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Bobbett, John Nelson, b.1870-, former Jesuit novice

IE IJA ADMN/20/356 · Person · 19 August 1870

Cardiff, William, 1832-1870, Jesuit brother of trhe Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1012 · Person · 02 August 1832-20 June 1870

Carroll, Anthony, 1722-1794, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/1018 · Person · 27 September 1722-05 September 1794

Born: 27 September 1722, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1744, Watten, Belgium - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1754, Liège, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1762
Died: 05 September 1794, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1764 Prefect of Sodality at Bruges
1767 Chaplin to Sir Richard Stanley, Eastham in Cheshire
1768 CAT said to be at Hooton near Chester

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1754 Sent to England and served at Lincoln for some time.
1774 After the suppression went to Maryland with Father John Carroll, the future Archbishop of Baltimore, arriving 26 June 1774
1775 he returned to England from America. He served at Liverpool, Shepton Mallet Somerset, Exeter, Worcester etc.
1776 He published a translation of many of Bourdaloue’s sermons under the title “Practical Divinity in four volumes at London. (cf de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”)
1794 He was attacked by robbers in Red Lion Court, London, and died at St Bart’s hospital a few hours after. (cf “Records SJ” Vol v, p 620)

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Anthony Carroll 1722-1794
Fr Anthony Carroll was born in Dublin on September 16th 1722.

He worked at Shepton Mallet, Exeter and other places. Finally in London on September 5th 1794, he was knocked down and robbed in red Lion Court, Fleet Street. He was carried speechless to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he died the next morning.

He translated Bourdalou’s sermons, and himself wrote a treatise on Theology in 4 volumes, entitled “Practical Divinity”.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CARROLL, ANTHONY, was born on the 16th of September, 1722. He began his Noviceship at the age twenty-two, and was numbered among the Professed Fathers in 1762. Shortly after his promotion to the Priesthood at Liege in 1754 he was ordered to the Mission. After exerting his zeal and talents at Shepton Mallett, at Exeter, and some other places, he came to an untimely end in London. On the 5th of September, 1794, he was knocked down and robbed in Red Lion Court, Fleet street, and carried speechless to St. Bartholomew s Hospital, where he died at one o’clock the following morning - See Gent. Magazine, 1794, p. 1555.
His translation of some of Bourdaloue’s Sermons, under the title of “Practical Divinity”, was published in 4 Vols. 8vo, London, 1776.

Clarke, Thomas, 1804-1870, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1052 · Person · 24 January 1804-02 September 1870

Born: 24 January 1804, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1823, Montrouge, Paris, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 20 December 1834, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England
Final Vows: 15 August 1841
Died: 02 September 1870, Blackpool, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Cousin of Malachy Ent 1825 and Thomas Tracy RIP 1862 (ANG)

1823-1825: Montrouge, Paris, France (ANG), Novitiate
1825-1826: Abbaye Saint-Acheul, Chaussée Jules Ferry, Amiens, Hauts de France, France (GALL), Philosophy
1826-1832: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy, Regency
1832-1834: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1834-1841: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, England, Missioner at Gillmoss, Lancashire
1840-1841: Tertianship
1841-1842: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, England, Missioner at Lydiate, Lancashire
1842-1843: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Derbyshire, England, Rector
1843-1844: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Provincial Socius from 25/07/1843
1844-1847: St Hugo’s College, Boston, Lincolnshire, England, Missioner at Irnham, Lincolnshire
1845-1847: Missioner at Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England
1847-1848: Missioner at Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, England
1848-1850: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Minister, Procurator
1849-1850: Procurator, Missioner
1850-1859: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Missioner at Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, England
1859-1866: St Ignatius College, Hill Street, London, Missioner at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
1866-1867: St Stanislaus College, Beaumont, Windsor, Berkshire, England, , Spiritual Father
1867-1870: St Ignatius College, Hill Street, Berkeley Square, London, England, Missioner at Wardour Castle, Tisbury, Wiltshire, England
1869-1870: Awaiting assignment
1870-1870: St Aloysius College, Lancashire, England, Caring for health at Blackpool

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Early education at Stonyhurst before Ent.

After First Vows, studies at Saint-Acheul, France and Stonyhurst, Regency and Theology at Stonyhurst, he was Ordained there by Bishop Penswick 20 December 1834
1834-1841 He was at the Gilmoss (near Liverpool) Mission
1841-1842 On the Lydiate - near Liverpool - Mission
1842 Appointed Rector of Mount St Mary’s. He left there some time after and served the Missions of Preston, Irnham, Lincoln and Market Rasen for brief periods.
1848-1850 Appointed Minister and procurator at St Beuno’s
1850-1859 On the Market Rasen Mission
1859-1867 On the Tunbridge Wells Mission, which was ceded to the local Bishop in 1867.
1867 He became a Missioner at Wardour Castle, from where, in declining health, he was sent to Blackpool, and he died there 02/09/1870 aged 66.
He was also Socius to the Provincial

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
CLARKE, THOMAS, Father, first cousin of the above, was a native of Dublin, born January 24, 1804 ; made his humanity studies at Stonyhurst College, and entered the Society Scptem ber 7, 1823. After his higher studies at St. Acheul and Stonyhurst Colleges, and performing the duties of Prefect, Master, &c., and studying his theology, he was ordained Priest at Stonyhurst, by Bishop Penswick, December 20, 1834, and was missioner at Gilmoss until January, 1841. Made Spiritual Coadjutor August 15, 1841, and served the Lydiate Mission until December 6, 1842, when he was de clared Rector of Mount St. Mary's College, Spinkhill, county Derby, but left it some time after, and then served the missions of Preston, Irham, Lincoln, and Market Rasen, for more or less brief periods. He was also Socius to the Provincial. In November, 1848, he was appointed Minister and Procurator of St. Beuno's College, near St. Asaph, which he left February 16, 1850. 'Again served the mission of Market Rasen until 1859, and left for Tunbridge Wells, which he served until January, 1867, when that mission was ceded to the Bishop of the diocese. He then became missioner at Wardour Castle, and his health soon declining, was sent to Blackpool, where he died, April 2, 1870, æt. 66. (Province Register.)

◆ Catholic Record Society, Volume 70, 1981

The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

Clarke, Thomas. Priest.
b. January 24th, 1804, Dublin.
Cousin of Malachy and Thomas Tracy.
e. Stonyhurst 1814-c.20.
S.J. September 7th, 1823.
Montrouge (nov) 1823-5.
St Acheul (phil) 1825-6.
Stonyhurst 1826-32.
St Mary's Hall (theol) 1832-4.
Ordained priest December 20th, 1834,
Stonyhurst. Gillmoss 1834-41.
Hodder (tert) 1841.
Lydiate 1841-42.
Mount St Mary's College 1842-3 (Rector).
Preston 1843.
Socius to the provincial 1843-4.
Irnham 1844-5. Lincoln 1845-7.
Market Rasen 1847-8.
St Beuno's College 1848-50.
Market Rasen c. 1850-9.
Tunbridge Wells 1859-67.
Wardour 1867-70.
Blackpool 1870.
d. September 2nd, 1870, Blackpool, bu. St John's church, Poulton-le-Fylde.

(Fo.7; Nec; CRS.22/198; Gil.5/61; 113; 114; 115).

Craig, Harold Edward, 1901-1985, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/106 · Person · 03 July 1901-29 October 1985

Born: 03 July 1901, Lansdowne Road, Dublin City / North Strand, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 01 September 1919, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 14 June 1932, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1935, Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Died: 29 October 1985, Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin

Part of St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly community at time of his death.

Father was a country Inspector with the RIC. Mother died in 1918.

Second eldest of four sons and has two sisters.

Educated at initially up to age 10 by a governess and then at Crescent College SJ

1919-1921: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate
1921-1922: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Rhetoric
1922-1925: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Philosophy
1925-1928: Xavier College SJ, Barkers Road, Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Regency
1928-1929: St Ignatius College SJ, Riverview, Cove Lane, Sydney NSW, Australia, Regency
1929-1933: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1933-1934: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG), Tertianship
1934-1935: Catholic Mission, Ngau-Pei-Lan, Shiuhing (Zhaoqing), Guandong, China (LUS) language studies
1935-1936: Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong, Minister, Teaching, studying language
1936-1938: Wah Yan College SJ, Robinson Road, Hong Kong, Teaching and language studies
1938-1939: Loyola, Taai Lam Chung, Un Long, Hong Kong, Studying language
1939-1942: Wah Yan College SJ, Robinson Road, Hong Kong, Teaching
1942-1944: Catholic Mission , Kweilin (Guilin), Kwangsi Province, China, working
1944-1945: Xavier University, Park Street, Calcutta, West Bengal, India (BEL M), working
1945-1947: Bishop's House, Yensing Road, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India (BEL M), working
1947-1948: Sacred Heart Church, Bradshaw Row, Accrington, Lancashire, England (ANG) , Curate
1948-1954: St Joseph’s Church, Mather Lane, Leigh, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1954-1977: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1977-1985: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Curate and Spiritual Exercises

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives

Father Harold Craig, SJ
R.I.P.

Father Harold Craig, S.J., died in Ireland on 31 October 1985, aged 84.

He worked in Hong Kong, mainly as a teacher in Wah Yan College, until 1941. After the Japanese occupation he went to India, flying the hazardous route then known as ‘across the Hump.’ He worked in India till after the end of the war. He then worked in parishes in Lancashire, England, for over a quarter of a century. About a decade ago he transferred to a rural parish in the Irish midlands, and did not give up this work there till after his 83 birthday. His retirement lasted less than three months.

Few people in Hong Kong will remember Father Craig after a gap of over forty years, but that few will remember him vividly. He was original in thought, word and action. Such men are not easily forgotten.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 8 November 1985

Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844-1889, Jesuit priest and poet of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/11 · Person · 28 July 1844-08 June 1889

Born: 28 July 1844, Stratford, Essex, England
Entered: 07 September 1868, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1877, St Beuno's, St Asaph, Wales
Final Vows: 15 August 1882, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England
Died: 08 June 1889, University College, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin - Angliae Province (ANG)

1868-1870: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1870-1873: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1873-1874: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Regency
1874-1877: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1877-1878: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Subminister, Teaching
1878-1879: Oxford Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga, Woodstock Road, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, Curate
1879-1881: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate
1881-1882: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Tertianship
1882-1884: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1884-1889: University College, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin (HIB), Teaching

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at Cholmeley Grammar in Highgate. He later studied Classics under the famous Dr Jowett at Baliol, Oxford. He had a keen interest indrawing, ever since his aunt introduced him to Layard, and he never ceased drawing and painting, as asell as studying Art and Architecture - such as Butterfield, the architect of Keble. He also had a great interest in music, and possessed a lovely voice. He won a school Exhibition, and an Exhibition at Baliol in 1863.
1866 he became a convert under the influence of Jowett and especially John Henry Newman, and two years later Entered the Society.

1884 After an arduous career on the mission in various parts of England, Scotland adn Wales, he came to UCD as Professor of Greek. he taught there for five years, and then contracted typhus, and he died there in 1889, butied in Glasnevin.

Though constantly engaged by botht the criticism of Poetry, and composing his own, he never published anything during his lifetime. He sent all his poems to his great friend Robert Bridges, who after his death set about having them published. He exercised great judgement, in terms of timing in the culture, fo these publications, allowing only a few at a time, lets they be considered oddities. It was not until 1918 that he decided that they be published in an edition. Only at the publication od the 2nd edition in 1930, and after Bridges’ death, was he considered a master of the art. The publication of Hopkin’s correspondence with both bridges, and later Richard Watson Dixon were very well received. The only disappointment was that the letters from Bridges have not survived, especially when he had written questioning Hopkins about thethe value of his continuing to write poetry, since we have Hopkins’ tender reply. He in fact valued Bridges’ poetry hugely. In addition his correspondence with Coventry Patmore has also been published. The published correspondences show how ill at ease Hopkins was in the world, but also that faith was the strongest and happiest part of him. (”MT” Irish Independent. March 1935)

He Ent at Hodder 07/09/1868, and his fellow Novices well recalled his pangyric on St Stanislaus as brilliant and beautiful.
1873 After Philosophy he went back to the Juniorate for Regency. he then wentfor Theology at St Beuon’s and was Ordained there 1877.
1878 He began life as a Missioner in London, Liverpool and Oxford, showing a great love of the poor and young, and devotion to the Vincent de Paul Society.
1881-1882 He made Tertianship at Manresa and took Final Vows there 15/08/1882.
1882-1884 He taught the “secular Philosophers” at Stonyhurst.
1884 Came to Dublin and UCD, having been made a fellow of the Royal University, and he taught Latin and Greek there, and examining the Classics for the Royal. He liked teaching but hated examining. Although he hated it, he was assiduous in his attention to this duty.

Most of his spare time was devoted to literature. He had prepared for publication a work on idioms and dialects in Ireland, and wrote some articles for the “Classical Review”. At the time of his death he was angaged in work dealing with dificult passages in Aristophenes. He read literature extensivley, though itmwas said he would e happy only to have his Breviary. He also compsed some fugues, which were well thought of by Sir Robert Stewart, an Irish composer : “On everything he wrote and said, there was the stamp of originality, and he had the keenest appreciation of humour. I think the characteristics whoch most struck all who knew him were firstly his priestly spirit....and secondly his devotion and loyalty to the Society of Jesus.

A day r two after Low Sunday 1889 he fell ill of typhoid. he was fully aware of the seriousness, but hoped he would pull through. His condition deteriorated seriously on June 5th, and he was attended to with great care by Thomas Wheeler. hearing that his parents were coming from England, he dreaded their arrival, because of the pain it would cause them to see him like this. Once arrived he was happy they had come. He knew that he was dying and asked each day for the Viaticum. On receiving the Last Rites on the day of his death, he was heard to say “I am so happy”. He was then too weak to speak, but seemed able to follow the prayers that Thomas Wheeler spoke, and he was joined by his parents for these. (“Letters and Notices”)

◆ “Letters and Notices”
He Ent at Hodder 07 September 1868, and his fellow Novices well recalled his panegyric on St Stanislaus as brilliant and beautiful.
1873 After Philosophy he went back to the Juniorate for Regency. he then went for Theology at St Beuno’s and was Ordained there 1877.
1878 He began life as a Missioner in London, Liverpool and Oxford, showing a great love of the poor and young, and devotion to the Vincent de Paul Society.
1881-1882 He made Tertianship at Manresa Roehampton and took Final Vows there 15 August 1882.
1882-1884 He taught the “secular Philosophers” at Stonyhurst.
1884 Came to Dublin and UCD, having been made a fellow of the Royal University, and he taught Latin and Greek there, and examining the Classics for the Royal. He liked teaching but hated examining. Although he hated it, he was assiduous in his attention to this duty.
Most of his spare time was devoted to literature. He had prepared for publication a work on idioms and dialects in Ireland, and wrote some articles for the “Classical Review”. At the time of his death he was engaged in work dealing with difficult passages in Aristophenes. He read literature extensively, though it was said he would be happy only to have his Breviary. He also composed some fugues, which were well thought of by Sir Robert Stewart, an Irish composer : “On everything he wrote and said, there was the stamp of originality, and he had the keenest appreciation of humour. I think the characteristics which most struck all who knew him were firstly his priestly spirit....and secondly his devotion and loyalty to the Society of Jesus.
A day or two after Low Sunday 1889 he fell ill of typhoid. he was fully aware of the seriousness, but hoped he would pull through. His condition deteriorated seriously on June 5th, and he was attended to with great care by Thomas Wheeler. hearing that his parents were coming from England, he dreaded their arrival, because of the pain it would cause them to see him like this. Once arrived he was happy they had come. He knew that he was dying and asked each day for the Viaticum. On receiving the Last Rites on the day of his death, he was heard to say “I am so happy”. He was then too weak to speak, but seemed able to follow the prayers that Thomas Wheeler spoke, and he was joined by his parents for these.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
by Patrick Maume

Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844–89), poet and Jesuit, was born 28 July 1844 at 87 The Grove, Stratford, Essex, eldest of nine children (eight of whom survived to adulthood) of Manley Hopkins (1818–1897), marine insurance adjuster, and his wife, Catherine, or Kate (née Smith; 1821–1920). His parents encouraged their children's artistic interests, inspired by the Ruskinian view that close observation of the natural world was intimately linked to moral perception; Gerard developed a talent for drawing, and two of his brothers became professional artists. His interest in poetry dated from his mid-teens. Hopkins was educated at Highgate School (1854–63), where he was regularly and brutally flogged, and Balliol College, Oxford (1863–7), where he thrived. Here he moved in Anglo-Catholic ritualist circles, whose views went beyond those of his high-church family. He began to practise auricular confession, and his religious faith centred on sacramental belief in the real presence of Jesus in the eucharist. Anglo-Catholic ritualism sometimes had a certain homoerotic element; there is little doubt that Hopkins's orientation was homosexual and that he was troubled by his fascination with the male body. He was a small and slightly built man who suffered from persistent health problems; some acquaintances regarded him as mildly effeminate, but others disputed this.

In the summer of 1866 Hopkins came to believe that the anglican claim to be a part of the one church founded by Christ was untenable; on 21 October 1866 he was received into the Roman catholic church by John Henry Newman (qv). After graduation he taught for two terms at Newman's Oratory school at Birmingham, but then decided to enter the religious life. After making this decision, on 11 May 1867, he burned his manuscript poems, believing them to be a possible obstacle to his religious vocation, but they survive in copies that he had sent to friends. In the ensuing years he continued to keep journals of his observations from nature.

In September 1868 Hopkins entered the novitiate of the English province of the Society of Jesus at Roehampton. In undertaking for the first time the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola he experienced a spiritual crisis (which he later recalled in his poem ‘The wreck of the Deutschland’). It appears that the Ignatian method both exercised his powers of observation (the Ignatian meditant is encouraged to visualise precisely the scenes on which he meditates) and heightened his tendency to morbid introspection and depression. After taking his vows on 8 September 1870 he spent 1870–73 in further training at St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, Lancashire, and 1873–4 teaching classics and English to junior novices at Roehampton. In August 1874 he was sent to St Beuno's College in Wales to study theology; he developed a special devotion to St Winifred, whose shrine is nearby, studied Welsh – a pursuit that combined an interest in prosody with a desire for the conversion of Wales – and continued his observations of nature. He also discovered the writings of the medieval scholastic Duns Scotus, who taught that each individual thing has its own distinct essence, by contrast with the Thomist view that matter is in essence undifferentiated; this accorded with his own view of the physical world as a sacramental medium through which God makes his presence known. Hopkins's aesthetic rejected ‘Parnassian’ regularity and tried to deploy words to bring out afresh the inherent design and energies of the sensual world. His adherence to Scotism, rather than Thomism, which was the officially favoured school, is believed to have hindered his advancement in the Jesuit order. Hopkins made the most of the fact that Scotus – unlike Aquinas – had been a zealous advocate of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which Pius IX had declared binding on all catholics in 1854. On 28 August 1874 he received the four minor orders of doorkeeper, lector, acolyte, and exorcist.

In December 1875 Hopkins was fascinated by newspaper accounts of the deaths of five German nuns, while escaping to America from Bismarck's Kulturkampf, in a shipwreck off the English coast; in response to a casual remark from his superior about the possibility of writing a poem on the subject, he composed an ode ‘The wreck of the Deutschland’, which combines an account of Hopkins's own submission to God with the story of the nuns’ deaths, and hails them as martyrs whose end will hasten the return of England to catholicism. Hopkins was acutely aware of the conflict between the catholic church and temporal powers across Europe; he believed that English civilisation faced imminent disintegration as a long-term effect of the Reformation, and hoped that his poetry might be an instrument of God in the subsequent reconstruction. The ode was completed by June 1875 and submitted to the editors of the Jesuit journal, The Month, who found its metrical and stylistic experiments incomprehensible and turned it down. Hopkins regarded their response not merely as an ordinary rejection but as an expression of official disapproval; after The Month refused a more conventional ode on a shipwreck, ‘The wreck of the Eurydice’ in 1878, he came to realise that his work would probably not be published in his lifetime. He continued to write – though in less complex forms – and to send copies of his poems to a small circle of friends, the most important of whom were Robert Bridges, an Oxford contemporary who became poet laureate and served as Hopkins's literary executor, and the anglican canon R. W. Dixon, a poet who had briefly taught Hopkins at Highgate.

After his ordination to the major orders of subdeacon, deacon, and priest (21–3 September 1877) Hopkins began a period of movement from place to place. He found this profoundly disturbing, though he accepted it in accordance with the Jesuit self-image of soldiers removed from inordinate attachment to their surroundings and willing to go where they were sent without hesitation. He taught at Mount St Mary's College, near Sheffield (October 1877 to April 1878), and was curate at the fashionable Jesuit church in Farm Street, London (July to November 1878) and at St Aloysius’ church, Oxford (December 1878 to October 1879); this experience of appearing as a revenant in the setting of so many fond memories produced a number of poems on transience and mortality.

In October 1879 Hopkins was assigned as curate to St Joseph's church at Bedford Leigh in Lancashire. This appointment saw the start of a period of service in the slums of the industrial north, which the nature-loving southerner found oppressive, particularly after he moved to St Francis Xavier, Liverpool (January 1880 to August 1881). His ornate style of preaching was ill suited to audiences more responsive to the direct style of Father Tom Burke (qv), in whose honour he composed some Latin verses. Hopkins once reduced a dining-room full of Jesuits to laughter by an extended comparison between the shape of the Sea of Galilee and that of the human ear, and he unintentionally scandalised a Farm Street congregation by comparing the church to a cow with seven teats – the sacraments. On a temporary posting to St Joseph's church, Glasgow (August to October 1881), he found ‘the poor Irish’ at Glasgow ‘very attractive . . . though always very drunken and at present very Fenian, they are warm-hearted and give a far heartier welcome than those at Liverpool’. In October 1881 Hopkins began his tertianship at Roehampton, and on 15 August 1882 he took his final vows, after which he was sent to teach at Stonyhurst.

In December 1883 Hopkins was invited to Ireland by Father William Delany (qv), who wished to raise the standard of teaching at University College, Dublin, the remnant of Newman's Catholic University, newly taken over by the Jesuits, and to recruit Jesuit staff whose salaries could be ploughed back into the college. Delany sought several English Jesuits but was able to get only Hopkins (who was regarded as eccentric and expendable). In February 1884 Hopkins was elected to a Royal University of Ireland classics fellowship, which enabled him to take up the position of professor of Greek at University College. His election produced a dispute between Delany and the future archbishop of Dublin William Walsh (qv), who believed that RUI fellowships should be spread among the catholic secondary schools around Dublin and not reserved for University College; there was also some resentment at the importation of an Englishman.

Hopkins, his expectations shaped by Oxford, was dismayed at the low standard of learning and the utilitarian attitude to education found among his pupils, who treated him with considerable irreverence. His English voice and mannerisms grated on colleagues as well as pupils; his closest friend was a Jesuit lay brother debarred from ordination by epilepsy, and he found occasional solace on visits to upper-class catholic families, notably the Cassidys of Monasterevan, Co. Kildare. Scrupulous attention to vast piles of examination scripts intensified his depression; an unfinished ‘Epithalamium’ for a brother's marriage, incongruously centred on an image of nude male bathers, was jotted on an answer book while Hopkins invigilated an examination in 1888. The six ‘terrible sonnets’ of 1885, never sent to friends and found among his papers after his death, are classic expressions of mental desolation and despair. He planned various scholarly projects which were never finished (sometimes hardly begun).

Hopkins was further divided from colleagues and pupils by his political views. The only other English Jesuit in the college, Joseph Darlington (qv), was pro-nationalist. Hopkins was despised as hysterical and effeminate – ‘a merely beautifully painted seashell. I never found any mollusc inside it of human substance’. Although Hopkins believed Britain had done injustice to Ireland in the past, he regarded the methods used by Irish agitators as immoral; he thought home rule was inevitable and should be accepted on the basis of getting the worst over as soon as possible, but he felt a visceral hatred for Gladstone for destroying the empire. Even after the exposure of the Pigott forgeries he continued to believe that Charles Stewart Parnell (qv) had been complicit in the Phoenix Park murders, adding that even if the accusations against Parnell were false they were less libellous than the claim made by William O'Brien (qv) that Arthur James Balfour (qv) deliberately caused the deaths of prisoners. Hopkins contrasted the sincere faith of Irish congregations with what he regarded as their immoral political activities, referring to ‘the unfailing devotion of the Irish, whose religion hangs suspended over their politics as the blue sky over the earth, both in one landscape but immeasurably remote’. Some of Hopkins's most assertively English poems date from his residence in Ireland. A number were encouraged by watching military displays in Phoenix Park – Hopkins was always fascinated by soldiers.

In the middle of 1889 Hopkins contracted typhoid, probably transmitted by the defective drainage system of University College (which was renovated shortly afterwards). This developed into peritonitis, from which he died 8 June 1889 at 86 St Stephen's Green; he was buried on 11 June in the communal Jesuit plot at Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. In subsequent decades Bridges, his literary executor, tried to prepare the ground for the acceptance of Hopkins's work by submitting examples of his poetry to anthologies. In December 1918 Bridges published Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, on which Hopkins's fame is based. His attention to language as a medium led him to be hailed as a forerunner of literary modernism. More recent critics emphasise his Victorianism.

Some accounts of Hopkins see his religious vocation as having provided structure and meaning to his life and enabled his poetic achievement; in this interpretation the dark years in Ireland are seen as a sacrifice offered to God. Other readings see him as fleeing from self-knowledge into an externally imposed discipline, which crippled and ultimately destroyed him; in this view the darkness of his later years reflects a painfully resisted awareness of frustration and futility. To a great extent this dispute reflects disagreement about the truth or falsehood of the faith to which Hopkins devoted his life, and the question of whether suffering is utterly futile or capable of redemption; neither side can deny the centrality of faith to Hopkins’ self-image, nor the intensity of his pain, and both can wonder what greater achievement might have been his had his superiors been receptive to his literary gifts.

Paddy Kitchen, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1978); Robert Bernard, Martin Gerard Manley Hopkins: a very private life (1991); Norman White, Hopkins: a literary biography (1992); Norman White, Hopkins in Ireland (2002)

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 9th Year No 1 1934

Leeson St :

Monday, November 20th, was a red-letter day in the history of Leeson street, for it witnessed the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of the House's foundation. In November, 1833. the Community came into being at 86 St Stephen's Green, where it remained until 1909, when the building was handed over to the newly constituted National University. The Community, however, survived intact and migrated to a nearby house in Lesson Street, where it renewed its youth in intimate relationship with the Dublin College of the University.

Its history falls this into two almost equal periods, different, indeed, in many ways, yet essentially one, since the energies of the Community during each period have been devoted to the same purpose, the furtherance of Catholic University Education in Ireland.

A precious link between the two eras is Father Tom Finlay, who was a member of the Community in 1883, and ever since has maintained his connection with it. His presence on Monday evening, restored to his old health after a severe illness was a source of particular pleasure to the whole gathering. It was also gratifying to see among the visitors Father Henry Browne, who had crossed from England at much personal inconvenience to take part in the celebration. Not only was Father Browne a valued member of the Community for over thirty years, but he acquired additional merit by putting on record, in collaboration with Father McKenna, in that bulky volume with the modest title " A Page of Irish History," the work achieved by the House during the first heroic age of its existence. It was a pleasure, too, to see hale and well among those present Father Joseph Darlington, guide, philosopher and friend to so many students during the two periods. Father George O'Neill, who for many years was a distinguished member of the Community, could not, alas. be epected to make the long journey from his newer field of fruitful labor in Werribee, Australia.

Father Superior, in an exceptionally happy speech, described the part played by the Community, especially in its earlier days of struggle, in the intellectual life of the country. The venerable Fathers who toiled so unselfishly in the old house in St. Stephens Green had exalted the prestige of the Society throughout Ireland. Father Finlay, in reply, recalled the names of the giants of those early days, Father Delany, Father Gerald Hopkins, Mr. Curtis and others. Father Darlington stressed the abiding influence of Newman, felt not merely in the schools of art and science, but in the famous Cecilia Street Medial School. Father Henry Browne spoke movingly of the faith, courage and vision displayed by the leaders of the Province in 1883, when they took on their shoulders such a heavy burden. It was a far cry from that day in 1883, when the Province had next to no resources, to our own day, when some sixty of our juniors are to be found, as a matter of course preparing for degrees in a National University. The progress of the Province during these fifty years excited feelings of admiration and of profound gratitude , and much of that progress was perhaps due to the decision, valiantly taken in 1883 1883, which had raised the work of the Province to a higher plane.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Gerard Manly-Hopkins 1844-1889
There can be few more remarkable stories in the history of literature than that of Fr Gerard Manly-Hopkins.

Born in 1844 at Stratford in Essex, he received his early education at Cholmeley Grammar School at Highgate. From earliest childhood he showed great talent for drawing and painting. He had an exquisite voice, and music absorbed him. He won an exhibition at Balliol College Oxford in 1863. Here, in addition to his ordinary course, he continued his studies of art, especially architecture. His course as a classical scholar was brilliant, under the famous Dr Jowett.

In 1866, under the influence of Newman, he became a Jesuit, and two years later entered the Society. After an arduous career on the mission in various parts of England, Scotland and Wales, he came to Dublin as Professor of Greek in the newly constituted Uiversity College at St Stephen’s Green, Dublin. There he laboured with success but increasing strain. The drudgery of correcting examination papers gradually wore him down. He was a man who was not vigorously healthy and so suffered more less continually from nervous depression. “It is killing work” he wrote once “to examine a nation”.

As a Theologian, he greatly admired Scotus, owing to the traces of Plato he found there. This leaning involved him in difficulties with his Thomist and Suaresian professors. It has been suggested by some of his many biographers, that he was uneasy if not unhappy as a Jesuit. That charge is easily answered out of his own mouth. To a friend, he remarked one day that he could get on quite happily with no other book than his breviary. Another friend wrote of him “I think the characteristics in him which most struck all of us who knew him were first, what I should call his priestly spirit, and secondly, his devotion and loyalty to the Society of Jesus”.

He contracted typhoid fever and received the Viaticam, and he was hear to murmur two or three times before he actually expired “I am so happy, I am so happy”. He died with his parents at his bedside on June 8th 1889.

He was first and foremost a poet, though he never published any of his poems while he was alive. He bequeathed them all to a friend, Robert bridges, Poet Laureate of England. The latter published them at forst one by one, gradually preparing the public for their originality. The first full edition came in 1918. By the time of the second edition in 1930, Hopkins was accepted as a master of his art, and is ranked as the most revered and influential poet of the second half of the nineteenth century.

◆ Interfuse No 37 : Easter 1985
Portrait from the Past

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (Province Archives)

Our archives contain menologies of Jesuits who died before the foundation of the Province News (when obituary notices took their place). Here's the piece on our most famous poet.

Born in 1844 at Stratford, in Essex, Gerard Manley Hopkins received his early education at the Cholmeley Grammar School at Highgate. From earliest childhood he showed a great talent for drawing, and his work was distinguished for its marvellous delicacy. His aunt used to read to him of the then recent discoveries of Layard, and they seized on his imagination and he never ceased drawing and painting subjects suggested by them. He had a very exquisite voice, and took great interest in music. This, with art and literature, became his special studies. His originality showed is itself from when he was a child in his objection to practical views on things.

He won a school Exhibition and gold medal in 1862, and an Exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1863. There he had scope for his brilliant talents, and pursued, with great enthusiasm, in the scant intervals of hard work, his studies of art. Architecture was a branch in which he took deep delight, and he was a fervent worshipper at the shrine of Butterfield, the architect of Keble College. “His conversation was clever and incisive”, writes an old friend, “and perhaps critical in excess. As to the quality of this criticism I thought much at the time - and have thought much since - that it was the best of the kind to be had in England, in places where production and criticism do not, as is the case at Oxford, keep pace. If he had not been the victim of a lengthened and overwrought critical education, which makes men sut jects of an operation, rather that trained instruments for work, Hopkins had all the elements of an eminent artist or literary man. His acquaintance with poetry was extensive, and his judgments differed upon various poets considerably from what most people entertain. When I first knew him he called himself a ‘Tractarian’, on the ground that he believed ‘Tractarian’ doctrine true, and if the Church of England rejected it, so much the worse for the Church of England. His leaving it was not to change, but to give expression to his religious faith. He had no patience with a Catholic plea for beliefs which are not on the surface, at least, of the Articles and Common Prayer Book”.

Gerard passed 1st Class in Mods., and in the June of 1867, 1st. Class in Honours in the final Schools. The late Dr. Wilson, his examiner for ‘Greats’, thought highly of his talents. It was very extraordinary to achieve such success when his mind was pre-occupied by the struggles of conversation.

The views of the Master of Balliol, Dr. Jowett, seem to have contributed towards his abandonment of Anglicanism, and Liddon is said to have expressed regret at his conversion as a serious loss to Anglicanism. He had made his ‘first confession’ to the learned Canon, and he used to say that he never had exceeded the contrition with which it was accomplished.

He entered the Novitiate on September 8, 1868, and his fellow-novices remembered long his panegyric of St. Stanislaus, which was as brilliant and beautiful as it was out of the usual routine of pulpit deliveries. As soon as he had taken his vows, he went to his Philosophy at the Seminary, and returned in 1873 to be Professor of the Juniors. The following year he began his life as a missioner at London, he spent some time also at Oxford and Liverpool, where, as in all places, he showed his beautiful love of the poor and the young, and devotion to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. 1881 - 1882 he made his Tertianship, and took his vows on August 15, 1882 at Manresa. His next two years were spent as Professor to the “Secular Philosophers” at Stonyhurst.

He came to Dublin fron Stonyhurst in 1884, on his appointment to a Fellowship in the Royal University. I have heard from Lord Emly, the Vice Chancellor of the University, that the recommendatory letters presented when he sought election spoke so highly of his character and attainments (especially one from Dr. Jowett, the Master of Balliol, in praise of his scholarship), as to make the Senate most anxious to obtain his services; and Lord Emly at the same time expressed, what is the universal feeling among that body, the loss the University has sustained by his death.

His duties consisted in teaching latin and Greek in the Catholic University College - where he resided - and in examining in classics for the various degrees of the Royal University. The first of these duties he liked, taking much interest in his pupils; but he had a great repugnance to the labour and responsibility involved the preparation of the examination papers, and in subsequently correcting and awarding them marks. Nevertheless, in his scrupulous anxiety to be just and fair, he was accustomed to give to these tasks a far greater amount of care and time than most conscientious examiners would have considered necessary.

He occupied his spare hours, which were not many, in literary work. He had collected and put together, with a view to publication in some work on British dialects, the idioms of the different Irish provinces. He wrote several articles for the “Classical Review”. I do not know how many of them appeared. He was engaged at the time of his death upon a critical work dealing with difficult passages in the plays of Aristophanes, the true meaning of which he believed that he had discovered. He read a great deal of general literature, considering the little leisure time he had, but I have heard him say he could get on quite happily with no other book than his Breviary. He was very fond of music, and composed some “fugues”, which were very much admired by Sir Robert Stewart, Mus. Doc.

On everything that he wrote and said there was the stamp of originality, and he had the keenest appreciation of humour. I think the characteristics in him that most struck and edified all of us who knew him were, first, what I should call his priestly spirit; this showed itself not only in the reverential way he performed his sacred duties and spoke on sacred subjects, but in his whole conduct and conversation; and, secondly, his devotion and loyalty to the Society of Jesus.

A day or two after Low Sunday, 1889, he fell ill of typhoid fever. From the outset he was fully alive to the gravity of his state, and, I believe, never shared the hope that others from time to time entertained - that he would pull through.

During the night of Wednesday, the 5th of June, a serious change for the worse took place in his condition, and when the doctors arrived early next morning, they pronounced his case well-nigh desperate. Father Wheeler, S.J., who attended him all through his illness with affectionate care, told him of his danger, and gave him the Holy Viaticum, which he
received with the greatest devotion.

On hearing that his parents were coming from England, he appeared to dread their arrival, because of the pain it would give them to see him so prostrate; but when the first interview was over, he expressed the happiness he felt at having them with him.

He quite realised that he was dying, and asked each day for the Holy Viaticum. He received it for the last time on the morning of the day of his death, Saturday, June 8, 1889.

The final blessing and absolution were also then given him at his own request, and he was heard two or three times to say, “I am so happy, I am so happy”. Soon afterwards he became too weak to speak, but he appeared to follow mentally the prayers for the dying, which were said a little before noon by Father Wheeler, and joined in by his parents. As the end approached he seemed to grow more collected, and retained consciousness almost up to the moment, half-past one o'clock, when he passed peacefully away. He was buried in the burial-ground of the Society at Glasnevin.

◆ https://biography.wales/article/s14-HOPK-MAN-1844

HOPKINS, GERARD MANLEY (1844 - 1889), poet and priest

Name: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Date of birth: 1844
Date of death: 1889
Parent: Manley Hopkins
Parent: Catherine Hopkins (née Smith)
Gender: Male
Occupation: poet and priest
Area of activity: Poetry; Religion; Education

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on 28 July 1844, at 87, The Grove, Stratford, Essex, the eldest of eight, or possibly nine, children of Manley Hopkins (1818-1897), the founder of a marine insurance firm, and his wife Catherine (née Smith, 1821-1900). His parents were devout High Church Anglicans with family connections in intellectual and artistic circles. In 1852, the family moved to Hampstead and Gerard was sent to board at Highgate School. He considered himself to be half-Welsh on the basis of his surname, which is common in south Wales.

In 1863, Hopkins went up to Oxford where he graduated with a First in Classics. Here he met one of his closest friends, Robert Bridges, who would become the Poet Laureate and the editor of his poetry. It was while he was at Oxford that he turned to a more ascetic way of life, one that would lead him to convert to Roman Catholicism, a move that led to his estrangement from his family. After graduation he was helped by (Cardinal) John Henry Newman, the leader of the Oxford Catholic converts to obtain a teaching post. At this time he turned away from poetry, even burning his poems, and decided to enter the ministry as a Jesuit. While he was studying for the priesthood at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire he came under the influence of the Franciscan philosopher and theologian Duns Scotus, whose idea of haecceitas, or 'this-ness' led to the coinage of inscape by Hopkins.

In August 1874, he went to continue his training at St Beuno's College, Tremeirchion near St Asaph in Denbighshire, north Wales. His three years there are regarded as the most influential and happiest of his life. Here he fell under the spell of what he called the 'instress and charm of Wales', responding enthusiastically to the landscape of the Vale of Clwyd.

Locality is vital to much of Hopkins's work. St Winifred's shrine at Holywell was an important local site for him, and he began a verse play on Beuno's miraculous resuscitation of Winifred. Garreg Fawr ('Great Rock') just south of St Beuno's - of which the poet wrote in his diary: 'The Rock is a great resort of hawks and owls' - inspired the poem he considered in 1879 to be 'the best thing I ever wrote', 'The Windhover', dedicated 'to Christ Our Lord'.

In a Dominican, a practice sermon for trainee Jesuits, delivered on 11 March 1877, Hopkins went so far as to compare the geography of the Vale of Clwyd with the Sea of Galilee. Drawing inspiration from the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, which required those involved to relive and invest emotionally in the geography and events described in the Bible, Hopkins invited his fellow students to imagine the geomorphology of the Sea of Galilee in terms of the landscape familiar to them. In a complex attempt at superimposition of geographical features, he fixed Bethsaida Julias, the river Jordan, Capharnaum and Tiberias on the map of Wales and located the place of the miracle of the loaves and fishes at the refectory at St Beuno's College, where he and his fellow Jesuits were taking their meal. That audience found the sermon less than convincing and even comical, as Hopkins himself testified. Damian Walford Davies, however, sees it as a 'confession couched as cartography', a manifestation of his Welsh identity and 'a rich example of Welsh writing in English'.

Hopkins began learning Welsh, taking lessons from a local Catholic woman, Miss Susannah Jones, despite discouragement from his superiors unless he was to use it to convert local people. He mastered the language sufficiently to compose some poetry in it, although his compositions are stylistically awkward and unconvincing. His 'Cywydd' celebrating the silver jubilee of the Bishop of Shrewsbury, written in 1876 under the bardic name 'Brân Maenefa' (The Crow of Maenefa, a mountain overlooking St Beuno's College), in which he laments that land and water bear witness to the old faith of Gwynedd more strongly than the people of the region, employs the Welsh strict-metre verse form with its alternate stressed and unstressed rhymes, but achieves only two correct examples of the requisite cynghanedd in its eighteen lines.

Hopkins found that the consonantal correspondences and internal rhymes of cynghanedd aligned well with his own poetic practice, and adapted them to the purposes of his English poetry, most notably in 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'. These are mostly employed loosely, such as 'Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind', and only occasionally do they form full cynghanedd (e.g. 'The down-dugged ground-hugged grey' which is cynghanedd sain). Hopkins coined the term 'sprung rhythm' to describe the technique he used in the poem, suggesting it was derived from classical, Old English and Welsh models. His use of prosody was influential on many poets of the 1930s writing in English, including Dylan Thomas.

'The Wreck of the Deutschland' was written at the suggestion of the Rector of St Beuno's College, Father John, to commemorate the drowning of Franciscan nuns fleeing persecution in Germany in December 1875, and in it Hopkins expressed his sense of guilt at the contrast between his physical and spiritual safety in Wales and the peril and martyrdom of the nuns. Having given up poetry for seven years to devote himself solely to God, this was the beginning of a surge of creativity during which Hopkins produced a third of his poetry.

'In the Valley of the Elwy' is one of a number of lyrical responses to the beauty of 'this world of Wales' composed in 1877. He wrote of Wales fondly to his friend Robert Bridges referring to 'my Welsh days... my salad days'. Hopkins wrote to Bridges of his use of cynghanedd in another poem deeply influenced by locality, 'The Sea and the Skylark', written during a stay for the sake of his health at the seaside resort of Rhyl.

Hopkins had to leave Wales in September 1877 when he was ordained to the priesthood. Over the next seven years he held various posts in England and Scotland, before eventually taking up the post of professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin in 1884. Hopkins had felt at home in the surroundings of what he called 'wild Wales', but found himself out of place in Ireland. His final burst of creativity came during this dark period towards the end of his life when he produced his gloomy and much admired 'terrible sonnets'.

Gerard Manley Hopkins died of typhoid fever in Dublin on 8 June 1889, and was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery.

Author
Eugenia Russell

◆ https://www.ncregister.com/blog/gerard-manley-hopkins-great-poet

England’s Greatest Catholic Poet Anyone?

Who was Gerard Manley Hopkins and why should we read him?

After the death of Jesuit Father Gerard Manley Hopkins in June 1889, almost 30 years would ensue before the poetry for which he is justly celebrated saw the light of day. Another 30 years would elapse before their original integrity was restored, the first edition having been so thoroughly botched by people who hadn’t understood what he was doing. Even now, in fact, nearly a century and a half later, readers continue to be baffled and put off by the poems.

Many of my students, for instance, on whom I’ve been copiously inflicting his verse for as long as I can remember. They just don’t get it, even as they are often stunned by the rhythm and imagery of the work. The titles, too, have often proven to be wonderfully arresting. Who can resist a poem called “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe?” Or, “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and on the Comfort of the Resurrection?” If the aim of literature is to be, in the words of Kafka, “an axe for the frozen sea within us,” then the poetry of Hopkins is the perfect icebreaker.

Who was he and why should we read him? Especially Catholics, that is, for whom an understanding of Hopkins may provide a marvelous and incisive key to unlocking the central mysteries of our faith.

But first a word or two about his life, which, from the moment he chose to convert, was dogged by disappointment. By rejecting the empty ritualism of the Church of England for the deeper realism of Rome, a conversion catalyzed by the influence of St. John Henry Newman, who received him into the Church in 1866, Hopkins had pretty much burned all his bridges. His family reacted with sheer bewilderment to the news, which only worsened when he decided to become a Jesuit, no more odious an order than which can be imagined among 19th-century English Anglicans.

And then, of course, there is the poetry itself, which longed for an audience he never really had, owing not only to the oddities of diction and syntax, but to the fact that early on he’d resolved not to write any more. Renouncing the muse, he believed, seemed the least sacrifice he could make to God for granting him the gift of his vocation. And so, on entering the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he made a holocaust of all his youthful verse. It was only after one of his superiors, seven years later, read about a shipwreck at sea in which hundreds drowned, including seven Franciscan nuns exiled from Bismarck’s Germany, and then wondered aloud if anyone might undertake to memorialize the event, that Hopkins offered to do so. Permission granted, he plunged at once into the making of “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” which has since become one of the enduring masterpieces of modern literature, despite the Society’s refusal to publish it.

More misunderstanding and neglect followed, including the appointment in 1884 to a professorship in Greek at University College, Dublin, where he labored amid an avalanche of numberless student exams which nearly drove him mad. Dublin was an awful place and within a few short years it left him dead from typhoid due to a polluted water supply, which the Jesuits were too cheap to try and remedy.

But the Dublin years, for all the wretchedness they brought down upon him, were not entirely wasted thanks to the poetry that resulted from them, most particularly those dark and terrible sonnets on which his reputation for lasting greatness rests. They are, simply put, an astonishment, evincing the great unassuageable hunger for God that stoked his soul from the start. Only now, of course, in these last weeks and months of a life that, more and more, he views as abject failure (“All my undertakings miscarry,” he writes. “I am like a straining eunuch. I wish then for death.”), God seems not to be there at all, his presence felt as sheer excruciating absence:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
But the letters have not come back empty, have they? Nor have they been left unopened, their heavenly recipient indifferent to the laments of those who fear themselves lost. Any more than the tall gaunt nun, her cries piercing the darkness of the storm — “Christ, come quickly! Come quickly!” — has gone unanswered. Christ has come, will come; indeed, he comes for all of us. Because he has never left us, not once has he left us. Because he does not live alas! away.

