believed you.
In fact, he spent most of his early childhood being “angry with God” after losing a friend to cancer.
“It was devastating”, he said. “I remember he was complaining about something on the back of his neck.
“I said to him, ‘it won’t kill you’, not realising it eventually would.
“How could this happen? How could God let this happen?
“I would go to the grave and talk to him on a daily basis, and I would go into the church afterwards where I was fighting with God.”
Those feelings of resentment stayed for a while, until a priest visited his dying aunt and he noticed the effect he had on her.
“Her face changed”, he noted. “Peace descended upon her. This feeling came across me. This is what God wanted me to do.”
What was his response to God’s calling?
“Forget about it, big lad”.
It took him a while to respond warmly to this feeling. In his late teens he told his school of his intentions to join the priesthood.
His teacher said to him he wouldn’t make an altar boy, and Fr Donegan tended to agree with him. “There were girls in my class who were more likely to become a priest than me”, he added.
Yet, his attitudes changed and after being ordained he first served in Enniskillen.
Ten years later he was “sent” to serve in Ardoyne — a word he uses deliberately.
As a self-confessed ‘culchie’, going from his roots in Newtownbutler to a post-good Friday Agreement Belfast that was still rife with sectarianism was not high on his to-do list.
Despite this, he said serving in north Belfast would go on to be the “biggest gift of his life”.
He recalls a time that he says sums up exactly what Ardoyne is like.
After going into a home which had a dead body inside, Fr Donegan left feeling shaken.
He continued: “I thought I would never eat again after what I’d seen inside there. But across the road a family called me into their home.
“There were kids around the table. They had made fries, and you didn’t know whether they were going to eat them or climb them there was that much food.
“The ma came along, and the da was sitting beside me with his arm around me. She started spearing sausages and bacon onto a plate and sat it down in front of me. I couldn’t not eat it.
If you can’t do a funeral, wedding or baptism with a smile on your face and love in your heart, you aren’t worthy of the colour on your collar.
“But that was Ardoyne for you.
“It has been the greatest privilege to serve. They are the most loving people. As the saying goes, they would ‘give you the bit out of their mouth’.”
The journey hasn’t been without its woes, however. Everything . the priest has seen has resulted in him getting a PTSD diagnosis.
This included being involved in the Holy Cross blockade.
Twenty-five years ago in June, loyalist protesters tried to block the route taken by the school’s pupils and their parents, who were from a Catholic background, on their walk to class.
Come September the same year, children were escorted by police to school while balloons filled with urine and a petrol bomb was thrown at them.
Fr Donegan helped by bringing the girls to school, and admitted it was “surreal” being involved in what was one of the biggest news stories in the world at the time.
The priest was reluctant to speak about the events for many years due to the trauma he was dealing with afterwards.
And it wouldn’t be the last traumatic incident he would be involved in during his time in north Belfast.
He recalls being hit with a water cannon while trying to dispel rioters, which resulted in him getting pneumonia.
On another occasion a person spat at him in a restaurant.
He admits to initially having an unhealthy way of coping with his mental health: “My way of dealing with trauma was more trauma”.
“Unfortunately, I have experienced so many tragedies around mental health and suicides. The youngest being 11, right through to 75. No two of those are the same.
“The family are the people who are left behind. It’s very personal to each person. You have to treat that with all the compassion in the world.”
With everything he has witnessed, Fr Donegan admits that priests must be more vocal about the effects the job may have on them personally.
“I remember going to a scene where a young man had been hit and killed. I stayed with him and wouldn’t leave him, and only when I got back to the car I realised I was frozen. “Clerics are famous for not getting help. Who cares for the carers?
“If you share your own vulnerability, it somehow gives other people the permission to seek the help themselves.”
Known as the ‘priest in jeans’, Fr Donegan has blended his streetwise approach with his preaching, saying he would put revolving doors on the chapel if he could. This includes lending a helping hand to anyone who needs it, no matter their background.
“Nobody bleeds green or orange. A person needed help, and I was told he was at best Protestant but probably not religious at all.
“I don’t turn away trade. I was with that person for five-and-a-half hours at their bedside. Sometimes that’s even more rewarding, when you’re outside your ‘box’.” The biggest lesson he’s learnt over the past 35 years is to not be afraid in standing up for people when they need it most.
“If you allow inner fear to paralyse you, you’ll do nothing. You’ve got to go out there and help.
“I remember Pope Francis saying, ‘don’t hide behind the clerical colours, get out and smell the sheep’.”
This stuck with the Fermanagh-born cleric for a very specific reason:
“As a culchie, I can tell you for a fact that sheep are stinking. They have the rottenest smell you’ll ever get in your life.
“The original image of Christ wasn’t on the cross, it was the Good Shepherd. And by God, you want to show love if you’re willing to put a sheep around your shoulders.” The priest carries this message with him in his work and said it’s not enough to hide behind the clerical colours.
“If you want to feel fulfilled in your vocation, get out there and get into ‘the hood’. Be relevant.
“If you can’t do a funeral, wedding or baptism with a smile on your face and love in your heart, you aren’t worthy of the colour on your collar.”