File 700 - Fr Michael William Shallo SJ

Born: 13 September 1853, Clondalkin, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 14 September 1872, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB for TAUR)
Ordained: 1885
Final Vows: 02 February 1891
Died: 27 January 1898, Santa Clara College, El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, USA - Taurensis Province (TAUR)

Transcribed HIB to TAUR: 1874

Early education at St Joseph’s Carmelite College, Clondalkin

1872-1874: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB for TAUR), Novitiate
1874-1876: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Rhetoric
1876-1877: Santa Clara College, El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, USA, Rhetoric
1877-1882: St Ignatius College SJ, Hayes Street, San Francisco CA, USA, Regency
1882-1887: Woodstock College, Woodstoick MD, USA (MARNEB), Theology
1887-1889: Santa Clara College, El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, USA, Teaching
1889-1890: St Stanislaus College, Howdershell Road, Florissant MO, USA (MIS), Tertianship
1890-1891: Santa Clara College, El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, USA, Teaching
1891-1892: Xavier College SJ, West 15th Street, New York NY, USA (MARNEB), writing
1892-1898: Santa Clara College, El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, USA, Teaching, Spiritual Father, Mission Consultor 1893-1894

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - For American Mission

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 27, Number 3

Obituary

“Father Michael William Sallo SJ” p377

Father Michael William Shallo who closed his short and laborious life at Santa Clara College on the 27th of January, was born September 12, 1853, in Dublin. His first days of school-life were spent at the Presentation Convent, Clondalkin, whence he passed to the Carmelite Monastery in Mount St Joseph. On his nineteenth birthday he eutered our Society at the Milltown Park Novitiate, where two years later, on the feast of Our Lady's Dolors, he pronounced his first vows. From Milltown, Father Shallo was sent for his juniorate to Roehampton. Having received permission to join the Mission of California, he came to San Francisco in 1876. An additional year of preparation at Santa Clara College followed, and in August, 1877, he was appointed to the Class of Poetry at St Ignatius College, San Francisco. Here he remained, as professor of Poetry and afterwards of Rhetoric, for five years, until 1882. During this time his superiors, knowing the rare talent and capacity for labors of the young professor, and urged by the pressing need of teachers, permitted him to take up his philosophical studies without, however, giving over his classes; on the expiration of his third year he was sent to Woodstock to repeat his philosophy and begin the course of theology.

In 1887 Father Shallo returned to California and was made professor of Mental Philosophy and of English Poetry at Santa Clara College. The year of tertianship at Florissant, Mo, followed; and on his return he was again appointed professor of Mental Philosophy at Santa Clara; which position he held until his death with the exception of a year he spent at New York as one of the editors of the projected Review.

With a mind of an unusual order, Father Shallo possessed a tact and discretion which rarely went astray in his dealings with others, and a sincerity of manner that begot in them esteem and confidence; and, while the charm of his presence itself exercised a desired influence on all with whom he came into contact, his devoted and particular interest in the welfare of each, won him their lasting affection. Special among his talents might be noticed a rare facility of assimilation by which all his wide and select reading was made his own treasure, so that his mind seemed ever teeming with information of utility and interest on subjects of the broadest range. With this went an unwonted capacity for long, uninterrupted labor, and a zeal reaching to enthusiasm for the success of his undertakings. These gifts found their fullest application in the labors of Father Shallo's professorship. With a taste and love for literature chastened by long and careful study, he led his pupils to the appreciation and true study of letters with a force all his own; while in his philosophical lectures, lucidity, wealth of interesting illustration, and a rare insight into the minds of students and power to apprehend their difficulties joined together to success. The pupils of Father Shallo, more than others, felt the magnetism of his character, and years after leaving college they might be seen returning regularly to their old professor and friend for counsel in doubt and difficulty, and encouragement in trial. The virtue they loved in hini were the modest blossoms along the path of duty: devotion to his labor with forgetfulness of self and an untiring readiness to accommodate himself to the needs of those for whom he toiled. But perhaps the truest proof of the father's virtue appeared during the last year of his life. Length of unsparing labors had began to prey visibly upon his system; his eyes in especial were affected, and paralysis of the optic nerve was thought inevitable. Yet the sufferer, though in the prime of his years and mental power, made ready to enter the night of total blindness with the devoted earnesfttess had shaped every action of his life.

In January of this year one of the class of philosophy was suddenly taken with pneumonia, and for several days hovered on the edge of death; while Father Shallo remained sleepless through the nights by his bedside, until, when on the 21st of the month the patient succumbed to the disease, exposure and forgetfulness of self had done their worst. That evening, worn out in body and mind, he retired earlier, and six days later he passed to the grave. RIP