And the most confirming sign that this may be true, that Father Hopkins too felt the reassuring hand, the imminence of a presence not of this world, yet there in that sickroom where he lay dying in order to beckon him to another world? It would be the very last words he ever spoke, words whispered while another Jesuit, a Father Wheeler, who was there to care for him, heard them on his rounds. Entering the room on the very last day of his life, he leans over the dying Hopkins to try and make out what he’s saying. “I am so happy,” he hears him saying. Again and again he will hear the same refrain: “I am so happy.”

Regis Martin Regis Martin, S.T.D

-oOo-

◆ https://www.jesuitarchives.co.uk/post/gerard-manley-hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mary Allen Aug 27, 2018 Updated: Feb 23, 2023

150 years ago, on 7 September 1868, Gerard Manley Hopkins entered the Society of Jesus at Manresa, Roehampton. Born in Stratford, Essex in 1844, he received his early education at the Cholmeley Grammar School in Highgate. According to his obituary in Letters and Notices, “from earliest childhood he showed a great talent for drawing, and his work was distinguished for its remarkable delicacy... He had a very exquisite voice and took great interest in music. This, with art and literature, became his special studies.” During his time at Balliol College, Oxford, Hopkins was received into the Catholic Church by John Henry Newman. After completing his studies, he entered the Jesuit Novitiate.

After ordination in 1877, Hopkins began his life as a missioner in London, but also spent some time at Oxford and Liverpool. During his time at Oxford, he was required to �ll in as parish priest at St Aloysius’ for Fr Thomas Parkinson SJ, who had been injured after a fall from a cart. Unfortunately, although “he had come [to the Society] with a record of brilliance and with all the enthusiasm of a convert, Hopkins had yet to succeed in the practical, workaday duties with which most Jesuits are expected to cope.” This description of his character �nds echoes in reminiscences of contemporary Jesuits in his obituary. “Of his ability I need scarcely speak. He had a distinct dash of genius. His opinions on any subject in Heaven and earth were always worth listening to and always fresh and original.” However, wrote another, “his mind was of too delicate a texture to grapple with the rougher elements of human life”, although “his kindness of heart and unsel�shness showed themselves in a thousand ways... The high order of his intellect was at once made evident to all who came into serious contact with him... True it was of a somewhat unpractical turn, but the various and often amusing extravagations into which it was from time to time in consequence beguiled, only added another point of attractiveness to his character.”

In 1884 he went from Stonyhurst to Dublin after receiving a fellowship at the Royal University, where he taught Greek and Latin. His spare hours where occupied with literary work, putting together a work on British dialects, which he hoped to publish, writing several articles for the Classical Review, and towards the end of his life, he engaged on a critical work of the plays of Aristophanes. Soon after Easter, 1889, Hopkins became ill with typhoid fever and died a few days later, 8 June, aged 45.

To read Hopkins’ obituary, one hardly gets the sense that he was one of the most important poets of the Victorian era. It is also perhaps surprisingly short, about six pages in total, and although it hints at a remarkable man, it does not show any inkling of the fame or recognition that he would later receive. Although it stresses his knowledge and passion for literature, the only mention of poetry does not refer to his own work:

His acquaintance with poetry was extensive, and his judgement differed upon various poets considerably from what most people entertain.

This re�ects the fact that during his lifetime and up to the early 20th century, Hopkins’ work remained largely unknown until his Oxford friend, the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, published a volume of his poetry in 1918. On the publication of its second edition in 1930, his work was �nally recognised as among the most original and powerful poetry of his time.

Among the Jesuits in Britain Archives, there are a few items in Hopkins’ own handwriting. These include his �nal vows, a transcription of a poem by Digby Mackworth Dolben (who Hopkins met in 1865), and a Porter’s Journal from the noviciate at Manresa, covering December 1869 to October 1871. The Porter, or Beadle, was a student assigned with the task of recording daily events. In the earliest part of the journal, one can easily recognise Hopkins’ distinctive handwriting, and an entry partway through the volume marks his departure for the Scholasticate.

If you are interested in Gerard Manley Hopkins or the work of the archives in general, please contact us. Collections of Hopkins’ papers can be found at Campion Hall, Balliol College, Oxford, and Gonzaga University, Washington. The British Jesuit Alfred Thomas devoted much of his life to the study of Hopkins, and his papers are open at the discretion of the Archivist.

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 71, Number 2 p 131

The Sacred Heart

When we worship Christ's heart it is a great deal more than the heart we mean, it is after all Christ Himself that we worship. For, my brethren, this is how we speak in many things. We say that in a town there are so many thousand souls; we mean so many thousand men, and children and not their souls only. We speak of a kind body, a busy- , body: we mean some man or woman that is kind or that is busy and not his or her body only. We call sailors or laborers hands; we say “all hands”, “a new hand”, and so on: it is men we mean, not their hands only. We call Plato and Shakespeare great minds: it is Plato and Shakespeare we mean, not their minds only. Nay, we call a man a warm heart, the very word, a large heart and the like: it is the man we mean and not his heart only. So then when we say the Sacred Heart it is of Christ Himself we are thinking and not of His Heart only. Not but what there is good reason for so speaking in all these cases: if living men are called souls, it is because the soul is the source of life in man; if they are called bodies it is because the body strikes the eye; if sailors and laborers are called hands, it is because their hands are what they work with; if great thinkers are called minds, it is because by their minds they have become famous; if kind people are called large hearts, it is because the quality of the heart makes them more remarkable than others.

When we speak so often of the heart, a great heart, a narrow heart, a warm heart, a cold heart, a tender heart, a hard heart, a heart of stone, a lion heart, a craven heart, a poor heart, a sad heart, a heavy heart, a broken heart, a willing heart, a full heart, of heart's ease, heart ache, heartscald, ofthinking in one's heart, of loving from one's heart, of the heart sinking, of taking heart, of losing heart, of giving the heart away, of being heartwhole-it would be endless to name all the ways we could bring the heart in-in all these expres- sions what we call heart is not the piece of flesh so called, not the great bloodvessel only, but the thoughts of the mind that vessel seems to harbour and the feelings of the soul to which it beats. For the heart is of all the members of the body the one which most strongly and most of its own accord sympathizes with and expresses in itself what goes on within the soul. Tears are sometimes forced, smiles may be put on, but the beating of the heart is the truth of nature. And as in others, so in Christ: the Sacred.Heart is that Heart which swelled when Christ rejoiced in spirit and sank when He was sad, which played its dark and sacred part in all Christ's life, in all He did and suffered, which in His Agony, with frightful and unnatural straining forced His blood out of Him in a teeming sweat, and after it had ceased to beat was pierced and spent its contents by the opening in His side. The Sacred Heart is all Christ did for us; the Sacred Heart is all Christ's joys, griefs, hopes, fears, love unto death, heroic courage, tender pity; the Sacred Heart is Christ's most per- fect character. Once see the matter in this light and surely there is no Christian who will blame, none will not admire, there should be none that would not practise, the de- votion to the Sacred Heart.

G M Hopkins SJ

◆ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins#:~:text=Gerard%20Manley%20Hopkins%20SJ%20(28,use%20of%20imagery%20and%20nature.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame places him among the leading English poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature.

Only after his death did Robert Bridges publish a few of Hopkins's mature poems in anthologies, hoping to prepare for wider acceptance of his style. By 1930 Hopkins's work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century. It intrigued such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis.

Early life and family
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, Essex[1] (now in Greater London), as the eldest of probably nine children to Manley and Catherine Hopkins, née Smith.[2] He was christened at the Anglican church of St John's, Stratford. His father founded a marine insurance firm and at one time served as Hawaiian consul-general in London. He was also for a time churchwarden at St John-at-Hampstead. His grandfather was the physician John Simm Smith, a university colleague of John Keats, and close friend of the eccentric philanthropist Ann Thwaytes. One of his uncles was Charles Gordon Hopkins, a politician of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

As a poet, Hopkins's father published works including A Philosopher's Stone and Other Poems (1843), Pietas Metrica (1849), and Spicelegium Poeticum, A Gathering of Verses by Manley Hopkins (1892). He reviewed poetry for The Times and wrote one novel. Catherine (Smith) Hopkins was the daughter of a London physician, particularly fond of music and of reading, especially German philosophy, literature and the novels of Dickens. Both parents were deeply religious high-church Anglicans. Catherine's sister, Maria Smith Giberne, taught her nephew Gerard to sketch. The interest was supported by his uncle, Edward Smith, his great-uncle Richard James Lane, a professional artist, and other family members.[1] Hopkins's initial ambition was to be a painter – he would continue to sketch throughout his life and was inspired as an adult by the work of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.[1][3]

Hopkins became a skilled draughtsman. He found his early training in visual art supported his later work as a poet.[1] His siblings drew a lot of inspiration from literature, religion, and the arts. In 1878, Milicent (1849–1946) enrolled in an Anglican sisterhood. Kate (1856–1933) would help Hopkins publish the first edition of his poetry. Hopkins's youngest sister Grace (1857–1945) set many of his poems to music. Lionel (1854–1952) became a world-famous expert on archaic and colloquial Chinese. Arthur (1848–1930) and Everard (1860–1928) were highly successful artists. Cyril (1846–1932) would join his father's insurance firm.[3]

Manley Hopkins moved his family to Hampstead in 1852, near where John Keats had lived 30 years before and close to the green spaces of Hampstead Heath. When he was ten years old, Gerard was sent to board at Highgate School (1854–1863).[1] While studying Keats's poetry, he wrote "The Escorial" (1860), his earliest extant poem. Here he practised early attempts at asceticism. He once argued that most people drank more liquids than they really needed and bet that he could go without drinking for a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed at drill. On another occasion he abstained from salt for a week.[3][4] Among his teachers at Highgate was Richard Watson Dixon, who became an enduring friend and correspondent. Of the older pupils Hopkins recalls in his boarding house, the poet Philip Stanhope Worsley won the Newdigate Prize.[5]

Oxford and priesthood
Hopkins studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford (1863–1867).[6] He began his time in Oxford as a keen socialite and prolific poet, but seems to have alarmed himself with resulting changes in his behaviour. There he forged a lifelong friendship with Robert Bridges (later Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom), which would be important to his development as a poet and in establishing his posthumous acclaim.[6] Hopkins was deeply impressed with the work of Christina Rossetti, who became one of his great contemporary influences. The two met in 1864.[7] During this time he studied with the writer and critic Walter Pater, who tutored him in 1866 and remained a friend until Hopkins left Oxford for the second time in October 1879.[8]

Alfred William Garrett, William Alexander Comyn Macfarlane and Hopkins (left to right), by Thomas C. Bayfield, 1866
In a journal entry of 6 November 1865, Hopkins declared an ascetic intention for his life and work: "On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it."[9] On 18 January 1866, Hopkins composed his most ascetic poem, The Habit of Perfection. On 23 January, he included poetry in a list of things to be given up for Lent. In July, he decided to become a Roman Catholic and travelled to Birmingham in September to consult the leader of the Oxford converts, John Henry Newman.[7] Newman received him into the Roman Catholic Church on 21 October 1866.

The decision to convert estranged Hopkins from his family and from a number of acquaintances. After graduating in 1867, he was provided by Newman with a teaching post at the Oratory in Birmingham. While there he began to study the violin. On 5 May 1868 Hopkins firmly "resolved to be a religious." Less than a week later, he made a bonfire of his poetry and gave it up almost entirely for seven years. He also felt a call to enter the ministry and decided to become a Jesuit. He paused first to visit Switzerland, which officially forbade Jesuits to enter.[3][10]

In September 1868, Hopkins began his Jesuit novitiate at Manresa House, Roehampton, under the guidance of Alfred Weld. Two years later he moved to St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, for philosophical studies, taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on 8 September 1870.[11] He felt that his interest in poetry had stopped him devoting himself wholly to religion. However, on reading Duns Scotus in 1872, he saw how the two need not conflict.[12] He continued to write a detailed prose journal in 1868–1875. Unable to suppress a desire to describe the natural world, he also wrote music, sketched, and for church occasions, wrote "verses", as he called them. He later wrote sermons and other religious pieces.

In 1874, Hopkins returned to Manresa House to teach classics. While studying in the Jesuit house of theological studies, St Beuno's College, near St Asaph in Wales, he was asked by his religious superior to write a poem to commemorate the foundering of a German ship in a storm. So in 1875 he took up poetry once more to write a lengthy piece, "The Wreck of the Deutschland", inspired by the Deutschland incident, a maritime disaster in which 157 people died, including five Franciscan nuns who had been leaving Germany due to harsh anti-Catholic laws (see Kulturkampf). The work displays both the religious concerns and some of the unusual metre and rhythms of his subsequent poetry not present in his few remaining early works. It not only depicts the dramatic events and heroic deeds, but tells of him reconciling the terrible events with God's higher purpose. The poem was accepted but not printed by a Jesuit publication. This rejection fed his ambivalence about his poetry, most of which remained unpublished until after his death.

Blue plaque commemorating Hopkins in Roehampton, London
Hopkins chose the austere and restrictive life of a Jesuit and was gloomy at times. His biographer Robert Bernard Martin notes that "the life expectancy of a man becoming a novice at twenty-one was twenty-three more years rather than the forty years of males of the same age in the general population."[13] The brilliant student who had left Oxford with first-class honours failed his final theology exam. This almost certainly meant that despite his ordination in 1877, Hopkins would not progress in the order. In 1877 he wrote God's Grandeur, an array of sonnets that included "The Starlight Night". He finished "The Windhover" only a few months before his ordination. His life as a Jesuit trainee, though rigorous, isolated and sometimes unpleasant, at least had some stability; the uncertain and varied work after ordination was even harder on his sensibilities. In October 1877, not long after completing "The Sea and the Skylark" and only a month after his ordination, Hopkins took up duties as sub-minister and teacher at Mount St Mary's College near Sheffield. In July 1878 he became curate at the Jesuit church in Mount Street, London, and in December that of St Aloysius's Church, Oxford, then moving to Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow.[3] While ministering in Oxford, he became a founding member of The Newman Society, established in 1878 for Catholic members of the University of Oxford. He taught Greek and Latin at Mount St Mary's College, Sheffield, and Stonyhurst College, Lancashire.

In the late 1880s Hopkins met Matthew Russell of the Irish Monthly, who introduced him to Katharine Tynan and W. B. Yeats.[14]

In 1884, Hopkins became a professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin.[15] His English roots and disagreement with the Irish politics of the time, along with his small stature (5 ft 2 in or 1.57 m), unprepossessing nature and personal oddities, reduced his effectiveness as a teacher. This and his isolation in Ireland deepened a gloom that was reflected in his poems of the time, such as "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, not Day". They came to be known as the "terrible sonnets", not for their quality but according to Hopkins's friend Canon Richard Watson Dixon, because they reached the "terrible crystal", meaning they crystallised the melancholic dejection that plagued the latter part of Hopki

Corr, Joseph, 1879-1971, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1112 · Person · 05 August 1879-09 December 1971

Cullinan, Patrick, 1888-1969, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1140 · Person · 20 November 1888-09 May 1969

Curran, Patrick, 1864-1916, Jesuit brother of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1150 · Person · 26 December 1864-12 November 1916

Daly, Patrick, 1876-1945, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1161 · Person · 02 April 1876-20 October 1945

Born: 02 April 1876, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 23 October 1897, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 26 July 1910, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1912
Died: 20 October 1945, Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1897-1899: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Novitiate
1899-1901: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Rhetoric
1901-1904: Maison Saint-Louis, St Hélier, Jersey, Channel Islands (FRA), Philosophy (192 ascribed to Zambesi Mission)
1904-1907: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, England, Regency
1907-1910: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB), Theology
1910-1911: Maison Saint-Ignace, ‘s Herenelderen, Tongres, Belgium (TOLO), Tertianship
1911-1917: Zambesi Mission: St Aidan’s College SJ, Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Teaching
1917-1921: St George’s College SJ, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, Teaching
1921-1924: Sacred Heart Church, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, Curate, teaching Catechetics, Ministering to Europeans
1924-1925: St Francis Xavier, Empandeni, Southern Rhodesia, Curate and studying language
1925-1927: St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church, Wade Road, Claremont, Cape Town, South Africa, Minister and Parish Priest
1927-1931: St Austin’s Church, Wentworth Terrace, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, Curate, Teaching Catechetics
1931-1936: St Francis Xavier College SJ and Church, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate, teaching Catechetics
1936-1939: St Joseph’s Church, Mather Lane, Leigh, Lancashire, England, Curate, teaching Catechetics
1939-1941: Lowe House, St Helen’s, Lancashire, England, Curate, teaching Catechetics
1941-1944: St Walburge’s, Weston Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, Curate, teaching Catechetics
1944-1945: Mount St Mary’s, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Caring for health

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1922

Our Past

Father Patrick Daly SJ

To the kindness of Fr J O'Connell SJ ('95-'98), of the Zambesi Mission, we owe a cutting from the “Rhodesia Herald”, giving an account of the welcome extended to Fr Patrick Daly SJ ('91-'97); in Salisbury, on his becoming parish priest of that town. Fr. Daly was greeted by the representative of the Catholic community as a true type of Irish gentleman, and of happy and fortunate temperament. After a reference to his education at Mungret and elsewhere “so that it was given him to get the best of five great nations it was also mentioned that he taught for five years at St Aidan's College, Grahamstown, and for another five at Bulawayo, at both of which places he was held in high regard by all”. In a reply which was interspersed with laughter and applause, Fr Daly concluded by the assurance that he would like to share in the life of the community as a citizen of Salisbury, because he held that the better the Catholic the better the citizen.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1946

Obituary

Father Patrick Daly SJ

Father Patrick Daly died at Mount St. Mary's College after a prolonged and painful illness. Father Daly came to Mungret in 1891 and passed up the various classes obtaining his BA degree. He joined the Jesuit Novitiate at Roehampton in 1897 and did his philosophy at Jersey, where he was a zealous helper in teaching catechismn and visiting the sick at St Mary's and St Peter's Church. He was ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin, on July 26th, 1910, and then a year after went out to South Africa. He taught at St Aidan's College, Grahamstown, from 1911-17, and then served the missions of Bulawayo and Salisbury, SA. Owing to ill-health he was compelled to return to England for a short time in 1924, but was soon back again in South Africa where he laboured on the native mission of Empandeni for two years. There his health broke down badly, and he had to return to England, where he ministered in the Jesuit parishes of Wakefield, Liverpool, Leigh, St. Helen's and Preston. He was noted for his gentleness and kindness as a pastor.

Fearn, Michael, 1821-1895, Jesuit brother of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1279 · Person · 17 June 1821-13 November 1895

Feran, William D, 1869-1942, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1280 · Person · 07 November 1869-11 August 1942

Fish, Joseph, 1860-1930, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1290 · Person · 18 August 1860-19 December 1930

Born: 18 August 1860, Norwich, Norfolk, England
Entered: 05 February 1881, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1894
Final Vows: 03 February 1896
Died: 19 December 1930, St Patrick’s Hospital, Belmont Park, Waterford, County Waterford - Angliae Province (ANG)

Died in HIB but member of ANG

1881-1883: Manresa, Roehampton, London England (ANG), Novitiate
1883-1884: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Rhetoric
1884-1885: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1885-1886: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Regency
1886-1889: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1889-1890: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1890-1891: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Regency
1891-1894: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Flintshire, Wales, Theology
1894-1895: Manresa, Roehampton, London England (ANG), Tertianship
1895-1899: St Joseph’s Church, Leigh, Lanashire, England, Curate
1899-1901: St Mary’s Church, Regent Road, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, Curate, Military Chaplain
1901-1902: St Wilfrid’s Church, Chapel Street, Preston, Lancashire, England Curate at St Walburge’s, Weston Street, Preston, Lancashire, England.
1902-1903: St George’s, Worcester, Worcerstershire, England, Curate
1903-1905: St Michael’s College, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Curate at St Joseph and St Francis Xavier Church, Victoria Road, Richmond, Yorkshire
1905-1907: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Flintshire, Wales, Curate at St Mary’s RC Church, Wellington Road, Rhyl, Wales
1907-1911: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1911-1913: Collège de la Sainte Famille SJ, Cairo, Egypt (LUGD), Teaching and Military Chaplain
1913-1914: Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, Lancashire, England, Curate at Our Lady Help of Christians, Portico, Prescot, Lancashire
1914-1916: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, working
1916-1919: St Michael’s College, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Curate at St Joseph’s, Richmond, Yorkshire
1919-1921: Collegio Santo Luigi, Birkirkara, Malta(SIC), Teaching
1921-1924: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Caring for health
1924-1928: Park Royal, Warrington, Lancashire, England, Caring for health
1928-1930: St Patrick’s Hospital, Belmont Park, Waterford, County Waterford (HIB), Caring for health

Gallagher, James, 1887-1960, Jesuit priest and chaplain of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1340 · Person · 21 October 1887-21 December 1960

Born: 21 October 1887, Crowanrudda, Kilcar, County Donegal
Entered: 01 February 1907, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 25 April 1918
Final Vows: 02 February 1926
Died: 21 December 1960, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Transcribed HIB to ANG : 1908

First World War chaplain

Father was a coal merchant. Parents lived at Nile Street, Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland.

Only boy with one sister.

Educated at a convent school in Greenock, he went to Glenleighan NS, Finstown, County Donegal. He then went to St Mungo’s Academy, Crownpoint Road, Glasgow, Scotland for one year. He then went to St Eunan’s Seminary, Letterkenny, County Donegal.

1907-1908: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate (ANG from 1908)
1908-1910: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, 2nd year Novitiate then Rhetoric
1910-1913: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1913-1914: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1914-1915: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Regency
1916-1918: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Flintshire, Wales, Theology
1918-1919: Military Chaplain
1919-1920: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB), Theology
1920-1924: Saint Austin's Church, Wentworth Terrace, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, Curate
1924-1925: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly (HIB), Tertianship
1925-1931: St Joseph’s, Woodside Road, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Curate
1931-1932: Holy Name, Manchester, Lancashire, England, Minister, Curate
1932-1936: Wimbledon College SJ, Edge Hill, Wimbledon, London, England, Residing and Curate at St Winifride’s Church, Latimer Road, Wimbledon
1936-1942: St Aloysius College SJ, Dalhousie Street, Garnet Hill, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Curate, and Teaching in Eelementary school (Minister from 1938
1942-1944: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhil, Serbyshire, England, Curate, Teaching in Elementary school
1944-1949: St Joseph’s, Leigh, Lancashire, England, Minister, Prefect of Church, Teaching in Elementary school
1949-1950: Corpus Christi, Christchurch Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, England, Curate, Teaching in Elementary school

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - St Eunan’s, Letterkenny, County Donegal student

Gallwey, Peter, 1820-1906, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1343 · Person · 13 November 1820-23 September 1906

Born: 13 November 1820, Killarney, County Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1836, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1852
Final Vows: 15 August 1854
Died: 23 September 1906, Immaculate Conception Residence, Mount Street, London - Angliae Province (ANG)

Gallwey served as Provincial of the Angliae Province (ANG) from 1873 to 1876

1836-1840: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate then Rhetoric and Logic
1840-1842: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1842-1843: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1843-1846: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lanacshire, Regency
1846-1849: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1849-1854: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Flintshire, Wales, Teheology
1854-1855: St Stanislaus, Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, Socius to Novice Master
1855-1857: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Prefect of Studies
1857-1868: St Ignatius College, Hill Street, Berkeley Square, London, England, Vice Rector, working in London
1858-1867: Rector from 01/152/1859 to 28/11/1867; Province Comsultor from 17/05/1860 to 26/11/1864
1867-1868: Spiritual Father
1868-1869: St Ignatius College, Mount Street, Berkeley Square, London, England, Spiritual Father and working
1869-1873: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Rector and Novice Master from 19/10/1869; Province Consultor from 19/10/1869
1873-1876: Mount Street, Berkeley Square, London, England, PROVINCIAL from 09/07/1873 to 01/09/1876
1876-1877: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Flintshire, Wales, Rector from 16/10/1876 to 02/10/1877; Prefect of Studies, Teaching
1877-1906: St Ignatius College, Mount Street, Berkeley Square, London, England, , Rector from 08/10/1877 to 06/10/1885; Province Consultor from 01/12/1877
1881-1906: Immaculate Conception Residence, Mount Street, London, Curate and Province Consultor from 01/12/1877 to 17/03/1881

◆ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gallwey#:~:text=Peter%20Gallwey%20(13%20November%201820,who%20worked%20primarily%20in%20London.

Peter Gallwey

Peter Gallwey (13 November 1820, Killarney – 23 September 1906, London) was a Jesuit priest and writer, who worked primarily in London.

Life

Stonyhurst College
He was educated at Stonyhurst College, and joined the Society of Jesus at Hodder, 7 September 1836. He was ordained priest in 1852, and professed of four vows in 1854. As prefect of studies at Stonyhurst, 1855–1857, he made improvements in the method of study.[1]

In 1857 he was sent to the Jesuit church in Farm Street, London, where—except for an interval of eight years during which he held the provincialate and other offices—he spent the rest of his life. A man of deep spirituality, he was much venerated as a preacher, spiritual director and giver of retreats. In October 1869, he left Farm Street to become novice master at Manresa House in Roehampton, where Gerard Manley Hopkins was one of his novices.[2] Gallwey served as Provincial of the English Province from 1873 to 1876, after which he became Rector at St Beuno's College in Wales.[1]

In 1878, Gallwey returned to Farm Street as pastor and brought Hopkins with him, having been impressed by the originality of one of Hopkins' sermons.[3] One of Gallwey's notable converts was Janet Erskine Stuart, daughter of an Anglican clergyman, and granddaughter of the Earl Castle Stewart. She joined the Society of the Sacred Heart, eventually becoming Superior General.[4]

Works
His writings include:

The Lady Chapel and Dr. Pusey's Peacemaker (1865)
Lectures on Ritualism (1879, two volumes)
Salvage from the Wreck: A Few Memories of Friends Departed Preserved in Funeral Discourses (1890), sermons preached at the funerals of some notable Catholics.
The Watches of the Passion (1894), a series of meditations on the Passion, embodying the substance of his retreats.
Legacy
In 1905, St. Joseph's Hospice for the Dying in Hackney by the Religious Sisters of Charity at Gallwey's suggestion. He was the Rector of the Farm Street Church at the time, and was instrumental in obtaining the necessary donations for establishing the hospice.[5] St Joseph's continues to provide care for anyone with serious and life threatening conditions.[6]

References
Smith, Sydney. "Peter Gallwey." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 9 June 2019Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
Allsopp, Michael A. “Peter Gallwey and Gerard Manley Hopkins: An Unrecorded Influence.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 72, no. 287, 1983, pp. 242–251. JSTOR
Feeney, Joseph J., The Playfulness of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Routledge, 2016, p. 40 ISBN 9781317021193
"Janet Erskine Stuart rscj", The Bridge, Academy of the Sacred Heart, winter 2014
Gavin SJ, Michael. Memoirs of Father P. Gallwey, S.J., Burns and Oates, 1913, p. 44Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
"Earl's Visit to East End Hospice", Jesuits in Britain, 10 Jul 2014

Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Peter Gallwey". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. The entry cites:
Concise Dictionary of National Biography

Further reading
Michael Gavin, S.J. (ed.), Memoirs of Fr. P. Gallwey, S.J. London: Burns & Oates, 1913

◆ https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/peter-gallwey

ENCYCLOPEDIA
Peter Gallwey
One of the best-known London priests in his time; b. at Killarney, Nov. 13, 1820; d. in London, Sept. 23, 1906

Gallwey, PETER; b. at Killarney, November 13, 1820; d. in London, September 23, 1906; one of the best-known London priests in his time. He was educated at Stonyhurst, joined the Society of Jesus at Hodder, September 7, 1836, was ordained priest in 1852, and professed of four vows in 1854. As prefect of studies at Stonyhurst, 1855-57, he made important improvements in the methods of study. In 1857 he was sent to the Jesuit church in London, where—except for an interval of eight years during which he held the provincialate and other offices—he spent the remainder of his life. He was a man of deep spirituality, much venerated as a preacher, spiritual director, and giver of retreats; he was also noted for his love of the poor and his earnest advocacy of almsdeeds. So great were his energy and enterprise that he set his stamp on all he undertook. Several London convents and Catholic institutions owe largely to his zeal and encouragement both their first foundation and their successful subsequent development. His writings comprise among others: “Salvage from the Wreck”, sermons preached at the funerals of some notable Catholics (1890); “Watches of the Passion” (3 vols., 1894), a series of meditations on the Passion, embodying the substance of his retreats; a number of sermons, tracts, and other small publications, mostly of a topical kind.

SYDNEY F. SMITH

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 35, Number 3

“Varia : England - Father Peter Gallwey SJ” p424

Father Peter Gallwey the well-known author of “The Watches of the Passion” died on Sept 23, 1906, in his eightysixth year. When a young man his doctor hinted that he had but a short life before him, but he lived to be a striking instance of the that '”men of condemned constitutions live long”. His was a very commanding personality and all through a life of ceaseless activity his influence was as great as it was widespread. A combative instinct and masterful will helped him to override what to others would have appeared insurmountable difficulties. To this physical energy he added a flow of gentle wit and humor and an insatiable thrist for work, which sustained him in the exercise of almost every function which the Society in- cludes wtthin the sphere of its activity.

Father Gallwey was born on the thirteenth of November, 1820, at Killarney, where his father was agent to the Earl of Kenmare. After his earlier education at Boulogne he was
sent to Stonyhurst and thence entered the Society at Hodder, on Sept. 7th 1836. On completlng his studies, his lungs began to be affected and he was sent to Ireland to recruit his health. A year after he was teaching at Liverpool. In 1846 he taught Poetry and Rhetoric at Stonyhurst and in 1849 began his theology at St Bueno's. After his profession in 1854 he became Prefect of studies at Stonyhurst. He revived and made of obligation the camp system in the classes, and “Concertations”, or contests between the different classes, were of frequent occurence in the community refectory, at meal time, a practice which is still in vogue at Stonyhurst.

Father Gallwey afterwards became, at separate periods, Rector of Farm Street, Master of Novices at Manresa, and in 1873 Provincial. After his Provincialate he was made Superior of St Beuno's College and Professor of Moral Theology until 1877, when he resumed his old post at Farm Street, where he remained until his death. Twice, namely in 1883 and 1892, he was sent to Rome to take part in the election of a General of the Society and it was on this second occasion that Father Villiger accompanied him on his visit to the Holy Land, whither he went to travel the same ground, view the same scenes and breathe the same atmosphere that Our Lord did and be thus enabled to realize for himself and others the interior lessons of each mystery. This he has done in the great literary work of his life. “The Watches if the Passion”, a perfect mine of spirituality. Father Gallwey displayed his untiring energy in varied fields of labor, in preaching, giving retreats and missions, writing, assisting and supervising the publication of books and promoting every Catholic interest that came to his notice. His power as a preacher and director of souls lay in this that his own life was an object lesson of what he taught to others. When a non-Catholic clergyman asked him what he considered the best proximate preparation for a sermon, Father Gallwey's answer was: “Taking a good discipline”. He was a great and simple man of God, a lover of the Blessed Sacrament and a lover of Christ's poor. Two other classes of persons commanded his special sympathy, his converts and those who were in any difficulty or trouble, comforting and encouraging, shielding them from observation, accounting for their position, explaining away whatever might give rise to a suspicion that they were under a cloud. A mark of his loving kindness was his habit, as Provincial, of accompanying to the train or seaport of departure those of his subjects who were leaving for a foreign mission. Yet in matters of serious duty he could act with an unyielding decision and sterness which some might regard as harsh and domineering. But to know Fr Gallwey was to love him, and to any subject who wouldd meet him with frankness and sincerity he was the kindest of fathers. RIP

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 16, Number 1

“Varia : New York” p91

Very Rev Fr Provincial (Fulton) sailed from New York on the 26th of Nov and reached Cork on the 4th of December. He was announced in Dublin as Visitor of the Irish Province on the 5th of the same mouth. He is expected back in the United States about the beginning of April. During his absence Fr. R W Brady is Vice-Provincial.

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 25, Number 1

“Father Robert Fulton SJ : A Sketch” p90

Robert Fulton was born in Alexandria, Virginia, June 28, 1826. His father was a sturdy Presbyterian, his mother a devout Catholic. Robert was the scion of a race that has played an important part in the nation's history, being related to ex-president Harrison and the late Governor Wise of Virginia. His grandfather on the mother's side was an O'Brien, at one time a prominent diplomatist in the service of the United States. Young Robert was left fatherless in his seventh year; yet even at that early age, he evinced a force of character worthy of note. The following incident told by his mother is an illustration in point. When he was a little tot he constantly went to St Peter's Church in Washington with his mother, no remonstrance being as yet made by his father. Upon arriving at the dignity of his first pair of trowsers, his father said to him, :-
“My son, you have been going long enough to your mother's church, henceforth you will come to mine”.
Upon hearing these words, Mrs. Fulton heaved a deep sigh, exclaiming within herself, “Dear Lord, now my sorrows begin. What shall I do if my dear boy is lost to the faith”? Sunday came around, and little Robert started off with his father, leaving his mother in tears. On the way they had to pass St Peter's. The child hesitated, looked at his father, then stopped.
“Papa”, said he, “this is my church”.
“No”, was the stern reply, while the father held him firmly by the hand; “you are not going to that church any more. You must come to my church”.
Young Robert stood still, and would not be forced from his position. Open rebellion it was and crowds of churchgoers around enjoying it. The father threatened; it was no use, and much to his disappointment he found himself : obliged to retrace his steps homeward with his young hero by his side, unconquerable and unconquered.
“Here”, said he to his wife, “take this youngster and do what you like with him. He shall never enter my church, after the holy show he has made of me to-day”.

The first years of boyhood were spent in the US Senate in the capacity of page. Here day after day he drank in the strong lessons of devotion to duty and sterling patriotism from the stirring appeals of such men as Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, whose genius to this day are the beacon lights to those aspiring to the name and honor of American statesmanship and oratory. With these models before him abroad, and the example and training of a careful Catholic mother at home, Robert grew up in the esteem and practice of those manly virtues which make the Catholic and the citizen.

Golden days were these; he never forgot them. They were the text of many and many a talk to the boys, and, needless to say, his reminiscences, always so classically told, instructed and delighted all, whilst they uplifted and inspired his youthful hearers with a love for literature, self-develop- ment and a nobler ideal of conduct than they ever had before.

A year or two prior to his death, Father Fulton made an address to the students of Fordham on the great men he had met in the nation's capitol. A delighted auditor writes that despite the march of years and growing infirmities, he spoke with all the glow and enthusiasm of one in the vigor of manhood.

As a boy, Robert was a great lover of books. He read in season and out of season. His mother said that from his first ABC lesson in spelling, he was hardly ever seen without a volume in his hands. This reading habit combined with a retentive memory, ready wit, and facility of expression far beyond his age, distinguished him even then as an extraordinary conversationalist. What was said of Macauley by his nurse, may be said equally of him: “This child speaks printed words”. What perfection he afterwards attained in this art is familiar history to us all. He was without a peer even among such men as Holmes, OReilly and others of that ilk. The story is told, which may as well be inserted here, that at a dinner in Boston, where Father Fulton and the “Autocrat” met togrether the genial author of the “Breakfast Table” turned him'and said:-
“Why, Father Fulton, are you here too?” “Yes, all that’s left of me”, was the reply. “Will”, said Holmes, “either you or I must get out. This place ts too small for both of us”.

Years afterwards, on hearing that Father Fulton was about to bid adieu to his beloved Boston, Holmes exclaimed: I am very sorry, indeed ; Father Fulton is among the brightest men in Massachusetts”.

When asked by a young man, what he should do to come a good talker, Father Fulton replied: “Avoid slang, keep good company, read good books, write carefully, speak carefully at all times and in all places. Why bless you”, he continued, good naturedly tapping his snuff box, “from my eleventh year I have formulated my every sentence previous to utterance, and as a boy was more scrupulous about the grammar than about the commandments”.

But to return. At sixteen Robert was sent to Georgetown College, where his name was destined to grace the honor roll of the great and good men that have gone from her classic halls, and have achieved enviable success in ecclesiastical, no less than in civil preferments. A contemporary writes that he easily distanced his fellows in English composition, and was a model of good behavior. Long before he met his friend Horace, the sentiment was strong in him that it was sweet and honorable to die for one's country. The glories of the battlefield had been the Utopian dream of his boyhood years. In fact, Georgetown College was merely intended as a stepping-stone to West Point. But the “Best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee”. God had other designs. The inspirations of grace, the prayers of a pious mother, the general-like discipline of the sons of Ignatius were slowly but surely directing the current of his thoughts into a higher and nobler channel. Upon communicating his purpose to his mother her heart leaped for very joy. She told him that she also intended to give herself to God's service in tiie religious life. A prayer of thanksgiving ascended from the lips of mother and son, and we venture to say that seldom is it given to witness a scene more touching, more solemn, more blissful, than that in which heaven came to earth to be wedded by a nobler, a purer, and a holier love.

The next step was to dispose of their worldly possessions, which were not inconsiderable. Accordingly measures were taken without delay for the manumission of their slaves. All, from first to last, were invited to a sumptuous banquet, where each one found his freedom papers by the side of his plate, while mother and son served their former servants at the joyous repast. The slaves, in token of gratitude, gracefully tendered their liberators a banquet in their turn, which was graced by the presence of eminent guests from the US Senate. The day of parting came between mother and son: she entered the convent of the Visitation at Georgetown, he the Jesuit novitiate at Frederick. The sacrifice was now complete, but the strong link of natural affection became all the stronger by a closer union with the well-head of all love, the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Mrs Fulton, in religion Sister Olympias, lived to a ripe old age, having died in the nineties. Her memory is still in benediction, as an efficient, edifying servant of the com- munity. She was a woman of fine mind and of strong character, had excellent business capacity, was the very soul of hospitality, and generous almost to a fault, though a scrupulous observer of the poverty of her order.

Father Fulton, like all good men, was very fond of his mother. His veneration for her was closely allied to worship. He never could speak of her without emotion, and, as he often told his boys, had no hope either in this life or in the next for the young man who did not reverence and love, that noblest of beings, his mother.

As a novice, Father Fulton was distinguished for a high sense of duty, and a tender love for the Society. His term of novitiate having expired, he was admitted to his vows, and resumed his favorite study of literature with renewed zest and ardor. As was to be expected, his marked ability in the department of letters very soon approved itself to his superiors: literature became the study of his life, and had he given himself exclusively to composition, he would doubtless, have won an international reputation. He might easily have become the Johnson of the nineteenth century, with the odds in his favor in point of original, elevated thought, and refined expression, seasoned by a copious infusion from the vigorous Saxon.

Father Fulton's literary style was, as we all know, pre-eminently his own. He believed in the axiom: “Le style c'est l'homme”. He was a thorough advocate of the "”Multum in parvo” or rather “Plurimum in minimo”.

As professor of rhetoric at the novitiate and at Georgetown, his success is a household word in the Province. It could not well be otherwise; command of choicest phrase, wide information, wealth of illustration, copious commentary, boundless reading, ready wit, retentive memory, enthusiastic love for the classics, made him a teacher unto the manner born.

His class was the most delightful and profitable of Hours. To say that his scholars loved him would be to speak mildly indeed; they fairly worshipped him. One of them on hearing of his death, wrote that he considered it the privilege of his life, worthy of thanksgiving even, to have known the man. Under such a master, the young mind at an impressionable age found the pages of antiquity a thing of living beauty. Not a few of his qjsciples were noteq in after life for their attachment to the classics, which they had learned to love and appreciate so well in his sunlit classroom. To arouse even a passing enthusiasm for the author under study is certainly no small merit in the teacher, at any time, but so to teach that the scholar, in the prosy business of life, will return with renewed delight to his Cicero, or his Horace, is the gift of very few, and a great desideratum in the educational training of youth.

As we are on the subject of letters, it may not be out of place here to say something of Father Fulton's methods and literary preferences. In the first place he strongly insisted on reading. It was his daily text to the boys. He drew up a list of books for the students, established class libraries, and at the mid-year and final examinations exacted an account of the authors prescribed. Without continuous reading, he repeatedly urged, no man will ever rise out of the commonplace, whether in preaching, teaching, or in conversation. “We Jesuits”, he used to say, “must talk like educated men; there should ever appear in our dealings with others an elevation of thought and diction, which will draw scholars to our schools, and force the most critical to admit, that we are what we profess to be, educators of the young, leaders of thought”.

Imitation he earnestly inculcated; not that imitation which is akin to transcription and destructive of originality, but that which enriches and develops the mind, and by observation teaches one how to think for himself. He distinguished between the style of an author and the philosophy of his style. This latter was ever to be the main object of study in the exercise of imitation. A favorite practice of his own when a scholastic, was to synopsize the argument of an author, set this aside for a day or two, then elaborate it into a formal composition, after which he compared his own production with the model before him.

Whilst he had his pet authors, he was by no means a man of one book. Hero worship was not one of his weak points. Being asked what he thought of Newman, “I think very highly of him, indeed”, he replied, “but take care not to fall into the error now prevailing, that canonizes Newman and Newman alone, as the only one who ever wrote English. Wherever I go I hear nothing but Newman. Indeed, I am almost tempted to buy up the whole edition of his works, to check in some way this excessive adulation. Why don't you say something about Ruskin and others whose names are legion, all of whom spoke and wrote English to admiration?”

In the matter of reading, he always advised to keep a poet side by side with a prose writer. As a priest of God and a man of true taste, he worshipped the Holy Bible. Shakespeare was his daily food, as was also his friend Horace, whom he knew almost by heart. His theory was that no one could be considered a scholar, who failed to appreciate Rome's favored lyrist, and the favorite of the entire host of Englishmen of letters. It is quite noticeable, he used to say, how all have tried their hand at Horace; even the great Gladstone himself found in him a revived inspiration at an age in which the “divinus afflatus” is supposed to be well nigh extinct. For sentence-building he read De Quincey; for classic erudition and copious, elevated thought, he studied Landor; whilst Johnson's oddities, and Lamb's quaint originality, pathos and exquisite humor, were ever a source of relief to him in his spells of frequent and violent headache. Such men as Emerson and Browning he did not admire nor read. He gave as his reason, that life was too short, time too precious to be groping in the clouds, when the sun was shining hard by. A prominent Boston physician on him one evening, launched forth into a learned discussion on the depth and originality of Emerson.

“Yes”, said Father Fulton, “there's the rub. It is a depth that has no bottom to it. Here”, says he, taking up a volume of the author that was on his desk, “I open at haphazard: pray, tell me, what does the man mean?” The doctor looked wise, scanned carefully the contents of the page,- “Well really I don't just see what he is driving at; I confess I have read little or nothing of Mr Emerson, but those in a position to know tell me he is the greatest thinker of his age”. “Possibly”, was the reply, “but it's a good deal like the Scotchman’s definition of metaphysics: Twa men disputin thegither; yin man dinna ken what the ither man says, and he dinna ken himsel. Emerson, like Wagner's music, may be appreciated in the far-off future. But it is quite the fad now-a-days to talk about and admire what we least understand. Omne ignotum pro magnificio.

In the year 1857, Father Fulton was crowned with the dignity of the holy priesthood, in company with Fathers O’Callaghan, Brady and McAtee. He was next sent to his old Alma Mater at Georgetown, where he succeeded Father Fenwick as prefect of studies and professor of rhetoric. In 1861 his superiors appointed him to Boston, which for twenty years was to be the theatre of his splendid labors. Here he taught moral theology in Boston College, which was then used as a scholasticate.

Those were the old pioneer days, still redolent with the memory of the venerable Father McElroy, and his many splendid efforts for the beauty of God's temple. It was not long before the people of Boston began to recognize the treasure they possessed in Father Fulton. They seemeci to understand him at the very outset of his career. There was about him that which just suited them. They looked upon him and loved him, and assuredly he loved them in turn. There was no gush about it, if you will, but a species of cool, calculating, platonic regard, so peculiar to the Yankee, and which intellect: never fails to inspire.

His sermons, which were usually on the argumentative plan, soon began to attract wide attention even among those not of the faith. Men of refinement and education were pleased with his logical, terse, original, classic expression, judiciously flavored with a dash of grim humor to facilitate the digestion of a hard doctrine, that, now and then, had to be swallowed. To one who confounds oratory with loud declamation, animated gesture, and the tearing a passion to tatters, Father Fulton's calm, deliberate style would, indeed, prove tame and uninteresting.

Wherever he went he was a marked personality. True, his methods were rather unique, and any attempt at analysis were futile in the extreme. But, whether one censure or praise, it must be admitted that his way suited him best, and achieved victories where others would have met with defeat. He had but to his needs, and forthwith helping hands, and open purses were at his command. With apparently little effort, he was enabled in a few years to clear the church in Boston of an immense indebtedness.

But Father Fulton's great work as an educator was now about to begin. In the year of grace, 1864, on Sept. 7, the schools of Boston College for the first time·were opened to the public. Extensive preparations had been made for months. Father Fulton was aglow with enthusiasm. The church had attracted the elite of the city; why not the college? His hopes ran high. The field was white unto the harvest. All looked bright. But, alas! it was the old story over again, “parturiunt montes”. The opening day came; Father Fulton stood at the small iron gate on James St, awaiting the throng that in numbers at least, if not in quality, would respond to his expectations, and the preparations made. The immense throng came; twenty-five urchins marched in solemn file before him to form the nucleus of an institution which was to be one of the glories of Boston. Father Fulton was a disappointed man. Who could blame him? But the occasion for the display of strong character was now all the greater. Though discouraged, he determined to push on to the goal. He reasoned and reasoned correctly, that the frustration of his hopes was not the result of ill will, but of indifference to, or rather ignorance of, the necessity of a Catholic education. The people had their public schools, their high schools, both Latin and English, with Harvard close by for those wishing to follow a professional career. As for the religious training, the Sunday school was they thought quite sufficient. It remained now to bring home to the Catholics of Boston the advantages and necessity of higher Catholic education. Father Fulton saw the Herculean task before him. He dared pick up the gauntlet thrown down in defiance, so to speak. It was intellect pitted against intellect. The struggle was to be sharp and continuous. Tension was high; every one was on his metal. Teaching in Boston was clearly not teaching elsewhere. The glorification of the public schools, their standing in the community, the cold self-sufficiency of the New Englander called forth the best efforts at all times and in all places. It was but too evident that Catholic Boston believed it had nothing to learn in the matter of education. In proof of this, we instance the following:-

About this period a lecture was given in the Boston theatre by a Mr Maguire from Dublin, on “Catholic Education”, at which Father Fulton had been a delighted auditor. Alluding to this topic shortly afterwards, he took occasion to commend the lecture and the lecturer, when a lady present exclaimed - “Why, Father Fulton, I am amazed to hear you talk so; the idea of a foreigner telling us how to educate our children!”

.”Yes”, replied Father Fulton, “the poor man made a mtstake, I fear; he thought, of course, he was talking to Catholics; had he consulted me I would have· suggested a more practical topic”. “What would that be?” asked the lady. “Well, Buddhism, for example, or the Platonic idea of happiness, or some of the more refined cults among the pagans, such as the custom obtaining among the Hindoos - and would it obtained now! - of the surviving half burying herself in the same tomb with the other half that has ceased to survive”.

Naturally enough, the college for some time lived in the shadow of the Church. Rome could not be built in a day. Father Fulton believed in hastening slowly, modifying, introducing and extending, as exigencies demanded. From the start he aimed at a model college, model in its material, as well as in its intellectual equipments. “No school can flourish”, he often said, “without generous expenditure. Keep a boy in the mud, and he will stay there. Surround him with respectability, and he will begin to respect himself after a time. The school furniture should ever be in keeping with the dignity of one's position”.

What he said he did. The desks in Boston College, both for teachers and scholars, are all that can be desired. The conspicuous absence of etchings, wood-cuts and other memorials of puerile genius, to this day in and around the class rooms are proof enough that Father Fulton's theory was the correct one, and that the iconoclastic propensity of youth can be educated to a sense of the eternal fitness of things. “Bear in mind”, he used to say to the teachers, “that these lads of ours look to us for everything. What grand men then, we ought to be! Remember we are not hired pedagogues; we are teachers of the Society. Boys are like monkeys, they imitate what they see. God forfend they should ever see in their teachers, aught that would tarnish their ideals of the true Jesuit”.

Thus the years went by, Catholic Boston was beginning to listen to and respect the claims of Catholic education. The old time prejudice was waning slowly but surely: Step by step the college was making its way into public favor. Some were of opinion that the government was too conservative; but Father Fulton did not believe in mushroom growth. He never for a moment lowered his colors, never for a moment lost sight of the noble ideal he had put before his mind in the beginning. “If we cannot have quantity, at least let us try to have quality”, he said. “We still re member”, writes one of his old boys, “how unsparingly he execrated the golden mean, so extolled by the Roman poet. ‘I would have you aim, young gentlemen’, was his daily strain, ‘at the highest in everything, in gentlemanly deportment, in splendid scholarship. I love the young man, whose banner bore that strange device Excelsior. Oh, that it be said of each and every one of you, that though the world should fall, you will never descend one jot or tittle from the highest perfection attainable. Truth, duty, consummate scholarship, by these shall all men know you are students of Boston College’.” He could not abide one who omitted a duty just because he didn't feel like it. But a fault committed through frailty was always sure to be for- given. He did not believe that people should be harder than God Almighty. “Boys”, he would often say, “if any of you do wrong, even were it the firing of this building, and the same nobly acknowledge his misdeed, he will render me powerless to punish. A boy that acts above board is always to be trusted”.

This constant appeal to high motives had its wholesome effect and witnesses contemporary with those days cheerfully testify to the spirit of conscientiousness that animated the vast majority of the students.

Father Fulton considered the moral and religious training above everything else. Despite his multiplicity of duties, and the almost hourly demands on his time, he never omitted the weekly catechism, and the annual retreat, both of which he conducted himself. This latter duty, however, he entrusted to others when thecollege had been sufficiently established, to go on almost by its own momentum. The boys never tired of listening to him. He could say the same thing in twenty different ways. His resources seemed inexhaustible. His influence was supreme, his authority absolute, his simple “ipse dixit” settled doubts, or created opinions. An author recommended or condemned by him was thereby enshrined or excluded forever by the students from the temple of fame. As a natural consequence he was everywhere quoted. His name became a very household word in the family circle. The college being thus advertised by the best of all advertisers, the students, the scholarly president soon began to be recognized among the prominent educators of Massachusetts. Words of praise began to come in from press, clergy and people. A prominent lawyer and graduate of Holy Cross College declared, in a public lecture, that the college of the Jesuit Fathers was a great boon to the city of Boston. Next followed the unqualified approval of the Archbishop who publicly and privately recommended the school to the priests and laity.

About this time, in the year 1869, the question of a graduating class was mooted. Father Fulton would not hear of it, giving as his reason that the body was too weak yet to sustain a head. There could be no thought of such a thtng until all the lower classes were strong and numerous enough to secure an unbroken succession. Eight more years rolled by before the college attained her majority. That was a veritable red-letter day, a day of family rejoicing and legitimate pride for the faculty and students of Boston College. Expectancy had been crowned with a crown that was destined to grow brighter and more glorious in the flight of time. Father Fulton's foresight and conservative policy have long since approved themselves; for since that memorable year of 1877 the graduates of the college have added, and are still adding, fresh laurels to the honored brow of their alma mater, in the cause of religion and letters; and without hesitancy it may be said that, with fewer numbers and a plentiful lack of financial patronage, they have reflected more credit on themselves and the positions they occupy, than the graduates of famous non-Catholic institutions, with greater nnmbers, bounteous patronage, handsome bequests, splendid architecture, and the social prestige of the land at their command.

Whilst Father Fulton was pre-eminently adapted for scholastic work, he was none the less efficient in matters spiritual. He was known in the church, even more perhaps than in the college. The Rev William O'Connell, lately appointed Rector of the American College in Rome, in his eulogy of him said that, whilst there are those who excel in one branch, it is rare that we find one who excels in many. Father Fulton was among the latter. His specialties were numerous. It was not surprising then that his influence in Boston was far reaching and varied. No literary gathering of any prominence was thought complete that was not graced by his presence. He believed that the college to succeed must have social and literary prestige, and should be the Mecca of the representative Catholics of the city. He certainly tried hard to make it so. He would tolerate no literary or dramatic performance that was not refined and elevating; and established the law, which is still in force, that the Commencement play should always he a tragedy from Shakspeare. His society was courted by the social and literary celebrfties of the day. Many an evening found him at table with the “Autocrat”, who pronounced him one of the brightest of men. Professors Agassiz and Sophocles, both of Harvard, were among his warmest friends He was invited to lecture before the University students in the school of Ethics, and examine them; he was nominated for the Public School Board and would have been elected, had he not fled the city until the crisis was over.

Father Fulton kept in touch with all the leading ques- tions of the day, and was often consulted by Catholics and non-Catholics on important dogmatical and social issues. The scholarly ex-Governor Rice, both during and after his administration was among his frequent visitors, and the writer has more than once seen him in Father Fulton's room discussing the grave problems of the hour.

One, the mention of whose name, we must beg the reader to forgive, the infamously famous Justin D Fulton, came to the college one day and asked to see the Rev President. The Rev President came. “Well, sir” said Father Fulton, “as you have not sent me your card, I must ask you who you are”. “Mr. Fulton”, replied Justin. “Mr. Fulton”, exclaimed his reverence, “there be many who shelter their rascality behind that title. May I ask you what is your front name?” “Oh, I am Justin D Fulton, sir”, was the reply. “Of Music Hall fame, I ween?” rejoined Father Fulton. '”Well, yes, Sir”, answered Justin, rather hesitatingly. “Dear me”, exclaimed Father Fulton: “brother, where are you?” The good brother who was nearby answered promptly, “here I am, Father”. “Bring me the holy water as fast as you can”, he said. Justin looked dazed. The thought of some dark Jesuit deed dawned upon his mind. As he was about to rise, he apologized for his disturbance, when Father Fulton very courteously bade him be seated and asked him if there was anything he could do for him.

“Oh, nothing”, replied Justin, “but both of us having the same name, I thought possibly we might be relatives. I have heard much about you, Father Fulton”, he continued. “I have heard much about you, too”, was the reply, “more really than I cared to hear, and that not of a very complimentary character. Whether you are a relative of mine or not, I can't say. But if I suspected you were, I should be the very first man in Boston to conceal the fact. Good morning, sir”.

A few days afterwards, the bill-boards throughout the city were littered with placards announcing a lecture by Fulton vs. Fulton. The Rev lecturer took occasion to lash the Society
in general, and Boston College in particular, as the inarnation of all that was vile and unprincipled, and stated, moreover, if the people of Boston knew the deeds of iniquity perpetrated within the college walls under the mask of education and virtue, the building had long since been razed to the ground.

Some one calling Father Fulton's attention to these assertions strongly urged him to bring a lawsuit against the Rev Doctor for libel. “Don't you think one fool is enough?” Was the reply. “Besides, those who swallow down such stuff, would not swallow down anything else even though convmced ten times over”.

Father Fulton was always a very busy man; yet despite his numerous social and scholastic employments, he somehow found time to interrupt the solid day to peruse four and five volumes a week. Being asked how he found leisure for so much reading, he replied “Well, you don't suppose I read every line in the book, do you? If the book be one of ficion, I skip the sunsets, small parlor-talk, analyze the leading characters,and following the stage direaions of my friend, Horace, Qui nil molitur inepte -rush on to the denouement. By practice, you know, one learns the art of gutting the page. When I read for mere information, I imitate Balmes, who seleaed the chapters he did not know, and passed over the rest”. Father Fulton had the enviable capacity of knowing when and how to skip without becoming superficial. He could take in a whole page at a glance, assimilating, diversifying, and applying when the occasion offered. He always had something new to say, or at least a new way of saying it. Some one has well styled this method of reading creative, which does not make a mere lumber room out of the mind; but which digests, animates with one's own individuality, and makes what is read part and parcel of the reader himself. Yet none knew better than he that while some books are to be tasted, there are others to be chewed, swallowed and digested.

Father Fulton worked rapidly and worked all the time; he would have a thing done when an ordinary person would be getting ready to do it. What cost others many hours of thought and consultation was to him a matter of a few moments. Thus for instance his sermons, which were always thoughtful, cost him simply the time it took to read over the gospel, choose his subject, and find the middle term of his thesis. The rest of the plan, its divisions and subdivisions, with language to suit, came at his bidding in the pulpit. Whether in the pulpit or on the platform, he had in an eminent degree the art of thinking on his feet. And even when called upon suddenly to on a topic about which he knew little or nothing, he could entertain an audience pleasantly and profitably for an hour by telling them all he did not know about it. “Many”, he used to say, “have the art of saying nothing; but few the art of saying nothing well”. Father Fulton's capacity and love for work was born with him. Work was his life. Inaction his death. Endowed with an Herculean constitution, nature gave him no warning to stop. The ills that human flesh is heir to seemed to pass him by. “When one begins to think he has a stomach, he is sure to be sick”, he used to say. “For my part, I don't much mind, so long as I can worry it down. The vires digestivae, according to St Thomas, do not come under the immediate cognizance of the will, you know. “Yet though unacquainted with sickness himself he was most kind to the suffering members of his community. He visited them regularly, and though not cut out by nature for a nurse, saw to it that the sick were puctaually supplied with whatever they needed. We may well imagine then, what a shock it was to one of his temperament to discover that he was the victim of disease, and must now retire from the arena of action into the solitude of rest. That rest was for him one of his heaviest crosses; he chafed under It, from the very fact that he never could realize that in the charitable judgment of his superiors, and the advice of his physicians, work was simply out of the question. He never took rest when he was at all able to work. In bilious spells to which he was subject, his greatest and only distraction was a ride in an open street car through the suburbs, or a whiff of the ocean between Boston and Nantasket beach.

Of course, he never could have accomplished so much had he not been a scrupulous economist of his time. In this he was a model. His calls to the parlor were as short as they were numerous and as a rule were conducted on strictly business principles. The devout sex he despatched with brevity, when courtesy allowed it. In fact one would hardly dare to call on him who had not business of importance to transact. A certain lady wishing him to call on her for some not very important matter, wrote him a note saying that she would be at home at four o'clock. She received the laconic reply: Dear Madam, so will I.

Father Fulton took a great delight in the company of young men. Young men were his hobby. Well remembered still are those Noctes Ambrosianae spent in the Association rooms of Boston College, where he discoursed wisely and wittily to the charmed circle around him, throughout the whole gamut of things knowable and unknown. Many a mind and many a heart owe their high principles of moral conduct to those hours of Attic refinement. No one ever left his presence without resolving to be a better man.

As in the Association, so in the college, he was the heart and soul of everything. His animating spirit was everywhere felt. At no time was this zeal for the college shown to more advantage, than when the opening of Woodstock necessitated the recall of so manv of our scholastics. Father Fulton's presence was well nigh ubiquitous. Every class seemed to be taught by him. The same programme c?ntt.nued to be followed out; the usual weekly report was distributed by his own hand to each pupil, with a lively running commentary which was not always to be sure, complimentary to the recipient. Yet when a boy did well, his laudation was as liberal as his censure was keen. Among the early students of the college there was one who for some time had been getting his weekly prescription without any apparent amendment. In fact, the strange story still goes the rounds, that the Rev President promised the mother of the youthful delinquent, to sing vespers for his conversion. A change however for the better came at last. His class standing had climbed into the region of respectability. The prescription was changed; censure yielded to praise, with an ominous, “But, my boy, will you persevere?” The boy has persevered and is now a father of this Province, beloved and respcted by all his brethren.

While there was any hope of reform, Father Fulton advocated toleration, “A quality”, he used to say, “not unfrequently desiderated in our younger teachers, who expect perfection at the very start. To be successful, one must appreciate boy nature and become a boy, so to speak, without being one; repuerasccre quin sit puer”. Whilst he would almost hope against hope for the student that made some effort, he would not tolerate one that made no effort at all. In this latter class was a youth who seemed utterly impervious to all counsel and threat. Monday came around as usual. Father Fulton looked at the weekly statement, then looked at the boy. “John”, said he, “what does your brother do for a living”? “He walks, Father”, was the reply. “Does he? well, walk in his footsteps”, said Father Fulton; and John walked out of the college.

The weekly catechetical instruction was always looked forward to as a treat. Many a student of theology has since declared that Fatlier Fulton had so stored his mind with dogmatic erudition, that his course in the seminary did little more than fill up the cracks of the edifice he had built up in his college career. It was during these familiar instructions that Father Fulton revealed himself as a friend to a friend, as a father among his children. It is indeed a great loss that he had not a Boswell among his listeners, who could easily have found matter for a good sized spicy Fultoniana volume, and even then the half would not have been told.

Wherever he went he was sure to say something either to draw a moral or to point a tale. He indulged in repartee not to down a foe, not to curry favor, not to pay court to superiority, still less to offend, but simply because nature had endowed him with a keen sense of the ludicrous, a fine perception of the incongruities of things, which on occasions asserted itself, do what he would to conceal it.

He never said “yes” when he meant “no”; never laughed or smiled at a joke, no matter who perpetrated it, unless he saw something to laugh or to smile at. On one occasion a gentleman in authority said to him by way of consolation,- “Why, I shouldn't mind that if I were you”. “No”, replied Father Fulton, with a touch of grim humor, “neither would I, if it had happened to you”. Father Fulton was proud of his Faith, and had no patience with those who thought the Church ought to be grateful for being tolerated in this country. A Protestant gentleman of distinction calling on him one day, said with an air of condescension, “Father Fulton I begin to like you Catholics very much”. “Indeed”, exclaimed Father Fulton, “permit me to thank you, sir, in the name of the universal Church”. “Ah”, says the Protestant, “but there is one thing that shocks me”. “Pray what is that?” asked Father Fulton. “It is”, solemnly replied the Puritan, “that your little boys play marbles on the Sabbath”. “The rascals!” rejoined his Reverence with a roguish twinkle in his eye; “but, my dear sir”, he continued, “I am pained to say that not only you but your wife and children, do something which shocks me still more”. “What is that, pray?” quoth the gentleman, looking rather alarmed. “It is that you all eat meat on Friday”, was the reply. “Oh, yes”, rejoined the Protestant, “but of course that is not a sin with us, you know”. “Neither is it reputed a sin”, replied Father Fulton, “in our poor little urchins to roll marbles on Sunday. If you want us to conform to your ideas, why not begin by conforming to ours?”

As a confessor, Father Fulton invariably gave the preference to young men, not that he despised the devout sex, but as he was wont to say, that class is generally well cared for, and besides demands less supervision. “All you need do for a woman”, he remarked on another occasion, “is to put her on the train for Heaven and she'll stay aboard; but you have to watch out for the men at all the way stations”.

He never sought friends for his own sake. His friends were the friends of the church or the college, and when they ceased to patronize one or the other, they were quickly dropped from his list. Whilst he strongly objectd to mixing up friendship with finance, he did not hesitate to let his needs be known, when his friends could afford to help him. He was grateful and sensitive to a degree; and believed that there was some truth in the adage that “Gratitude is a keen sense of favors to come”. Where his duty as a priest demanded his presence, he made no distinaion between Jew and Gentile,- “Tros tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine habentur”. But when for some good reason a social call was accepted, then he seleaed those only whose influence was refined and elevating.

There were few priests better known or more highly respected in the diocese than Father Fulton. He was a prominent figure in the Conferences, where his skill as a casuist was universally recognized.

He had a pleasant but effective way of telling people their faults. Meeting in the street car a man somewhat intoxicated, his Reverence turned away from him with an air of disgust. The man exclaimed, “Why Father Fulton, you know me”. “I did”, was the reply, “when you were not so disguised. How can you expect me to know you, when you don't know yourself?”

Passing the Boston Cathedral, a well dressed gentleman who sat next him in the car, ventured the remark that he thought it strange charity for Catholics to lavish on magnificent churches large sums of money which should be given to the poor. “I think I have heard that remark before”, said Father Fulton. “From whom?” asked the gentleman. “From one named Judas Iscariot. Good morning, sir”, and he left the man to his reflections, whilst he got out of the car that was just then passing the street leading to the college.

The newsboys were frequently a source of amusement to him, though on more than one occasion those irreverent creatures gave him more than he bargained for. A smart looking lad offered his Reverence one day a copy of Harper's Illustrated Weekly. “'Well, sonny, what do you want?” asked Father Fulton. “Buy the paper sir”, was the reply. “Ah yes, but how do you know I can read?” “Well”, retorted the youngster, “probably you can't, but I thought you might like to look over the pictures”. Father Fulton bought the paper, called the urchin to his side and said, “See here, Johnnie, if you want to go to school, come to Boston College and I will gladly educate you for nothing”.

As a rule, Father Fulton did not care to engage in conversation while travelling, and whenever he went abroad he generally carried with him a pocket edition of some classical author. Riding along the picturesque Hudson on his way to Albany, a young man, decked out á la mode, with goggles and cane to match, had turned himself into an interrogation point for the particular amusement of Father Fulton. Thinking to discourage him, his Reverence adopted the policy of replying, “I don't know” to every question that was put him. After numberless vain efforts to elicit some spark of information, the interrogation point asked with an air of triumph, “Do you know Adam, sir?” “Adam”, replied Father Fulton, with a look of indescribable fatigue, “what Adam?” “Why, Adam, of course”, rejoined the interlocutor rather surprised. “Adam who?” asked Father Fulton. The conversation suddenly came to a full stop, while the gentleman fell to reading his paper the rest of the journey. On another occasion when he got off at Poughkeepsie, a stylish lad who had watched him closely during the journey, and was anxious to introduce himself, made bold to ask him if he were going as far as Albany. “Are you?” inquired Father “Yes, sir”, he answered. “Well, go ahead then”, he replied. The story ends here; but doubtless his Reverence called to mind Horace's encounter with the bore, “Sic me servavit Apollo”.

Wherever he went, his striking personality was sure to attract attention, and it were an endless task indeed, to weave into detail the strange happenings, the incidents numerous as they were humorous that characterized his encounters with men. We have instanced but a few out of the many that came to mind, for without some mention made of them, his biography would be that of a class, not of an individual such as Father Fulton certainly was.

As a superior in the Society, Father Fulton had often occasion to address Ours, and in his exhortations he strongly insisted on two things - supernatural motives, and love for the Spciety. This latter subject was a favorite theme with him - a marked feature of his spiritual life from the days of his novitiate. “To one who loves the Society”, he often said, “everything is easy. The less we love the less we will accomplish. He who loves much is the ideal Jesuit. One St Francis Xavier was enough for a whole nation because he loved much. Without this love we become one of your listless, negative, milk-and-water, laissez faire sort of characters. We cannot be too careful not to confound weakness with gentleness, indifference with patience, lack of energy with equanimity. Our one test is sacrifice, ‘agere contra”. If you love me take up my cross”. Being a man of ideals, the ideal Jesuit was the leading thought in his every instruction. He had the very greatest admiration for the early companions of our holy Founder, and his discourses on that topic, couched in his own classic phrase, very often transcended the beautiful.

As superior, Father Fulton's first and tenderest care was the welfare of his own brethren. However busily engaged, he was always accessible, always greeted one with his pleasant, “Good morning”. He exercised the most fatherly supervision over the scholastics in their intellectual, no less than in their spiritual training, exacting an account at stated intervals of what they read, and how they read, and in general what they were doing in the way of self-culture. In the early days of Boston College, he hired a trained elocutionist for the more thorough formation of his teachers, and was a very Aristarchus in pronunciation and emphasis, and always reserved to himself the duty of corrector at table, to a degree that made one rather uncomfortable at times. A blunder in Latin prosody was almost a reserved case. As an aid to elocution, he counselled and required the teachers to exact with rigor the proper reading of the Greek or Latin text under translation; “a practice”, he said, “much neglected in our schools”. He contended that he could generally tell from reading of a passage, how much he knew about it.

Father Fulton always arose at the first sound of the bell even when business had kept him up late, the night before. He was ever among the first at the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, and continually insisted in his exhortations on the morning visit to our Lord. And even when the hand of sickness was heavy upon him, he could always be seen at prayer with the rest of the community. Though he was a man of affairs, he was seldom absent from meals, or the common recreation. Nay, he gave strict orders not to be called at that time, save in cases of grave importance.

As prefect of studies, he permitted nothing to interfere with his regular and frequent visits to the classes, and the meetings of the teachers. Not unfrequently he was present at our little festive board, where he entertained, enlivened, and cheered on each one in his work. His instructions to teachers may be thus summed up: prayer, good example, careful preparation, study of character, patience, good temper, punishments seldom. He considered that frequent punishment showed great weakness on the part of the teacher.

Father Fulton's long career as President of Boston College was now drawing to a close, and after a glorious decade of years as rector, he was transferred to the pastorship of St. Lawrence's Church in New York, where he left substantial souvenirs of his administration, in the shape of a handsome parochial residence, and a sodality of married men that still bless and honor his name.

We still remember the parting scene in Boston when priests, people and a goodly number of representative citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic, gathered together in the college hall to bid God-speed to their distinguished guest. Many addresses were made that were as sincere as they were complimentary. The Mayor of the city declared that in the departure of Father Fulton, he felt that Boston had been robbed of half its sunlight. It was on that occasion .that the learned John Boyle O'Reilly read the poem of his life,”The Empty Niche”, concluding with the true and beautiful sentiment:-

We who love and lose, will, like the king,
Still keep the alcove empty in the hall ;
And hope firm-hearted that some day will bring
Our absent one to fill his pedestal.

Little did the Rev Father then think that in a few years he would be called to preach over the remains of one at that time in the full vigor of his noble manhood.

Shortly before leaving Boston, Father Fulton started to make the round of the classes with Father Jeremiah O'Connor the incoming rector, for the twofold purpose of bidding adieu
to the students and of introducing his successor. He did not go very far however. The strain was too much for him. After a few pleasant remarks to the philosophers, his eyes filled up, and finding himself unable to proceed further, he retreated with hasty steps to his room. Some one asked htm what was the matter. “Everything is the matter”, he answered. “These rascally boys never will know how much I think of them. Why, I am just after making a great baby of myself”.

After a year spent at St Lawrence's, he was appointed rector of Gonzaga College, Washington, DC, but as he remained in Washington but one year, the people had just begun to know him, when he was elevated to a still more responsible position. Few inqeed knew Washington better than he, but time and the hand of death had removed so many of the old landmarks that he used to say, he felt like Marius amid the ruins of Carthage. There was one however who still lived and never changed, and that one was his venerable mother in the convent at Georgetown. It was in one of his visits to her that his good mother, observing the obsoleteness of his dress, ventured to say to him, “Robert, suppose someone were to find fault with your personal apparel what answer would you make to him?” “I should distinguish the proposition, madam”, he good-naturedly replied. “If the fault-finder intended to purchase me a new one, I should say, thank you; if not, I should recommend to him the counsel of St Paul, ‘Attende tibi et doarince’.”

During his administration as Provincial he was particularly solicitous for the young men of the Society, whilst his prudence and foresight effected many useful legislative measures for the well-being and permanent stability of the Province. As Provincial he combined the “fortiter in re” with the “suaviter in modo”. He strictly observed the rule himself, and enforced its strict observance upon others; religious observance was the constant theme of his exhortations, which he never failed to conclude by a strong appeal to supernatural motives, and renewed effort to fashion our condcta according to the pattern presented to us in the lives of our saints, and of those ideal Jesuits who formed the noble band of the Primeval Society.

During his term of office he went ex officio to the general congregation which eleaed Very Rev Father Anderledy. In the December of 1886, he was appointed by Very Rev Father General Visitor to the Irish Province; and for his labors in this important charge he received from his Paternity warm personal letters of thanks and congratulation.

He returned to Boston College once again in capacity of rector, but alas he was no longer the Father Fulton of yore. Years were beginning to tell on his powerful physique. Still this second but brief sojourn was distinguished by an energy and activity that would have done credit to many a younger man. He enlarged the college, created spacious and commodious apartments for the “Young Men's Association”, founded as far back as '75, and ever among his tenderest cares. The ceremony of inauguration was presided over by Father Fulton himself. Besides his own and other addresses, words of praise were heard from the lips of his Grace, the Archbishop of Boston, and the Hon P A Collins, a warm friend and admirer of Father Fulton. This was Father Fulton's last public appearance in the city of his love. Among other good things, he said, “I feel somewhat like Moses, for we have passed the Red Sea, and now I stand upon the mount looking down into the promised land. I see the grapes and the pomegranates, the shining rivers, and the land flowing with milk and honey”.

About this time failing health obliged him to seek relief from his onerous duties. By the decision of his physician he went to the renowned Hot Springs of Arkansas, but this and various other experiments failed to effect the desired cure. Superiors did everything that kindness and charity could suggest; but all was in vain. Father Fulton was clearly a broken down man. It remained but to ease his painful pathway to the grave. He spent some time in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and other houses of the Province, and was finally assigned to the chair of English Literature in the post-

Gartlan, Ignatius, 1848-1926, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1349 · Person · 08 December 1848-12 December 1926

Born: 08 December 1848, Moynalty, County Monaghan
Entered: 07 September 1867, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1883
Final Vows: 02 February 1887
Died: 12 December 1926, Campion House, Thornbury Road, Osterley, Isleworth, Middlesex, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Tertianship Instructor 1911-1917; 1919-1921 at Tullabeg (HIB)

1867-1869: Manresa, Roehampton London, England (ANG), Novitiate
1869-1870: Manresa, Roehampton London, England, Rhetoric
1870-1873: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashure, England, Philosophy
1873-1880: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashure, England, Regency
1880-1884: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Flintshire, Wales, tehology
1884-1885: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool., Lancashire, England, Teaching
1885-1886: Manresa, Roehampton London, England, Tertianship
1886-1891: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashure, England, Teaching
1891-1899: St Wilfrid’s Church, Chapel Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, Curate
1894-1899: At St Ignatius Residence, Minister and Curate
1899-1904: St Aloysius College SJ, Dalhousie Street, Garnet Hill, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Rector from 08/01/1899, Curate
1904-1911: Zambesi Mission, Bulawayo, Souithern Rhodesia, Mission Superior from 04/10/1904 to 06/06/1911
1911-1917: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offalay (HIB), Tertian Instructor
1917-1919: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashure, England, Spiritual Father, Teaching
1919-1921: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offalay (HIB), Tertian Instructor
1921-1926: Campion House, Osterley, Isleworth, Middlesex, London, England, Spiritual Exercises
1926: Kennington, London, England, Caring for Health

◆ Irish Province News 2nd Year No 2 1927

Obituary

Fr Ignatius Gartlan - There was genuine sorrow in the Irish Province when news reached us that Fr, Gartlan was dead. During his long stay in Tullabeg he had endeared himself to many of us by his kindly nature, lovable disposition, and utter devotion to duty. Not only by the Community was he known and esteemed, but the pool' people living round the College feel in his death the loss of a kind friend. Fr. Gartlan was born in 1848. He entered the Society in 1867, and took his last vows in 1887. He was Rector of Glasgow, 1899-1904, Prefect Apostolic and Superior of the Zambesi Mission, 1904-1911, and spent the next six years as Tertian Master in Tullabeg. He was again Tertian Master, 1919-1921, and a third time, but only for a few months, 1922-1923. He spent the last five years of his life at Osterley as Spiritual Father to sixty young priests, giving Retreats, and keeping the accounts. The present Superior of Osterley writes that he was “a tower of strength to the house, always calm, cheerful, level headed, a young man in mind, though feeble in body. I once asked him if there was anything he could suggest to improve the working of the house, He answered : “No, we have an excellent balance - there is just enough liberty to train character, and just enough restraint. In his private life he set an example of what a Jesuit should be, and by doing so several were drawn to the Society. Under his direction, Osterley has sent thirty into the English Province, and twenty into other Provinces. Many of these remarked : Fr. Gartlan has been my model. I can think of nothing better. In the house he was a ray of sunshine, patience, and self-sacrifice.” He died on Sunday, December 12th

◆ Irish Province News 2nd Year No 4 1927
Obituary :

Fr Ignatius Gartlan continued
Fr, Gartlan was Spiritual Director of the Young Priests at Osterley, and their beadle writes : “I always found his advice of such practical value and encouragement that it can scarcely be expressed in terms of mere human appreciation, how great the difficulty Fr Gartlan always had an exquisitely sound answer. His prolonged experience in the Mission field was one of the reasons to which we attributed his foresight, but, when I had known him for a few years, I reached what must be 'the real conclusion - He was a Saint. ... The soul that was troubled found an understanding friend in a. priest who was Christ-like in his every detail. If he had a bête noir it was insincerity, the only vice, he used to say, towards which Our Lord Himself was quite ruthless. He loved the Society, and was keenly interested in its work, saw good everywhere, but was not blind to faults, had an immense faith in its training, if only, as he used to say, it were given a fair chance. He left nothing undone which might help to enter more generously into its spirit, the interior law of charity, without which all its exterior works were vain. As a confessor he was practical to the verge of incurring the wrath of the pedant whose outlook on life is bounded by books. He used to remind us that the priest was not discussing a case of moral theology with the penitent, that the perfectly correct solution might not be the one to be unhesitatingly given : that the confessor was more than a legal adviser. He should be the Father and teacher of his penitent, whose difficulties he should see in the concrete and not merely in the dry light of moral science.

Outside the confessional his advice was equally sound. To those who honestly objected to make the colloquies at the end of the meditations on the Kingdom and Two Standards, saying : ‘I do at want contempt and had treatment, and I won't pretend I do,’ he used to say. ‘Let us not exaggerate. What does this colloquy mean in actual practice? Cheerful content, sterling charity, obedience under difficult conditions. If we refuse to make it, we refuse the perfection proper to religious life. If we had not something of this spirit in us, we should never have entered religious life at all. Without prayer and the supernatural outlook, religious life is mere club life with most of the conveniences left out’. And, with enviable simplicity : ‘I am not a man of prayer, but I try to be. So I spend half an hour in the chapel every evening after supper, and I find it very hard’”.

◆ https://ordo.jesuitssouthern.africa/obit/12-12-1926%20%E2%80%93%20Ignatius%20Gartlan.pdf

12 December
Fr IGNATIUS GARTLAN 8 December 1848 – 12 December 1926

Ignatius Gartlan is another example of a point often made by Eddie Murphy: the English Province used to send many of its best men to the missions. Born in Monalty, Ireland, he was educated at Mount St Mary’s and joined the Society in 1867. He taught for so many years during regency at Stonyhurst that he saw the same pupils through the school from Elements to Poetry. ‘Fr Garts’, as they called him, had a way of getting the best out of his students.

After ordination in 1883, he did a variety of jobs and in 1891was the acknowledged leader, without an official position, of the Jesuits working in the Preston area. His ‘calm sweetness and spiritual insight’ was acknowledged widely. He became rector of St Aloysius Glasgow from 1899 to 1904 when he was suddenly whisked off to Africa as the superior of the Salisbury Mission. He knew he had no experience of Africa and when unsure about an issue, would reply, ‘I leave it to your judgement.’ He was considered ‘a charming man’ by all. But he had a way of putting heart into a mission and cheering up the priests and brothers. The only photo of him, centre back, this writer can find gives a hint of this.

He held the post for seven years during which Chikuni, Driefontein and Gokomere were established and, when the Marianhills developed their mission at Monte Cassino, he encouraged them to reassume responsibility for Triashill and St Benedict’s, places they had abandoned during the Chimurenga of 1896.

In 1911 Ignatius Gartland returned to the UK and was appointed Tertian Instructor based at Tullabeg (Ireland). His ‘simple common sense’ was highly appreciated by his tertians. ‘Are we men of prayer?’ uttered by him was not a pious platitude. ‘Without prayer and the supernatural outlook,’ he would say, ‘religious life is a mere club without most of the conveniences.’

His last task was to assist Fr Lester in the foundation of Osterley, the centre for late vocations. In 1921 he had serious attack of congestion of the lungs and he developed other maladies in one of his legs. He died in a nursing home in London run by a group of sisters he helped to found.

Graham, John, 1855-1927, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1384 · Person · 16 February 1855-10 April 1927

Fallon, John, 1875-1937, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/144 · Person · 18 August 1875-17 September 1937

Born: 18 August 1875, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 11 November 1893, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 01 August 1909, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1911, Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick
Died: 17 September 1937, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

Part of the St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin community at the time of death

Educated at Belvedere College SJ

1893-1895: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate
1895-1897: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Rhetoric
1897-1899: Maison Saint-Augustin, rue des Augustins, Enghien, Belgium (CAMP), Philosophy
1899-1900: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1900-1902: St Aloysius College SJ, Bourke Street, Sydney NSW, Australia, Regency
1902-1903: Loyola, Greenwich Road, Greenwich, Sydney NSW, Australia - working while St Aloysois College was moving
1903-1904: St Ignatius College SJ, Riverview, Cove Lane, Sydney NSW, Australiaa, Regency
1904-1906: Xavier College SJ, Barkers Road, Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Regency
1906-1909: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1909-1910: Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium (BELG), Tertianship
1910-1914: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Teaching
1914-1919: Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Teaching
1919-1921: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Missioner
1921-1922: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, Teaching
1922-1925: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Teaching
1925-1927: Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Cardigan Road, Leeds, Yorkshire, England (ANG), Curate
1927-1930: St Winefride's Roman Catholic Church, Well Street, Holywell, Flintshire, Wales (ANG), Curate
1930-1932: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Spiritual Exercises
1933-1937: St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin, Curate and Director of St francis Xavier school, Dorset St.; Penny Dinners from 1935

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
John Fallon entered the Society in November 1893. In the later part of 1899 he was sent to Australia where he taught at St Aloysius' College, 1900-02. In 1903 he was involved in a reorganisation of the Jesuit scholastics in Australia and was moved to Riverview. From there he went to Xavier, 1904-06, where he taught and assisted with the boarders.

◆ Irish Province News 13th Year No 1 1938

Father John Fallon
1875 Born, 18th August, in Dublin, Educated at Belvedere
1893 Tullabeg, Novice, Entd. 11th Nov
1895 Tullabeg, Rhetoric
I897 Enghien, Philosophy
1899 Sydney (Australia), St. Aloysius, Bourke St., Doc., etc
1902 Sydney, House of Exercises. Ad. disp. P, Superioris, with 10 others
1903 Sydney, Riverview, Doc., care of boats
1904 Melbourne, Kew, Doc., etc
I906 Milltown, Theol. , Ordained, 1909
1909 Tronchiennes, Tertian
1910 Mungret, Doe., etc
1914 Crescent, Doc. Open., etc
1919 Rathfarnharn, Miss. Excurr, Conf. N.N
1921 Galway, Doc. Oper. Exam. and. N.N
1922 Mungret, Doc. an, 20 Mag. , Conf. NN. et alum
1925 England-Leeds, Liverpool, Prescot, Oper
I927 N. Wales, Holywell, Oper
1930 Milltown, Trod. exerc. spir
1931 Milltowll, Trad. exerc. spir., Adj. dir. dom. exerc
1932 Gardiner St., Oper., Dir. School, S. F. Xavier
1935 Gardiner St., Oper., Dir. School, S. F. Xavier, Penny dinners
1937 Died at St. Vincent's, Dublin, Friday, I7th Sept.-R.I.P

As may be gathered from the above, Father Fallon's 44 years in the Society is an excellent example of the life of a Jesuit “Operarius”. There was nothing outstanding in it, nothing remarkable, Unless indeed the performance of all his duties faithfully and well, over such a long period is remarkable enough and Father Fallon did that.

He was naturally very reserved, and that fact had to be taken into account when dealing with him. He was straightforward and honest. In religious life he was very exact, very careful in dealing with others, never saying anything against charity, was always in the right place and time for every duty. To the Confessional he was most attentive, indeed it is quite certain that his attention was such that it hastened his death.

During his College career he had to deal chietiy with the lower classes. When he went to Gardiner Street he got charge of the choir, but the object of the appointment was to preserve order for Father Fallon was not a musician, the technical part was done by the Organist, He took a more active part in dealing with the Catechism class held in Gardiner Street every Sunday after last Mass. Besides appointing a number of excellent young men and girls to teach the classes, he gave an instruction every Sunday when their work was done.

He was also quite at home in dealing with St. Francis Xavier's National School, and gave the children frequent instructions. Finally, he effected many first-rate and far-reaching changes when managing the Penny Dinners.

In a word, Father Fallon's life was spent in dealing with the less attractive works of the Society. But he did these works well and is now, please God, reaping his reward.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1937

Obituary

Father John Fallon SJ

Less well known to Belvederians was a relative of the doctor’s, who was also Belvedere boy. Father John Fallon SJ, was born in 1875, and was eucated entirely at Belvedere till the year 1893, when he entered the Jesuit novicehip, but though he taught for many years in our southern colleges and laboured for still more on the mission staff, and since 1932 in Gardiner Street, strangely enough, he was never one of the Belvedere community, yet he retained a real affection for the school and a gratitude to its training, as the present writer can testify. His own exact and devoted life was a credit to his school. For some years before his death, as manager of the Gardiner Street Schools, he had an oppotunity to put at God's service his own talent for bringing young souls to God, and I leading children to piety and discipline by interest and affection.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1938

Obituary

Father John Fallon SJ

Father Fallon was born in Dublinin 1875, and was educated at Belvedere College. He entered the Society of Jesus in November, 1893. When he had completed his philosophical studies, he went to Australia and was appointed to the teaching staff of St Aloysius and St Ignatius, Sydney, and later on at Xavier, Melbourne. He returned to Ireland for his theological studies, and was ordained at Milltown Park in 1909. His priestly life was spent in teaching and in giving missions and retreats. During his period of residence in England he was attached to the church of the Society of Jesus in Leeds; and for three years was parish priest of Holywell, North Wales.

Father Failon was a member of the teaching staff in Mungret from 1910 to 1914; and in 1922 he returned to the College to take charge of the Study, a post which he filled for three years. Although Father Fallon was of a retiring disposition, the boys quickly came to know and appreciate his kindliness of heart. He would never tolerate any nonsense, but at the same time knew how to temper justice with mercy.

In 1932 Father Failon was attached to the Church of St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin. Early last year he contracted a serious malady, and after a short illness he died on September 17th, 1937. May he rest in peace.

LD

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Commnnity

Father John Fallon (1875-1937)

A native of Dublin and educated at Belvedere College, entered the Society in 1893. His regency was spent in the Jesuit College in Australia. He made his higher studies in Belgium and Milltown Park where he was ordained in 1909. Of his eleven years as master in the colleges, five were spent in the Crescent, 1914-1919. The remaining years of his life were spent as missioner, retreat-giver, or church-worker at Gardiner St, Dublin.

Henry, Charles, 1826-1869, Jesuit priest of the Anglia Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1443 · Person · 20 May 1826-11 August 1869

Jones, James, 1785-1809, Jesuit novice

IE IJA J/1485 · Person · 1785-30 September 1809

Flinn, Daniel Joseph, 1877-1943, Jesuit priest and chaplain

IE IJA J/151 · Person · 11 January 1877-24 May 1943

Born: 11 January 1877, Arklow, County Wicklow
Entered: 01 February 1894, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 01 August 1909, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1911, Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway
Died: 24 May 1943, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin

Part of the St Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street, Dublin community at the time of death

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

First World War chaplain

1894-1896: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate
1896-1897: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Rhetoric
1897-1900: Maison Saint Louis, St Hélier, Jersey, Channel Islands (FRA), Philosophy
1900-1905: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Regency
1905-1906: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Regency
1906-1909: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1909-1910: Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium (BELG), Tertianship
1910-1913: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, Missioner and Pioneers
1913-1917: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Missioner, Spiritual Exercises
1917-1918: Military Chaplain : VI Corps Rest Station North, BEF France
1918-1919: Military Chaplain : 88th Brigade, BEF France
1919-1922: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Missioner, Spiritual Exercises
1922-1943: St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin, Curate, Pioneers Director

◆ Irish Province News 18th Year No 3 1943

Obituary :

Father Joseph Flinn SJ (1877-1943)

Fr. Flinn died in the early hours of Monday, 24th May, at Rathfarnham Castle, where he had been convalescing after a serious heart attack.

Born at Arklow on 11th January, 1877, he was at school in Liverpool and at Mungret before going to Clongowes in 1891, where he remained until December, 1893. During his stay at Clongowes he seems to have been very popular with the other boys, had a place on the school teams, both rugby a»nd cricket, and during the last term held the position of Vice-Captain of the House. On the day before he left, the boys showed their appreciation of his robust character by according him a wonderful ovation in the refectory.

He entered the novitiate at Tullabeg on 1st February, 1894, and after taking his Vows studied rhetoric for two years. He did his philosophy at Jersey from 1898 to 1901, and in the latter year became Prefect at Clongowes, first of the Gallery (1901-2), then Third Line (1902-3), Lower Line (1903-4), Higher Line (1904-5). He spent 3 years at Mungret before beginning his theology at Milltown, where he was ordained, priest in 1909.

On his return from Tronchiennes where he made his third year's probation in 1910, he started his successful career as missionarius excurrens, being attached first to St. Ignatius, Galway (1911-13) then to Rathfarnharn Castle (1913-17, and 1919-22). While at Galway he had charge of the local Pioneer centre, thus gaining experience of temperance work, towards which he was to make such a vital contribution in later years. In 1917 came the call to act as military chaplain in France during the great war. In spite of the marked distaste he had for the work it was all along more an agony than a service for him - he set about his new duties with characteristic conscientiousness. When hostilities ceased he resumed his work as missioner at Rathfarnham. till his transfer to Gardiner Street Church in 1922, when he was appointed to succeed Fr.James Cullen as Central Director of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart.

Fr. Flinn was thoroughly equipped for the great task which now confronted him. As a Missioner he had won renown both here and in England by reason of his tireless zeal, and his exceptional talents as an organiser and trenchant speaker. These talents were now pressed into the service of the Pioneer movement, which for the next twenty years and more, under his fostering care, gradually attained that commanding position which it holds to-day. Details of the remarkable growth of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association under Fr. Flinn's able administration are given on another page. Suffice it here to say that his name. which had become a household word in the land, will be ever inseparably linked with those of Fr. Matthew and Fr. Cullen in the history of Temperance. His talents as an organiser probably outdistanced those of Fr. Cullen himself. He was a great stickler for tradition, and much of the success he achieved was doubtless due to his allowing the faultless machinery created by the founder of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association to function undisturbed. Still the fresh impetus given the movement since 1922 must be attributed in large part to Fr, Flinn's strong personality, his gifts as a forceful speaker, the meticulous care with which he organised the annual rallies and most of all to the supernatural outlook which characterised his work.

Fr. Flinn was also a member of the Fr. Matthew Union and of the Committee of the Catholic Social Service Conference.

Just and conscientious to a fault, strong and purposeful by disposition, Fr. Flinn possessed a character of sterling quality. Completely devoted to the cause of God, hard and austere towards himself, unworldly, he showed himself kind and sympathetic towards others with a soft spot in his heart for the poor, the underdog. To an infinite capacity for taking pains he joined an ardour and enthusiasm for work which was infectious. Though for the ten years preceding his death he laboured under a physical disability of a very distressing kind, chronic heart trouble, which more than once brought him to death’s door, he continued his labours undismayed, and retained his courage and serenity to the very end. His devotion to the memory of Fr James Cullen was touching in its humility and self-effacement - when Fr. Cullen’s mantle fell upon his shoulders, he inherited as well that great man's spirit of his selfless devotion to a great cause. R.I.P.

Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart :

Father Flinn’s Death :
“So the grand old man has gone to his reward may he rest in peace. He surely did a man’s work in the great cause”. “I never had the pleasure of meeting Fr. Flinn, but from the many letters he wrote me I have a very vivid picture of his great sincerity and unselfish zeal in the noble cause for which he gave his life”. “What a worker, and what a record to leave behind him”. These are but three of the very many tributes paid to Fr. Flinn, by Bishops, priests, religious and laymen from every part of Ireland. Few of Ours can have been as well known, few so much respected as Fr. Flinn. His work of organising and running the Pioneer Association made for him contacts, many personal, others by letter only, but in them all his wholehearted love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was the inspiration of his Pioneer work, was manifest and recognised. He was a truly holy man, in whom the love of Our Lord was a very real and very personal thing. It was thus a personal matter for him that sin should be prevented, and when committed that it should be atoned for. In the curse of intemperance he saw what he believed to be the greatest source of sin in Ireland. and hence he set himself to work. heart and soul to fight intemperance, which so greatly injured the cause of Christ whom he loved. That was his Pioneer creed. That made for him the Pioneer cause a sacred one, for he believed it was the cause of the Most Sacred Heart, and in that belief he was so sincere that his sincerity impressed even those who criticised his methods. It was this sincerity and the zeal which sprung from it, allied with the courage which is born of true humility, that won for him a deep respect, and often an enthusiastic admiration from all those who came in contact with him.

In 1922 when Fr. Flinn became Central Director, there was a membership of about 250,000 in 410 Centres. At his death the membership had grown to 350,000 and there were more than 950 centres. This great expansion did not bring with it any slackening in the very strict rules of Fr. Cullen. At the Annual Meeting last November, Fr. Flinn could boast that in his 21 years as Director there had been no change in the rules in spite of very great pressure being brought on him to make changes. That is a very remarkable thing, for in the growth and expansion of an organisation there is almost always modification and adaptation. Not so the Pioneer Association under Fr. Flinn. It grew to be a movement of national importance, but Fr. Cullen's dying wish that there should be no change of rule was for Fr. Flinn a duty. The Pioneer Association today is the Pioneer Association that was founded by Fr. Cullen, with rules no less strict, observance no less rigidly enforced. Here again it was not just sentiment nor a mere hero worship of Fr. Cullen that made Fr. Flinn adopt so uncompromising an attitude. The Pioneer Association was the fruit of fifty years of tremendous experience in temperance work on the part of Fr. Cullen. Movement after movement to fight against intemperance had been started only to fail. The Pioneer Association with its very strict and very rigid rule was begun and was successful where the other movements failed. This success both Fr. Cullen and Fr. Flinn attributed to the strict rules and the strict way in which these rules were enforced. Hence Fr. Flinn was not prepared to depart in any way from a method which was proved by experience and by its results to attain the end for which it had been started. Rule after rule was planned to check what experience had shown to be causes of lapses in the past, and to bar excuses which made pledge-breaking easy. Fr. Cullen was fifty years at the work. His experience was tremendous. “I shall be a long time in charge before I dare to set my judgment against his." Thus spoke Fr. Flinn at the Annual Meeting last year, and there is little doubt that it was this great loyalty to Fr. Cullen and to the spirit of the Association as founded by Fr. Cullen which made Fr. Flinn's long period as Central Director so successful a one for the Association and so fruitful of great work to the glory of God.

◆ Irish Province News 18th Year No 3 1943

Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin (Juniorate, Tertianship. and Retreat House) :

General :
Fr. Joseph Flinn, who had been resting at Rathfarnham, died on Monday morning, 24th May, deeply regretted by all. He had daily edified the Community by his cheerfulness and courage liable as he was at any moment to serious heart attacks. We of

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Joseph Flinn SJ 1877-1943
The name of Fr Joseph Flinn will always be linked with those of Fr Matthew and Fr Cullen in the Ministry of the Temperance Movement.

Born in Arklow on January 11th 1877, he was educated at Mungret and Clongowes. After his ordination as a Jesuit, he was atached to the Mission Staff. He then served as a Chaplain in the First World War, and on his return was assigned to Fr Cullen as his assistant. He succeeded Fr Cullen in 1922 and for twenty years and more guided the Pioneer Association on its ever-expanding path. With his great organising ability and meticulous adherence to the Founder’s ideas, he gave the Movement an impetus which has spread its branches beyond the shores of Ireland.

Completely devoted to God and His Glory, austere towards himself, unworldly, he showed himself kind to others, especially the poor and the underdog. For the last ten years of his life, though afflicted with a heart complaint, he worked as hard and as cheerfully for the Cross as ever.

Fr Joe was possessed of a vigour and drive that was truly phenomenal. This was evident iin all his activities, as Prefect, as Missioner, as Pioneer leader, and was conveyed succinctly by his well known nick-name “The Pusher”.

He had tremendous fire. On the platform he would remind one of the Prophets of the Old Testament, breathing indignation, with fire flashing from hius eyes and his hand uplifted calling on the people of Ireland to follow him to the Holy Land of Temperance and sobriety.

He died at Rathfarnham Castle on May 24th 1943.

◆ The Clongownian, 1943

Obituary

Father Joseph Flinn SJ

News of Fr Flinn’s death has reached us as we are going to press, hence only a very brief notice of his life and work is possible.

In his last year here at school he was second captain of the school. He entered the Jesuit noviceship in- 1894. In 1901, he returned to Clongowes as a Scholastic and was Prefect successively of all three Lines. He took a very deep interest in everything connected with Clongowes, and regularly sent news of “The Past” to the Editor of “The Clongownian”.

He was ordained in 1909. He was immediately appointed to the mission staff and devoted his time to the giving of public retreats and missions until 1922, with an interval when he served as a military chaplain during the war of 1914-1918. In 1922, he was appointed Director of the Pioneer Total Abstinence organization, and gave all his energies to this work up to within a few months of his death.

As missioner and military chaplain he was noted for his unflagging zeal and his gift for winning over “hard cases”. He was a forceful and convincing preacher and public speaker. But his outstanding gift was that of organizing. For over twenty years the Annual Meeting of the Pioneers in the largest Dublin theatre was a triumph of organization. Perfect stewarding ensured smooth handling; of the immense audience. The panel of speakers was well chosen, and there was never any; flagging in interest. Even the smaller details, the musical programme that followed, the singing of the various hymns, all were carefully prepared. The result was always a most inspiring and enjoyable afternoon. Several members of the Irish hierarchy. who addressed these meetings were heard to describe them as amongst the most impressive Catholic gatherings they had ever seen.

This gift of organization was shown on some even greater occasions, as, for instance, the Jubilee of the Association, in 1923, when thousands of Pioneers brought by special trains from all over Ireland, marched through the city to the Royal Dublin Society's Buildings at Ballsbridge, where a monster meeting was held. It was shown again on the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress, in 1932, when again, Pioneers in their thousands, rallied to the shrine of their Eucharistic King.

But it was not merely Fr Flinn's organizing ability that gave to these gatherings their success. An even greater source of inspiration was his devotion to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, and his constant insistence on that devotion as the mainspring of the Pioneer movement. In this, Fr Flinn carried on the tradition of Fr James Cullen, for whose memory he had the deepest veneration. On every occasion, Fr Flinn spoke of Fr Cullen. At all his big meetings Fr Cullen's portrait was prominent, and in recent years one of the nost striking feature was the throwing on a screen of portraits ( Fr Cullen, Fr Willie Doyle, Fr John Sullivan and Matt Talbot, with a reminder to the audience that these four men of God were all Pioneers.

Fr Flinn literally gave his life for the work for the Sacred Heart, as it was undoubtedly his exertions on those great occasions and many others that undermined his health. His reward will surely be great.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1944

Obituary

Father D Joseph Flinn SJ

The generations to come may well rate Father J. Flinn as the greatest of Mungret's sons and it is certain that he will rank as one of the most powerful forces in the new Ireland. His work was the work whose influence will be felt and recognised fully only in the time it will have borne its fruit. It is probable that. Father Flinn's name will be coupled with those of Father Mathew whom he so admired and of Father Cullen whom he succeeded and whose work he put on the lasting basis of an excellent organisation. To this work he came in 1922, prepared with an experience of human nature gained by prefecting boys in Clongowes and in Mungret from 1901 to 1905, by nine years as a missioner throughout the country, and by two years of service in the British army as a chaplain. He came to it with natural gifts of energy, ability in organising and direct forceful oratory. From within he drew zeal that was uncompromis ing and supernatural tenacity of purpose. His twenty years of office saw the Pioneer movement throw off its swaddling clothes and emerge as a national body of sure purpose, unwavering loyalty to its stated ideals and deadly earnestness in the pursuit of them. The Pioneers have counted in Ireland since Father Flinn took charge. In these labours for God and Ireland he wore himself out without counting the cost. The movement is his best epitaph. The apostle has been called from the vineyard. With such glorious work done, his must have been a triumphal entry to heaven. To his brother we offer our sympathy and assure him of our prayers. RIP

Brigham, Henry, 1796-1881, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1538 · Person · 23 June 1796-26 May 1881

Born: 23 June 1796, Manchester, England
Entered: 07 September 1813, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 01 June 1822, St Patrick's College, Maynooth, County Kildare
Final Vows: 15 August 1837
Died: 26 May 1881, St Stanislaus, Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, Berkshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

i1813-1815: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1815-1818: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy, Regency
1818-1822: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Theology
1822-1827: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching, Curate, Confessor
1827-1833: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Missioner at Hereford, Herefordshire
1833-1834: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Tertianship
1834-1836: St Aloysius College SJ, Preston, Lancashire, England, Missioner in Preston
1836-1845: Holy Apostles College SJ, Suffolk, England, Missioner at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
1842-1845: Vice Rector from 29/08/1842, Missioner at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
1845-1847: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Prefect of Studies
1847-1849: St Michael’s Residence, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Missioner in Pontefract, Wakefield, Yorkshire
1849-1860: St George’s College SJ, Worcester, Worcestershire, England, Missioner in Oxford
1855-1856: Missioner in Teignmouth, Devon
1856-1860: Missioer at Ugbrooke, Devon
1860-1865: St Aloysius College SJ, Preston, Lancashire, England, Caring for health at Clitheroe, Lancashire
1865-1881: St Stanislaus College, Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, Teaching, Caring for health

Felix Henry Brigham
Ordained at St Patrick’s College Maynooth, on a Saturday within the octave of Pentecost 1822, having studied Theology at Clongowes

◆ The English Jesuits 1650-1829 Geoffrey Holt SJ : Catholic Record Society 1984
Educated Stonyhurst 1808-1813
Entered : 07/09/1813 Hodder
1815-1818 Stonyhurst Philosophy and Regency
1818-1822 Clongowes Wod College Theology
Ordained 01/06/1822 Maynooth
1822-1827 Stonyhurst
1827-1833 Hereford
1833-1834 Hodder, Tertianship
1834-1836 Preston
1836-1845 Burty-St-Edmunds (Superior of the College of Holy Apostles 1842-1845)
1845-1847 Stonyhurst
1547-1849 Pontefract
1849-1855 Oxford
1855-1857 Teignmouth
1857-1860 Ugbrooke
1860-1865 Clitheroe
1865-1881 Beaumount College

Lachal, Louis, 1906-1991, Jesuit priest of the Ranchiensis Province (RAN)

IE IJA J/1549 · Person · 11 May 1906-19 March 1991

Born: 11 May 1906, Northcote, Melbourne, Australia
Entered: 08 March 1925, Loyola Greenwich Road, Greenwich, Sydney NSW, Australia (HIB
Ordained: 30 June 1940, Liverpool, England
Final Vows: 02 February 1979
Died: 19 March 1991, St Xavier’s, Bokaro Steel City, Hazaribag, Jharkhand, India - Ranchiensis Province (RAN)

Transcribed HIB to ASL 05-April 1931; ASL to RAN 12/ March 1956

1925-1927: Loyola, Greenwich Road, Greenwich NSW, Australia (HIB), Novitiate
1927-1930: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate, UCD
1930-1931: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Philosophy
1931-1933: Séminaire de Vals, Vals-près-le-Puy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (TOLO), Philosophy (ASL from 1931)
1933-1937: St Ignatius College SJ, Riverview, Cove Lane, Sydney NSW, Australia, Regency
1937-1940: San Luigi, Via Posillipo, Naples, Italy (NAP), Theology
1940-1941: Heythrop College, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England (ANG), Theology
1941-1944: St Ignatius College SJ, Riverview, Cove Lane, Sydney NSW, Australia, Teaching
1944-1945: Loyola College, Grimshaw Street, Watsonia, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Tertianship
1945-1947: St Patrick’s College SJ, Cathedral Place, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Teaching
1947-1950: St Ignatius Church, Church Road, Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Curate and Catechetics locally, Minister from 1949

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :

Note from Francis Keogh Entry :
His death was keenly felt by those who served under him, especially at Sevenhill. Mr Lachal there wrote “He was the kindest of Superiors, a real father to the Novices, keeping a particularly keen eye on their health. I wish I had Father Rector’s ticket to heaven, Father Master once said to his Novices.’

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280

Lou Lachal received his early education at the local parish school and his secondary education at Xavier College, Kew, where his father had been before him. Though he excelled perhaps more in sports than in studies, he graduated in 1924 with honours in French and Latin in the final examinations.

In March 1925 he joined the Jesuits at Greenwich, Sydney, and in 1927 he went to Rathfarnharn for his juniorate studies, gaining a BA from the National University of lreland. Philosophy studies followed in France, and he did regency at St Ignatius' College, Riverview, from 1933. He was rowing master among other things, and received a reprimand from the general for allowing the boys to mix with non-Catholics in the rowing sheds!

Theology studies followed at Naples, Italy, but World War II broke out and he moved to Liverpool in 1940 with a letter of commendation to any bishop to ordain him. He was ordained in Liverpool, completed his theology at Heythrop, Oxford, and then spent a few months caring for the needs of working class people in the city of Glasgow, Scotland.

Towards the end of 1941 Lachal returned to Australia via the Panama Canal. He was once again sent to Riverview. Tertianship at Loyola College, Watsonia, followed in 1945, after which he taught for two years at St Patrick's College. He worked in the parish of Richrnond in 1948. He enjoyed his time there, and they appreciated the tall, strong, modest, pipe-srnoking priest who could he relied upon for service at any time of day or night.

Lachal was among the first Australian Jesuits assigned to the mission in the Hazarihag region of India in 1951. He was 45 years old at the time, and was to spend another 40 years in India. He found Hindi studies difficult, but could generally make himself understood. His good humor and friendliness did the rest. Soon after arrival in India he became involved with direct missionary work at Chandwa, then one of the two parishes in the district of Palamau.

Later, he became parish priest of the Chechari region, which stretched for 130 miles, and then at Mahuadanr, followed by Hazaribag, Chandwa, Bhurkunda and Bokaro Steel City
Wherever he worked, his constant aim was first to provide an adequate education system, followed by health and other development projects to uplift poor people.

One of his greatest triumphs was setting up the Christian Centre at Bokaro Steel City in the vanguard of the ecumenical movement, Lachal proposed the Christian Centre as his
solution to the problem of how to share one small piece of real estate allotted by the Steele Authority to no less than ten groups all claiming to be Christian.

He was a caring father to all Jesuits in the Hazaribag diocese and to religious and lay people all over the Daltonganj diocese. Many sought his wise advice, encouragement and
companionship. People meant much to Lachal. He was a great conversationalist with a quick wit. In addition, he wrote thousands of letters, especially to the mission's friends and
supporters in Australia, assuring them of his interest and concern.

Laehal, commonly known as 'Lou', was greatly loved, respected and trusted by everyone, Jesuits and lay friends alike. He had a strong, outgoing personality, a man of immense charm, wisdom and optimism. His life was characterised by his availability to people anywhere at any time. He was rarely seen alone, he always had people around him. He had a solid, simple spirituality with a great devotion to Our Lady. He was regularly seen saying the Rosary, or heard singing Marian hymns during Mass. He regularly said two public Masses a day, even when he could only travel by rickshaw. When asked what he had been doing, he jokingly said that he had been “witnessing”, a constant feature of his long and happy life.

Maguire, James, 1825-1904, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1654 · Person · 05 May 1825-10 March 1904

Born: 05 May 1825, Newgrange, County Meath
Entered: 07 October 1843, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1856, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1859
Died: 10 March 1904, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1843-1845: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1845-1846: Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium (BELG), Rhetoric
1846-1847: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1847-1850: St Charles College SJ, Grand Coteau, Louisiana, USA (LUGD), Regency
1850-1854: St Peter and Paul College SJ, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA (LUGD), Regency
1854-1857: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1857-1858: Montée de Fourvière, Lyon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (LUGD), tertianship
1858-1871: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, England, Curate in St Oswald’s and Sacred Heart, Accrington, Lancashire
1871-1876: St Aloysius College SJ, Dalhousie Street, Garnet Hill, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Superior, Procurator, Parish Priest, Prefect of Studies
1873-1874: Superior, Parish Priest at St Joseph’s, North Woodside Road, Glasgow, Scotland
1874-1876: Galashiels, Selkirkshire, Scotland, Minister of community, Parish Priest
1876-1879: St Francis Xavier College, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate, Catechetics in poor school
1877-1879: Vice Rector from 16/08/1877, Curate
1879-1880: Selkirk, Selkirkshire, Scotland, Curate, Assists in poor school
1880-1883: Guyana Mission, Barbados, West Indies, Curate, Military Chaplain, Hospital Chaplain, School Chaplain
1883-1884: St George’s College, Bristol, Somerset, England, Curate
1884-1887: Sacred Heart Church, Talbot Road, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, Minister, Curate, Assists in parish school
1887-1890: Pontefract, Yorkshire, England, Curate, Assists in parish school and poor house, Military Chaplain
1890-1901: St Wilfrid’s Church, Chapel Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, England, Curate
1901-1902: St Joseph’s, Bedford Leigh, Lancashire, England, Curate, Catechetics in parish school
1902-1903: St Joseph and St Francis Xavier Church, Victoria Road, Richmond, Yorkshire, England, Curate
1903-1904: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Caring for health

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Older brother of Matthew (HIB) - RIP 1864

Mahon, Henry, 1804-1879, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1660 · Person · 25 September 1804-04 May 1879

Born: 25 September 1804, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 November 1823, Montrouge, Paris, France - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 20 December 1834, Stonyhurst
Final Vows: 15 August 1841
Died: 04 May 1879, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1823-1825: Montrouge, Paris, France (ANG), Novitiate
1825-1827: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1827-1828: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1828-1831: St Ignatius College, London, England, Regency
1831-1835: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1835-1838: Residence of St Thomas of Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, England, Missioner at Wardour Castle, Wardour, Wiltshire, England
1838-1840: St George's Residence, Worcester, Worcestershire, England, Missioner at Preston, Lancashire
1840-1841: St Aloysius College, Lancashire, England, Tertianship at Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lanashire, Missioner in Preston
1841-1842: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Studies
1842-1846: St Francis Xavier College, Hereford, Herefordshire, England, Superior from 22/09/1842 to 08/12/1846 and of St George's Residence, Worcester, Worcestershire, England from 22/09/1842 to 08/12/1846, living at Spetchley, Worcestershire
1846-1847: Missioner at Spetchley, Worcestershire, England
1847-1849: Missioner at Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England
1849-1851: Superior from 12/01/1849, Missioer at Bristol, Somerset, England
1851-1858: St Ignatius College SJ, London, England, Missioner
1858-1860: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Chaplain in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England
1860-1861: Church of the Sacred Heart, Lauriston Street, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, Curate
1861-1864: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Writer
1864-1865: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Chaplain in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England
1865-1867: St George's Residence, Sansome Place, Worcester, Worcestershire, England, Curate
1867-1869: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Curate at St Mary's Church, Regent Road, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England
1869-1870: St Ignatius College, Mount Street, London, England, Curate
1870-1872: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate
1872-1873: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Caring for health

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Early education in Humanities at Stonyhurst before Entry

1827 At a newly opened Jesuit school in London
1834 Ordained at Stonyhurst by Bishop Penswick 20 December 1834
1842-1847 After serving at Wardour Castle and St Ignatius Church, Preston, he was appointed Superior of the St Francis Xavier College (Hereford District), and of the Residence of St George (Worcester District), and residing as Chaplain at Spetchley Park.
1848-1851 Served the Shepton Mallet and Bristol Missions, also being Superior At St George’s.
1851-1858 Served on the London Mission
1858 he served the Great Yarmouth, Edinburgh, Worcester, London and Liverpool Missions, and then went to Stonyhurst for health reasons in 1872. He died there 04 May 1879 aged 75.

He was distinguished for his eloquence in the pulpit and skill as a Confessor. (Province Record)

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
MAHON, HENRY, Father, was born in Dublin, September 25, 1804 ; studied his humanities at Stonyhurst College; entered the Society at Mont-Rouge, Paris, and was professed of the four vows August 15, 1851. In 1827 he was a Master in the school opened by the Society in London; and was ordained Priest at Stonyhurst College, by Bishop Penswick, December 20, 1834. After serving at Wardour Castle and St. Ignatius Church, Preston, for a few years, he was appointed Superior of the College of St. Francis Xavier (the Hereford District), and of the Residence of St. George (Worcester District), in Sep tember, 1842, residing as Chaplain at Spetchley Park until September, 1847. In 1848 till 1851 he served the missions of Shepton Mallet and Bristol, being also Superior of St. George's Residence. In 1851, and till 1858, he was missioner in London. After this period he served the missions of Great Yarmouth, Edinburgh, Worcester, London again, and Liver pool, and was sent to Stonyhurst, cur, val., in 1872. He died there May 4, 1879, æt. 75. He was distinguished for his eloquence in the pulpit, and skill as a confessor. (Province Register.)

◆ The English Jesuits 1650-1829 Geoffrey Holt SJ : Catholic Record Society 1984
Born 25/09/1804 Dublin
Entered 01/11/1823 Montrouge Paris
1825-1827 St Acheul Philosophy
1827-1831 London School
1831-1835 St Mary’s Hall Theology
Ordained 20/12/1834 Stonyhurst
1835-1838 Wardour
1838-1840 Preston
1840-1842 Hodder including Tertianship (supplying at Lydiate 1841)
1842-1847 Spetchley
1847-1849 Shepton Mallet
1849-1851 Bristol
1851-1858 London
1858-1860 Yarmouth
1860-1861 Edinburgh
1861-1865 St Beuno’s
1865 Yarmouth
1865-1867 Worcester
1867-1870 Yarmouth
1870-1871 London
1871-1872 Liverpool
1872 Stonyhurst

Malone, Bernard, 1891-1963, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1666 · Person · 04 September 1891-06 March 1963

McCann, Matthew, 1810-1874, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1690 · Person · 12 November 1810-01 June 1874

Born: 12 November 1810, Drogheda, County Louth
Entered: 09 September 1828, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 19 September 1840, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England
Final Vows: 25 March 1848
Died: 01 June 1874, Wardour Castle, Salisbury, Tisbury, Wiltshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

part of the St Ignatius College SJ, Mount Street, London, England community at the time of death

1828-1830: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1830-1833: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1833-1838: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1838-1840: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1840-1841: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1841-1842: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1842-1843: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1843-1844: Montée de Fourvière, Lyon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (LUGD), Tertianship
1844-1850: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate in Portico, Lancashire, England
1849-1852: Curate in St Helen’s, Lancashire, England
1852-1857: St George’s College SJ, Worcester, Worcestershire, England, Curate at Spetchley, Worcestershire, England
1855-1857: Curate in Hereford, Herefordshire, England
1857-1858: St Ignatius College SJ, Hill Street, London, England, Curate at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
1858-1860: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Curate at Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England
1860-1861: St Ignatius College SJ, Hill Street, London, England, Curate at Wardour, Tisbury, Wiltshire, England
1861-1867: St George’s College SJ, Worcester, Worcestershire, England, Curate at Exeter, Devon, England
1863-1867: Curate at Trenchard Sttreet, Bristol, Somerset, England, Procurator
1867-1869: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Superior and Curate at Regent Road, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England
1869-1873: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate at Portico, Lancashire, England
1873-1874: St Ignatius College SJ, Mount Street, London, England, Curate at Wardour Castle, Salisbury, Tisbury, Wiltshire, England

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
M CANN, MATTHEW, Father, was a native of Drogheda, Ireland, born November 12, 1810; studied his humanities at Stonyhurst College ; entered the Society at Hodder, Septem ber 29, 1828, and was made a Spiritual Coadjutor March

◆ Catholic Record Society, Volume 70, 1981

The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

McCann, Matthew. Priest.
b. November 12th, 1810, Drogheda, Ireland.
e. Stonyhurst 1820-8.
S.J. September 7th, 1828.
Hodder (nov) 1828-30.
St Mary's Hall (phil) 1830-3.
Stonyhurst 1833-8.
St Mary's Hall (theol) 1838-40.
Ordained priest September 19th, 1840,
Stonyhurst. Clitheroe 1841-3.
St Mary's Hall (tert) 1844.
Portico 1844-9. St Helens 1849-52.
Spetchley 1852-5.
Hereford 1855-7.
Tunbridge Wells 1857-8.
Lincoln 1858-60.
Wardour 1860-1.
Exeter 1861-3.
Bristol 1863-8.
Yarmouth 1868-9.
Portico 1869-73.
Wardour 1873-4.
d. June 1st, 1874, Wardour.

(Fo.7; 115; Nec).

McConnell, James, 1879-1966, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1697 · Person · 17 March 1879-06 February 1966

McEntegart, William, 1891-1979, Jesuit priest of the Britanniae Province (BRI)

IE IJA J/1710 · Person · 14 June 1891-31 January 1979

Born: 14 June 1891, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Entered: 07 September 1910, Manresa, Roehampton, London England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 31 July 1923, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1929
Died: 31 January 1979, Bridge House, Westbourne, Bournemouth, Dorset, England - Britanniae Province (BRI)

1910-1912: Manresa, Roehampton, London England (ANG), Novitiate
1912-1914: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1914-1920: St Ignatius College SJ, Stamford Hill, London, England, Regency
1920-1924: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB), Theology
1924-1925: St Stanislaus Coillege, Tullamore, County Offaly, Tertianship
1925-1926: Xavier College SJ, Barkers Road, Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (HIB), Teaching, Confessor
1926-1928: Corpus Christi College, Russell Street, Werribee, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (HIB), Teaching, Confessor
1928-1929: St Ignatius College SJ, Riverview, Cove Lane, Sydney NSW, Australia (HIB), Teaching, Confessor
1929-1930: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Teaching
1930-1943: Heythrop College, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England, Teaching, Confessor
1943-1944: St Ignatius College SJ, Tottenham, London, England, Curate
1944-1945: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1945-1946: Mount Street, London, England, Awaiting assignment
1946-1950: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Minister, Assistant Procurator

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280

William McEntegart came from a large family with strong Irish origins and deep religious affiliation. He was a man with a large frame, long, but always lean and athletic. He must have been a precocious schoolboy at St Francis Xavier's College, for he graduated and completed a BSc degree from Liverpool University by the time he was nineteen years old.

He entered the Society at Roehampton, England, 7 September 1910, and enjoyed his philosophy studies at St Mary's Hall. Regency was at St Ignatius' College, Stamford Hill, where
he taught science and mathematics. He was remembered as a terrifying teacher, but it was a period of time when vocations resulted from the school, so the students must have been impressed.

For theology McEntegart went to Milltown Park, Dublin, 1921-24, and was in tertianship at Tullabeg the following year. Novices at the time in that house remember him for his fondness for fresh air, windows wide open and feet outside. He had Little time for stuffy officialdom and made a point of amusing the novices. He managed to let them know items of news normally concealed from them. He took a kindly interest in their well being, and though never edifying in the conventional sense made them feel happier.

Then began negotiations for him to teach philosophy in Australia. The Irish provincial considered him a very suitable person, and the English provincial reluctantly allowed him to go. McEntegart wanted to go to Australia.

He arrived in 1926 and went to Corpus Christi College, Werribee, to teach philosophy. But it was not long before he clashed with the rector, Albert Power. McEntegart was a genial, easy-going man. Albert Power a small, intense, hard-drivlng and rather narrow man. The latter persuaded himself the former was having a bad influence on the students, and had him moved to Riverview in 1927. He had McEntegart's final vows postponed, despite clearance from the English province. After this treatment, McEntegart naturally desired to return to his own province, and left Australia in February 1929. He was a great loss.

His next assignment was to Stonyhurst and the Mount, teaching mathematics and physics, but this was short lived. In 1930 he settled down to teach Thomist philosophy, especially cosmology, at Heythrop College quite successfully for thirteen years. His students found him a particularly fine and interesting lecturer on frequently dull subjects. He made his lectures interesting by often bringing in a newspaper, from which he would read an article and comment on it humorously and often devastatingly. He could be witty and even a little wicked at times. He was much liked by his students.

It was recalled that he would say Mass in a basement chapel that attracted gnats and mosquitoes, so a “moustiquaire” was made for McEntegart, who rewarded the donor with a couple of cheroots, golf balls and, on his birthday, a full size cigar. McEntegart enjoyed playing bridge and golf and was keen on solving esoteric crossword puzzles at Christmas time.
From 1954-64 McEntegart filled a number of useful assignments. He did a year as professor of philosophy in the Madurai province and then joined the staff of Campion High School,
Trichinopoly. Later he returned to England and taught moral theology living at Manresa House, Roehampton. Then he was chaplain at Gateley Hall, the junior school for Farnborough Convent, followed by a year at Assisi Maternity Home, Grayshott.

In 1964 he joined the St Francis Xavier's College community at High Lee, Woolton. This enabled him to renew a number of family contacts in the Liverpool area. He was faithful to his daily Latin “Tridentine” Mass. He could keep himself amused and interested at all times and developed a first class knowledge of horse racing on television. Amusing comments were made about the advancing involvement of lay people in the Church after Vatican II. He also developed unusual food habits. In contradiction to modern medicine, he became addicted to animal fats and dripping. The more cholesterol he had, the better he flourished.

In 1970 he was assigned to St Beuno's. McEntegart lived a long life and was appreciated by many, especially by the scholastics who experienced so much of his thoughtfulness and kindness.

Meyrick, Thomas, 1817-1903, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1744 · Person · 12 October 1817-24 September 1903

Born: 12 October 1817, England
Entered: 21 May 1846, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1850, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
Died: 24 September 1903, Brescia, Italy - Angliae Province (ANG)

1846-1848: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1848-1851: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1851-1852: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Prefect of scholastics; Teaching
1852-1853: St Ignatius, Stamford Hill, London, England, Studies at University of London and Missioner
1853-1854: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Spiritual Father; Studies at University of London
1854-1855: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Teaching; Curate
1855-1859: St Michael’s College SJ, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Missioner at Gunnerside and Richmond, Yorkshire
1859-1861: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, teaching and Caring for health (1860)
1861-1866: St Stanislaus College SJ, Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, Teaching
1862-1866: Spiritual Father for House and Church; Teaching
1866-1867: St Mary's Church, Regent Road, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, Curate
1867-1868: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Writer
1868-1870: St Michael’s College, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Missioner at “The Grange”, Pontefract, Yorkshire, England
1870-1875: St George’s College, Worcester, England, Missioner at Trenbchard Street Church, Bristol, Somerset
1873-1874: Caring at Trenchard Street Church, Bristol for health
1874-1875: Caring for health at St Clement’s Parish, Oxford
1875-1877: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Caring for health at St Clement’s Parish, Chesterfield
1876-1877: Caring for health
1877-1878: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Writer
1878-1879: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Curate and Confessor
1879-1880: Caring for health in health facility
1880-1903: ???? (not in HIB or ANG Catalogues)
1903-1904: Died in Brescia Italy

Morron, Edward, 1797-1862, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1777 · Person · 01 January 1797-12 November 1862

Born: 01 January 1797, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1818, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1823, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England
Final Vows: 15 August 1838
Died: 12 November 1862, St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1818-1820: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1820-1823: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy and Theology
1923-1824: Missioner in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England and Courtfield, Herefordshire, England
1824-1827: Missioner in Rotherwas Hall, Herefordshire, England
1824-1836: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, Englanf, Missioner at Chipping, Lancashire England
1836-1837: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Tertianship
1837-1838: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, Englanf, Missioner at Chipping, Lancashire England
1838-1844: Missioner at Wigan, Lancashiure, England
1944-1862: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Missioner at Gilmoss, Lancashire, England

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :

DOB 01/01/1797 Ireland; Ent 07/09/1818 Hodder; Ord 1823 Wolverhampton; FV 15/08/1838; RIP 12/11/1862 Liverpool aged 65

Studied Humanities at Stonyhurst before Ent.

Ordained 1823 Wolverhampton by Bishop Milner.

1823-1844 Served the Missions of Courtfield, Rotherwas, Bedford Leigh, Chipping and Wigan until September 1844.
1844 Sent to Gilmoss, near Liverpool, whcih he served until illness saw him moved to St Francis Xavier Liverpool, where he died 12/11/1862 aged 65

He was universally esteemed for his siplicity of character and his great humility.

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
MORRON, EDWARD, Father, bom in Ireland, January 1, 1797, studied his humanities at Stonyhurst College; entered the Society at Hodder, September 7, 1818, and was made a Spiritual Coadjutor August 15, 1838. He was ordained Priest at Wolverhampton by Bishop Milner in 1823, and served the old missions of Courtfield and Rotherwas (both long since given up), Bedford Leigh, Chipping, and Wigan, until Septem ber, 1844, when he was sent to Gillmoss, near Liverpool, which he served until a short time before his last sickness, when he was removed to St. Francis Xavier's College, Liverpool, and died soon afterwards on November 12, 1862, aged 65. He was universally esteemed for his simplicity of character and his great humility.

◆ Catholic Record Society, Volume 70, 1981

The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

Morron, Edward. Priest.
b. January 1st, 1797, ?Dublin.
e. Stonyhurst 1813-8.
S.J. September 7th, 1818.
Hodder (nov) 1818-20.
Stonyhurst (phil and theol) 1820-3.
Ordained priest 1823,
Wolverhampton. Courtfield 1823-4.
Rotherwas 1824-7.
Leigh 1827-8.
Chipping 1828-37.
Hodder (tert) 1837.
Chipping 1837-8.
Wigan 1838-44.
Gillmoss 1844-62.
Liverpool 1862.
d. November 12th, 1862, Liverpool, bu. Gillmoss.

(Fo.7; 115; Gil.5/61; CRS.4/428; CRS.36/4; Che.72/101ff; Nec).

Mulhearn, Timothy, 1808-1874, Jesuit brother of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1784 · Person · 12 August 1808-16 October 1874

Mullin, John, 1827-1904, Jesuit brother of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1790 · Person · 10 July 1827-05 February 1904

Murphy, Cornelius, 1696-1766, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/1795 · Person · 24 October 1696-31 October 1766

Born: 24 October 1696, Belgium or Derry, County Derry
Entered: 07 September 1711, Watten, Belgium - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1720
Final Vows: 02 February 1729
Died: 31 October 1766, St Ignatius College, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Vice Provincial Angliae Province (ANG)

1723 Catalogue is said to be called “Quercetanus” in Adamman (would = Derriensis)
1757 ANG Catalogue says DOB Belgium. Was Rector and of very high talent and proficiency
1763 Catalogue Said to have been Rector of London Mission, Vice Provincial and then Socius
1761 Murphy wrote from Liège “There is a long and learned letter in defence of Floyd’s works

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
A Writer of ANG;
Rector of the London Mission; Socius of the Provincial; Vice-Provincial (cf ANG Catalogues 1723 and 1763)
Served the Lancashire Mission for many years and Rector of St Aloysius College in 1740
A curious account of an intended attack by “priest-catchers” upon his person when at Brindle (Southhill) is given in “Records SJ” Vol V, p 338.
He was removed to London c 1748/9, declared Rector of St Ignatius College, 31 Janaury 1749, and died there 31 October 1766.
Three works of his are in de Backer “Biblioth. des Écarivains SJ” (cf Foley’s Collectanea)
Called “Quercetanus”, which means a native of Derry as Daire - quercetum; Quercetum certainly means a native of Derry, as the Irish (Zeus MSS) Darach or Derry glosses Quercetum in Latin, and Adamnan translates Daire, Roboretum.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MURPHY, CORNELIUS, was born in Ireland, on the 24th of October, 1696, was admitted into the Society, on the 7th of September, 1711, and was Professed in the Order, on the 2nd of February, 1730. This eminently gifted Father served the Lancashire Mission for several years, and was Rector of his Brethren there, I think, from 1740, to 1748. He was then appointed Superior of his Brethren in London, and its vicinity. At Christmas 1759, I meet him at Scotney. His death occurred on the 31st of October, 1766.* He was the Translator of Pere Daubenton’s Life of St. John Francis Regis 8vo London, 1738, pp.368 : and was also the Author of “A Review of the important controversy concerning Miracles, and the Protestant Systems relative to it : to which is added a letter with some Remarks on a late Performance called ‘The Criterion of Miracles examined’”. Octavo, London, ( No date of year) pp. 456. It was in the appendix of tins work, that Dr. Milner found ready arranged the refutation of Detector Douglas, of which he has made so important a use in his invaluable work, “The end of Religious Controversy”.

Was he not related to the Rev. John Murphy, that Apostolic Priest in Dublin, and devoted friend of the Jesuits, who died on the 2nd of July, 1733, aet. 52.

Naish, Vincent, 1852-1913, Jesuit priest of the Belgicae Province (BELG)

IE IJA J/1813 · Person · 29 August 1852-12 June 1913

Born: 29 August 1852, County Limerick
Entered: 07 February 1870, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Ordained: 1889
Final Vows: 02 February 1891
Died: 12 June 1913, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada - Belgicae Province (BELG)

Part of the L’Imaculée Conception, rue Rachel, Montréal, Québec, Canada community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to BELG : 1890

Educated at Belvedere College SJ and St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg and Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire

1870-1872: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Novitiate
1872-1873: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Regency
1873-1878: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Regency
1878-1879: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Regency
1879-1882: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Philosophy
1882-1883: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Regency
1883-1884: Colegio San Francisco, Oña, Burgos, Castile y León, Spain (CAST), Theology
1884-1886: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG), Theology
1885-1887: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, studying
1887-1889: Sint Jan Berchmans, Rue des Récollets, Leuven, Belgium (BELG), Theology
1889-1890: Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium (BELG), Tertianship
1890-1891: St Mary’s, Kurseong, West Bengal, India (BELG from 1890)
1891-1895: St Francis Xavier College, Chowringhee, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, Teaching
1892-1893: Vice-Rector from 05/07/1892, Teaching
1893-1895: Rector from 27/04/1893, Prefect of Studies, Mission Consultor
1895-1903: St Joseph’s, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, Parish Priest, Military Chaplain, Catechetics in Loreto School
1903-1904: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1904-1908: Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1905-1908: Curate, Hospital Chaplain
1908-1913: L’Imaculée Conception, rue Rachel, Montréal, Québec, Canada (CAN), Missioner

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Transcribed into BELG Province 1888, and went to India

◆ The Clongownian, 1914

Obituary

Father Vincent Naish SJ

Advices from Canada in the June of last year brought the unexpected announcement of the death of the above-named distinguished ecclesiastic. Although born and educated in Ireland, the greater part of Father Naish's life was passed in foreign lands. Belvedere and Tullabeg Colleges were accountable for his early education, and in the latter establishment he was fellow student with many men whose public life is familiar to our readers, and among his class-fellows was the late Mr Alfred Blake, of Cork, whose rather sudden death caused such a sensation in the Four Courts two days ago. Father Naish came from an ancient and distinguished stock well known in Co Limerick, of whom the late Lord Chancellor Naish was not the least distinguished member. Early in his career as a Jesuit, after teaching for some six years in Clongowes and Tullabeg, he volunteered for work on the foreign mission, and although Irish by sympathy and every tie, he was attached to the Belgian Province of the Order, and consequently his work lay principally in India, which is one of the mission fields of that province. For several years Father Naish was engaged in that missionary work, and directed with distinguished success the great Catholic College of Calcutta. Later on he was recalled to Europe, and was well known as a preacher of eminence all over the North of England. As a missionary in Canada he laboured among his own countrymen in almost every town of any note from Labrador to Vancouver. He was a man of remarkable presence and of most distinguished gifts, both as a scholar and a preacher, and his loss will be deeply felt by those to whom he gave the unstinted labour of his later and riper years. With his immediate relatives much sympathy is felt, and those with whom his name was familiar thirty years ago will feel a pang of regret as they breathe a prayer for the eternal rest of a friend of very noble and winning character.

“Freeman's Journal” June 19th, 1913.

-oOo-

Rev Vincent Naish SJ, a distinguished Churchman and scholar, passed away at Moncton, NB, shortly after six o'clock last night (June 12th), death ensuing after an illness of three days' duration, Ten days ago the deceased went down to that city in company with Rev Father Gagnieur SJ, to conduct a mission in St Bernard's Church. At the close of the spiritual exercises last Sunday he contracted a severe cold, which later develop into pneumonia. On Monday he was removed to the City Hospital for treatment, but yesterday his condition became such that no hopes could be held out for his recovery. He remained conscious to the end, and was attended in his last moments by Father Gagnieur, as well as by the priests of St Bernard's. During his sojourn in India he made exhaustive studies of the Buddhistic, Islamistic, and other Oriental religions, and became authority on these branches. But it was as a missionary that he excelled. A powerful speaker, lucid of argument, with an eloquent and easy flow of language, backed by a seemingly inexhaustible fund of knowledge of men and things, he had that quality which made him tower far above many engaged in mission work. A man of deep piety and religious conviction, he was an inspiration his fellow members of the Jesuit Order, as well as to all those with whom he came in contact in the course of his missionary labours. Since his arrival in Canada, some six years ago, Father Naish was engaged exclusively in missionary work, and in the course of his activities along this line he has been heard in Catholic pulpits of almost every Canadian city from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

“Montreal Gasette”, June 13th, 1913.

◆ https://limerickarchives.com/2024/01/17/limerick-mourns-the-loss-of-distinguished-jesuit-scholar-rev-vincent-naish-s-j/

LIMERICK MOURNS THE LOSS OF DISTINGUISHED JESUIT SCHOLAR,

REV. VINCENT NAISH, S.J.

n a solemn turn of events, the city of Limerick is grappling with the news of the passing of Reverend Vincent Naish, S.J., a distinguished Churchman and scholar. The Montreal Gazette reported on June 13th that Rev. Naish, aged 62, breathed his last at Moncton, N.B., succumbing to an illness that transpired over a brief three-day period.

The esteemed clergyman had travelled to Moncton to conduct a mission at St. Bernard’s Church alongside Rev. Father Gagnieur, S.P. Unfortunately, what began as a routine spiritual endeavour took a grave turn when Rev. Naish contracted a severe cold at the culmination of the spiritual exercises last Sunday. The cold swiftly developed into pneumonia, prompting his admission to the City Hospital on Monday. Despite the efforts of medical professionals, his health deteriorated rapidly, leaving little hope for recovery.

Rev. Naish, who remained conscious until his final moments, received dedicated care from Father G. Mar and members of St. Bernard’s parish. The community, still reeling from his recent ministrations, maintained a vigil over his body throughout the night at St. Bernard’s Church.

The funeral arrangements are set to take place at 1.30 this afternoon at St. Bernard’s Church, where the parishioners, joined by prominent citizens such as Peter McSweeney, W. B. Chandler, Hon. F. J. Sweeney, John Sutton, H. F. Hamilton, and John O’Neil, will bid farewell to the revered clergyman. The final journey will then proceed to the Intercolonial Depot, where the remains will be transported via the Ocean Limited for their journey to Montreal.

Born in Limerick and a brother of the late Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Rev. Naish, in his 62nd year, leaves behind a legacy of intellectual prowess and a deep commitment to his calling. After completing his studies in Ireland and England, he entered the Jesuit Order forty-three years ago. His missionary zeal led him to India, where he served as the Rector of the Jesuit College in Calcutta for five years. Subsequently, he undertook the role of Chaplain to the British Forces in the Himalayas for an additional eight years.

Rev. Naish’s multifaceted knowledge spanned theology, philosophy, and the sciences. His time in India saw him delving into exhaustive studies of various religions, particularly Buddhism and other Oriental faiths, establishing himself as an authority in these fields. Despite his scholarly pursuits, he distinguished himself primarily as a missionary.

Known for his powerful oratory, compelling arguments, and eloquent discourse, Rev. Naish’s missionary work in Canada became synonymous with his dedication to spreading the Catholic faith. Over the years, he addressed congregations in cities across the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, leaving an indelible mark on those who had the privilege of hearing him speak.

In the wake of his demise, Limerick reflects on the loss of a man of deep piety, unwavering conviction, and profound humility. Father Vincent Naish, S.J., may have departed this world, but his legacy as a missionary, scholar, and compassionate human being will undoubtedly endure in the hearts and minds of those he touched throughout his remarkable journey.

O'Brien, Peter, 1735-1807, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/1861 · Person · 28 March 1735-05 March 1807

O'Callaghan, Kevin, 1915-1998, Jesuit priest of the British Province (BRI)

IE IJA J/1866 · Person · 05 March 1915-25 December 1998

O'Carroll, Richard, 1807-1858, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1871 · Person · 14 July 1807-14 February 1858

Born: 14 July 1807, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 18 September 1825, Casa San Antonio, Chieri, Torino, Italy - Italiae Province (ITA) for Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 20 December 1834, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England
Final Vows: 02 February 1845
Died: 14 February 1858, St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1825-1827: Casa San Antonio, Chieri, Torino, Italy (ITA for ANG)
1827-1828: Rue du Collége, Dôle Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France (GALL), Philosophy
1828-1829: St Joseph, Rue Lacépède, Aix-en-Provence, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (GALL), Mathematics
1829-1833: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1833-1834: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, Regency
1834-1838: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology then Teaching, Missioner at Worcester 1835)
1838-1841: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1841-1842: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Teaching
1842-1844: St Winefride’s, Well Street, Holywell, Flintshire, Wales, Missioner
1844-1848: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Teaching, Missioner at Chipping, Lancashire
1848-1851: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate
1851-1852: St Michael’s College, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Missioner at Brough, Yorkshire
1852-1858: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :

DOB 14/07/1807 Dublin; Ent 18/09/1825 Chieri, Italy; Ord 20/12/1834 Stonyhurst; FV 02/02/1845 Stonyhurst; RIP 14/02/1858 Livepool aged 51

Early education at Stonyhurst

After First Vows spent two years studying Philosophy at at Dôle and Aix.

1834-1849 Taught at Stonyhurst, and was a Prefect. He was Ordained there 20/12/1834. He continued teaching at Stonyhurst, was Superior of the Seminary, and Missioner for a short time at Holywell, and then Superior of the Seminary again in 1845.
1849 Sent to St Francis Xavier, Liverpool. He became a distinguished Preacher, his religious and strinking appearance in the pulpit adding weight to his impassioned addresses. Worn out by his work, he died there 14/02/1858, aged 51, and was buried at Gilmoss, attended by a great procession of the congregation by whom he was much beloved.

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
CARROLL O', RICHARD, Father, was born in Dublin July 14, 1807; made his humanity studies at Stonyhurst College ; entered the Society at Cheiri September 18, 1825, and after his philosophy at Dôle and Aix, and his theology at Stonyhurst, where he also served as Prefect in 1832, &c, he was ordained Priest at the same College December 20, 1834. After a course of teaching, &c., at Stonyhurst, Superior of the Seminary adjoining, and missioner for a short time at Holywell, he was professed of the four vows February 2, 1845, and in September of that year was again made Superior of the Seminary. In September, 1849, he was sent to the mission of St. Francis Xavier, Liverpool, where he became distinguished as a preacher, his religious and striking appearance in the pulpit adding weight to his impassioned addresses. Worn out by his work, he died at Liverpool February 14, 1858, æt. 51, and was buried at Gillmoss, attended by a great procession of the congregation, by whom he was much beloved.

◆ Catholic Record Society, Volume 70, 1981

The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

O’Carroll, Richard. Priest.
b. July 14th, 1807, Dublin.
e. Stonyhurst 1821-5.
S.J. September 18th, 1825.
Chieri (nov) 1825-7.
Dôle (phil) 1827-8.
Aix (phil) 1828-9.
Stonyhurst (theol) 1829.
St Mary's Hall (theol) 1830-2.
Stonyhurst 1832-4.
Ordained priest December 20th, 1834, Stonyhurst.
St Mary's Hall 1834-8 (supplied at Worcester 1835).
Stonyhurst 1838-41.
St Mary's Hall 1841-2.
Holywell 1842-3.
St Mary's Hall 1844-9.
Liverpool 1849-58.
d. February 14th, 1858, Liverpool. bu. Gillmoss.

(Fo.7; 115; CRW.67. Nec).

O'Reilly, Michael, 1888-1953, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/1947 · Person · 01 September 1883-22 December 1953

Born: 01 September 1883, Irvinestown, County Fermanagh
Entered: 07 September 1901, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1916, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1922
Died: 22 December 1953, St Aidan’s College SJ, Grahamstown (Makhanda), Eastern Cape, South Africa - Angliae Province (ANG)

1901-1903: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Novitiate
1903-1904: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Rhetoric
1904-1907: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1907-1911: Campion Hall, Brewer, Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, Further studies in Classics
1911-1913: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Regency
1913-1917: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1917-1920: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1920-1921: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly (HIB), Tertianship
1921-1923: St Stanislaus College SJ, Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, Teaching
1923-1939: St George’s College SJ, Bullawayo, Southern Rhodesia, Teaching, Spiritual Father
1939-1941: Campion House, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, Curate in Sacred Heart, Hospital Chaplain, Catechetics in local school
1941-1953: St Aidan’s College SJ, Grahamstown (Makhanda), Eastern Cape, South Africa, Teaching, Spiritual Father

◆ https://ordo.jesuitssouthern.africa/obit/12-22-1953%20%E2%80%93%20Michael%20O_Reilly.pdf

22 December

Fr MICHAEL O’REILLY 9 January 1883 – 22 December 1953

Born in Irvinestown, Fermanagh, Ireland, Michael O’Reilly was educated at St Aloysius Glasgow and the Mount. After entering the Society in 1901 he did a degree in Classics at Campion Hall Oxford and later taught at Beaumont. He was ordained in 1916 and went to Southern Africa in 1923 where he taught Latin, French and English at St George’s both before and after the move to Salisbury. He was effervescent; quick witted, easily irascible and just as easily recovering from it. The boys enjoyed hi and out of class he would be surrounded by the boys who jostled him and made jokes at his expense!

At a game he would run up and down the side line shouting support and advice. As spiritual father his Saturday evening talks reflected his ‘virile spirituality’. His influence was great and the first candidates for priesthood in Rhodesia came under his influence. But it seems he was eventually judged ‘impossible’ in the classroom and was moved to the Cathedral.

Then in 1942 he was suddenly back in the classroom, this time in St Aidan’s ‘to his joy and that of the community’. Francis X Jackson who knew him as a boy in Bulawayo and as a scholastic in Salisbury, wrote ‘it was a happy day for the college when he arrived here and his influence over the boys during his last twelve years was lastingly beneficial. … His constant interest in them outside the classroom and on the playing fields, all had a telling effect. They knew instinctively that here was a man who was spending himself on their behalf.’ And yet he was suffering from serious heart disease and had to be removed to the nursing home in Port Elizabeth run by the ‘Blue Nuns’ (The Little Company of Mary). Finally he returned to St Aidan’s to the college infirmary where he died.

Purbrick, Edward I, 1830-1914, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2013 · Person · 22 June 1830-18 July 1914

Born: 22 June 1830, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Entered: 15 October 1851, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1864, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1869
Died: 18 July 1914, Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1851-1853: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1853-1854: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1854-1861: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1861-1865: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1865-1866: Roman College, Rome, Italy (ROM), Theology
1866-1867: Maison Saint-Vincent, Laon, Hauts-de-France, France (CAMP), Tertianship
1867-1869: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Spiritual Father, Prefect of Studies
1869-1879: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Rector from 08/09/1869
1879-1880: St Ignatius, Mount Street, London, England, awaiting assignment
1880-1881: PROVINCIAL from 30/03/1880 to 15/08/1888
1881-1895: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Tertian Instructor
1895-1897: Wimbledon College SJ, Edge Hill, Wimbledon, London England, Minister, Curate, Catechetics
1897-1900: Xavier College SJ, West 15th Street, New York NY, USA (MAR), PROVINCIAL from 14/03/1897 to 08/01/1901
1900-1903: Sacred Heart Church, Albert Road, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, Caring for health
1903-1904: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare (HIB), Spiritual Father
1904-1906: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Spiritual Father, Curate
1906-1907: St Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie NY, USA (MAR), Tertian Instructor
1907-1914: Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, Lancashire, England, Spiritual Father, Confessor

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 43, Number 3

“Varia: Manchester, England - Death of Father Purbrick” p403

From the Catholic Times of Liverpool (Friday, July 24th) we borrow the notice of the death of Father Purbrick, the distinguished English Jesuit, whose name is well-known amongst us.

Father Edward Ignatius Purbrick, an ex-Provincial of the Society of Jesus in England and America, died at the Holy Name Presbytery, Manchester, on Saturday morning, July 18th, at the ripe old age of eighty-four. Father Purbrick, when feebleness and other natural accompaniments of old age were having their effects upon a once powerful frame, repaired to the Holy Name, Manchester, there to prepare, in God's good time, for his end. This was about seven years ago, but until about eighteen months since, the veteran priest was quite able to say Mass, hear confessions, officiate at baptisms, and so on. For the last year or more, however, he never left his room, although never confined to bed. He was able to sit in a chair, and passed his days in reading, prayer, etc. Although his lower limbs became increasingly weaker, yet his mind and intellect remained perfectly clear, and he was able to debate on different questions with a keenness and avidity that surprised his friends. About three weeks ago, however, it was apparent that the end was near. He showed evident signs of a rapid break up, and he was anointed. The next day, however, he appeared as well as before, but it was only a flicker. On Friday morning last he received Holy Communion, as usual, but half an hour later the Brother in attendance noticed that he appeared ill. The physician was summoned, and it was discovered that the aged priest had had a slight stroke. He rallied during the day, but in the evening Holy Viaticum was administered. During the night, he struggled on, but died on Saturday morning at half-past seven, in the presence of the Fathers and the Community, who recited the prayers for the dying.

Father Edward Ignatius Purbrick, was born in the year 1830, and was educated at Birmingham under James Prince Lee, and subsequently at Christ Church, Oxford. He came under the influence of Cardinal Newman and others at that period, and shortly after the Cardinal's conversion, young Purbrick, whilst an undergraduate, was received into the Catholic Church. This was in the year 1850. In 1851, he entered the novitiate of the Society and studied theology, etc., at St. Beuno's College, North Wales, and at the Collegio Romano, being ordained priest in 1864. Five years later, he was appointed rector of Stonyhurst College, holding this most important charge for ten years - 1869 to 1879. During this time he projected the buildings of modern Stonyhurst from plans prepared by Messrs Dunn and Hansom. In 1879 be went to Canada as visitor of the Jesuit Canadian Missions. From 1880 to 1888 he was·Provincial of the English Province, and upon relinquishing that onerous position in the latter years, he was appointed to the highly responsible post of Instructor of Tertian Fathers at Manresa House, Roehampton. This responsible office he held until 1895, when he was called upon to preside, as rector, over the destinies of Wimbledon College - 1895 to 1897. America was then the scene of his labors, where, from 1897 to 1900, he was Provincial of the Maryland-New York Province. Later on, from 1905 to 1907, he was Instructor of Tertians at St Andrew-on-Hudson. Whilst in the United States, he removed the Novitiate from Frederick, Maryland, to St Andrew-on-Hudson, NY., and turned Keyser Island on the Sound into a general villa resort for the colleges of the Maryland-NY Province. He successfully advocated, after much opposition, the opening of Catholic Halls at Oxford and Cambridge. He was the author of' “May Papers”,' a beautiful work on Our Blessed Lady; and of sermons published in “Sermons by Fathers of the Society”,' besides many contributions to the '”Month”,' the “Dublin Review”, and other periodicals. Upon leaving America in 1907, he returned to England, and took up his residence at the Holy Name Presbytery, Manchester.

On Monday morning, at ten o'clock, a Low Mass of Requiem for the soul of the deceased priest was said by the Rev Father Bader SJ, rector of the Holy Name, all the Fathers of the Holy Name, the Community, and mem-bers of the congregation assisting.

On Monday afternoon the body was removed from the Holy Name and conveyed to Stonyhurst College by train, where the interment took place on Tuesday. RIP

Kelly, Thomas Patrick, 1890-1977, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/210 · Person · 07 April 1890-29 July 1977

Born: 07 April 1890, Prnce Edward Terrace, Blackrock, County Dublin
Entered: 01 October 1912, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1923, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 08 December 1926, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare
Died: 29 July 1977, Our Lady’s Hospice, Harold’s Cross, Dublin

Part of the College of Industrial Relations, Ranelagh, Dublin community at the time of death

Older brother of Austin Kelly - RIP 1978

Father was a Commission Agent for Wollen and Drapery Warhouses.

Second of three sons and has four sisters.

Educated at Dominican Convent, Blackrock and then went to Blackrock College CSSp. In 1900 he went to Belvedere College SJ until 1907. In January 1908 he went to Holy Cross College, Clonliffe until 1912. In 1911 he obtained his BA at NUI.

I year of Theology at Holy Cross College, Clonliffe, Dublin before entry
Studied for BA at UCD

1912-1914: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate
1914-1915: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate
1915-1918: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1918-1920: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Regency
1920-1921: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Regency
1921-1924: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1924-1925: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Teaching
1925-1926: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Tertianship
1926-1930: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Teaching
1930-1931: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Teaching
1931-1944: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Teaching, Procurator
1944-1947: Sacred Heart Church, Cardigan Road, Leeds, Yorkshire, England (ANG)
1947-1949: St Francis Xavier Church, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1949-1953: Bourton Hall, Rugby, Derbyshire (ANG), Missioner
1953-1955: St Ignatius College SJ, High Road, Tottenham, London, England (ANG), Curate
1955-1974: Mungret College SJ, Limerick, Procurator, Confessor from 1971
1974-1977: College of Industrial Relations, Sandford Road, Dublin, Confessor

◆ Irish Province News 52nd Year No 4 1977

College of Industrial Relations
On Friday morning, July 29, Fr Tom Kelly died in Our Lady's Hospice at the fine old age of 87 years. He had been steadily deteriorating and passed away quietly and peacefully just as he would have wished. Fr Tom was essentially a simple man prone to scrupulosity. He had endeared himself to the Sisters and Nurses who showed him much kindness at all times. He is sorely missed by his nephews and nieces, particularly Rose Maguire who was very devoted to Fr Tom.

◆ Irish Province News 56th Year No 3 1981

Obituary
Fr Thomas P Kelly (1890-1912-1977)
As a scholastic he had the unpleasant job of Gallery Prefect in Clongowes (at least I think so) and had to help out in the big study when the priest in charge was sick. He made his tertianship in Tullabeg under Fr Bridge, 1925-26, and together with his brother Augustine, who afterwards became Provincial in Australia, he gave the Lenten Mission in the “People's Church”. It was said that the men preferred Fr Tom and the ladies, Fr Austin. He was a chaplain during World War II.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1978

Obituary

Father Tom Kelly SJ (1907)

The Reverend Thomas Kelly S.J. who died on 29th July 1977 was one of a fast diminishing group of Old Belvederians who came to the College at the beginning of the present century. Fr Tom was the second of three brothers. Eddie, the eldest, died at an early age; Austin, the youngest, still survives, and is a Jesuit priest belonging to the Australian Province. Austin was in Australia when that area was separated from the Irish Province and has remained there ever since.

Fr Tom, who was born on 7th April 1890, maintained throughout his long life a loyalty to his old school which remained undimmed in spite of the many other interests which occupied his mind, and the diverse occupations which claimed his attention. While at school Tom was not only successful in his academic pursuits but also excelled in the athletic activities of the College. Tall and strongly built, and a strong runner, he also possessed the characteristics of a leader. It followed almost as a natural consequence that he should be elected to captain the school Rugby XV, a position which he filled successfully in the season 1906/1907, impressing on the team his own high standards of sport smanship and discipline. His activities, however, were not confined to field sports, for his physique and his environment combined to make the water almost a second element. He became an excellent water-polo player and in his last year at school, at the annual swimming gala, a feature of those days, he won the College 100 yards Championship.

Tom left school in 1907 and, following his vocation to become a priest, and feeling that his vocation lay in parochial work, entered Clonliffe College. In 1911 he took his degree at the recently founded National University of Ireland. Meanwhile his younger brother Austin had joined the Jesuit Noviciate at Tullabeg, and in the Autumn of the year 1912 Tom left Clonliffe and was accepted into the Jesuit Noviciate. Tom and Austin were ordained on the same day, 31st July 1923.

From the date of his joining the Society in 1912 until 1945 Tom spent varying periods, in the normal occupations of a Jesuit, in every one of the Houses throughout Ireland, and in addition, in Stonyhurst in England, where he studied philosophy from 1916 to 1918. In 1945 however, he had a change of scene and of activities when he went to England to assist at Missions and Parish work. Here he spent ten years chiefly in the North of the Country. At the end of this period, Father Tom returned once more to Ireland and was stationed at Mungret again, after an absence of ten years. It was here that he remained until he retired in 1974. During the last years of his life, Father Tom was stationed at the College of Industrial Relations in Sandford Road, Dublin.

This brief chronicle of a very full life can only be an outline sketch the details of which are so many and so varied as to crowd the canvas. The amount of work included in so long a span, the priestly, the apostolic, the academic, the vast amount of help and sympathy and advice to those in need of it, tend to be overlooked, and indeed taken for granted; but these attributes were merely the development of those characteristics of loyalty a sense of duty and discipline which distinguished him as a school-boy some seventy years ago. To those who knew him, and are the better for that knowledge, to his relatives and specially to his brother Austin, we offer our most sincere sympathy.

May God have his soul in His Divine keeping.

Sherlock, Peter, 1820-1910, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2128 · Person · 25 September 1820-07 October 1910

Born: 25 September 1820, County Kilkenny
Entered: 20 May 1839, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1850
Final Vows: 02 February 1852
Died: 07 October 1910, St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1839-1841: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1841-1845: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Rhetoric studies for University of London, then Philosophy
1845-1846: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Regency
1846-1847: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1847-1848: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1848-1850: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1850-1851: Notre-Dame de Liesse, Liesse-Notre-Dame, Hauts-de-France, France (FRA), Tertianship
1851-1854: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Teaching
1854-1857: St Ignatius College SJ, London, England, Curate in Westminister Diocese
1857-1958: British Guyana Mission, Missioner
1858-1862: St Ignatius College SJ, Berkeley Square, London, England, Curate in Westminister Diocese at Millbank, Confessor at Convent of Infant Jesus, Cavendish Square, London
1862-1863: Curate
1863-1865: St George’s College, Worcester, England, Curate at St Joseph’s Chapel, Trenchard Street, Bristol
1865-1868: St Aloysius College, Preston, Lancashire, England, Curate at St Wilfrid’s, Director of poor school
1868-1871: St Michael’s College, Skipton, Yorkshire, England, Curate at St John the Evangelist (Pontefract Priory), Pontefract, Yorkshire, England, Caring for Poor House
1871-1872: St Ignatiius College SJ, Berkeley Square, London, England, Curate in Westminster, living at Earl Street
1872-1874: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisburty Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate at Prescot, Lancashire
1874-1875: Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, England, Curate at Holy Cross Church, Liverpool Road, Eccles, Manchester, Lancashire, England, Minister
1875-1876: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Curate
1876-1885: St St Aloysius College SJ, Dalhousie Street, Garnet Hill, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Curate at Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Andrew, Stirling Street, Galashiels, Selkirkshire, Scotland, Minister, Missioner to Lauder, Berwickshire, Scotland, Caring for a poor school
1885-1893: St George’s College, Worcester, England, Curate at St Joseph’s Chapel, Trenchard Street, Bristol
1886-1891: Curate, Catechetics in parish school
1891-1893: Curate at St Joseph’s Catholic Chapel, Trenchard Street, Bristol, Catechetics in parish school
1893-1894: Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, England, Curate at St Mary’s Church, North Road, St Helen’s, Lancashire, England
1894-1896: St Aloysius College SJ, Dalhousie Street, Garnethill, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Curate at St David’s Church, Eskbank Road, Dalkeith, Midlothian
1896-1897: St Michael’s College, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, awaiting assignment
1897-1899: St Aloysius College, St Wilfrid’s Church, Chapel Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, Curate at St Michael and St John’s Roman Catholic Church, Lowergate, Clitheroe, Lancashire, caring for poor house, Catechetics in parish school
1899-1900: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Curate at St Mary’s RC Church, Wellington Road, Rhyl, Wales and Missioner at St Joseph's Church, Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales
1900-1901: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Missioner
1901-1903: Holy Name Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, England, Curate at Our Lady Immaculate & St Joseph Catholic Church, West Street, Prescot, Lancashire, England
1903-1904: Burton Hill, Petworth, Sussex, England, Caring for health
1904-1905: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Caring for health
1905-1906: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, Caring for health
1906-1910: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Caring for health

Strickland, Gerard, 1822-1856, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2159 · Person · 04 November 1822-22 April 1856

Born: 04 November 1822, Lough Glynn, County Roscommon
Entered: 07 September 1840, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1850
Died: 22 April 1856, in battle near Sevastopol, Crimea - Angliae Province (ANG)

1840-1841: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1841-1842: Madeira Island, Portugal, Caring for health
1842-1843: Ireland (HIB), 2nd year Novitiate
1843-1845: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Regency
1845-1848: Séminaire de Vals, Vals-près-le-Puy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (LUGD), Philosophy (2), Theology
1848-1851: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1851-1853: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Procurator
1853-1854: Manchester, Lancashire, England, Superior, Procurator, Missioner in Manchester
1854-1855: St Aloysius College SJ, Preston, Lancashire, England, Missioner in Accrington
1855-1856: Military Chaplain in Crimea

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Studied Humanities at Stonyhurst before Ent.

1841 After a year at Hodder, he was sent to Madeira with his father for a change of air 27 September 1841
1844 Sent to Liverpool School for Regency
The after studies in Philosophy at Vals and a long course in Theology at St Beuno’s, he was Ordained 1850.
1851-1853 Appointed Minister at Stonyhurst
1853-1854 Appointed Superior of the new school in Manchester
1854 Appointed Superior of the new Mission at Accrington

He was appointed Chaplain to the English forces in the Crimean War, for which he had volunteered. He died in a camp there of fever 22 April 1856 aged 34. he was universally beloved for his many virtues, a man of great talent and high promise. he was buried in the Crimea with military honours, and his funeral was accompanied by upwards of 6,000 troops. He had caught the fever while voluntarily attending to the wounded French soldiers. He died before taking Final Vows.

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
STRICKLAND, JERRARD, Father, was born at Loughglyn, near Frenchpark, Roscommon, Ireland, November 4, 1822 ; studied his humanities at Stonyhurst College, and entered the Society September 7, 1840; he was sent for change of air with his father to Madeira on September 27, 1841. On February 14, 1844, he was appointed a Master at the Liverpool School (No. 45, St. Anne's Street); after studying philosophy at Vals for several years, he made his long course of theology at St, Beuno's College (North Wales), where he was ordained Priest in 1850. In the following year he was appointed Minister of Stonyhurst College ; in 1853 Superior of the school opened by the Society at Manchester ; in 1854 Superior of the new Mission of Accrington, and, having been appointed one of the Chaplains to the English forces in the Crimean war, for which he had volunteered his services, he died in the camp there of fever April 26, 1856, æt. 34; universally beloved for his many virtues, a man of great talents, and of high promise. He was buried in the Crimen with military honours, and his funeral was accompanied by upwards of six thousand troops. He caught the sever while voluntarily attend ing the wounded French soldiers. He died before his pro session of the four vows to which he was entitled. (Province Register.)

◆ https://www.jesuitarchives.co.uk/post/gerard-strickland-chaplains-in-the-crimean-war

April 26 2021

Gerard Strickland & Chaplains in the Crimean War

This year, 26 April marks the 165th anniversary of the death of Fr Gerard Strickland SJ, a Jesuit army chaplain, during the Crimean War. For this anniversary we are revisiting a blog post from 2016 on the anniversary of the Treaty of Paris which touched upon Strickland’s experiences as a chaplain.

The Treaty of Paris (30 March 1856) put an end to over two years of fighting between Russia and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia in the Crimean War. It was to be a war of several firsts: it was one of the first conflicts to use modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways, and telegraphs, one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and photographs, and it was the first occasion on which the British Government appointed permanent Catholic chaplains to the army.

Among those chaplains were two Jesuits of the English Province (as it was then): Fr Joseph Woollett SJ (1818-1898) and Fr Gerrard Strickland SJ (1822-1856). You may have deduced from the dates of the latter that Fr Strickland was sadly not to return from the Crimea. In an account of Woollett and Strickland prepared for the Letterae Annuae in the Archives (reference UI/10/2) we are told that:

Since the fall of Sebastopol, the English army had enjoyed the best of health, and the hospital work became light. The Frs felt free to offer their services to the chaplain in the French camp and they proposed that they... should visit the French hospitals which were full with cases of fever, scurvy and frost bite...The Frs saw the danger they incurred and could not expect to escape any more than the French clergy – but charity called them and they were happy to answer the call.

Fr Woollett caught the fever in March 1856 but after a severe illness recovered. Fr Strickland was taken ill two days after Woollett embarked for England but was not so fortunate; he died on the 26th of April. He was buried at Cathcart’s Hill and the funeral was attended by the whole of his Regiment, and by men from every other Regiment in the Division.

Fr Woollett had left England in March 1855, about a year and a half into the conflict, with Fr Strickland arriving in the Crimea in August that year. The Fathers would have said Mass at an early hour every morning in their respective tents and, according to the account for the Letterae Annuae, would have had anywhere from one to ten communicants, while on Sundays there could be 30 to 80 when Mass was held in the open air. According to the regulations of the War Office, all officers and soldiers not otherwise engaged on duty on a Sunday had to be present on parade for the Divine Service of his own Faith – “half the infantry being Catholics it was a fine spectacle to see every Sunday two or three thousand troops at the adorable sacrifice.”

But it was in the camp hospitals that the priests would have spent most of their time, setting off in the morning and working there for most of the day, particularly during the spring and summer as fever and cholera attacked the troops, or after an attempt on the batteries of the town, to catch the dying and those in immediate danger. The round of hospitals was often made twice during the day.

Fr Woollett sums up his duties neatly by opening several of his letters from the Crimea (in Letters and Notices vol. 22): ‘Mass, Communion, hospital visited’, before going into greater detail about his day.

Bridge, John Brice, 1793-1860, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2287 · Person · 02 November 1793-20 February 1860

Born: 02 November 1793, Liverpool, England
Entered: 07 September 1814, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: July 1819, Dublin City, County Dublin
Died: 20 February 1860, Allerton Park, Mauleverer, Yorkshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1814-1816: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Novitiate
1816-1819: Philosophy and Theology
1819-1837: College of the Holy Apostles, Suffolk, England, Missioner at Norwich, Norfolk, England
1822-1837: Missioner at Newhall Convent, Chelmsford, Essex, England
1837-1841: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister, Missioner at Chipping, Lancashire, England
1841-1842: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Minister
1842-1860: St Michael’s College, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Missioner at Allerton Park, Mauleverer, Yorkshire, England
1849-1860: Rector, Missioner at Allerton Park, Mauleverer, Yorkshire, England

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
BRIDGE, JOHN BRICE, Father, was a native of Liverpool, born November 2, 1793; made his studies at Stonyhurst College, was admitted to the Society at Hodder, September 7, 1814, and was made a Spiritual Coadjutor August 15, 1834. Ordained Priest in July, 1819, at Dublin. After serving the missions of Norwich and Newhall, Chelmsford, he was appointed Spiritual Father and Superior (June, 1838) of the Seminary, Stonyhurst, Minister of Stonyhurst College (November, 1841), and was stationed at Allerton Park (now Stourton), county York, as missioner July 18, 1842, where he died February 20, 1860, æt. 67. He was the compiler of the Ordo S., from 1844 until his death, and was for many years Superior of the Residence of St. Michael (Yorkshire District). The Diary of the Newhall Convent states that he arrived there in the autumn of 1822. His active and fervent zeal was of the greatest service to the convent school, and he was venerated alike in the community and school, and pages would be required to do justice to his memory. His ideas of religious life were most exalted, especially in devotion to our Blessed Lady. For a time he had very great difficulties to contend with, but his angelical patience overcame all. He left Newhall September 9, 1837.

◆ Catholic Record Society, Volume 70, 1981

The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

Bridge, John Brice. Priest.
b. November 2nd, 1793, Liverpool.
e. Stonyhurst 1810-4.
S.J. September 7th, 1814.
Hodder (nov) 1814-6.
Stonyhurst (phil and theol) 1816-9.
Ordained priest July, 1819, Dublin.
Norwich 1819-22.
New Hall 1822-37.
St Mary's Hall 1837-41 (supplied at Chipping 1840).
Stonyhurst 1841-2.
Allerton Park (Stourton) 1842-60 (Rector of College of St Michael 1849-60).
d. February 20th, 1860, Allerton. bu. Allerton.

(Fo.7; NA.37/159; ER.5/97; 115; CRS.36/4; New H. 174; Nec; 94 f.324. For writings see Som.).

Mattingly, John, 1745-1807, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/2345 · Person · 25 January 1745-23 November 1807

McClune, John, 1809-1848, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2346 · Person · 19 April 1809-16 December 1848

Born: 19 April 1809, Liverpool, England
Entered: 07 September 1826, Novitiate, Rue St Marc, Avignon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 24 December 1839, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare
Final Vows: 02 February 1847
Died: 16 December 1848, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

1826-1827: Novitiate, Rue St Marc, Avignon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France (GALL foe ANG), Novitiate
1827-1828: Hodder. Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1828-1830: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1830-1837: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1937-1840: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Theology
1840-1841: St George’s Residence, Worcester, Worcestershire, England, Missioner in Worcester
1841-1842: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Missioner at Chipping, Lancashire, England
1842-1844: St Aloysius College SJ, Lancashire, England, Missioner at Our Lady Help of Christians Church, Portico Lane, St Helen’s, Prescot, Lancashire
1844-1845: Liverpool Residence, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Missioner in Bedford, Wigan, Lancashire
1845-1846: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Derbyshire, England, Spiritual Father
1846-1848: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Provincial Socius

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
M'CLUNE, John, Father, was born in Liverpool, April 19, 1809; studied his humanities at Stonyhurst College; entered the Society at Avignon, in France, September 7, 1826, and was made a Spiritual Coadjutor February 2, 1847. Ordained Priest at Clongowes College, December 24, 1839. He served various missions for short periods, Worcester, Portico, and Bedford Leigh; also filled the offices of Subminister at Stonghurst (1841), Procurator at Mount St. Mary's College (1845), Sub procurator at Stonyhurst (1846), and Minister there in 1847; and died at the same College December 16, 1848, æt. 39. (Province Register.)

◆ Catholic Record Society, Volume 70, 1981

The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

McClune, John. Priest.
b. April 19th, 1809, Liverpool.
e. Stonyhurst 1820-6.
S.J. September 7th, 1826.
Avignon (nov) 1826-7.
Hodder (nov) 1827-8.
Stonyhurst (phil) 1828-30, 1830-7.
St Mary's Hall (theol) 1837-40.
Ordained priest December 24th, 1839, Clongowes, Ireland.
Worcester 1840-1.
Stonyhurst 1841-2 (supplying at Chipping 1841).
Portico 1842-4. Leigh 1844-5.
Mount St Mary's College 1845-6.
Stonyhurst 1846-8.
d. December 16th, 1848, Stonyhurst. bu. Stonyhurst.

(Fo.7; 115. CRS.36/4; Nec).

Woodlock, Joseph M, 1880-1949, Jesuit priest and chaplain of the Angliae province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2352 · Person · 01 February 1880-06 January 1949

Born: 01 February 1880, Bray, County Wicklow
Entered: 06 March 1899, Manresa, Roehampton, London England - Angliae province (ANG)
Ordained: 1914
Final Vows:: 02 February 1917
Died: 06 January 1949, Heythrop College, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England - Angliae province (ANG)

1899-1901: Manresa, Roehampton, London England (ANG), Novitiate
1901-1904: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1904-1908: Campion Hall, Brewer, Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, Further studies
1908-1911: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Regency
1911-1915: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB), Theology
1915-1916: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly (HIB), Tertianship
1916-1917: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1917-1919: Military Chaplain
1919-1943: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Prefect of Studies, Teaching, Editor College Annual
1937-1944: Teaching
1943-1949: Heythrop College, Chimmping Norton, Oxfordshire, England, Spitirual Father, Teaching
1947-1948: Tutor to Jesuit Graduate students
1948-1949: Prays for Society

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 44, Number 3

“Varia: England - Father J Woodlock writes” p398

I am getting Brother Griffin to print me a postcard with some bits of practical advice on it, and I am going to send it to each of my 1,300 Catholics (no postage to pay!): so that all whom I have failed to find may know how to make use of the churches where they happen to be. I am telling them to ask for “M’siew le Cooray” at any and every hour, to strike their breast and say, “Absolution and Communion”, and to find out the hour of mass for themselves if they are not sent to mass where I happen to be saying it. Odd men in batteries or army service corps are terribly hard to find and it may be months before they come across me, but I hope that my postcard may show them how to look after themselves.

The Church of England chaplains seem to dislike the bedside work, but they flourish at a funeral. Of the crowds of wounded thro' my hospitals the great majority of patients are Church of England men - but I never saw the chaplain in the place except when I went to fetch him to perform a funeral - and then he simply beamed and fussed and thoroughly enjoyed himself for a while.

Strickland, William, 1819-1901, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/2386 · Person · 07 July 1819-30 May 1901

Born: 07 July 1819, Lough Glynn, County Roscommon
Entered: 14 May 1838, Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1846
Final Vows: 02 February 1864
Died: 30 May 1901, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Older Brother of Gerard Strickland - RIP 1856 (33)

1838-1840: Hodder, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England (ANG), Novitiate
1840-1842: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Rhetoric
1842-1846: Séminaire de Vals, Vals-près-le-Puy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (LUGD), Philosophy (2), Theology
1846-1847: La Maison de Saint-Michel, Laval, Pays de Loire, France (LUGD), Tertianship
1847-1848: Madurai Mission, Nagapattinam College, Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India (LUGD), teaching
1848-1853: Novitiate, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India (LUGD), Military Chaplain
1853-1854: Rome, Italy (ROM), awaiting assignment
1854-1860: Bombay Mission, India (GER), Military Chaplain, Missioner in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India
1859-1860: Caring for health in Europe and Maryland, USA
1860-1861: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1861-1865: Immaculate Conception, Mount Street, London, Missioner in Lulworth Castle, Wareham, Dorset
1865-1874: St Michael’s College, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, residing at St Joseph and St Francis Xavier Church, Victoria Road, Richmond, Yorhshire, England, Parish Priest, Missioner in the Yorkshire Dales, Hospital Chaplain, Poor House Chaplain
1874-1875: St Ignatius, Mount Street, London, England, Curate
1875-1876: Maison la Colombière, Faubourg de la Rez, Paray-le-Monial, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France (LUGD), Spiritual Exercises
1876-1877: St George’s College, Worcester, England, Missioner at St Aloysius, St Giles, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
1877-1879: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lamcashire, England, Curate
1879-1880: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Curate at St Mary’s RC Church, Wellington Road, Rhyl, Wales
1880-1882: St Aloysius College, Preston, Lancashire, England, Curate at St Walburge’s, Weston Street, Preston, Lancashire, England
1882-1883: St George’s College, Worcester, England, Missioner at Bristol, Somerset, England
1883-1895: Catholic Church, Barbados, West Indies, Parish priest and military Chaplain, Hospital and School Chaplain
1895-1901: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Caring for health

Bingham, Michael, 1941-2022, Jesuit priest of the Brittaniae Province (BRI)

IE IJA J/261 · Person · 06 March 1941-12 January 2022

Born: 06 March 1941, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire/Northampton, Northants, UK
Entered: 07 September 1959, Manresa, Roehampton England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 24 August 1974, The Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate & St Thomas of Canterbury, Kingsthorpe Road, Primrose Hill, Northampton, Northamptonshire, England
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Bogotá, Colombia
Died: 12 January 2022, Craigavon Area Hospital, Portadown, County Armagh - Brittaniae Province (BRI)

part of the Iona, Portadown, County Armagh community at the time of death

Born : 6th March 1941 Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, England
Raised : Northampton, Northants, England
Early Education at Beaumont College SJ, Windsor, England
7th September 1959 Entered Society at Manresa House, Roehampton, London
8th September 1961 First Vows at Manresa House, Roehampton, London
1961-1964 Studying Philosophy at Studying Philosophy at Heythrop College
1964 living at Harlaxton & St Mary’s, Woodhall House, Woodhall Road, Colinton, Juniper Green, City of Edinburgh
1964-1965 Wimbledon College London, England - Regency : Teaching Latin & English at Wimbledon College, Edge Hill
1965-1968 Campion Hall, Oxford, England - Studying English Language & Literature at Campion Hall, Brewer St
1968-1971 Stoneyhurst College, Clitheroe, Lancs, England - Regency : Teaching English at Stonyhurst College
1971-1972 Southwell House, London, England - Studying Theology at Heythrop College, London, England
1972-1975 Toronto, ON, Canada - Studying Theology at Regis College, Ontario, Canada
24th August 1974 Ordained at Northampton Cathedral of St Mary & St Thomas, England
1975-1976 Tertianship at Medellin, Colombia
1976-1980 Medellín, Colombia - Pastoral Work in Parroquiua María Auxiliadora, barrio Zamora, & Fe y Alegría
1980-1982 Cali, Colombia - Pastoral Work in Parroquia San Ignacio
2nd February 1981 Final Vows at Bogotá, Colombia
1982-1984 Santander, Colombia - Parish Work at Parroquia de la Santissima Trinidad, Sabana de Torres
1984-1998 Liverpool, England - Parish Priest at The Friary, Bute Street; Director of Inner-City Project; Studying for MSc in Drugs & Addictions at John Moore's University
1998-2022 Iona, Portadown - Community Development and Reconciliation Ministry; Spiritual Director; Treasurer
1999 Trainer with Meditation Northern Ireland
2001 Studying for M Phil at Irish School of Ecumenics/TCD; Board “Northern Ireland Support Group”
2005 Prison Ministry
2007 Youth Conferencing with Northern Ireland Youth Justice Agency
2011 Prison Ministry (ex-prisoner support); Community Development
2013 Studying for Doctorate in Professional Studies in Practical Theology at University of Chester

William George Michael Bingham SJ
Michael had a good Christmas day with the Belfast community. On St Stephen’s day he had the symptoms of a heavy cold and tested positive on the Antigen test two days later. His temperature went up on 5th January and he was taken to hospital by the emergency services the following day. He moved on full oxygen through the last stages and died peacefully on the 12th January.

Michael was a member of the British Province who published the following notice to the Province on Wednesday January 12th 2022:

Dear Brothers in Christ,

I am sorry to let you know that Fr Michael Bingham SJ died at around 9.10am this morning, Wednesday 12th January, in the Craigavon Area Hospital in Portadown. He had been admitted there last Thursday with COVID, exacerbated by underlying health conditions. He was 80 years old, in the 63rd year of religious life.

Michael was born on 6th March 1941 in Chalfont St Peters, Buckinghamshire. He was educated at St John’s preparatory school, and then at Beaumont College. On finishing school he entered the novitiate at Manresa, Roehampton in 1959. After taking his First Vows there, he was sent to Heythrop in Oxfordshire for philosophy. An intervention by the Province’s Visitor, Gordon George, interrupted these studies, but in 1964 he began a year teaching at Wimbledon College. He next took an MA in English literature and language at Campion Hall, and then taught for three years as a regent in Stonyhurst. A year of theology at Heythrop (by then in London) followed, and then between 1972 and 1975 he studied for an MDiv at Regis College in Canada, returning for ordination in Northampton in 1974. The following year he made his tertianship in Colombia, remaining there afterwards, working for eight years with Fe y Alegria and in parish ministry. In 1984 he returned to Britain, and worked in the SFX and Friary parish in Liverpool for the next fourteen years. Finally, in 1998, at the invitation of the Irish Province he moved to Northern Ireland, where he would spend the rest of his life, in a variety of ministries of reconciliation in Portadown.

Funeral arrangements will be sent out in due course. May he rest in peace

◆ https://www.jesuit.ie/news/michael-bingham-sj-a-heart-of-gold/

Michael Bingham SJ – ‘a heart of gold’

Many tributes in the local press of Ireland and England have been paid to Fr Michael Bingham SJ, the British Jesuit who worked for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland for over two decades. He died peacefully at 81 years old at Craigavon Hospital, Portadown, County Armagh, on 12 January 2022. Frank Brady SJ, the homilist at the Funeral Mass on 17 January, spoke of Michael’s long and varied life as a Jesuit and his capacity to always see the good in others.

Fr Damian Howard, Provincial of the British Jesuits, responded to Michael’s death on Twitter. He commented:

“So sad to announce the death this morning of Fr Mike Bingham SJ. Over two decades working for reconciliation in Portadown, Northern Ireland and a lifetime dedicated to justice and human dignity. Truly an unsung hero. May he rest in peace.”

SDLP MLA Dolores Kelly paid tribute in the online publication Armagh I. She said:

“Originally from Liverpool, he was soon adopted as a local after moving to Portadown. When tensions arose in this area Fr Bingham was known to be a calming voice. He also worked hard to foster good cross-community relations and he himself enjoyed a strong relationship with the other church denominations in the area.

He was widely recognised for his work with the Drumcree Community Trust, where he served for over 20 years, including as chairperson, where he worked to make a real difference to the lives of ordinary people in this area.”

The Funeral Mass took place in the Church of St John The Baptist, Drumcree, on 17 January, followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery. Homilist Frank Brady SJ, who lived and worked with Michael in Portadown, referred to his broad experience and ministry around the world.

He noted Michael’s five masters degrees, competence as a cellist and appreciation of nature. He spoke of his ministry with Native American people in Canada, his work in Colombia, other Latin American countries, inner city Liverpool and 23 years in the local community of Portadown.

He also mentioned Michael’s dedication to hearing the stories of prisoners and ex-prisoners in Northern Ireland, Britain and Toronto and his work with young offenders in Northern Ireland.

Speaking to the congregation at the Funeral Mass, Fr Frank said:

“Michael had a great sense of direction. He walked the walk and he talked the talk with us, with young people, on your behalf, to create a hope-filled future for us all. And he was achieving that because we and particularly young people let him in, let him in to our lives.

You helped him to discover God. You helped him to discover the Father of Jesus and our Father. As he said himself, God, the one who always believes in us long before we ever believe in him or even name him, and long before we believe in ourselves.”

Fr Frank continued:

“So many have said that Michael could always see the good in others. He was all give, had a heart of gold. And he could get quite angry at what he saw as injustice, but he learned to use that anger to move him peaceably, to do something about it.

His hope is that we too will discover God, our discovering God to one another as we walk this way together. That we too will discover the meaning of St Paul’s prayer as Jesus’ love grows in our hearts. God rest you Michael.”

Fr Michael Bingham SJ is deeply regretted by his sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, the Jesuit community in Portadown, Armagh and other Jesuit communities in Britain and Ireland.

Requiescat in Pace

◆ http://www.sjweb.info/documents/cis/pdfenglish/200611105en.pdf

Review of Ignatian Spirituality - XXXVII, I/2006

BEING IN TUNE BEING IN TUNE TO GOD’S L O GOD’S LOVE IN ME: Michael Bingham

Biographical Introduction
I was born in England in 1941 of a Protestant father from Northern Ireland and a Catholic mother from London. I was sent away to a Jesuit boarding school for 10 years, after which I joined the novitiate in 1959. Philosophy followed, then graduate studies in English at Oxford. I taught in another Jesuit boarding school for three years before starting theology at Heythrop College in London, which I completed at Regis College in Toronto, Canada, returning to England for ordination in 1974.

After a few months studying Spanish in Mexico I took up residence in Medellín, Colombia, attending the Instituto Pastoral Latinoamericano for another few months before doing Tertianship in a poor neighbourhood under Miguel Elizondo from 1975-6. I stayed on for a further three years in the Jesuit parish there as a member of the staff, moving to another poor parish of ours in Cali for two years, and lastly to a country parish near Barrancabermeja before returning home at the end of 1983.

Since then I worked in a Jesuit parish in inner-city Liverpool for 14 years, and in 1998 moved to Northern Ireland to join a small insertion community in a ‘nationalist’ (catholic)
area of Portadown.

My Life in the Society and the Social Apostolate
It was not till I moved to Canada in 1972 to complete my theology that I felt able to develop my interest in social justice. I first did a pastoral placement in an Institute for young female offenders, and then as member of a small community did supervised chaplaincy work in prisons. On several occasions I stayed at various Jesuit missions to the native American people. In 1975 I visited various basic Christian communities, mainly in Mexico, before arriving in Medellín, Colombia, to study pastoral practice in Latin America following the principles of the 1968 CELAM Conference. In Tertianship there we ministered to the poor amongst whom we lived. Afterwards I helped briefly in 1976 on the mission teams in the diocese of Riobamba, Ecuador, being caught up in the military raid on the Latin American bishops’ meeting there, detained briefly and expelled from the country.

Until 1983 I was assigned to poor parishes in Colombia. Besides performing regular pastoral duties I was chaplain and catechetical coordinator in the Fe y Alegría schools in Medellín (until I was effectively declared ‘persona non grata’ by the bishop), and in Cali did some conscientising work amongst neighbourhood groups. The Jesuit social centre CINEP in Bogotá offered training and reflection to those of us in the popular pastoral sector. Before leaving Latin America I helped out for several weeksin a parish on the outskirts of Managua in Nicaragua, at that time facing the Contra rebellion. For the next 14 years from 1984 my work in an inner-city parish in Liverpool, marked by high unemployment and substandard housing, was part pastoral, part community development. I helped to organise housing tenant groups, children’s play schemes and adult learning, all in a context of good relations with the local Anglican church. I did some work with drug addicts, studying for a Master’s degree on the subject. During the 1980s I was active in promoting Central American solidarity, and took part in protest rallies against the presence of nuclear bases. Within the British Province I belonged to our Social Apostolate group, becoming a member of the social ministries Commission, and helped to host two meetings of the northern sector of Mission Ouvrière.

In Northern Ireland, where I have been now since 1998, my work has been marked throughout by the issue of political and religious division. Besides helping in the parish and in a nearby prison, I have become involved in our local neighbourhood organisation, being currently on the management committee, and have supported people in their opposition to sectarian parades through the area. Within the town of Portadown I belong to an inter-church group of clergy and church workers, a lay-led group that promotes reconciliation, and another that offers mediation services to individuals and groups in dispute, aware of the recent influx of migrant workers into the area and the growth of racism. Further afield I work with Mediation Northern Ireland, based in Belfast, providing training sessions to groups on issues around conflict. I recently did a Master’s degree in Reconciliation Studies in Belfast, and have done courses in dealing with trauma, suicide and depression. I also help to staff a telephone service for those contemplating suicide.

I continue to be a member of my Province’s social ministries Commission, liaising with Irish Province representatives in the field, and maintain links with Mission Ouvrière. I recently contributed an article in a publication by the Faith and Justice Centre in Dublin on ‘The Church’s Social Teaching in Action’

Times I have experienced Movements of the Spirit Times
In spite of a conventional, even privileged upbringing, around 1968 certain interests and concerns were emerging in my consciousness before theology, apparently extraneous to any religious or spiritual dynamic: awareness of social inequities, the call for radical change, the survival of human cultures and natural resources.

On a visit to a Jesuit mission in Northern Ontario I recall the sensation of getting down from the ice-bound train one Christmas and approaching the township almost on tiptoe through the snow for fear of damaging fragile sensibilities with my clumsy mental and cultural baggage. Hearing the stories of the inmates in a women’s gaol in Toronto where I was chaplain, I found
myself looking at the underside of society and discovering that it looked, and felt, completely different. I don’t think I have seen things quite the
same way since.

In a cramped little Tertianship house in the ‘misery belt’ of Medellín I wrestled with the contradictions and dilemmas posed by our ‘parachuting’ into the lives of these chosen neighbours around us. I felt again the sense of awe and hesitancy before the vulnerable existences and relationships disturbed by our appearance. Our professed ‘poverty’ was a sham in the midst of the humble yet dignified people, for we were by any definition ‘rich’ - in money, resources, power, influence, education and opportunities. Yet so poor we discovered ourselves when compared to them in terms of generosity, availability, mutual dependence, authenticity and spontaneity.

We concluded that taking a leading role would only perpetuate the people’s sense of impotence and incompetence. It felt like a ‘handing over’ - or even ‘handing back’ - of power and dignity to those to whom it had rightfully belonged. We reasoned that the best gift we could offer them would be to accompany them in their pains and trials, their hopes and struggles.

As I settled into the rhythm of life in the world of the marginalised, it felt like being at the centre of the world. This was where lay new hope for a better order of things. Though the senses were continually assailed by sights, sounds and smells associated with the detritus of society, it was a privilege and a blessing to be there.

The sense of being part of a continentwide community of purpose and commitment was a powerful support and motivator. There was a clear political and social project to establish a just society with which we could identify and to which owe allegiance.

Back in Britain, in a parish in a disintegrating part of inner-city Liverpool, I recognised the same world of ordinary human lives whom wealth, success and fortune pass by, here marked by unemployment, and superfluous to the national enterprise. Here again were the friends I had already made in Latin America, whose powerlessness is their greatest poverty, their humanity their greatest richness.

Lack of access to social participation, whether in the slums of Medellín or in an inner-city estate in Liverpool, produces characteristic patterns of behaviour, values and world-view. I realised that the faith that emerged from this experience was qualitatively different. I saw the spirituality of the poor as the paradigm of all spirituality, where a sense of dependence and impotence is the absolute condition of our relationship with God. Not only that, but these virtues that survive in our impoverished and cynical society have enriched my own spirituality. One day a young man whom I had known came to me asking for help. He was one of the many drug abusers in the neighbourhood. I became aware of the pain that was not as public as other ills of social marginalisation, but just as real. Having tended to focus on people more as a class or collectivity I became more attentive to individual and personal needs. Building relationships in Northern Ireland I have sensed the contradiction between living in solidarity with our Catholic neighbours and trying to bridge the rift with the Protestant community. How can I be committed to one and yet detached from both? If I pursue the cause of reconciliation, can I really affirm that I am committed to anybody?

Here the priority is the healing of differences and divisions. Between the rights and demands of each, one can occasionally glimpse in the gap the ideal of a higher, or deeper justice, where truth and compassion meet.

Where I have been inspired by Ignatian Spirituality
The link between justice and God came gradually for me. It was like a re-exploration of my faith as I matched my experience of the poor with my beliefs.

The image of Jesus, ‘pioneer of our faith’, the lowly leader who calls us to follow only where he has gone before himself, was very strong from my days of Tertianship, and the vision of his kingdom was the template for transformative action in the world. Jesus’ option in favour of the excluded and vulnerable, and challenge to the upholders of power and privilege, sprang out from the pages of the gospel as I re-read them, and were reinforced by the 4th decree of GC 32.

I aspired to a more radical poverty in solidarity, like the generous ‘emptying out’ of Jesus, to the extent of accepting criticism and misunderstanding without defence. All choices, all judgments, tended to be made in this light – discerning them from the perspective of the poor.

In the early years of my experience little self-reflection took place, so focused was I on living out the consequence of my commitment. Only later did the people among whom I worked help me to look more closely at my moods and my desires, and integrate my own spirituality with my lifechoices.

Learning to relate more to individual needs has led me to be more aware of movements of the spirit in myself, and become more understanding of people, the reasons for their being where they are, and their capacity for moving forward. Where once ‘contemplative in action’ was simply activity driven by a conviction, it has become more a being in tune to God’s love in me.

◆ https://armaghi.com/news/portadown-news/truly-an-unsung-hero-tributes-paid-to-long-standing-portadown-priest-fr-michael-bingham/154802

‘Truly an unsung hero’ – tributes paid to long-standing Portadown priest Fr Michael Bingham

Tributes have been paid to a long-standing Portadown priest following his passing in Craigavon Hospital on Wednesday morning.

Fr Michael Bingham SJ – based out of Drumcree Parish for more than two decades – was the dear brother of Paul, Philip, Jacqueline, Claire, Celia, Nicholas and the late Mark and beloved uncle of Michaela.

Paying tribute, St John the Baptist College in Portadown said: “The SJBC family are very saddened to hear of the passing of Fr Michael Bingham.

“Fr Michael was a compassionate, caring and very charitable man in attitudes and deeds. A great friend and role model to the local community and parish. Sacred heart of Jesus have mercy on his soul. May he rest in peace.”

Fr Damian Howard, Provincial Superior of the British Jesuits, commented: “So sad to announce the death of Fr Mike Bingham SJ. Over two decades working for reconciliation in Portadown, Northern Ireland and a lifetime dedicated to justice and human dignity. Truly an unsung hero. May he rest in peace.”

SDLP Upper Bann MLA Dolores Kelly paid tribute, saying Fr Bingham would be missed by his parishioners and all those at the Dumcree Community Trust.

“I was saddened to hear of the death of Fr Michael Bingham and I know his loss will be keenly felt throughout our community,” said Ms Kelly.

“My thoughts go out to his family and friends following their sad loss, I’m sure he will be missed by everyone who knew him.

“Originally from Liverpool, he was soon adopted as a local after moving to Portadown. When tensions arose in this area Fr Bingham was known to be a calming voice. He also worked hard to foster good cross-community relations and he himself enjoyed a strong relationship with the other church denominations in the area.

“He was widely recognised for his work with the Drumcree Community Trust, where he served for over 20 years, including as chairperson, where he worked to make a real difference to the lives of ordinary people in this area. Fr Bingham was also known for his work at Maghaberry Prison. He has made a huge contribution to this area over the past few decades and leaves behind a lasting legacy.”

The Parish outlined details around the reposing of Fr Bingham’s remains.

Fr Bingham’s remains will arrive at Drumcree Community Centre, Ashgrove Road, Portadown, where they will repose from 1pm until 9pm.

Friends, neighbours and members of the community will be welcome to pay their respects to Fr. Michael during those times.

Drumcree Community Centre will also open on Monday, January 17 from 10am until 1pm for those persons wishing to pay their respects to Fr. Michael after which the Community Centre will be closed to the public.

This closure is to facilitate a period of private and quiet reflection for Fr Michael’s family members who will be travelling from England and for his religious friends and colleagues.

We would ask that all those wishing to attend Drumcree Community Centre strictly abide by guidelines relating to Covid-19.

In particular, it is important that all persons attending the Community Centre use the hand-sanitiser located at the main entrance; wear face-coverings, and maintain adequate social-distancing. Entrance to, and exit from, Drumcree Community Centre will be by separate doors.

To facilitate members of Fr Michael’s immediate family travelling from England and a number of his colleagues also travelling from several parts of Ireland and Britain, Requiem Mass will take place on Monday, January 17 in the Church of St. John The Baptist, Drumcree, at 3pm with burial immediately afterwards in the adjoining cemetery.

O'Kelly, Augustine, 1876-1950, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/338 · Person · 26 May 1876-22 July 1950

Born: 26 May 1876, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1892, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 01 August 1909, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1911, Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick
Died: 22 July 1950, St Mary's Home, Pembroke Park, Ballsbridge, Dublin

Part of the St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin community at the time of death

Educated at Belvedere College SJ

1892-1894: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate
1894-1896: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Rhetoric
1896-1899: Maison Saint Louis, St Hélier, Jersey, Channel Islands (FRA), Philosophy
1898-1901: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Regency
1901-1903: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Regency
1903-1906: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Regency
1906-1909: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1909-1910: Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium (BELG), Tertianship
1910-1917: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Teaching
1917-1919: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Minister, Librarian
1919-1921: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick Teaching, Director of Apostolic School, Prefect of Church
1921-1922: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Assistant Editor “Irish Monthly”, Spiritual Exerecises
1922-1923: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Teaching
1923-1925: Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Teaching, Curate
1925-1940: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1941-1950: St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin, Curate

◆ Irish Province News 25th Year No 4 1950

Obituary

Fr. Augustine O’Kelly (1876-1892-1950)

Father Augustine O'Kelly, or as he was known to his many friends, Fr. "Gus” O'Kelly, died peacefully at the Pembroke Nursing Home on Sunday, July 23rd, 1950. He was born in Dublin on 16th May, 1876 and belonged to a well-known city family. After completing his education at Belvedere College he entered the novitiate at Tullabeg on the 7th of September, 1892. He spent many successful years in the Colleges in Clongowes and in Mungret. He was given charge of the Apostolic students in Mungret and many of those who were under him still remember him and speak of him with great reverence and affection.

After finishing in the Irish colleges he spent some years in parochial work in Liverpool and in Preston. This part of his life was characterised by great zeal and devotion, especially among the poorer classes. His success in instructing converts was remarkable, and this was largely due to his painstaking efforts. He was also interested in the many problems affecting married life and several invalid marriages were set right as the result of his efforts.

He returned to Ireland about a dozen years ago and the remaining years of his life were spent in zealous work in St. Francis Xavier's Church, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin, For a few years before his death, he was the victim of blood pressure and heart trouble. He went to Rathfarnham Castle for a short holiday in the middle of July of the present year. While there he had a heart seizure and had to be removed to the Pembroke Nursing Home. A stroke followed a few days later and this was the immediate cause of his death. During his illness he showed great edification to his nurses and to the Doctor who attended him,

The outstanding features of his life were that he was a very saintly man and an excellent religious. All through his life everyone regarded him as a very holy man of God, and as a man who loved his rule and practised it as perfectly as possible. The boys in the Colleges had this opinion of him. The people with whom he came in contact during his missionary career thought the same of him, and above all his religious brethren of the Society looked up to him as a great example of holiness and religious observance. He practised self-denial very intensely. For instance, during the later years of his life he had no fire in his room, even in the depths of winter. He ate no meat and he scarcely ever indulged in food which was specially pleasing to the palate. But his self-denial was not repellant, because he was the soul of kindness and good nature. Even when he was suffering he was always friendly and in good humour. This was especially manifest during the last years of his life when he suffered considerably. He was eagerly sought as a confessor both by externs and by his own brethren in religion. He was always faithful and punctual in his confessional and his penitents could rely on his being present at his post. He had a great sense of humour and enjoyed telling and listening to amusing stories, especially those of the sensational kind. He was a great lover of holy poverty and certainly felt at times some of its effects. His obedience was sometimes amusing to his brethren - for instance, he had his bag always packed so that he could leave any house where he was stationed at a moment's notice. He was a model of all the religious virtues and without any ostentation. Like His Divine Master he effaced himself in all things,

The news of his death was received with genuine sorrow by the many friends he had made in Gardiner Street, and elsewhere. He leaves a gap and will be sadly missed. May he rest in peace!

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Commnnity

Father Austin O’Kelly (1876-1950)

Was born in Dublin and received his education at Belvedere College. He entered the Society in 1892 and pursued his higher studies at the French scholasticate in Jersey and Milltown Park where he was ordained in 1909. He was a member of the teaching staff at the Crescent from 1923-25. Shortly afterwards he went over to England to work in the Jesuit churches at Preston and Liverpool. His chosen apostolate was amongst the poorer classes. Before the outbreak of the last war he was recalled to Dublin and continued his apostolate amongst the poor near Gardiner St Church.

Sloan, John G, 1893-1947, Jesuit priest of the Chigagensis Province (CHG)

IE IJA J/408 · Person · 06 July 1893-28 December 1947

Born: 06 July 1893, Benagh, Kilkeel, County Down
Entered: 01 October 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: by 1934, Kurseong, India
Final Vows: 15 August 1937
Died: 28 December 1947, Korangi Creek, Karachi, Pakistan - Chigagensis Province (CHG) - Madurensis Mission (MDU) (in a plane crash)

part of the St Xavier’s College, Gandhi Maidan Road, Patna, Bihar, India community at the time of death

Transcribed : HIB to TOLO 1926 to MIS 1929 to CHG 1930 (MDU)

1924-1926: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate (HB to TOLO 1926)
1926-1931: Sacred Heart College, Shenbaganur, Tamil Nadu, India, Rhetoric (2), Philosophy (MIS from 1929)
1931-1935: St Mary’s College, Kurseong, West Bengal, India, Theology
1935-1936: Manresa House, Nayatoli, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India (BELG), tertia nship
1936-1937: St Joseph’s, Jamalpore, Gujarat, India, Missioner at Monghyr (Munger), Bihar, India
1937-1938: Bishop’s House, Bankipore, Patna, Bihar, India, Chaplain and Catechetics in local Girls School, Hospital Chaplain
1938-1939: Sacred Heart Residence, St Michael's School, Digha Ghat, Patna, Bihar, India, Superior, Missioner
1939-1947: St Xavier’s College, Gandhi Maidan Road, Patna, Bihar, India, Superior of Missioners, Missioner

◆ Irish Province News 23rd Year No 1 1948

Frs. G. Casey and C. O'Conor represented the Province at the Solem Requiem Mass celebrated at Kilkeel Church, Co. Down on 22nd January for the late Fr. John Sloan, S.J., of Patna Mission (Chicago Province) who perished in the Dakota crash outside Karachi on the night of 27th December. Fr. O'Conor was the Celebrant. A brief account of his career appears below.

Obituary

Fr. John Sloan (1893-1924-1947) - Patna Mission

Fr. John Sloan (Patna Mission). Many of our Province who knew Fr. John at Tullabeg were shocked to learn of his tragic death in the last days of December, with twenty two others he perished in the Dakota crash just outside Karachi on the night of the 27th. He was at the time Superior of the missionary band (miss. excurr.) and on his way to give a mission.
Born at Benagh in the parish of Kilkeel, Co. Down in 1899, he went straight from the National School to business at John Hughes, Ltd., Liverpool. He appears to have attended night school at St. Francis Xavier's, where he met Fr. Bridge who arranged for his entry to Osterley, from which he came to our Novitiate on 1st October 1924. During the following year he was assigned to the Madura Mission of the Toulouse Province, where he completed his noviceship. He studied philosophy at Shembaganur, and during holidays, when catechising in various mission stations, began to show those talents for preaching which he put to such good use in after years. It was as a philosopher, too, that he started collecting funds for the building of a Church to St. Patrick at Periakulam, South India, a project which was warmly supported by the Bishop of Trichinopoly and was carried through to a successful issue. About 1928 Fr. General granted Mr. Sloan permission to transfer to the Patna Mission of the Chicago Province, where he enjoyed much better health and secured congenial work. On the completion of his philosophy in November 1930, he set out for Patna, where, to his amazement, he found himself Procurator of the Mission and residing at Bishop's House, Banakipore. At the end of the following year he went to Kurseong for theology and was ordained priest on 21st November, 1934.
After his Tertianship he served at various mission stations until 1937, when he became head of a missionary group, engaged in the giving of missions throughout India, a post be held till his untimely death, He travelled extensively by air during the ten years of this fruitful apostolate, and had only returned from the Persian Gulf a few days before the end.
He was the recipient of a personal letter of congratulation from our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, on the success of his work. Fr, Sloan was never in Ireland after he left it as a novice, in 1925.
He is survived by two sisters : Mrs. Harper, Greencastle, Ballyardle, Co. Down, and Mrs. Cavin, St. Anthony, Idaho, and by a brother, Fr. Francis Sloan, pastor of St. Teresa's Church, Midvale, Utah, R.I.P.

◆ Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948

Letter from Fr. J. A. MacSeumais, R. A. F. Staging Post, Mauripur.

“I am still awaiting a plane for Singapore. However, there is a possibility that I may be away tomorrow. This Station is served by Dutch Franciscans from St. Patrick's Church, Karachi. I was in there on Sunday and met the Superior Ecclesiasticus of this Area, Mgr. Alcuin Van Miltenburg, O.F.M. He it was who made all the arrangements for the burial of Fr. John Sloan, S.J. Fr. Sloan was travelling from Karachi Airport to Ceylon, in a TATA Dakota when the plane crashed at Karonji creek about 15 miles from Karachi Airport. The Mother Superior of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and one of her nuns, Mother Anthony, an Irishwoman, were called to St. Teresa's Nursing Home, Karachi to prepare Fr. Sloan's body for burial. He is buried in the Catholic Plot at Karachi Cemetery where several other Jesuits are buried. I visited Fr. Sloan's grave on Sunday and I hope to obtain a photograph of it.

The German Jesuits had the Mission of Sind and Baluchistan, and after the First World War, it was taken over by the other Provinces. In 1935, it was taken over by the Franciscans. There is a magnificent Memorial in front of St. Patrick's, built in honour of the Kingship of Christ and commemorating the work done by the Society in this Mission. Under the Memorial is a crypt and in a passage behind the altar is the ‘The Creation of Hell’ by Ignacio Vas, a number of figures of the damned being tortured in Hell. Indefinite depth is added by an arrangement of mirrors”.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Sloan 1893-1947
John Sloan has been described by his biographer as a Francis Xavier from Ulster. Born in Kilkeel County Down in 1898, he was what we might have called a late vocation. At the age of 23 he entered Osterley College in London, under Fr Lester, to fill in the gaps in his education. In 1924 he entered the Irish noviceship, during the course of which he was selected for the Indian Mission. Eventually in India, he was attached to the American Misison at Patna. Here began his life’s work.

The All-India Mission Band, which travelled the length and breadth of India, preaching Missions, mainly to English speaking residents. His conversions were untold, and the harder the case, the better John Sloan liked it. He was also responsible for numerous late vocations. His energy was boundless, though his frame was frail. Being warned by his doctor to take at least a year’s rest, he replied “I am only looking for eternal rest”.

He had just finished a Mission to oil-workers in the Persian Gulf and was on route to Ceylon to begin another campaign. The plane he boarded at Karachi on December 27th 1947 blew up after being air-borne ten minutes, and his broken body was picked up some ten miles from the city. He had had a premonition of disaster and had made a general confession in the Franciscans before embarking.

A truly apostolic soul, the fruits of his work are still to be seen, and many a priest thanks God daily at his Mass, that he met John Sloan.

◆ Irish Jesuit Directory 1953

From Ulster to India –
John G Sloan SJ
A Tribute

John D. Sheridan did the Society of Jesus a useful service in his novel, Paradise Alley, when he put on the lips of one of his characters, Denis Domican, the exact attitude which Jesuit superiors have towards their future subjects. “The Jesuits don't look for geniuses; all they ask is that a boy should have a certain degree of education and ordinary intelligence”. But, when John G. Sloan applied for admission in 1924 at the comparatively late age of twenty-six, he had barely attained that certain degree of education which was expected from candidates some ten years younger, but nevertheless he was accepted. His elementary schooling had, indeed, ended some considerable time before the outbreak of World War I. And, had it not been for Father Lester's new school for late vocations at Osterley Park, in England, it is probable that his dream of becoming & priest would never have materialised.

He remembered Osterley with gratitude, and how hopefully he had faced the stiff ordeal of beginning secondary school at twenty-three years of age. So hopeful was he that he asked and received the favour of being allowed to complete a six-year course of studies in half that time. At first he had planned on becoming a Redemptorist, since these men had early excited his admiration by their splendid preaching. It was a shock, then, for his family, who lived in Kilkeel, Co. Down, when after a brief illness, during his final holidays from Osterley Park, John changed his mind about the Redemptorists and decided to become a Jesuit. Surprisingly (as it appeared to his family) he was accepted, and so in 1924 he said goodbye to England, where he had worked since 1914, and entered the noviceship of the Irish Province at Tullabeg. He knew that he would never be a great scholar, and, in fact, was keenly aware that the long and gruelling course of Jesuit professional studies would be something of a martyrdom for him. Not that his intellect was less keen than that of his companions, but his lack of previous academic preparation did indeed prove to be a severe handicap.

Nevertheless, he knew himself to possess the gift of oratory, and had dreams of using this talent to the full in Australia, which at that time was the Missionary field of the Irish Jesuits. But this dream of preaching popular missions in Australia, which had strongly influenced him to seek admission to the Irish Jesuit Province, was to be shattered before he had scarcely begun his second year of noviceship. An appeal to Ireland from the Indian mission of the French Jesuits was answered by the designation of three young Irish Jesuits. John Sloan, who considered himself unsuited for reasons of health and his difficulty in learning new languages, as well as his scholastic difficulties previously mentioned, was unexpectedly chosen. Years afterwards, as a sucessful missioner in India, he could still remember this decision of his Irish superiors as the hardest cross of his entire life.

Tullamore to India
And thus he passed from the boggy midlands of Ireland to a house of studies on a mountain top in Southern India, Sacred Heart College, Shembaganur. Here he pronounced his first vows in 1926, and for the next three years he did the best he could with the philosophical, studies. But providence, after all, was not minded to keep him in Southern India struggling with a difficult language, and in 1929 he was eagerly welcomed as a new recruit by the incipient American Jesuit Mission at Patna on the banks of the Ganges. He arrived at the time of the great depression, very little money was coming through from the States, and, since he had gained a high reputation at Shembaganur for the financial skill he had exercised in some smaller matters, he found himself unexpectedly entrusted with the finances of the entire diocese of Patna. Normally, the Jesuit Scholastic interrupts his studies between philosophy and theology with a period of teaching in the colleges, but John Sloan's appointment as diocesan treasurer was a unique departure from the usual procedure. Over and above his financial occupations he found time to devote himself to the apostolate, and this sideline was indulged in with conspicuous success. One achievement in particular stands out in the memory of his Bishop, and this was the case of Tom Malone. Tom had abandoned the faith of his Irish childhood and had also seduced his wife from hers. Many strenuous efforts of the missionaries and of the Bishop had been repulsed. As a last resort, the Bishop turned to John Sloan for assistance. But, even after more thad an hour of preaching and reasoning, old Tom Malone was still obdurate. John, however, refused to retreat, taking out his orucifix he went on his knees in Tom's presence and reminded Our Lord that He had promised that all those devoted to His Sacred Heart would be given grace to convert the hardest sinners. He begged from the Sacred Heart this most hardened of sinners.

It is possible that this incident may appear theatrical, but it was not so for old Tom Malone. The old sinner returned to the Church and his blessing was still ringing in John's ears when he left a little later for the theologate and the last stage of his studies prior to ordination,

John pursued his final studies diligently. Up there in the mountains there seemed little scope for the apostolate. There was to be sure, the case of a renegade priest who was brazenly living with a woman in the proximity of the college. This man was considered hopeless by all the priests who had attempted to reason with him, and yet John Sloan in the year before his own ordination sought out the unfortunate man in his own home and after a sharpe struggle brought him to true repentance.

Popular Parish Missions.
By 1938 John could look back on his career with the grateful knowledge that his Jesuit formation was now fully completed. He had been ordained some years earlier and now his superiors gave full scope to his talent for preaching, by entrusting him with the task of pioneering popular parish missions in the entire sub-continent of India. A considerable number of English speaking Catholics were to be found in every region of India, Burma and Ceylon. Commerce, and the English Conquest had brought them out from Europe, and while it was true that many of them were much more gainfully employed in the East than they ever could have been in the West, in the matter of their eternal salvation their condition had become much more perilous.

The early successes of Fr. John and his companion Fr. P. A. Welfle, S.J., among such people, soon attracted the notice of other bishops and before long invitations to preach missions were pouring in from every part of India. Theirs was a combination of fiery zeal and mellifluous persuasion. Fr. John's special line was his sermon on hell, and it was hard for a sinner to stand up against it. His chastening effects were not produced by rhetorical descriptions of the place of the damned, but by the realisation in the minds of his auditors that this man spoke with authority.

That sense of authority came not from his physical appearance which was ordinary, nor from his oratorical ability, but rather from his great Faith in God and his profound awareness of God's hatred for sin, and his unshak able conviction that unrepented mortal sin merited the everlasting fires of hell.
His missionary technique was simple and effective, before he commenced preaching in a parish, he would spend a week contacting all the apostates and back sliders of the parish, seeking to persuade them to come to the mission, and it often happened that he obtained lightning conversions even before the mission was formally opened. There was one case of an octogenarian whose wickedness had been a thorn in the side of the parish priest. This individual who had not received the Sacraments for more than sixty years was a Master Mason. In his own home he showed Fr. John the document which he claimed made him a Mason forever. Fr. John assured him that hell-fire would soon burn the document, but that it could never efface the evidence of Catholicity which was imprinted on his soul at baptism. Before the evening was over this man repented; his case was not unique, for in practically every mission he preached the man of God caught some big fish. He attributed his successes to prayer and indeed, he was constantly begging prayers from schoolchildren and from convents for the success of his work.

Second World War.
When war came to India the new All India Mission Band had already become an acknowledged success. Its existence at this stage can only be called providential. Thousands of Catholic soldiers in the English and American Armies poured into India to take part in the campaign against Japan. Every man of them was exposed to more grievous temptation than his parents had ever dreamed of, and the spiritual danger was aggravated by a chronic shortage of Catholie Chaplains. At such a juncture Fr. Sloan's superiors realised that a highly mobile Mission band would be of great assistance to harassed chaplains, and con sequently the Mission Band was augmented to eighteen men, leaving to Fr. John the full disposal of such resources.

Travelling, at this time, because of the shortage of rolling stock, and the vast numbers of men who had to be transported, had become something of a nightmare. Soldiers were moved over immense distances in crowded uncomfortable trains, while the fierce Indian sun made life quite unpleasant. It was a relief for the military that they only travelled occasionally, but the missioners were on the move at the end of a week or a fortnight, and in spite of the incredible nervous strain they managed to keep going.

Vocations.
A new side of Fr. John's apostolate was now being developed : he still had numerous conversions of lapsed Catholics, and was receiving many non-Catholic men into the Church, but nothing pleased him so much, as the opportunity to decide a vocation to the priesthood. Before the war came to an end he had already found seminary places for dozens of soldiers and with all these he corresponded until they were safely established in their houses of religion. Many others too who are studying for the priesthood today owe much of their inspiration to him. His zeal to spend himself in Christ's cause seemed boundless, for a while he gave missions in the actual battle zones of Burma and at one period he astounded an Anglican chaplain (whom he afterwards converted), by visiting the most forward troops at a time when the appalling monsoons had made all wheeled transport impossible.

This incredible activity could not go on indefinitely, and on several occasions the missioner was forced to yield because the body was overcome by sickness. A doctor who warned him that he would not be responsible for him unless he rested for a year, received the spirited reply, that “I am only looking for eternal Rest”. And that “eternal Rest” which he so ardently desired was to come upon him in a manner which did not after all justify the doctor's prudence.

He had just concluded a mission to oil workers in the Persian Gulf and was enroute to Ceylon to begin another campaign. The long journey was never completed, for the plane he boarded at Karachi two days after the Christmas of 1947 blew up twenty minutes after leaving the airport, and his broken body was picked up some miles from the city. In dying he preached his greatest sermon, for a premonition of disaster had come upon him, so that before boarding the plane he asked the Franciscans to hear his general confession. Often he had preached to the fifteen thousand Catholics in the capital of Pakistan and the immense crowds at his funeral bore some testimony of the esteem and veneration in which he was held by so many Catholics over the length and breath of India.

On this occasion of the fourth Xaverian centenary, we think we are justified in describing him as an Ulster Xavier. Like Xavier his priestly work in the East had lasted barely a decade, and like Xavier he covered immense distances in pursuit of souls, Kashmir to Ceylon and Arabia to Siam were the points which encompassed his work and if the souls he helped to save are only to be numbered in hundreds where Xavier can number ten thousand, still the heartbeat of these two widely separated Jesuits registered exactly the same message, “Da mihi animas, Domine - Lord, give me souls to save”.
Charles G Lenaghan SJ

Scott, John 1835-1894, Jesuit brother

IE IJA J/426 · Person · 26 January 1835-11 May 1894

O'Reilly, Philip, 1847-1926, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/564 · Person · 20 September 1847-16 June 1926

Born: 20 September 1847, Castlerahan, County Cavan
Entered: 31 October 1867, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Ordained: 1882
Final Vows: 15 August 1887
Died: 16 June 1926, Park Royal Hospital, Middelesex, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Part of the St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales community at the time of death

Transcribed: HIB to ANG 1886

Early education at Mt St Mary’s, Derbyshire & Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire

Middle brother of John (ANG) - RIP 1892, and Richard - RIP 1932

Transcribed HIB to ANG: 1886

1867-1869: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Novitiate
1869-1870: Abbaye Saint-Acheul, Chaussée Jules Ferry, Amiens, Hauts de France, France (FRA), Rhetoric
1870-1871: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Regency
1871-1872: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Regency
1872-1873: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Rhetoric
1873-1876: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ,. Lancashire, England (ANG), Philosophy
1876-1879: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Regency
1879-1883: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG), Theology
1883-1884: St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Teaching
1884-1885: Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Teaching
1885-1886: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Tertianship
1886-1887: St Francis Xavier College SJ, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Curate, Director Franciscan 3rd Order (ANG from 1886)
1887-1888: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England Minitser, Prefect of Church, Procurator
1888-1891: St Stanislaus College SJ, Beaumont, Windsor, Berkshire, England, Spiritual Father, Curate, Teaching
1891-1892: St Walburge’s, Weston Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, Curate
1892-1895: St John's Roman Catholic Church, Powell Street, Wigan, Lancashire, England, Curate, Catechetics in elementary school, Carer of Poor house
1895-1916: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England Missioner
1916-1917: St Michael and St John’s Roman Catholic Church, Lowergate, Clitheroe, Lancashire, England, Caring for health
1917-1918: St Joseph’s Retreat House, Oakwood Hall, Romiley, Cheshire, England, Missioner, Spiritual Exercises
1918-1921: 1918-1921: St Winefride's Roman Catholic Church, Well Street, Holywell, Flintshire, Wales, Curate, Curate
1921-1926: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Caring for health

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Made First Vows at St Acheul 02 November 1869; Transcribed to ANG Province 1886

Barden, Thomas Joseph, 1910-1997, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/57 · Person · 31 March 1910-03 June 1997

Born: 31 March 1910, Rathmines, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 September 1927, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 13 May 1942, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1945
Died: 03 June 1997, McQuoin Park Infirmary, Hornsby, NSW, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Part of the St Aloysius College, Milsons Point, Sydney, Australia community at the time of death.

Transcribed : HIB to ASL 05/04/1931

Father was on the commercial staff of Irish Independent Newspapers and died in March 1922. Mother now holds father’s position and lives at Rathgar Road, Rathgar, Dublin.

Youngest of three boys with two sisters.

Educated at a Convent school and then at Synge Street. At twelve he went to Mungret College SJ

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
A twin - his sister Hyacinth was a Loreto Sister and worked in Africa. His brother William was a Dominican and Archbishop of Tehran until the overthrow of the Shah.

His early education was with the Presentation Sisters and the Christian Brothers. In 1922 he gained a scholarship to Mungret College SJ.

1929-1932 He did his Juniorate at Rathfarnham graduating BA from University College Dublin in Celtic studies.
1932-1935 He was at St Aloysius College, St Helier, Jersey for Philosophy, which gained him a lifelong interest in French language.
1935-1939 He made Regency at St Aloysius College, Sydney, and accepted Australian citizenship in 1936.
1939-1943 He studied Theology at Milltown Park Dublin
1943-1944 He made Tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle
1944-1945 He was at Liverpool, England doing parish work.
1945-1947 He returned to Australia and St Aloysius, Milsons Point.
1948-1952 He was appointed Rector at St Louis School, Perth. He became popular there with local families who helped develop the oval facilities for the school. His students there remember his wit, shrewdness and ability to inspire them.
1964-1961 He was appointed Headmaster at St Ignatius College, Norwood. His style and manner during these years did much to establish the tradition of rapport and affection between staff and students. He was a firm disciplinarian, and the tongue lashings he gave were formidable, as was his humour and the twinkle in his eye, which indicated a man who loved the school, the work he was doing and the boys he taught. He also employed the first lay teachers there.
1962-1964 He was dean of students at St Thomas More University College, Perth, but he did not enjoy working with tertiary students.
1965-1968 He returned to St Louis, Perth, as Vice-Rector and Prefect of Studies.
1969-1974 He was a respected French teacher and Form Master At St Aloysius College, Sydney.
1975-1984 He was French teacher and Form Master at St Ignatius College, Athelstone SA, and was also the community bursar there.
1985-1993 He was back at St Aloysius, Sydney. where he taught for a number of years.
1993 For the last seven years at St Aloysius his memory had become unreliable, and so he moved to the retirement home at McQuoin Park, where he was happy and well cared for. When his health failed finally, he was transferred to the Greenwich Convalescent Hospital.

He was very Irish, a great conversationalist and storyteller, entertaining and witty. He was a good companion and a joy at any party. As an administrator he was efficient and fair, and incisive in his decisions. He had a gift for preaching and was a good retreat giver, though not creative in thought. He was experiences as a wise counsellor and a fair judge of human nature. He made many friends among the parents in Perth, Adelaide and Sydney, some of whom kept lifelong contact.

Corcoran, Patrick, 1822-1905, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/571 · Person · 16 December 1822-23 February 1905

Born: 16 December 1822, Tuam, County Galway
Entered: 07 January 1862, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Ordained: - 1850, pre Entry
Final Vows: 15 August 1873
Died: 23 February 1905, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin

Educated at St Jarlath’s, Tuam then at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth

1862-1863: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Novitiate
1863-1864: St Beuno’s St Asaph, Wales (ANG), Theology
1864-1871: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, teaching
1871-1872: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Assistant Procurator
1872-1874: Sacred Hearrt College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Missioner
1874-1876: Holy Cross Church, Corporation Street, St Helen’s, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1876-1878: Saint Francis Xavier Church, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1878-1879: Sacred Hearrt College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Minister, Curate
1879-1881: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County KildareJ, Spiritual Father
1881-1889: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, Teaching and Spiritual Father
1889-1896: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Spiritual Father
1896-1902: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Spiritual Father
1903-1905: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Spiritual Exercises

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Educated at Maynooth for the Tuam Diocese, where he was administrator of the Cathedral before Ent.

He was sent to Galway and Limerick as Operarius, and also to Clongowes as Spiritual Father and Procurator. He spent time at Mungret as well as Spiritual Father.
He was for a while on the Missionary Band under Robert Haly with Thomas Molloy and William Fortescue as fellow Missioners. He also worked on the ANG Mission at Liverpool and other places in Lancashire.
In his last year he was at Milltown, where he died after a short illness 25 February 1905
He was a good Theologian, spoke Irish, a zealous worker and a kind and friendly man.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Community

Father Patrick Corcoran (1822-1905)

A former alumnus of Maynooth College, was a secular priest of the Archdiocese of Tuam at the time of his entrance into the Society in 1862. Father Corcoran was a member of the Crescent community, as a missioner, from 1872-1874 and was again at the Crescent as minister, 1878-1879. In his later years he was a member of the retreat staff at Milltown Park.

Marmion, Joseph, 1925-2000, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/630 · Person · 24 November 1925-15 November 2000

Finn, Cornelius P, 1910-1993, Jesuit priest of the Australiae Province (ASL)

IE IJA J/658 · Person · 07 November 1910-

Born: 07 November 1910, Mallow, County Cork
Entered: 01 September 1928, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1939, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1978
Died: 29 August 1993, Manresa, Hathersage Street, Toowong, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed : HIB to ASL 05/04/1931

1928-1930: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Novitiate
1930-1933: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate, UCD (ASL from 1931)
1933-1936: Collège Philosophique, Eegenhoven, Leuven, Belgium (BELG), Philosophy
1936-1938: Innsbruck Colleg, Strasse der Sudetendeutschen, Innsbruck, Tirol, Austria (ASR), Theology
1928-1940: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1940-1941: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Tertianship
1941-1942: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG), Curate
1942-1949: Loyola College, Grimshaw Street, Watsonia, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Minister of Juniors, Prefect of Stduies, Teaching
1949-1953: Aquinas College, Montefiore Hill, North Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, Studying
1950-1952: Rector
1952-1953: Caring for health
1953-1960: St Thomas More College SJ, Perth, Western Australia, Rector; Founder of Newman Collehe and St Joseph Pignatellii School at Attadale WA.
1960-1968: Loyola College, Grimshaw Street, Watsonia, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Minister of Juniors, Retreats
1968-1973: Corpus Christi College, Russell Street, Werribee, Melbourne, Victoria, Australiae
1973-1974: Sabbatical, Travelling
1974-1986: Corpus Christi College, Russell Street, Werribee, Melbourne, Victoria, Australiae, Spiritual Director
1986-1987: St Thomas More College SJ, Perth, Western Australia
1987-1989: Manresa, Burwood Road, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
1989-1993: Manresa, Hathersage Street, Toowong, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
His early education was at Mungret College Limerick, and he lived in the Apostolic School there, where boys interested in priesthood lived. he Entered the Society in 1928 at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg.

1930-1933 After First Vows he was sent to Rathfarnham Castle to study at University College Dublin, majoring in Latin and English.
1933-1936 He was sent to Leuven for Philosophy where he also learned French and Flemish
1936-1938 He was sent immediately from Leuven to Innsbruck for Theology, where he learned German as well and made the acquaintance of Karl Rahner.
1938-1940 As war was begin in Europe he was brought back to Milltown Park Dublin to complete his Theology, and was Ordained there in 1939.
1940-1941 He made Tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle under Henry Keane, the former English Provincial.
1941-1942 He spent this year in Liverpool at a parish awaiting a ship to Australia. He finally made the journey, but it was a dangerous trip, involving dodging German submarines, but he and his Jesuit companions arrived safely.
1943-1949 He was appointed Minister of Juniors at Loyola Watsonia where he remained for seven years. He was like by the Scholastics for his youth - only 33 years of age - and he was full of bright ideas and encouragement. He taught English, Latin and French there. He was also a great raconteur and rarely lost for a word. He was also engaged in giving Retreats at Watsonia to many groups who passed through Loyola. His cheerful presentation of the spiritual life had a wide appeal.
Among his innovations at the Juniorate was the introduction of a course in education (pedagogy) to prepare Scholastics for Regency. To prepare himself for this course he undertook a Diploma in Education himself at University of Melbourne, which included a six week training at Geelong Grammar School. He also instituted a Summer School on education for the Scholastics, inviting various experts to come and address them.
1949-1950 He began an MA himself at University of Melbourne focusing on the influence of the Spiritual Exercises on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. However at this time he was also appointed Dean of Students at Newman College left him not time to complete this MA.
1950-1952 He was appointed Rector at Aquinas College, Adelaide and was expected to develop this College. A stately home was purchased at North Adelaide and a new residential wing erected. By 1952 Aquinas had 40 resident students and 50 non-residents. During this time he also tutored students in French, English, Latin and Philosophy as well as carrying out chaplain duties. By the end of that year he had something of a breakdown and was given a rest.(1952-1953)
1953-1960 He was considered to have recovered his health sufficiently to be appointed the founding Rector at St Thomas More College in Perth. During 1954 he was expected to fundraise for new buildings there and this proved difficult. Meanwhile Archbishop Prendiville asked him to take over a new Parish at Attadale, where land hand been donated for a Jesuit school. He supervised the building of a parish school, St Joseph Pignatelli. By 1955 he was relieved of his parish duties to focus exclusively on the Newman College, which was due to open in March 1955. While unable to effect much influence on the grand design of the College, he did see to some of the finer details, such as the stained glass windows in the Chapel, the work of the Irish artist Richard King. He gave the College its motto “God's Servant First”, chose the first students and welded them into a community.
He was a very energetic chaplain to the Newman Society, holding the Annual Catholic Federation of Australia conference in 1958 - the first time for Perth. For some years he conducted “The Catholic Answer” programme on radio, and he continued to be in demand for Retreats and sermons. Overall he spent six years at this work.
1960-1968. He returned to Loyola Watsonia, somewhat tired to resume his former work as Minister of Juniors and Retreats. He spent much of these years between Loyola Watsonia and Campion College, including being appointed Rector at Campion for a new community for Scholastics attending University at the Dominican House of Studies in Canberra.
1969-1973 He began his long association with Corpus Christi College at Werribee and Clayton. It was to last 17 years. There he did what he had usually done, teaching English together with Liturgy and Scripture, and giving Spiritual Direction and retreats.
Between the end of Werribee and Clayton, he was given a sabbatical year in 1972, taking courses in San Francisco, Glasgow, Ireland and Rome. He was preparing for a position at the Catholic Education Office in Sydney helping teachers with catechetics. He took up this position in 1973 and resided at St John’s College.
1974-1986 His work at Clayton began in 1974. His first years were as Spiritual Director and then as Moderator of the Second Year students. This role involved tutoring. Students experienced him as quiet, diffident even, but sincere with integrity and deep spirituality.
1986 Following retirement his health and confidence deteriorated. After a year at Thomas More College and the Hawthorn Parish he spent his last four years at Toowong, where the climate was more suitable. He would return to Hawthorn and Queenscliff during the more oppressive Brisbane summers.

He was remembered for his Irish wit, his friendliness, his kindness, his wisdom and gentleness as a spiritual director, his “marketing” of the “discernment of spirits”, his preaching and his zeal in promoting vocations to the Society. he was a man of many talents but very humble.

Note from Michael Moloney Entry
Michael Moloney came to Australia as director of the retreat house at Loyola College, Watsonia, and worked with Conn Finn, 1964-66.

Gilmore, Denis, 1906-1961, Jesuit priest of the Australiae Province (ASL)

IE IJA J/716 · Person · 20 October 1906-12 December 1961

Born: 20 October 1906, Liverpool, Lancashire, England / Gertrude Terrace, Lower Dargle Road, Bray, County Wicklow
Entered: 01 September 1927, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1940, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1943
Died: 12 December 1961, Canisius College, Pittwater Road, Pymble, Sydney NSW, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

Born in Liverpool but family moved to Gertrude Terrace, Bray, County Wicklow

Educated at St Peter’s NS, Bray, and then at the Technical School, Bray. He then went as an apprentice cabinet-maker at age 14, but did not continue. At 18 he went to the Franciscan College, Multyfarnham, County Westmeath with the intention of studying for the priesthood. He then went to the Matriculation College, Dublin in 1926-1927

1927-1929: St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois, Novitiate
1929-1931: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate
1931-1934: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Philosophy (ASL from 1931)
1934-1937: St Ignatius College SJ, Riverview, Cove Lane, Sydney NSW, Australia, Regency
1937-1941: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1941-1942: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Tertianship
1942-1944: Xavier College SJ, Barkers Road, Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Teaching
1944-1945: Manresa, William Street, Norwood, Adelaide, South Australia, AustraliaCurate
1945-1953: St Francis Xavier, MacKenzie Street, Lavender Bay, Sydney NSW, Australia, Curate, Catechetics in parish school
1953-1954: St Mary’s, Miller Street, Sydney NSW, Australia, Curate
1954-1958: St Ignatius Church, Church Road, Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Curate
1958-1961: Canisius College, Pittwater Road, Pymble, Sydney NSW, Australia, Spiritual Father

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
He Entered the Society at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg.
1929-1930 After First Vows he was a “home” Junior at Rathfarnham Castle
1930-1934 He was sent to Tullabeg for Philosophy,
1934-1937 He was sent to Australia teaching at St Ignatius College Riverview for Regency
1937-1941 He was back in Ireland at Milltown Park for Theology
1941-1942 He made Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1942-1943 He was sent back to Australia to teach at Xavier College Kew, but was thought more suited to Parish work,
1944-1945 He was at the Norwood Parish
1945-1953 He was sent to the Lavender Bay Parish
1953-1954 He was at St Mary’s Miller Street Parish
1954-1958 He was sent to the Richmond Parish
1958 He was sent to Canisius College Pymble as Spiritual Father due to ill health.

He was very like Father Sydney McEwan in appearance and had a beautiful singing voice. He suffered from heart disease for some years and died suddenly at morning tea.

McCarthy, Jeremiah P, 1894-1968, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/728 · Person · 30 April 1894-27 July 1968

Born: 30 April 1894, Stourport, Worcestershire, England
Entered: 07 September 1910, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 31 July 1926, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1930
Died: 27 July 1968, St Joseph’s, Wise Mansion, Robinson Road, Hong Kong - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1926 came to Milltown (HIB) studying
by 1940 came to Hong Kong (HIB) working 1940-1967

1910-1912: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Novitiate
1912-1913: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Rhetoric
1913-1916: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1916-1919: Campion Hall, Brewer, Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, Higher studies
1919-1923: Wimbledon College SJ, Edge Hill, Wimbledon, London, England, Regency
1923-1925: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1925-1927: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin (HIB), Theology
1927-1928: St Stanislaus College SJ, Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, Teaching
1928-1929: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Tertianship
1929-1934: St Michael’s College SJ, St John’s Road, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, Teaching
1934-1937: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1937-1939: St Ignatius College SJ, St Wilfrid’s Church, Chapel Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, Teaching
1939-1943: Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong (HIB), Teaching Theology
1943-1945: Vila Flor, Macao, Teaching
1945-1949: Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong (HIB), Teaching Theology
1949-1951: Ricci Hall, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, Promoting Institute of Studies in Chemistry, “Mission Bulletin”
1951-1953: St Ignatius, Battery Path, Hong Kong, Vice Rector from 31/07/1951
1953-1954: Xavier, Cheung Chau, Hong Kong, Vice Rector from 31/07/1951
1954-1959: Wah Yan College SJ, Waterloo Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Assistant Editor “Tsing Nin Man Yau - “China News Analysis”
1959-1964: Wah Yan College SJ, Queen’s Road East, Hong Kong, Assistant Editor “China News Analysis”, Bursar
1963-1964: Assistant Editor “China News Analysis”; Director “Interprovincial News on Study and Research”
1964-1968: St Joseph’s, Wise Mansion, Robinson Road, Hong Kong, Assistant Editor “China News Analysis”; Director “Interprovincial News on Study and Research”

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Father McCARTHY Jeremias
R.I.P.

At noon every Saturday for the past eleven years the Editor of this paper lifted the phone and spoke for a few minutes to a voice coming from a flat in Robinson Road. On the following Monday morning with unfailing regularity a typewritten page was delivered to the Sunday Examiner office; the weekly editorial had arrived.

To the deep regret of the staff of the Sunday Examiner and of its readers this time-honoured procedure will never be repeated: for Father Jeremiah McCarthy, S.J. our editorial writer died at 2:45pm last Saturday afternoon at the age of seventy-four.

Father McCarthy was a man of many talents; a distinguished theologian, he began his missionary work in Hong Kong twenty-nine years ago as Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the Regional Seminary for South China at Aberdeen; he held a Master’s Degree in Chemistry from Oxford University and as a war-time refugee in Macao he turned his knowledge to good use by devising substitute fuels to keep the local power supply in operation.

When the war was over Father McCarthy returned to his post at the Seminary and began his connection with the Agricultural and Fisheries Department with whom he developed a method of drying and preserving fish and experimented in the increased use of natural and artificial fertilisers.

After some years in Cheung Chau Island as Superior of the Jesuit Language School he returned to Hong Kong, joined the staff of the China News Analysis and began the long association with the editorial page of this paper which despite declining health continued up to the week of his death.

Father McCarthy wrote over five hundred editorials for this paper; and as we look through the files at the variety of subjects covered we can only marvel at the range of intelligent interest of which this one man’s mind was capable. Moral, liturgical, social, political, international and local problems were subjected in turn to his keen analysis and the conclusions recorded in the elegant, economical prose of which he was a master. Freshness of approach, clarity of though and expression, and a deeply-felt sympathy for the poor, the suffering and the oppressed - these are the marks of the writer, as well as of the man and the priest, whose comments on the passing scene stamped this page with a character of its own.

The staff of the Sunday Examiner, and of the Kung Kao Po where Father McCarthy’s editorials appeared in translation, has lost a most valued and faithful collaborator and friend.

May God reward his earthly labours with the blessing of eternal refreshment, light and peace.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 2 August 1968

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He arrived in Hong Kong from the English Province in 1939 and went to teach Dogmatic Theology at the Regional Seminary in Aberdeen.

During WWII, as a refugee in Macau, his Masters Degree in Chemistry enabled him to devise substitute fuels to maintain the local power and water supplies going.
After the War he returned to Aberdeen and began an association with the Agriculture and Fisheries Department, developing methods of drying and preserving fish.
Later he joined “China News Analysis”, enhancing its reputation. During these years he also wrote weekly editorials for the “Sunday Examiner”, over 500 of them, on a wide range of topics. His comments on local affairs especially were often quoted at length in the Hong Kong daily press.

◆ Jesuits in Ireland

Irish Province News 22nd Year No 1 1947
Departures for Mission Fields in 1946 :
4th January : Frs. P. J. O'Brien and Walsh, to North Rhodesia
25th January: Frs. C. Egan, Foley, Garland, Howatson, Morahan, Sheridan, Turner, to Hong Kong
25th July: Fr. Dermot Donnelly, to Calcutta Mission
5th August: Frs, J. Collins, T. FitzGerald, Gallagher, D. Lawler, Moran, J. O'Mara, Pelly, Toner, to Hong Kong Mid-August (from Cairo, where he was demobilised from the Army): Fr. Cronin, to Hong Kong
6th November: Frs. Harris, Jer. McCarthy, H. O'Brien, to Hong Kong

◆ Irish Province News 23rd Year No 4 1948

Fr. Jeremiah McCarthy of the Hong Kong Mission writes from the U.S.A, where he is examining possibilities of setting up an Institute of Industrial Chemistry in Hong Kong :
New York, 23rd September :
“I have spent some time at Buffalo and Boston and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Professors there were most kind, and I learnt a good deal. I expect to be here for a month or six weeks, visiting factories and Colleges in New York. I met Fr. Ingram at Boston. He was doing some work at Harvard. I have heard from several sources that he had a great reputation at Johns Hopkins. I went yesterday to the Reception for Mr. Costello at Fordham and the conferring of an Honorary Degree. Cardinal Spellman was there. In his speech Mr. Costello avoided politics, except to say that the Government would stop emigration altogether, save that they would still send priests and nuns wherever they might be required. Most of the speech was taken up with a very graceful tribute to the Society and its work. He referred to the debt of Ireland to the Society in times of persecution, and again in modern times, and hoped to see an extension of our work in schools and Colleges in Ireland. The address was broadcast”.

◆ Irish Province News 24th Year No 1 1949
Fr. Jeremiah McCarthy arrived at Cobh from New York on 7th December and is spending some time in the Province, before resuming in England, his study of technological institutes, prior to his return to Hong Kong.

◆ Irish Province News 43rd Year No 4 1968

Obituary :

Fr Jeremias McCarthy SJ (1893-1968)

Fr. Jeremias McCarthy, a member of the English Province who to the joy and lasting advantage of all Jesuits working in Hong Kong was ascribed to the Irish Province in 1939 for work in Hong Kong, died in Hong Kong on 27th July, aged 74.

He was born on 3rd April 1893 at Stourford, Worcestershire, where his father, a civil servant, was then stationed. Some of his early years were spent in Co. Cork, Ireland, but he returned to England and was educated at St. Francis Xavier College, Liverpool. He entered the English Province noviciate in 1910. (Two of sisters later became Columban Sisters.) After philosophy in Stonyhurst, he taught for four fondly remembered years in Beaumont. He also spent three years at Oxford, taking an M.A. degree in Chemistry and thus equipping himself for unforseeable work, valuable but bizarre. After two years of theology in St. Bueno's, he transferred to Milltown Park, Dublin, where he was ordained on 31st July 1926. After his tertianship he taught in various schools in the English Province for eleven years and was solemnly professed in 1930. In 1939 he applied to the General for work in a mission country and Fr. Ledochowski ascribed him to the still small Hong Kong mission in April of that year.

He was warmly welcomed in Hong Kong, where several of the little band of Jesuits had known him in his scholasticate days. His unmistakable intellectual distinction and originality made him a very valuable addition to the mission; but he looked so frail that many must have wondered how long he could stand up to the strain imposed by the Hong Kong summers. He was thin, looked older than his years and was bent forward by a spinal affliction. Time was to show that this apparent physical frailty was largely an illusion. He may have suffered but he made no show of it. For almost three decades he was to labour at an astonishing variety of tasks, defying not only the Hong Kong summer, but the hardships of the Japanese capture and occupation of the colony and, in his last years, a complication of organic ills. Three days before his death he was still vigorously doing work that would have appalled many a younger man.
For his first three years in Hong Kong he taught dogmatic theology in the Regional Seminary for South China. In 1942 he went to Macao, where the Hong Kong Jesuits were opening a school for Portuguese boys whose families had fled from occupied Hong Kong. This school won a special place in Fr. McCarthy's affection : the boys were, and have always remained, grateful for the help given them in a time of great hardship. The school did not occupy all his energies. Macao, cut off from the rest of the world, was short of nearly everything, so Fr. McCarthy, the best qualified and most ingenious chemist in the territory, quickly set about providing ersatz substitutes for the ungettable imports - everything from petrol to cosmetics. As a mark of appreciation, the Governor of Macao decreed that vehicles using the evil-smelling McCarthy substitute for petrol should not pass within nose-shot of the Jesuit school. In later years new arrivals in Hong Kong would be shown a lump of the McCarthy soap substitute, hard and gritty but beyond price in days when no other soap was to be had. Morale had to be kept up in Macao, so Fr. McCarthy and the other Jesuits joined the more vigorous citizens in organising debates and lectures and helping to provide through the local press a substitute for the intellectual sustenance normally fetched from abroad. Macao in those years of isolation was a little world on its own where every local crisis and dispute was avidly discussed by the whole population. In post-war years Fr. McCarthy had an inexhaustable fund of stories of the strange doings of those days including the great debate on the use of Chinese or Western style in the rebuilding of a church lavatory, and his own five-minute suspension for publishing an article expounding the views on evolution later contained in Humani Generis - as he was leavng the episcopal chamber the bishop said “I lift the suspension”.

After the war he returned for a year to his work in the seminary, after which he went to Europe for a much needed rest. He was next asked to explore the possibility of setting up an institute of industrial chemistry in Hong Kong. This scheme proved abortive, but his next venture was fruitful. At the request of the govern ment of Hong Kong he toured Europe and America investigating methods for making compost from what is politely described as night soil. It is scarcely necessary to say that the more ribald Jesuits of the many countries he visited were less mealy-mouthed in describing this novel form of apostolate. Fr. McCarthy's rather donnish appearance and fastidious diction added to the joke.

Having completed his work on nightsoil, he was asked by the government to act as technical adviser on fish-drying part of a large-scale reorganisation of fisheries, which was one of the most valuable works undertaken by the government in its post-war effort to rebuild and enrich the life of the colony. This work brought him into close contact with probably the ablest young government servant in Hong Kong, Mr. Jack Cater, who became one of Fr. McCarthy's closest friends, visited him frequently, sought his advice on such matters as the organisation of co-operatives, and was to rank almost as chief mourner at Fr, McCarthy's funeral.

About this time Fr. McCarthy was appointed rector of the language school. Surprisingly enough this appointment did not prove altogether happy. It was known that he had been an independent minded scholastic and, though in his late fifties (and looking older), he was on terms of unforced equality with most of the younger priests in the mission; yet he found himself unable to make easy contact with those in their twenties. There was relief on both sides when his rectorship was terminated after a couple of years. On their return to Hong Kong after ordination, those who had failed to understand him in their scholastic years came to cherish his rewarding friendship.

From his earliest days in Hong Kong, he had been known as a writer of concise, lucid and pointed English. Bishop Bianchi of Hong Kong was always eager to make use of this gift, frequently asking him to draft pastorals, messages to his diocese and other important documents. The bishop always showed great trust in Fr. McCarthy's judgment knowing that this faithful scribe would nearly always convey his ideas exactly and in a form palatable to and easily assimilated by the recipients. The bishop also had the happy certainty that Fr. McCarthy would not repine if on occasion his drafts were not used.

Another seeker of his pen was Fr. (now Mgr.) C. H. Vath, then editor of the Sunday Examiner, the Hong Kong diocesan weekly. At Fr. Vath's request, Fr. McCarthy wrote a long series of articles on Christian doctrine, which were studied eagerly by teachers of religious knowledge. Fr. Vath also invited Fr. McCarthy to become the regular leader writer for the Sunday Examiner. This task out lasted Fr. Vath's editorship. For over a dozen years-right up to the last week of his life-Fr. McCarthy wrote a weekly editorial, often pungent, always carefully pondered and lucidly expressed. The secular papers frequently reproduced and commented on leaders dealing with economic or sociological topics, and echoes of these leaders could often be discerned in later discussions or in government action. At least one was quoted in the House of Commons, These leaders gave the paper an influence out of all proportion to its circulation. The McCarthy touch will be sadly missed. It will probably be impossible to find anyone able to combine the patience, readiness, skill and erudition that went into his leaders week after week, year after year.

For the last eleven years of his life he was mainly engaged in work for the China News Analysis, (the authoritative and highly expensive) weekly analysis of the Chinese Communist press and radio published by Fr. L. Ladany, a Hungarian member of the Hong Kong Vice-Province. Fr. McCarthy acted as procurator, relieved the editor of the difficulties inseparable from writing in a foreign tongue, and wrote articles based on the editor's research. This was not glamorous work - the days of the nightsoil apostolate were over but it was essential work and was done with unfailing exactness and punctuality.

The large number of religious at his funeral was a tribute to spiritual help given by Fr. McCarthy. In community life he was not ostentatiously pious, but he was exact in religious observance, as in all other things, and he was notably kind. His admirable book Heaven and his domestic exhortations were the most striking manifestations of spirituality that his fundamental reserve allowed him to make. These exhortations were revealing, deeply interesting, full, original without striving for originality and provocative of further thought. He was frequently urged to publish them, a suggestion that he seldom or never accepted. Enthusiasm for one's domestic exhortations is a tribute rarely paid in the Society. It was paid to Fr. McCarthy.

Frail as he looked, he was very seldom ill. Early this year, how ever, he had to go to hospital and was found to be suffering from grave heart trouble and certain other ills. He resumed work as soon as possible. On Thursday, 25th July, having completed a day's work, he fell and broke a thigh while saying his Rosary in his room, and it was some hours before he was able to call the attention of another member of the small community in which he lived. He was suffering grievously and an immediate operation had to be carried out, despite the precarious state of his heart. He never recovered consciousness and he died on Saturday, 27th July.

The funeral Mass was concelebrated by his Provincial, Fr. F. Cronin, his Superior, Fr. Ladany, and one of his closest friends.

https://gwulo.com/node/29615

Old Hong Kong

Father Jeremiah McCarthy was a member of the British Order of Jesuits - during the occupation he seems to have passed as Irish (although born in England and possibly a British citizen) because he was serving with the Irish Jesuit Order.

In November 1942 he was sent with Fr. Thomas Cooney to Macao to run a school for refugee children. While there he used his knowledge of chemistry (he had a Masters from Oxford) to devise substitute fuels to keep the power station running. On his return to Hong Kong after the war, he continued to use his training in co-operation with the Agricultural and Fisheries Dept.

He died in Hong Kong.

McKenna, Liam, 1921-2013, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/752 · Person · 12 August 1921-02 March 2013

Born: 12 August 1921, Chivers Lodge, Ballybunion, County Kerry
Entered: 07 November 1939, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1957, Catholic Workers College, Ranelagh, Dublin
Died: 02 March 2013, Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin

Part of the St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin at the time of death.

Family lived at The Square, Listowel, County Kerry

Younger of two boys with two sisters.

Early education at a private school, and then at age 10 sent to Kilashee Convent school. In 1933 he went to Clongowes Wood College SJ (1933-1939)

1939-1941: St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois, Novitiate
1941-1944: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate, UCD (Arts)
1944-1947: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Philosophy
1947-1950: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Regency
1950-1954: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1954-1955: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Tertianship
1955-1969: College of Industrial Relations, Ranelagh, Dublin, Studied Economics and Sociology at UCD; Lectured in Sociology, Economics and Industrial Relations
1969-1970: Southwell House, Fitzjohn’s Avenue, London, England (ANG), Resaerching at Tavistock Institute, Gee Street, London, Ebgland
1970-1976: College of Industrial Relations, Ranelagh, Dublin, Lectured in Sociology, Economics and Industrial Relations
1976-1979: Loyola House, Eglinton Road, Dublin, Member of “Special Secretariat”
1979-1982: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, “Centre of Concern' Office”, at University Hall SJ, Hatch Street & Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London
1980-1982: Director of Centre for Concern for Human Dignity at Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London (ANG)
1982-1984: Luís Espinal, Gardiner Place, Dublin, Secretary to Commission for Justice CMRS (Justice Desk)
1984-1989: Campion House,m Hatch Street, Dublin, Secretary to Commission for Justice CMRS (Justice Desk)
1989-2005: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Assisting at “Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice”, Sherrard Street, Dublin
2002-2003: Assistant Guestmaster
2003-2005: Assists in Church of St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
2005-2013: St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin, Assists in Church
2012-2013: Prays for Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin

◆ https://www.jesuit.ie/news/fr-liam-mckenna-dies-at-91/

Fr Liam McKenna dies at 91

Fr Liam McKenna died on 2 March in Cherryfield, having moved there from his community in Gardiner Street five days earlier. He was 91, but was alert and engaged to the very end of a full and fruitful life. Liam (as he was known in his family – Jesuits tended to call him Bill, with which he was happy) was born in Ballybunion and grew up in Listowel, though with long periods away from home as a boarder first in Kilashee, then in Clongowes, where in his last year he was captain of the school.

He had an early interest in economics, but was put on for a classics degree in UCD. It was only after several false starts that he was launched into the work which was to occupy most of his life, as a mentor of trade unionists in public speaking and in negotiation – but a mentor who was himself learning every step of the way. In a rambunctious partnership with Fr Eddy Kent he helped to found and develop the Catholic Workers College. It was not an academic setting, though the team (McKenna, Kent, Hamilton, Kearns, Des Reid, Michael Moloney) included some of the brightest in the Province, who would spend their summers upgrading their expertise in European countries.

Back in Sandford Lodge, where money was scarce, they would spend their afternoons putting out the chairs and preparing the classrooms and canteen for the evening sessions. They gradually built up a trusting relationship with the unions, and a clientele of up to 2000 adult students. Bill spent 35 years training shop stewards and foremen in the sort of speaking and listening skills that would empower them for their work in the unions, shaping their own destiny.

In the mid-1970s Bill moved to work for the Province, then for the Centre of Concern, the conference of Religious, and the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. He paid the penalty for heavy smoking in a serious heart attack, but lived life to the full, aware that he could drop dead at any moment. In Gardiner Street he would join in concelebrated Masses twice a day. On 24 February he acknowledged his need for full-time care, and moved to Cherryfield, after arranging daily delivery of the Financial Times.

He was alert until shortly before his peaceful death, as his curious, questing mind moved to explore the ultimate mystery of God.

◆ Interfuse No 152 : Summer 2013

Obituary

Fr Bill (Liam) McKenna (1921-2013)

12 August 1921: Born in Ballybunion, Co. Kerry:
Early education in Kilashee Prep, and Clongowes Wood College
7 September 1939: Entered Society at Emo
8 September 1941: First Vows
1941 - 1944: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1944 - 1947: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1947 - 1950: Mungret College - Teacher
1950 - 1954: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31 July 1953: Ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin
1954 - 1955: Rathfarnham: Tertianship
1955 - 1969: College of Industrial Relations - Studied Economics / Sociology at UCD; Lectured in Sociology, Economics and Industrial Relations at CIR
2 February 1957: Final Vows
1969 - 1970: Tavistock Institute, London - Research
1970 - 1976: CIR – Lectured in Sociology, Economics and Industrial Relations
1976 - 1979: Loyola - Member of Special Secretariat
1979 - 1980: Milltown Park – “Centre of Concern' Office”, University Hall & Heythrop
1980 - 1982: Director “Centre of Concern” Office (moved to Liverpool Jan 1982)
1982 - 1984: Espinal - Secretary to Commission for Justice CMRS (Justice Desk)
1984 - 1989: Campion House - Secretary to Commission for Justice CMRS
1989 - 2005: Belvedere College
1989 - 2002: Assisting in Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice
2002 - 2003: Assistant Guestmaster
2003 - 2005: Assisted in SFX Church, Guestmaster
2005 - 2013: Gardiner Street: Assisted in SFX Church, Assistant Librarian (since 2011)

By mid-February, Bill was becoming weaker and eating very little. He was still concelebrating Mass twice daily in the church and in the house chapel. On Sunday 24" February, he agreed that he needed full time care, so he moved to Cherryfield Lodge the following day. Bill appreciated the care and was alert until very shortly before his peaceful death at 7.35pm on Saturday 2nd March.

Liam McKenna died only eleven days before the election of Pope Francis, having taken a great interest in the resignation of Pope Benedict. A Jesuit Pope would have provoked many a question from Liam and many a conversation. His mind remained lively until the very end of his long life, so his deep love of the Church and his commitment to prayer and to the Eucharist would have informed anything he might have said about having a Pope from his own Order. His breviary and missal were well used, and he had spare copies of each.

There is a photograph, taken in the mid-1920s, of Liam, as a very small boy, with his mother and his elder brother: Mrs McKenna is a slim, elegant and very well-dressed woman; Liam and Jack wear expensive clothes. The image is one of comfort and security, as might be expected from a very successful merchant family in a Kerry town, but Jack's health was so precarious that his mother sent him to Switzerland for a year; he is still in good health at 95. Liam became a Jesuit and his two sisters (who predeceased him) became Ursulines, so Jack was the only one of the four siblings to marry.

Listowel was not a town where Catholics were universally welcomed: one of Liam's sisters wanted to join the local tennis club, which was reserved for Protestants, so Mr McKenna was forced to enlist the unwilling help of the bank manager by the simple threat to move his account elsewhere. Liam's attitude to everything was influenced, and positively so, by being a younger brother all his life.
Liam (as he was known in his family - Jesuits tended to call him “Bill”, with which he was happy) was born in Ballybunion and grew up in Listowel; his Kerry roots remained very important throughout his life, despite long periods away from home as a boarder in County Kildare, first at Kilashee, and then at Clongowes, where he was captain of the school. Bill went to the noviceship at Emo just a few months after leaving school.

He had an early interest in economics, but was told that the topic was “of no use”, so he was sent for a classics degree in UCD. Bill followed the normal Jesuit formation of the period and, in a time of European war, it had to be entirely in Ireland, up to his completion of Tertianship at Rathfarnham in 1955. His formidable brain helped him to see that many aspects of Jesuit formation were outmoded, and over stylised. Bill emerged from Tertianship with a great love of the Society, a deep commitment to his priesthood and a great ability to recognise nonsense when he saw it.

Until that point, Bill's Jesuit career had been like many of his Jesuit contemporaries, until he was assigned to the Catholic Workers College in 1955. He was based there for twenty-one years. Bill had finally managed to study economics and sociology at UCD, so he lectured in sociology, economics and industrial relations. Significantly, Bill was launched into the work which was to occupy most of his life, as a mentor of trade unionists in public speaking and in negotiation - but a mentor who was interested in everything and who himself was learning every step of the way. In a rumbustious partnership with Fr Eddy Kent, he helped to found and develop the College. It was not an academic setting, though the team (Kent, Tim Hamilton, Lol Kearns, Des Reid and Michael Moloney) included some of the brightest in the Province, who would spend their summers upgrading their expertise in European countries. Back in Sandford Lodge, where money was scarce, they would spend their afternoons putting out the chairs and preparing the classrooms and canteen for the evening sessions.

They gradually built up a trusting relationship with the unions, and a clientele of up to 2000 adult students. Bill spent 35 years training shop stewards and foremen in the sort of speaking and listening skills that would empower them for their work in the unions, shaping their own destiny. The Catholic Workers College evolved into the National College of Industrial Relations and now, on a different site) is the National College of Ireland.

The three-man Special Secretariat was set up in 1972 following the McCarthy Report on Province Ministries. Liam joined it in 1976, when it was no longer quite so centered on Jesuit Province administration, leaving its members free to work elsewhere. Liam gave great help to the Holy Faith Sisters as they produced new Constitutions.

Liam's passion for social justice was based on calm analysis and passionate commitment. It was the focus of his work from 1979 until 2002, no matter where he was living, be that London, Liverpool, Gardiner Place, Hatch Street, Belvedere College or Gardiner Street. He helped set up, with Ray Helmick (New England) and Brian McClorry (Prov. Brit.), the Centre for Faith and Justice at Heythrop, then in Cavendish Square in London. The 1970s and early 1980s could fairly be described as 'strike-ridden'; in or about 1982, Liam and Dennis Chiles, Principal of Plater College, Oxford, were joint authors of a 91-page pamphlet Strikes and Social Justice: a Christian Perspective, but it may have been for private circulation.

In all those years of activity, Liam made many friends. He was especially kind to anybody who was ill, but very impatient if he detected excessive “self-absorption”. Liam's style of talk was unique, with every word well enunciated and with a regular, almost rhetorical, pause as he gathered himself to declare a supplementary opinion. Was he disappointed at never becoming superior of a Jesuit community? Being highly intelligent, he may have realised that his gifts would be wasted in such a role. Liam always admired those who did any job well; he was very proud of his niece who became a forensic scientist.

Liam gave the impression of being very serious, and he did some very serious reading, but there was a lighter side. He kept all the novels of Dick Francis; he had boxed DVD sets of every television series that starred John Thaw. Videos, DVDs and his own television entertained him when it was no longer easy for him to leave the house. Liam was the only member of the Gardiner Street community to have a small coffee bar in his room. He became a familiar figure on Dorset Street, as he walked briskly along, pushing his walking frame.

Liam paid the penalty for heavy smoking in a serious heart attack, but lived life to the full, aware that he could drop dead at any moment. In Gardiner Street be would join in concelebrated Masses twice a day (one in the church and the other in the house chapel). On 24 February 2012 he acknowledged his need for full-time care, and moved to Cherryfield Lodge, not permanently, after arranging daily delivery of the Financial Times. He was alert until shortly before his peaceful death five days later, as his curious, questing mind moved to explore the ultimate mystery of God.

Brereton, Joseph P, 1920-2012, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/767 · Person · 05 December 1920-07 May 2012

Born: 05 December 1920, Liverpool, Lancashire, England / Lifford Avenue, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 07 September 1938, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1952, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1955, Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick
Died: 07 May 2012, Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin

Part of the Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare community at the time of death.

Father was a publican and died in 1928/9. Mother then lived at Mount Carmel, Ballinacurra, Limerick City supported by private means.

Youngest of three boys with two sisters..

St Mary's R C Primary School, Back Lane, Little Crosby, Liverpool, England

Educated at a National School in Limerick he then went to St Mary’s Primary School, Liverpool. He then returned to Ireland at Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick

1938-1940: St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois, Novitiate
1940-1943: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate, UCD (Arts)
1943-1946: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Philosophy
1946-1948: Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Regency
1948-1949: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Regency
1949-1953: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1953-1954: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Tertianship
1954-1960: Sacred Heart College SJ, Crescent, Limerick, Teaching
1960-1963: Gonzaga College SJ, Ranelagh, Dublin, Teaching
1962-1963: Minister, Teaching
1963-1968: Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin, Minister, Spiritual Exercises
1968-2012: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Teaching, Assistant Prefect, Chaplain at Hazel Hall Nursing Home, Prosperous Road, Clane, County Kildare
2012: Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin

◆ Interfuse No 148 : Summer 2012 & ◆ The Clongownian, 2012

Obituary

Fr Joseph (Joe) Brereton (1920-2012)

5 December 1920: Born in Liverpool;
Early education in St. Mary's Primary, Liverpool, and Crescent College, Limerick
7 September 1938: Entered Society at Emo
8 September 1940: First Vows at Emo
1940 - 1943: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1943 - 1946: Studied philosophy in Tullabeg
1946 - 1948: Crescent College - Teacher
1948 - 1949: Belvedere College – Teacher
1949 - 1953: Studied theology in Milltown Park
31 July 1952: Ordained at Milltown Park
1953 - 1954: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1954 - 1960: Crescent College, Limerick - Teacher
2 February 1955: Final Vows
1960 - 1963: Gonzaga
1960 - 1962: Teacher
1962 - 1963: Minister, teacher
1963 - 1968: Manresa - Minister, Assisted Director of the Retreat House
1968 - 2012: Clongowes
1968 - 1990: Teacher of Religion, French and English
1990 - 1997: Teacher of English; Assistant to Higher Line Prefect; Chaplain to Hazel Hall (1992)
1997 - 2012: Teacher; Assistant to Higher Line Prefect; Tutor to foreign exchange students; Chaplain to Hazel Hall
7 May 2012: Died Cherryfield

Fr Brereton was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge on 7th January 2012 suffering from recurrent respiratory problems. His treatment necessitated occasional visits to hospital. He remained in good spirits and mentally alert. His condition deteriorated since mid-April. Fr Brereton passed away peacefully in the company of his sister, Josephine, and Fr Michael Sheil in the early morning of May the 7th 2012. May he rest in the Peace of Christ

Obituary : Michael Sheil
The Fiant solita suffragia for the average Jesuit extends to a full page - and sometimes beyond, Fr Joe's CV does not fill even one. But then, Joe was not an “average" Jesuit – he was not an “average" person. The fact that he spent all of 44 years in the same job in Clongowes suggests proof of this !

Joseph Brereton was born in Liverpool and was always loyal to his origins - as the many red soccer jerseys given to him by successive Rhetoric Years in Clongowes will attest. When his father died young, Joe's mother moved her family of three boys and two girls back to her native Limerick, where the sons attended Crescent College. From there Joe entered the Jesuits in 1938 – and the subsequent story of his life is simply told.

He followed the traditional Jesuit training course - BA in UCD [40-43] - Philosophy in Tullabeg [43-46] - Regency in Crescent and Belvedere [46-49]. After three years of theology in Milltown Park, he was ordained there in 1952. Tertianship followed in Rathfarnham (53-54] and Joe returned to his Alma Mater in Limerick as a Teacher for 6 years before moving to Gonzaga College (60-63] and was Minister in Manresa Retreat House from 1963 to 1968. In August 1968 he came to CWC. Fr Tom Layden - our present Provincial - who gave the final Absolution - had not even arrived to start school there at that time!

That made up a grand total of 44 years - give or take a few weeks - for there he stayed ever since. He would probably have occupied the same room for all that time, if a new Rhetoric Wing had not been built in 1999 - but he simply moved about 20 metres west and two floors down to his new quarters.

Joe was a very private sort of person himself – but was deeply interested in other people. In his long life of teaching - all of 56 years in total - and looking after his young charges – he fully justified God's faith in his ability to make his five talents bear fruit. It is calculated that he influenced the lives of over 3,000 students in Clongowes alone -- and the many tributes and messages of sympathy to the Community bore rich testimony to their gratitude to him:

The present writer had the joy and privilege of working with him for 18 years as Higher Line Prefect. Joe always referred to the members of his area as Officers – and dismissed all others as Baggage-Handlers until - when I arrived – I insisted on calling my charges Gentlemen ! He was always there in support - to praise - to encourage – to lower the rising temperature (when needed!] - to offer advice - and, on occasion, to chide ! To be called Villain by him was not a compliment. --- and no one, high or low, Officer or Gentleman - Student or Teacher - was spared! On his encouraging side, his trademark phrase was: That's OK ! That's OK ! A few days after he died this email arrived from Hanoi, Vietnam, from a former pupil: Officers and Gentlemen alike (and also some Villains) will be united in sadness at the news of Fr Joe's death -- and equally warmed by the myriad of happy memories of a great Teacher and a remarkable man.

Very often I used to meet past pupils who would enquire after some of their former Jesuit Teachers – and, after giving them the sad news of the death of A + B +C, I might be asked: And when did Fr Brereton die ? I used to reply, to their surprise: Well I saw him this morning and he was OK !

Sadly for them and for us - as we heard in the second reading at his funeral Mass - this will be no longer so. Joe's tent has been folded up - as he moved – for the last time – to an everlasting home in the heavens. In our first reading – the Prophet Isaiah presents the image of God's Kingdom as a banquet of rich food prepared for all peoples. Joe would surely approve of my choice – for, while Joe was a very private person - in his own quiet way, he was quite a party-man ! While he eschewed the grand manner – he loved the occasional (and increasingly frequent] occasions of sharing some sweets - fruit - biscuits - and a variety of other edibles - from the depths of a seemingly bottomless pocket - with unsuspecting beneficiaries who happened on his path.

In the context of the greater world out there Joe's life was unheralded and unsung - but not so in the daily living of a grace-filled and remarkable life - remarkable in its simplicity and commitment. For his was a life full of love – care - kindness – concern -- thoughtfulness for others – phone-calls - cards – notes – all came to surprise and delight the recipients. His was a life animated by prayer - especially by his devotion to Our Lady, which was well-known - the Breviary and his daily Mass [with his own unique liturgy complete with interjections and dialogue questions!] Joe's proverbial kindness - his five talents (it was the Gospel chosen for his farewell Mass] - was an investment which bore rich dividends for the recipients. Many are the memories – personal and precious - which everyone had of his kindness - each person with his/her own story to tell. He had a particular soft spot for the House Staff - and undertook an unashamed defence of the Eves among them – often reminding the Adams of anniversaries/birthdays, which might otherwise have been forgotten! Exchange students were also among his favourites. At the end of one year – during the Leaving Certificate exams in June - Rhetoric Year gave Joe a present of an electric blanket - for he always seemed to feel the cold very keenly – and was often wrapped in layers of pullovers and his famous coat - beneath which (at least it was rumoured] were several hot-water bottles! He put up a notice to thank the Students for their “very thoughtful gift – which will be so useful now that winter is drawing on” .............. and this was in the first week in June !

At an age when most of his contemporaries were long retired or invalid - Joe continued to patrol the corridors of the Higher Line's “R Block” in Clongowes – encouraging the lame ducks – searching for the lost souls – sharing his wisdom with all and sundry. He had such a canny knack of foretelling what might "come up" in the Leaving that there many of his charges could not be persuaded that he did not have “insider information” in the Department !

In the evening of his life Joe became more frail in body - but with his spirit's sparkle never dimmed. The Nurses in Clongowes looked after him with a tender devotion far beyond the call of duty (as did the Staff in the village pharmacies). During his last few months, it was the turn of the Nurses and Staff of Cherryfield to fall under his charm and to care for him with their renowned love and attention. This task carried its own challenge - and many of them found themselves on the receiving end as they enquired after his health -- only to find themselves responding to Joe's interrogation as to how they were getting on ! Joe had never wanted to go there - and it is their great triumph that they succeeded in making it a real home-from home for him. Once a Prefect - always a Prefect - or so it is said! In Cherryfield Joe remained always “on duty”. On one occasion he entered someone else's room late at night and told him to Turn off that TV - and do it now! I have people studying for the Leaving Cert. along this corridor – and you are distracting them! His startled companion duly complied!

Late on the evening of Sunday 6th May the Night Nurse in Cherryfield alerted the Rector and Joe's Sister that he had taken a turn for the worse. I have a very moving cameo-memory of seeing Josephine sitting by Joe's bed, reciting prayers from an old Child of Mary prayerbook - occasionally glancing round at her Brother as he listened to her prayers for and with him - as we shared his last moments on earth. Night Staff in a hospital or nursing home live a sort of owl-like existence - rarely heard or seen ............ Joe introduced us to three wonderful people on that Sunday evening - aş, at the moment of his final departure, they cared for both of us trying to cope with the finality of it all. Three minutes into a new day -- on Monday 7th May - Joe celebrated what the ancient Roman martyrology called our dies natalis - his Heavenly Birthday. He had reached God's holy mountain -- to share in the New Life promised by Jesus to those who eat the Bread of Life and drink from the wells of Salvation.

At the Community Mass in Cherryfield on the day Joe died, Fr Paul Andrews quoted a celebrated phrase of Prof. Winnicott, a distinguished psychiatrist who once said: I pray that I will be alive when I die ........ I pray that I will be alive when I die! This was so true of Fr Brereton - and his spirit will live on - both in CWC and throughout the world – where so many of his former pupils mourned his passing – fully alive, aged ninety-one-and-a-half years old.

◆ The Clongownian, 2012

The passing of Fr Joe Brereton SJ saw Clongowes lose one of its most faithful servants. The many tributes and messages of sympathy referred to by Fr Michael Sheil SJ included the following, one from a present pupil, Tom Goodman, and one from an Old Clongownian...

The Captains Last Voyage

by Tom Goodman (Poetry)

The sky was a ceiling of deep blues and greys when we arrived at the dock. Clouds hid the moon, but from some lighted windows we were able to make out the shape of some of the structures along the seafront. Nature's silence lay our with us, which, combined with the wind and water in their whirling, created a sublime calm. So much so, that we were afraid to speak above a whisper, content to be keepers of serenity. At last we reached the ship, a looming yer majestic vessel bobbing slowly on the chop, and stepping up to the gangplank, we boarded. The ship itself creaked gently as we almost tiptoed across the rain-slick deck. Then, coming to a pair of large wooden doors, banded with riveted iron strips, we stepped in to meet The Captain.

Leaving the rain on the other side of the door, we took off our coats and, in our surroundings, not for the first or last time. The room was quite compact and plain. On one side there stood elegantly a shrine to Our Lady, and on the opposite side to this the room was walled with wooden-slatted shutters that were pulled right down to the ground. Faintly from behind these, the murmur of hymns floated, changing the silence into a soft praising song. Heels clacking on the planks beneath our feet, we approached the shutters and knocked firmly; after a few moments they opened.

The Captain stood there, measuring us intently He was an elderly man, with a kindly face and silky snow-white hair. With a slight hunch he stood shorter than he should and he held his gnarled hands down in front of him. Smiling, he invited us to sit; and we did, the reverent music resounding out behind us from the horn of the gramophone, and waited as The Captain sat silently at his desk, working his way through his rosary beads with quavering lips. Looking past The Captain out the porthole, we caught a glimpse in the newly emergent moonlight of the glorious bone-white castle standing vigilant to the night with its golden doors. The gramophone dinked as the clay disc finished its circuit and The Captain's beads pattered as he laid them on the table and sat back in his padded pinewood chair. Behind us the heavy wooden door groaned to admit a woman with a small frame, long straight brown hair and spectacles. Neither we, nor The Captain said a word as she sat herself down on one of the benches at the wall. But after a few moments we realised that she was praying for The Captain, and by this time she had already risen, blessed herself and was making for the door, while The Captain quirked a little smile in thanks. After glancing to each other and then to The Captain, we resumed our quietude.

Sitting for so long in that room with the silent Captain, we began to notice all its little details, as one could not help but do in such a situation. Twelve candles stood in gilded sticks, ten of which were alight, casting a mellow and soft radiance across The Captain's quarters. Out another of the portholes, which was fitted with red glass, a shining shaft of light shooting from the lighthouse could be seen. It added to the strange atmosphere in the room that persuaded silence. The Captain's kindly smile still lingered from the woman's visit, and rekindled as two more figures stepped through the large wooden doors.

The two men were quite different yer similar in appearance. Both held some weight on their paunches, both looked a considerable age (one more so than the other.) and both looked strangely as if they had just recently emerged into joy from grief. They were speaking quietly to one another as they stepped across the threshold and brushed off their coats, their firm shoes tapping on the floor. After they had said their prayers in a similar fashion to the woman previously, the two men paused to look at The Captain, who was sitting back, straight in the eye. Resuming their conversation (which seemed to revolve around The Captain himself) they quietly departed, leaving The Captain smiling,

The time to speak
Now the time came when we finally began to speak to The Captain and one another; quietly at first but gradually as we breached the swallowing silence of the cabin, the level of our voices began to rise. The Captain sat like a stone through it all, smiling in a calm thoughtful bliss.

It was past midnight when we finally left The Captain. We were admittedly reluctant to leave; but we needed our sleep for the following morning, for The Captain's final journey on the sea. Walking in the crisp, cold night, we left the harbour already dreaming of bed beneath the moonshine in the ever-creeping weariness.

The morning rose bright and blue, but soon the sea-breeze swept clouds in over our heads, and with the clouds came rain, light at first. As we walked down to the docks feeling the first spots of rain on our faces, gulls reeled and screeched along the wind, and from afar we could see the crowd that had formed around The Captain's vessel. Even from that distance we could pick out some officers, though the general rabble of other crew-members melded into one uniformed crowd. At the fringes could be seen both men and women, dressed in many different fashions. Here some ex-officers in formal. raiment, and there women, both old and young, in their own finery.

Coming closer along the water a wave plashed against the harbour wall, spraying us lightly with an early blessing. The cobbles beneath our feet mimicked tiles in their various colours and shapes and wall murals stuck up at regular intervals. Fourteen we counted by the time we joined the crowd that stood watching the captain on the deck.

The great splayed mix of voices quietened as priests in their white robes stepped up to bless The Captain and his voyage. Silence, as well governed as on the previous night, blanketed the crowd as The Captain was blessed, for it was well known that The Captain himself was a man of God, and as the ceremony progressed, The Captain visibly stepped out of his hunch, standing tall to the wind and vast ocean ahead of him. At The Captain's side stood his sister, regal in her equanimity; for it was no easy thing to do, leaving a brother to the voyage alone. At the will of the priests, we began to sing. Deep sonorous bass notes were complemented by the higher ones, swirling together into a great farewell, filled with the respect and praise The Captain was due. While we slid from song to prayer and back again those men on-deck lined the way to the helm; a guard of honour for The Captain, despite the raindrops, which fell down with abandon. When the songs were over and The Captain stood nobly gripping at the pinewood wheel with his hands, the rest of us that could fit climbed up upon the ship, ready to sail The Captain to the places where map and sight failed to guide. Without order we hitched the booms, hoisted the sails and cast off, the bow cutting into the water, cleaving our way forward with the aid of the sails. With the bowsprit pointing our way we departed, The Captain leading with an open grin on his face, which had youthened, his hair now turning a tawny colour, and his eyes holding the light of excitement.

After quite some time in the pouring rain, whipping wind and amidst the tang of salt in one's nostril, a small elbow of land sitting green on the horizon came into view, it was on no sea-chart, no map or in no book that the men could find, The Captain had taken us, and he had led with the surety of somebody heading home along an old road from their childhood, but we all knew that he had never visited this place; none of us had. When we made closer to the islands, mists rose out of the sea to shroud them. The Captain bade us stop, so we weighed anchor. The Captain now holding the youthful look of a man of thirty, with all the wisdom of an eighty year old behind the eyes, leapt down onto the deck past us, utterly astonished, to the rowing boats which were tied off at the side of the ships hull and hopped into the sleek, varnished pine boat. We all stood around agape at first as he began to lower himself down, but at the signal of one of the priests who ventured along with us, we began a final lamenting praise for The Captain. Weak and sad to begin, the melody took us to a time when The Captain began to prepare for this voyage, to the care he showed to us, each of his crew-members, his love and concern, his imagination and his ability to see that it was okay when chaos and ruin seemed to loom; to now, as the sky opened up to the warm embrace of the sun we realised that this journey is made by all good men and women, those who are in their nature - for others. The Captain was leaving now, his boat had silently dipped into the water and had begun gliding along, tending towards the shore, but we would see him again. Smiles broke out among the crew as we watched him shrink. When he was still clearly visible he turned his young face that was filled with life ship-ward and smiled one last time for us, as the golden mists enveloped him, hiding him from our view. And so we sat and thought of the time when we ourselves would have to make a similar journey, through this life into another. Still smiling.

And into the misty isles of time,
We all shall sail ourselves.
Whether in morning, day or dusk,
We drink now from the well
That quenches all; the fair of heart
Villains, liars, fiends
And leaves behind no thirst for men
Or thought of mortal dreams.
Failing body, prevailing soul
Through all that ever is.
Someday hope you'll take your boat
On through the golden mists.

-oOo-

Officers, Gentlemen and Villains

by Rossa McDermott (OC ‘78)

It was a far from soft day when the casket of Fr Joe Brereton SJ was lowered into the grave by a new generation of Clongownians in the community graveyard, just off the main avenue. Alongside the recently departed Fr Paddy Lavery SJ, the man more affectionately known ‘Bertie” Brereton was laid to his final place of rest in front of many Clongownians, past and present. It was somehow unfair that this most gentle of men did not get more deserving weather - some bright Spring sunshine - in order to record the sad moment when he left the Clongowes Community for good. But then again, Bertie was never one for the limelight.

In recalling the long shadow he cast over the Clongowes Community, Fr Michael 'Mocky' Sheil fondly remembered that the Bertie era started even before the current Jesuit Provincial, Tom Layden, had arrived in Clongowes many years ago. Mocky estimated that his influence had been cast over 3,000 pupils during his tenure, and a testament to that influence was the cross-section of ages in the Boys Chapel for his funeral service, all reflecting a man who, in a very quiet, yet determined way, had managed to impact on many, many generations during his teaching years.

For those who wondered in the early days why soccer played such a role in the teaching of English, it was due to his roots in Liverpool, where he lived until the premature death of his father, after which the family moved back to Limerick. In looking back over old copy books in clear outs and house moves, it is now clearer to me why so many essays, projects and drawings of the 1974 World Cup were acceptable English copy for Fr Brereton. Unbeknownst to many of us he loved football, but he also took an interest in all sporting achievements of his charges, especially his “Officers”. In a moving, honest and potent homily Fr Sheil recalled a particular rivalry between prefects in the old Rhetoric Building, Since forever, it seemed, Bertie called his fellow dwellers on the top floor of the old 1966 building “Officers”, all seemingly a reflection of a higher quality of Rhetorician in the scheme of things - in his mind. This was carried further in the cup teams and other sports, as no winning team went without a competitive count from Joe Brereton as to his Officer numbers in the wining side.

But it was perhaps the term “Villain” that evoked the most recognition from the packed church during Mocky's fond recollections on Thursday morning. It was the fiercest term that Bertie ever mustered when talking about the most mean of people. In an era when the hard edge of The Raz - aka Fr Gerry O'Beirne - was not slow about calling things as they were (and often in the most non-Jesuitical language) Fr Joe Brereton never moved beyond the term “villains”. This, perhaps, most accurately reflected the soft and caring nature of the man, characterising everything he stood for during his four plus decades in Clongowes. Whatever about being an Officer or a Gentleman, one thing you never wanted to be was a Villain. There was possibly nothing more troublesome.

In the closing prayers at the graveside on Thursday Fr Sheil and Fr Moloney ended concelebrating the life of a great man in the company of Fr John Looby, Fr Phil Fogarty, and Fr Colin Warrack. They did so with a befitting sense of ceremony perhaps so typical of the Jesuit Community over the generations. Sadly though the Clongowes Jesuit community graveyard is filled with too many stalwarts now long since at peace, yet evoking memories for each and everyone of us: Fr Cyril Power, Fr James “Pop” Casey, Fr Charlie O'Connor, Fr Ray Lawler, Fr Percy Winder, Fr Gerry O'Beirne, Fr Frank Frewen, Brother Willie Fitzgerald, Brother William Glanville and the one and only Jim Treacy - to mention just a few. On May 10th 2012 Fr Joe Brereton, SJ sadly joined them. May he rest in peace.

Johnston, William, 1925-2010, Jesuit priest of the Japanese Province (JPN)

IE IJA J/776 · Person · 30 July 1925-12 October 2010

Born: 30 July 1925, Norfolk Parade, Belfast, County Antrim
Entered: 20 September 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 24 March 1957, St Ignatius, Tokyo, Japan
Final Vows: 02 February 1961, Tokyo, Japan
Died: 12 October 2010, SJ House, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan - Japanese Province (JPN)

Transcribed HIB to JPN: 02 February 1961

Father was a businessman.

Youngest of four boys

Early education was at a Convent school in Belfast, and then at primary schools in Belfast, Holyhead and Liverpool. He then went to St Francis Xavier’s College in Liverpool. Returning to Belfast he attended St Malachy’s College, Belfast

1943-1945: St Mary's, Emo, County Laois, Novitiate
1945-1948: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Juniorate, UCD
1948-1951: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublinn, Philosophy
1951-1953: Eiko Gakuen, Tanra-Machi, Yokosuka-shi, Japan, Regency, syudying language
1953-1954: Sophia University, Jochi Daigaku, Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan, Regency
1954-1958: Jesuskai Shingakuin, Chome, Kami-Shakujii, Nerima-ku, Tokyo, Japan, Theology
1958-1959: Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, Tertianship
1959-1960: Miason Saint Ignace, Rue Washington, Brussels, Belgium (BEL M), Catechetical studies
1960-1961: Sophia University, Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Lecturing

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/122-death-of-bill-johnston-sj

Death of Bill Johnston SJ
Bill Johnson SJ, the Irish Jesuit internationally renowned for his work on mysticism and inter-faith dialogue, died on Tuesday 12 October in Tokyo, Japan.

Born in Belfast on 30 July 1925, he entered the Jesuits on 20 September 1943. He was ordained a priest on March 24 1957 and spent many years of his life in Japan where he became actively involved in inter-religious dialogue, especially with the Buddhists. He was well known also for his best-selling books on mysticism, including Silent Music, The Still Point, and The Inner Eye of Love. May he rest in peace.

https://www.jesuit.ie/who-are-the-jesuits/inspirational-jesuits/william-johnston/

William Johnston
Born in a time in Northern Ireland when religious strife and segregation was prevalent, William Johnston went on to become one of the foremost persons in the area of interfaith dialogue, after encountering Buddhism while in Japan.
William Johnston was born in 1925 in Belfast, the youngest of four sons. When he was seven his family moved first to Holyhead in Wales, then to Liverpool. At fifteen he returned to Belfast, where he attended St Malachy’s College. In 1943, having finished school, Johnston entered the noviciate for the Society of Jesus, in Tullabeg, Co. Laois. While studying philosophy in Tullabeg, he was assigned to Japan, so in 1951 he travelled east. He first spent two years learning Japanese in a Jesuit community south of Tokyo, before moving to Sophia University in the city, where he taught English.
Johnston went to Japan expecting to preach and convert. While studying theology in Shakujii, however, he began to develop a fascination with Buddhism, in particular Zen Buddhism, and mysticism. He saw that for all the differences between his religion and those he encountered in Japan, when it came to meditation and the search for wisdom the great religions shared a common ground. From this revelation came what would be a lifelong involvement in inter-religious dialogue, in particular between Buddhism and Christianity.
When he travelled to Rome in 1958 for six months he further immersed himself in mysticism and transcendental meditation. He later called his time there a ‘revolution in my life’. Once he returned to Japan to resume teaching in 1960, having spent a short while in a New York parish, Johnston read the great 14th century mystical work, The Cloud of Unknowing. He was enthralled. He began then to write on it, work which he later turned into his doctoral thesis, later published as The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing.
Following this Johnston’s next major endeavour was the translation of a novel called Chinmoku, written by Endo Shusaku, a Japanese Catholic. The book, released as Silence, tells the story of a Jesuit apostate in Japan, and because of this many of Johnston’s colleagues weren’t pleased that he chose it. The translation, released in 1969, was highly regarded, and it introduced the acclaimed novel and writer to a new audience. Johnston met Endo when undertaking the translation, and they remained friends until Endo’s death in 1996.
Johnston continued to write over the decades that followed, and he amassed a wider and wider following. He was in demand as a teacher and travelled extensively, to China, the Philippines, Australia and elsewhere. In 2006 he released an autobiography titled Mystical Journey. Johnston died in 2010, in Tokyo.

◆ Jesuits in Ireland

◆ https://www.jesuit.ie/news/tokyo/

Goodbye to Bill

Fr Bill Johnston, who has died in Tokyo, had a good send-off, reflecting the remarkable impact of this diffident Belfast-born Jesuit. It included a message from President Mary
McAleese: ‘I’m so sorry to hear of Father Johnston’s death, though glad for him that his suffering is over and he has reached life’s best destination. May he be enjoying a heavenly welcome.’ The Archbishop of Tokyo (whom Bill had baptised) led the funeral Mass in St Ignatius’ Church, accompanied by the Irish Ambassador, some thirty priests and Archbishop Pittau SJ. The Irish Times plans an obituary. All friends are welcome to a Month’ s Mind Mass in Milltown Park at noon on Friday, 12 November. The photo of Bill reproduced here was taken in 1988.

◆ https://www.jesuit.ie/news/william-johnston-sj-rip-2/

William Johnston SJ, RIP
Bill Johnson SJ, the Irish Jesuit internationally renowned for his work on mysticism and inter-faith dialogue, died peacefully this morning, Tuesday 12 October in
Tokyo, Japan. Born in Belfast on 30 July 1925, he entered the Jesuits on 20 September 1943. He was ordained a priest on March 24 1957 and spent many years of his life in Japan where he became actively involved in inter-religious dialogue, especially with the Buddhists. Writing in an article for The Tablet in the aftermath of 9/11 he claimed, “We used to say that dialogue between the religions is necessary for world peace. Now we can say that dialogue between the religions is necessary for world survival.” He was well known also for his best-selling books on mysticism, including Silent Music, The Still Point, and The Inner Eye of Love. Read the full text of Bill’s Tablet article below. May he rest in peace.

◆ Interfuse No 144 : Spring 2011

Obituary

Fr William Johnston (1925-2010) : Japanese Province

Bill, the youngest of four boys, was born in Belfast, a city torn with political and religious tension and strife. Those earliest years scarred Bill's memory for the rest of his life. When he was eight, the family moved to Wales, and a year later to Liverpool, where Bill went to Xavier, the Jesuit school. He appreciated his Jesuit teachers but hated the use of corporal punishment. When Liverpool was targetted by German bombers in World War II, the family returned to Belfast and Bill completed his secondary education in St Malachy's College. He entered the Jesuit noviciate in Emo in 1943, did a BA in Classics in UCD, then studied philosophy in Tullabeg. The saintly Fr John Hyde later told Donal Doyle that of all the scholastics he had ever taught, Bill Johnston had the most brilliant mind.

In 1951 he and Gerry Bourke were accepted for the Japanese mission, and it was in Tokyo that he was ordained priest in 1957, taught English Literature in Sophia University, and enrolled for a doctorate in theology there. He did his dissertation on the anonymous medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing. Bill's book The Mysticism of 'The Cloud of Unknowing’, with a preface by Thomas Merton, became an authoritative work and set the tone for a lifelong spiritual journey through various styles of prayer. Bill had felt drawn to prayer from his early years, and the titles of his books reflect his spiritual journey: The still point: reflections on Zen and Christian mysticism (1970); Christian Zen (1971); Silent music: the science of meditation (1974); The inner eye of love: mysticism and religion (1978); The mirror mind: spirituality and transformation (1981); The wounded stag: Christian mysticism today (1984); Being in love: the practice of Christian prayer (1988); Letters to a contemplative (1991); Mystical theology: the science of love (1995); Arise, my love: mysticism for a new era (2000); Mystical journey; an autobiography (2006). He also translated Endo Shusaku's Silence (1969), and Nagai Takashi's Bells of Nagasaki (1984).

Because of the popularity of his books, Bill became well known around the world and, while continuing to teach religion at Sophia University, he gave talks and retreats in many countries, and was appointed to direct the tertians in the Philippines for two years. The last and most memorable of his retreats was to diocesan priests in China just a few months before he collapsed into his final illness,
. As the book-titles suggest, Bill engaged actively in religious dialogue, especially with Buddhists. He wrote euphorically about the religious summits in Assisi convoked by Pope John Paul II, which he felt heralded the new era" implied in the title of Arise my love. He took part in a World Religious Summit in Hieizan in 2007. Throughout all this, his love for silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament was remarkable. If he was not in his room or had gone out somewhere, he would often be found in the Chapel in silent prayer. With his prayer group of lay people, he would bring the Blessed Sacrament to a small chapel where they would pray silently together.

The Teacher
Bill first appeared in my life in 1944 as a teacher, instructing Michael Crowe and me in the customs of the Jesuit Noviciate in Emo. Indeed Michael was already a mystic. Bill was our angelus, the second-year novice who looks after a couple of first-years. He went on to be a great teacher. Most of his books were essentially didactic, teaching people how to pray. Being in Love begins: “You have asked me, Thomas, to write to you about the art of prayer” - and he goes on to instruct, with clarity and order,

Skip nearly sixty years. One morning in 2002 I had breakfast with Bill in Manresa, a chance to renew an old friendship. Looking back on the years since our noviceship, I ask him over breakfast:

“Bill, your life is productive. You have made a difference. You have helped countless people across the world. You have written bestselling and original books, lectured in your Japanese university and in many other countries. Of all the things you have done, what would you like to be remembered by? What was most worthwhile?”

Bill blushed, which he did easily, though his red hair had turned white. And he thought for a bit before replying: “I taught some people to pray”.

“When you say ‘taught’, I asked, do you mean by your writing and lecturing?”

“No, no”, he answered. “I mean that individuals asked me how to pray, and I taught them, one by one. Some of them were Europeans who came to Japan to learn Zen meditation, but they had no experience of the Christian tradition of interior prayer which goes back two thousand years. I taught them- that makes me happy”.

I thought about this. It was not what I expected. Bill was an international figure. He was moving on from Manresa to give a retreat to Lutherans in Sweden. He was just back from lecturing in USA. But he did not rate that as high as helping people to pray.

He saw prayer not so much as a private devotion, but as the only hope for the future of mankind. At the Assisi meeting of the world's religious bodies Pope John Paul II had said that the exigencies of peace “transcend all religions”. Bill took this further: “I still ask myself if we can develop the Pope's thought in such a way that people throughout the world – with or without religion - will be willing to sit together in silence, faithful to their own beliefs but united in a great love for peace and for the earth”.

He was a good teacher because he had learned from experience, reflecting on the history of his heart in the same way as Ignatius did. His journey had been a lengthy one, from Ireland his mother to Japan his wife (as he liked to put it), from the sectarian hatreds of Belfast to a philosophy of love, and from the stringent logic of the first week of the Spiritual Exercises to a contemplation in which the body and the heart were what counted.

That was one of his lifelong struggles: did he belong in the Jesuits, where the spirituality he had been taught in Emo was so rational, conscious, intellectual? He came to see that Ignatius himself was not like that, but a true mystic, reaching beyond language, so much in love with God that his tears of joy in prayer threatened to damage his eyesight. Bill too was a man who wept easily, and knew the ecstasy of falling in love. His friendships, with both men and women, were immensely important to him. Yet in prayer he knew the value of habit and discipline in opening oneself to the Lord.

His first advice was: Attend to your breathing; then to your posture – straight back, eyes half closed, in lotus position if you can manage it. Then find a mantra, a phrase that you can repeat: Jesus, Come Holy Spirit, or the like. Give time to prayer - Bill himself was faithful to an hour's meditation every day, and as the years passed be loved to spend longer periods with the Blessed Sacrament.

Dark nights
Bill knew that it would not be all sweetness and light. He went through difficult periods. On a mission to India his money, passport, visa and tickets were stolen, and he had to cancel a retreat because he could not travel. He was left alone to manage a tertianship in the Philippines and was forced to realise that his strength was in teaching, not administration. He opted to make a 30-day retreat in USA under a famous director, but was so shaken by his confrontations that he fell sick. The shadow of the Cross often fell upon him. He suffered a great deal from what he felt were abuses of truth, as when well-known theologians were censured in different ways. At such times Bill became angry and critical of how things were being done. But he continued to pray, and in time, as the storm abated, peace and the love of life returned.

St Teresa of Avila warns that ordinarily one does not enter the seventh mansion (the apex of mystical prayer) without severe illness and pain. When Bill read this, he reacted: For me this is frightening, and I hope the great Carmelite is wrong. Alas, she was right. The real history of Bill lies not in his books, lectures or travels, nor in the things that he did, but in the steady work of God, putting him through a long dark night of sleeplessness and anxiety, and finally stilling him with paralysis. Even words failed as he lost the power of coherent speech. The last two years may well have been the most formative of his entire life, when God, not Bill, was active. The book that he had had constantly come back to was the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing, which urges us to seek God not through knowledge but through what the author calls a "naked intent" and a “blind Love”.

After two years in which he could neither move nor speak, Bill has gone beyond the Cloud of Unknowing to that happiness where, as St Paul writes: Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. The impression of his final weeks could be summed up in the word Peace. It was written on his face almost as though he had caught a glimpse of the happiness promised in the Gospel. May God be good to him.

Paul Andrews, helped especially by Dermot Brangan and Donal Doyle

◆ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Johnston_(priest)#:~:text=William%20Johnston%20(born%20in%20Belfast,under%20the%20Irish%20Civil%20War.

William Johnston (priest)

William Johnston (born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1925 — died in Tokyo, Japan, 2010) was a Jesuit priest and a Zen meditation advocate. His family was a supporter of Irish Republican Army and suffered terror under the Irish Civil War. He studied in Liverpool University and at the National University of Ireland, then joined the Jesuit Order and in 1951 moved to postwar Japan.[1][2]

Johnston held a doctorate in mystical theology from the Sophia University, Tokyo, and had also carried out specific studies on Buddhism. Been heavily influenced by Jesuit priest Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, he participated actively in the dialogue between Zen Buddhism and Christianity.[3] He practiced Zen under the guidance of Yamada Koun Roshi, and insisted on continuing to recite the Jesus Prayer despite Yamada's contrary instructions. This stopped the master-disciple link.[1]

Johnston's reflections on his background in Northern Ireland, his transition to Japan and the practice of Zen, are about how the relationship of Catholicism and Zazen meditation can transform Ireland, Japan, Zen Buddhism, and Christian mysticism. Toward the end of his life, influenced by the Japanese experience of bombing of civilian populations and his understanding of the Buddha and Christ's teachings, he embraced the active promotion of nonviolence.[1]

References
From the Falls Road to Zen: The Mystical Journey of William Johnston, S.J. Leo Lefebure. Buddhist-Christian Studies (Vol. 39), 2019. University of Hawaii Press
William Johnston. Editorial Herder México
Shusaku Endo in conversation with William Johnston. Where Buddhism meets Christianity. He translated the text from Japanese to appear in volume 172 of America Magazine, published by the National Catholic Review.

◆ https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/theologian-who-pushed-for-inter-religious-dialogue-1.676649

Theologian who pushed for inter-religious dialogue

WILLIAM JOHNSTON, who has died in Tokyo aged 85, was a Jesuit theologian who wrote extensively on Zen and …

William Johnston:WILLIAM JOHNSTON, who has died in Tokyo aged 85, was a Jesuit theologian who wrote extensively on Zen and Christian contemplation. Domiciled in Japan for most of his adult life, he became actively involved in inter-religious dialogue, especially with Buddhists.

After 9/11 he wrote in the Tablet: "We used to say that dialogue between the religions is necessary for world peace. Now we can say that dialogue between the religions is necessary for world survival." Only prayerful dialogue between Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism could save the planet from destruction, he continued. "What a responsibility we have!"

He was born in Belfast in 1925. The youngest of four sons of William Johnston, a civil servant, and his wife Winnie (née Clearkin), he grew up on the Falls Road and attended the Dominican convent.

In 1932 the family moved to Holyhead, Wales, and later to Aigburth, Liverpool. There he attended an elementary school, “run by a tyrannical Irish nun”, and later joined his brothers at the St Francis Xavier school.

In 1940 he returned to Belfast where he attended St Malachy’s college. In 1943 he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Emo, Co Laois.

He studied classics at University College Dublin, gaining first-class honours. In 1948 he began studying philosophy at Tullabeg, Co Offaly, and in 1951 he was assigned to Japan, joining the Jesuit community at Taura. After two years learning Japanese he joined the staff of Sophia University, Tokyo, to teach English.

He then studied theology at Shakujii, and became interested in mysticism, Zen Buddhism and inter-religious understanding. On completing his studies he was ordained a priest in March 1957.

In 1958 he spent six months in Rome, which he later described as “nothing short of a revolution” in his life. In Brussels he studied at the Lumen Vitae catechetical institute. He immersed himself in the study of mysticism, encountering traditions such as TM (transcendental meditation).

Following a brief spell ministering in a New York parish, he returned in 1960 to Japan, and resumed teaching at Sophia University. His doctoral thesis was published as The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing(1978), and is widely regarded as his best book.

His other works include The Still Point: Reflections on Zen and Christian Mysticism(1970), Silent Music: the Science of Meditation(1974), and The Inner Eye of Life: Mysticism and Religion(1978)

He translated Endo Shusaku's novel Chinmoku, published in English as Silence(1969). Some colleagues were offended, as the novel's central character was a Jesuit apostate. The translation was highly praised. As his reputation grew, he was invited to preach and teach abroad. His travels took him to the US, UK, Australia, China and the Philippines. He made several visits to Ireland.

His autobiography, Mystical Journey(2006), clearly shows that while his commitment to the welfare of the Catholic Church was never in doubt, he passionately believed all religions should strive to work together in peace.

He suffered a stroke two years ago which left him bedridden and unable to speak.

This week Paul Andrews SJ said: “Fr Bill Johnston spent his Jesuit life on the frontiers, exploring the common ground between Christian and Buddhist mysticism, seeking words to express what is beyond language. Now he has slipped from the Cloud of Unknowing to the state where ‘he will know even as he is known’. May God be good to him.”

His brother Kevin, extended family members and Jesuit con-freres survive him.

William Johnston SJ: born July 30th, 1925; died October 12th, 2010

Andrews, Paul W, 1927-2018, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/818 · Person · 10 January 1927-27 November 2018

Hayes, James FG, 1933-2016, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/838 · Person · 06 July 1933-31 January 2016

Born: 06 July 1933, Pery Square, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 14 September 1951, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 29 July 1965, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Died: 31 January 2016, Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin

Part of the Loyola, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin community at the time of death.

Father was an Engineer and Company Director

Older of two boys with two sisters.

Educated at a Convent school and then at Crescent College SJ for eight years.

◆ https://www.jesuit.ie/news/20674/

Fr Jim Hayes RIP: committed to kindness and service of the Gospel
There were two sides to Jim Hayes, the Limerick-born Jesuit who has died at the age of 82. At first blush a stranger might find him serious, almost stern, in face and manner; but where he was looking after others – as he was for most of his ministry – he was kindness itself. He is remembered in both Milltown and Belvedere not just for efficiency as a Minister, but for an almost motherly eye for the needs of the brethren, and readiness to take pains and spend money to meet those needs. Any Jesuit in the job of Minister lives in a tension between the needs of the brethren and the money-wise watchfulness of superior and bursar. In that tension Jim put the brethren’s needs first. So he is remembered with great regard and affection. He sometimes felt the pressure of the bursar’s books, for instance when he was unexpectedly moved from Belvedere. Years later the Provincial who moved him wrote to him with an apology for making that move, acknowledging that it was a poorly-founded decision.

After a short spell in Limerick, (at that time there were more priests in its main street than in the whole of Zambia), he was invited by Fr Oliver McTiernan to ease the shortage of priests in London. With the support of both Irish and British Provincials he spent fifteen happy years in Islington. Both Oliver and Bruce Kent, his companions in Islington, later left priestly ministry, but Jim persevered faithfully.

In the mid-1980s he felt moved to volunteer for the diocese of Aberdeen, where the shortage of priests was so chronic that it survived only through an infusion of Jesuit volunteers. Jim was parish priest in a Highlands parish west of Inverness, then in a city parish, and then for seven years in the Shetland Islands. When he went there, he found only four native Catholics, but with the development of the oil fields their number was swollen by a surge of workers, from Scotland, England, Ireland, Poland and elsewhere.

Despite the loneliness and the long winter nights, Jim enjoyed Shetland, moving round his parish by car and boat. But ten years ago he found that his half-moon glasses no longer served him adequately. A specialist found that he was suffering from loss of central vision due to diabetes (of which Jim was unaware). His sight gave way suddenly. When he could not identify parishioners, he knew he had to leave the parish. The British Provincial asked him to serve as full-time chaplain in the Catholic Institute for the Blind in Liverpool. He worked there for fourteen years until, blind and afflicted by Parkinson’s, he returned to Ireland and settled well into Cherryfield Lodge. His condition deteriorated quickly in the past two weeks, and he died peacefully on 21 January, surrounded by his family and Jesuit companions.

O'Driscoll, Cornelius E, 1933-2015, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/844 · Person · 31 July 1933-27 January 2015

Born: 31 July 1933, Piltown, County Kilkenny
Entered: 07 September 1954, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 29 July 1965, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Mukasa Seminary, Zambia
Died: 27 January 2015, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin - Zambia-Malawi Province (ZAM)

Part of the St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin community at the time of death.

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 15 August 1971; ZAM to HIB 16/02/1999

Born in Wexford Town, County Wexford

Father was a Sergeant in the Garda and family lived in Grew up in Ballyhale, County Kilkennn and Piltown, County Kilkenny

Eldest of five two boys and three girls.

Educated first at Ballyhale NS, County Kilkenny and then at St Kieran’s College, Kilkenny City. After school he was awarded a Cadetship in the Irish Army and was a commissioned officer in 1953.

Father Neil O'Driscoll, elder son of Mr and Mrs C O'Driscoll, Palmerstown, Co. Dublin, was born in Wexford on the Feast of St Ignatius, in 1933 and brought up in Ballyhale, Co. Kilkenny. He received his secondary education at St Kieran's College, Kilkenny. In 1951 he joined the Army as a cadet and was commissioned as an officer in November 1953. In 1954 he resigned from the Army to enter the novitiate at St Mary's Emo. From 1956 to 1959 he studied philosophy at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore. In 1959 he went to Zambia and spent three years teaching and also studying the language. In 1962 he returned to Milltown Park for theology.

1954-1956: St Mary's, Emo, County Laois, Novitiate
1956-1959: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly, Philosophy
1959-1960: Chivuna Station, Monze, Northern Rhodesia, Regency, language studies
1960-1962: Canisius College SJ, Chikuni, Chisekesi, Northern Rhodesia, Regency, Teaching
1962-1966: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Theology
1966-1968: Canisius College SJ, Chikuni, Chisekesi, Zambia, Teaching
1968-1969: Mukasa Minor Seminary, Choma, Zambia, Teaching
1969-1971: Canisius College SJ, Chikuni, Chisekesi, Zambia, Teaching, Gamesmaster, Assists in Church (ZAM from 1971)
1971-1972: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG), Tertianship
1972-1976: Canisius College SJ, Chikuni, Chisekesi, Zambia, Teaching, Gamesmaster
1976-1978: Mukasa Minor Seminary, Choma, Zambia, Teaching
1978-1981: Canisius College SJ, Chikuni, Chisekesi, Zambia,
1981-1985: St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin (HIB), Vocarions, Assists in Church
1985-1988: Chikuni; Namwala -- Teaching; Parish Work; Marriage Encounter
1988-1991: Namwala-Superior, Assistant P.P.
1991-1992: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG), 3M Course
1992-1994: Namwala Mukasa - Teaching: Parish Work; Marriage Encounter
1994-1995: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, , Spiritual Exercises, Pastoral work
1995-2005: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, Assists in Church
1997-2003; Parish Priest
2003-2005: Prefect of Church
2005-2006: Sabbatical (USA); Rome C.I.S. Course on Spiritual Exercises
2006-2010: John Austin House, North Circular Road, Dublin, Assistant Director Jesuit Mission Office; Assisted in Church of the Holy Family, Aughrim Street, Dublin
2008-2010: Superior, Assistant Director Jesuit Mission Office; Assisted in Church of the Holy Family, Aughrim Street, Dublin
2010-2015: St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin, Assists in Mission Office, Spiritual Director, Legion of Mary
2011-2015: Praying for Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin

◆ https://www.jesuit.ie/news/rip-fr-neil-odriscoll-sj/

RIP: Fr Neil O’Driscoll SJ
Fr Neil O’Driscoll died peacefully in St. Vincent’s Hospital on Tuesday 27th January, aged 81. The eldest of five chidren, he was born in Wexford but moved as a child to Kilkenny, the county that commanded his loyalty from then on. He was a fine figure of a man who never lost the military bearing that reflected his three years in the army, moving from cadetship to commission. Was it the example of the soldierly Ignatius Loyola that moved him to the next stage, entering the Jesuit noviciate at Emo? Or the fact that Neil, like his father, was born on St Ignatius’ feast, 31 July? As with Ignatius, what met the eye was impressive, but less important than the depth and gentleness that lit up his face when he smiled. He was a dear and delightful companion.

Of his fifty years of priesthood, he spent half in Zambia, first learning the language, then schoolmastering and parish work in Chikuni and Namwala. When Bishop James Corboy founded Mukasa Minor Seminary in Choma, Neil went there as Prefect and teacher, and had a great influence on the boys there. His ability to encourage vocations and his good-tempered approach to teaching and to discipline made him a valued member of staff. I don’t think it is just coincidence that among his pupils there were two who later became Bishops and many others who were priests in various dioceses.

Neil was 61 when he returned to Ireland for a new ministry of giving retreats and running St Ignatius’ parish in Galway – he was the last Jesuit Parish priest. It was a good time for him. He always spoke of Galway with special affection; he found a warm welcome there and made many close friends. Meeting Neil you sensed a man who was happy in his priestly vocation, right up to his last years in Cherryfield. And he was a man of strong loyalties: to his family, his county of Kilkenny, his Alma Mater St Kieran’s College, and to the Jesuits, his comrades and spiritual home for sixty years of his life. May the Lord reward him.

◆ Interfuse No 159 : Spring 2015

Obituary

Fr Cornelius (Neil) O’Driscoll (1933-2015)

31 July 1933: Born in Wexford.
Early School years in Ballyhale National School, Kilkenny
1945 - 1951: St Kieran's College, Kilkenny
1951 - 1954: Defence Forces - Cadetship and Commission
7th September 1954: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1956: First Vows at Emo
1956 - 1959: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1959 - 1960: Zambia - Studied the language
1960 - 1962: Chikuni College - teaching, prefecting, games, helping in Parish
1962 - 1966: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
29th July 1965: Ordained at Milltown Park
1966 - 1968: Zambia - Chikuni College, teaching
1968 - 1969: Mukasa Minor Seminary – Teaching; Prefecting; Games, Helping in Parish
1969 - 1971: Chikuni College -- Teaching; Prefecting; Games; Helping in Parish
1971 - 1972: Tertianship: Liverpool/St. Bueno's
1971: Transcribed to Zambia Province
1972 - 1976: Chisekesi, Zambia -- Teacher; Prefecting; Games at Canisius College, Chikuni
1976 - 1978: Mukasa – Teaching; Prefecting; Games; Helping in Parish
5th November 1977: Final Vows at Mukasa, Zambia
1978 - 1981: Namwala; Chikuni, Chivuna, Assistant Parish Priest
1981 - 1985: SFX, Gardiner Street – Vocations and Church/Parish Work
1985 - 1988: Chikuni; Namwala -- Teaching; Parish Work; Marriage Encounter
1988 - 1991: Namwala-Superior, Assistant P.P.
1991 - 1992: 3M Course at St. Beuno's, Wales
1992 - 1994: Namwala Mukasa - Teaching: Parish Work; Marriage Encounter
1994 - 1995: Milltown Park – Directing Spiritual Exercises; Pastoral Work
1995 - 2005: Galway - Church/Parish/Retreats
1997 - 2003: Parish Priest; Librarian
16 Feb 1999: Transcribed to Irish Province
2003 - 2005: Prefect of the Church
2005 - 2006: Sabbatical (USA); Rome C.I.S. Course on Spiritual Exercises
2006 - 2010: John Austin House - Assistant Director Jesuit Mission Office; Assisted in Aughrim Street Parish
2008: Superior
2010 - 2015: St. Francis Xavier's Church, Gardiner St. - Assisted in Mission Office; Spiritual Director, Legion of Mary
2010 - 2015: Residing in Cherryfield Lodge, praying for the Church and the Society

Fr. Cornelius (Neil) O'Driscoll was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge in September 2010. He settled in well and his presence was very much part of life in Cherryfield, enjoying social outings and chatting with residents and staff. In latter months his condition deteriorated and he died peacefully in St. Vincent's Hospital on Tuesday 27th January 2015. May he rest in the Peace of Christ.

Neil O'Driscoll died peacefully in St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin on 27th January 2015, aged 81. Like his father, he was born on the feast of St. Ignatius, something that may have had a bearing on his decision to enter the Society. He was baptised as Cornelius, though his Jesuit colleagues will ever remember him as Neil. But there are more significant things they will surely remember about him; his bright reassuring smile; the twinkle in his eye; his personal concern for his fellow-Jesuits and their work; the warmth, kindness and sincerity of his friendship; his gentle manner; the patient resignation with which he bore adverse health conditions; the uncomplaining way in which time and again he readjusted the course of his life in answer to the demands of his deteriorating health; his deep spiritual life, never paraded openly, but obvious in his great devotion to the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament and the Rosary.

The human context for all of this was the characteristic that first met the eye: Neil's impressive, almost military, bearing and the measured way in which he would deal with an issue. The years he spent in the Irish Army Officer Cadet Corps before entering the Jesuit novitiate made a deep impression on him and in God's surprising ways equipped him for some of the roles he would fill in the Society. A very early one, while still a novice, was to take some of his fellow-novices for drill, marching thern round in efforts to improve their carriage and bearing. This was at a time when Ireland was experiencing renascent Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity; so it is no surprise that when light aircraft were seen flying over Emo, the rumour went round that the Irish authorities were checking in case the Jesuit novitiate had become a hot-bed for training IRA recruits! Neither is it any surprise that Neil was affectionately known to so many fellow-Jesuits as “the Captain” - almost instinctively you wanted to salute him when you first met him!

Neil spent 27 years, or almost exactly one-third of his life in Zambia. He would certainly have remained longer if the problems with his health had not made it necessary for him to return permanently to Ireland in 1994. In 1959, he arrived in what was then Northern Rhodesia for his three years of regency, spent most of his first year learning Chitonga and the following two years teaching in Canisius College, the Jesuit secondary school at Chikuni, He returned to Ireland for theology and was ordained on 27th July 1965, along with two other stalwarts of the Zambia-Malawi Province, Frank Wafer and Frank Woda. Following his fourth year of Theology and then Tertianship, Neil returned to Zambia in 1967. There he found both national and church scenes greatly changed compared with the way they had been when he left in 1962: what had been Northern Rhodesia had become Zambia; the Diocese of Monze had been established, with James Corboy as its first bishop; and Mukasa, a Jesuit run minor seminary for Monze Diocese, had been opened in Choma.

Neil was always happy to be sent where there was a need. At the time of his return to Zambia the need was for dynamic teachers and exemplary role-models in the schools for which the Society was responsible. And so it was that he spent the next eleven years of his life teaching either in Canisius or Mukasa. His colleagues remember with great admiration the way he always gave himself totally to the job. Very cheerfully he would take on extra classes or deal creatively with double sized classes of 75 or more (necessitated by a shortage of teachers). And as might have been expected from such a fine figure of a man, he knew how to use his impressive presence to bring control out of what otherwise might have been bedlam.

In some ways these were Neil's best and most fulfilling years. He was totally engrossed in his work, never seemed to have a moment for himself, and clearly enjoyed almost every minute of the diverse demands of his teaching apostolate. Around this time he began to show the attractive personality trait that was to become his hallmark in later life - pausing in a reflective and somewhat ponderous manner when asked a question and then giving a characteristic "hmmm” before answering. But for Neil one great thing about these teaching years was that he was just too busy to be able to pay attention to the dark and nameless anxieties that were lurking under the surface of his personal life and that became such a heavy cross for him in later years.

As was not unusual at that time in schools in Zambia, Neil also had to provide back-up and support for his teaching colleagues and the school administration if there were any disturbances among the students. This was a challenge for him, often involving a situation where he did not feel comfortable or at ease. But invariably he provided courageous support and showed unswerving loyalty. The experience of such situations burned deeply into him, unsettling him in some ways, though in later life he could recall them with sardonic humour. Thus, in mid-March 1974, he was with Jerry O'Connell one Sunday evening in the Canisius Headmaster's office when they heard sounds of shouting and rioting that were getting ominously louder. Quickly, Jerry and Neil switched off the lights and remained low, letting the disorderly students pass by outside. All settled down that night, but ever after when he would meet Jerry, Neil would say in characteristic fashion, “Jerry, beware the ides, beware the ides of March”

The legacy that Neil brought with him into the Society as a cadet officer in the Irish Army stood him in good stead during the years of his assignment to Canisius. Under Tom McGivern, a cadet contingent, attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Zambian Army, had been established at the school in 1964 and flourished over the years. On his return to the school in 1967, Neil enthusiastically became involved with these Cadets - the records show him as “Lieutenant the Rev. N. O'Driscoll” for five years and then for a year as Contingent Commander until he withdrew gracefully from this position so that a Zambian could take charge.

In 1979 Neil moved from school to parish work, becoming assistant parish priest in Chivuna. He served in this position for two years before returning to Dublin to spend three years in Gardiner Street on vocations promotion and parish work. From there he moved back to Zambia, first to a teaching post for three years in Canisius, then to Namwala for five years as superior and assistant parish priest, and then once again back to teaching, this time in Mukasa for a year.

The background to these many adjustments and changes was Neil's uncertain health status. For a considerable period he suffered from the undetected condition of excess iron in the blood, something that necessitated regular replacement of his blood supply. It was this that eventually made it necessary for him to leave Zambia in 1994 and return permanently to Ireland, At the same time he had to withstand the almost unremitting onslaughts of what St. Ignatius called the "evil spirit”. This plagued the second half of his life with a great burden of nameless anxieties, apprehensions and uneasiness. Notwithstanding his fine presence, he disliked being in a position of responsibility as he felt it difficult to make important decisions. But for as long as he was able, he continued with his apostolic work despite the physical and psychological burdens that he was carrying. Unfailingly he also continued to show himself a warm-hearted and delightful companion.

That he never deviated from the steady paths of apostolic engagement and very agreeable companionship shows that spiritually as well as physically Neil was truly a man of God and a man of stature. This made a strong impression on his Jesuit colleagues as well as on the Zambian people. It is gratifying to be able to record that late in 2014, just some months before he died, former parishioners of his recalled with great appreciation the work that he and Frank O'Neill had done when they were running Namwala parish. Even today, more than twenty years after his departure from the country, the people of Zambia remember with affection and appreciation Neil's pastoral presence among them.

Neil was 61 when he returned to Ireland in 1994 to a new ministry of giving retreats and running the parish in Galway, This was a good time for him. He always spoke of Galway with special affection. Meeting him, you sensed a man who was happy in his priestly vocation, right up to his last years in Cherryfield. And he was a man of strong loyalties: to his family, his county of Kilkenny, his Alma Mater St Kieran's College, the people of Zambia, his fellow-Jesuits, and the Society that was spiritual home for sixty years of his life.

In his wonderful book Where To From Here? Brian Grogan envisages a person who has just died moving with Christ in a small boat into the unbelievably wonderful life that lies ahead and being welcomed on the other side at a crowded quay. Undoubtedly it was that way with Neil when, towards the end of January, he got into that boat and left us. And surely among those offering him a thunderous welcome when he arrived at the other side were the Jesuit colleagues with whom he had worked in Zambia and who had pre-deceased him in Cherryfield - John Fitzgerald, Dick Cremins, Paddy Kelly, Charlie O'Connor, John McCauley, Jim Dunne, Denis Flannery and, of course, Frank O'Neill – and the countless Zambian people to whom he was such an inspiration, guide and genuinely good person. Can't you see him characteristically raising his bushy eyebrows, smiling radiantly with his whole being, joy shining through his eyes, completely overwhelmed, unable to find a word, and a small sound coming from his lips -- "hmmm”? Neil, you were a great and wonderful companion and priest. We greatly took forward to the welcome you will have for us when the time comes for us also to get into the boat and cross with the Lord to where you are now.

Michael J Kelly

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries
Note from Joseph B (Joe) Conway Entry
Two days before his death, Joe became semi-comatose and was moved to a nearby hospital run by the Sisters of St. John of God. While in this state, he spoke Tonga and also answered Fr O’Driscoll in Tonga who was with him the day before he died.

◆ https://ordo.jesuitssouthern.africa/obit/01-27-2015%20%E2%80%93%20Cornelius%20ODriscoll.pdf

Fr Cornelius O’Driscoll, S.J. (1933-2015.

In Zambia/Malawi 1959-1994)

27 January 2015

Father Neil O’Driscoll died peacefully in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on 27 January 2015. Neil was born on St Ignatius Day, 1933, in Wexford. His primary and secondary education took place in Kilkenny. Before entering the novitiate in 1954, he spent three years in the Irish Army Cadet Corps earning a commission. Throughout his life Neil carried himself with almost a military bearing and dealt with issues in a measured way. He was affectionately known to so many fellow-Jesuits as “the Captain” – almost instinctively you wanted to salute him when you first met him!

Neil spent almost one-third of his life in Zambia. In 1959, he arrived in, what was then, Northern Rhodesia, for his three years of regency, spent most of his first year learning chiTonga and the following two years teaching in Canisius College at Chikuni. When he returned to Zambia in 1966 after ordination in Ireland, he found both national and church scenes greatly changed compared with the way they had been when he left in 1962: what had been Northern Rhodesia had become Zambia and the Diocese of Monze had been established, with James Corboy as its first bishop.

Neil was always happy to be sent where there was a need. At the time of his return to Zambia, the need was for dynamic teachers and exemplary role-models in the schools for which the Society was responsible. And so it was that he spent the next eleven years of his life teaching either in Canisius or Mukasa. In some ways these were Neil’s best and most fulfilling years. He was totally engrossed in his work, never seemed to have a moment for himself, and clearly enjoyed every minute of it. He was just too busy to pay attention to the dark and nameless anxieties that were lurking under the surface of his personal life and that became such a heavy cross for him in later years.

The legacy that Neil brought with him into the Society as a cadet officer in the Irish Army, stood him in good stead during the years of his assignment to Canisius. Under Tom McGivern, a cadet contingent, attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Zambian Army, had been established at the school in 1964 and flourished over the years. On his return to the school in 1967, Neil enthusiastically became involved with these Cadets – the records show him as ‘Lieutenant the Rev N O’Driscoll’ for five years and then for a year as Contingent Commander, until he withdrew gracefully from this position so that a Zambian could take charge.

It was not unusual at that time in schools in Zambia, to have strikes and disturbances among the students. This was a challenge for Neil, often involving a situation where he did not feel comfortable or at ease. But invariably he provided courageous support and showed unswerving loyalty. However, the experience of such situations unsettled him in some ways, though in later life he could recall them with sardonic humor.

In 1979 Neil moved from school to parish work, becoming assistant parish priest in Chivuna. He served in this position for two years, before returning to Dublin to spend three years in Gardiner Street on vocations promotion and parish work. From there he moved back to Zambia, first to a teaching post for three years in Canisius, then to Namwala for five years as superior and assistant parish priest, and then once again back to teaching, this time in Mukasa for a year.

Because of a chronic health problem, Neil returned to Ireland permanently in 1994 for a new ministry of giving retreats and running the parish in Galway. This was a good time for him. He always spoke of Galway with special affection. Meeting him, you sensed a man who was happy in his priestly vocation, right up to his last years in Cherryfield Lodge, the Province Infirmary.

That he never deviated from the steady paths of apostolic engagement and agreeable companionship shows that spiritually, as well as physically, Neil was truly a man of God and a man of stature. He will also be remembered for: his bright reassuring smile; the twinkle in his eye; his personal concern for his fellow-Jesuits and their work; the warmth of his friendship; his gentle manner; the patient resignation with which he bore adverse health conditions; his deep spiritual life, never paraded openly, but obvious in his great devotion to the Mass, the Blessed
Sacrament and the Rosary.

Brady, Philip, 1846-1917, Jesuit priest

IE IJA J/945 · Person · 08 July 1846-05 January 1917

Born: 08 July 1846, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1868, Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin
Ordained: 1880, St Beuno's, St Asaph, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1889, Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick
Died: 05 January 1917, St Vincent's Hospital, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin

Part of the St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly community at the time of death

Older Brother of Thomas - LEFT 1872

Early education at Castleknock College, St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg, Belvedere College SJ and Clonliffe

1868-1870: Milltown Park, Sandford Road, Dublin, Novitiate
1870-1872: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG) studying Rgetoric
1872-1873: Séminaire de Vals, Vals-près-le-Puy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (TOLO) studying
1873-1874: Brussels College SJ, Brussels, Belgium (BELG) studying
1874-1876: Mount St Mary’s College SJ, Spinkhill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England (ANG) Regency
1876-1878: St Francis Xavier, Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England (ANG) Regency
1878-1881: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG) studying
1881-1884: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Teaching
1884-1885: Clongowes Wood, College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Teaching
1885-1886: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG) Tertianship
1886-1887: Clongowes Wood, College SJ, Naas, County Kildare, Teaching
1887-1894: Mungret College SJ, Mungret, County Limerick, Teaching
1894-1901: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, Teaching
1901-1903: Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Teaching
1903-1904: St Mary’s RC Church, Wellington Road, Rhyl, Wales (ANG) working
1904-1907: St Walburge’s, Weston Street, Preston, Lancashire, England (ANG) working
1907-1908: Lowe House, St Helen’s, Lancashire, England (ANG) working
1908-1915: Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Sea Road, Galway, Missioner
1915-1917: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly Missioner, Spiritual Exercises

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He had a younger brother Thomas who also Entered, but left for the Dublin Diocese and was Ordained, but unfortunately at his parish in Dundrum he was thrown from his horse and killed instantly. He also had a half-brother John Brady CM, a Vincentian based at Phibsborough.

Early Education was at Castleknock College.

After his Noviceship he studied Rhetoric at Roehampton, and Philosophy at Vals, France.
He did his Regency at Mount St Mary’s (ANG)
1879 He was sent to St Beuno’s for Theology and was Ordained there.
After Ordination he was sent to Belvedere and Clongowes teaching for some years. He also taught for many years at Mungret and Galway.
He then joined the Mission Staff, and then went to work in the ANG Parish at Preston.
His last year was spent at Tullabeg. he had a serious deafness problem and an operation was advised. he died at the Leeson Street Hospital 05 January 1917, and buried from Gardiner St. A large number of Vincentians attended his funeral out of respect for his half-brother John Brady CM of Phibsborough.

Bridge, James, 1871-1940, Jesuit priest of the Angliae Province (ANG)

IE IJA J/954 · Person · 03 April 1871-11 January 1940

Born: 03 April 1871, Wigan, Lancashire, England
Entered: 07 September 1888, Manresa, Roehampton, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1906, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1909
Died: 11 January 1940, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1925 came to Tullabeg (HIB) Tertian Instructor 1924-1928

1888-1890: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England (ANG), Novitiate
1890-1891: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Rhetoric
1891-1896: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Philosophy
1896-1897: St George’s College, St Aloysius Residence, St Giles, Oxford, England, studying
1897-1901: St George’s College, Campion Hall, Brewer, Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, studying
1901-1903: Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Regency
1903-1907: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Theology
1907-1908: Manresa, Roehampton, London, England, Tertianship
1908-1911: St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire, England, Teaching Philosophy
1911-1915: St Francis Xavier’s College SJ., Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Prefect of Studies
1915-1919: St Wilfrid’s Church, Chapel Street, Preston, Lancashire, England, Prefect of Studies
1919-1924: St Francis Xavier’s College SJ., Salisbury Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, Rector (August 1919)
1924-1927: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly (HIB), Tertian Instructor
1927-1930: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Tertian Instructor
1930-1931: St Austin’s Church, Wentworth Terrace, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, Parish Priest, Minister
1931-1932: Wimbledon College SJ, Edge Hill, Wimbledon, London, England, Minister and Bursar
1932-1936: Sacred Heart Church, Albert Road, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, working
1936-1939: St Peter’s School, Southbourne, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, Spiritual Father
1939-1940: St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales, Caring for health

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 15th Year No 2 1940
Obituary :
Father James Bridge

Fr James Bridge, Instructor of Tertians at Tullabeg, 1924-1927, and at St. Beuno's, 1927-1930, was found dead on the morning of Thursday, January 11th. He had retired to St Beuno's in October, suffering from heart attacks, and for some time had been unable to say Mass. He was buried at Pantasaph, on Monday, January 15th. R.I.P

Thompson, Richard, priest

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Youens, Thomas, priest

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