Born: 03 November 1737, Ireland
Entered: 07 September 1756, Watten, Belgium - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: c1767
Died: 07 December 1802, Dublin - Angliae Province (ANG)

Alias Hacon; Alias Spencer

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Author of some works.

◆ The English Jesuits 1650-1829 Geoffrey Holt SJ : Catholic Record Society 1984
Son of William and Anne or Sarah Spencer
Educated St Omer 1746-1755
1755-1756 Douai
Entered 07/09/1756 Watten
1761Bruges College
1763/4-1767 Liège, Theology
Ordained c 17671767-1768 Ghent, Tertianship
1768 St Aloysius College (Southworth, Croft, Leigh)
1769-1774 St Chad’s College, Aston
1774-1798 London
1798-1802 Dublin

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
ADAMS, JAMES, began his Noviceship at Watten, 7th September, 1756. In the sequel he taught a course of Humanities with distinguished credit at St Omer. After pursuing the quiet tenor of his way as a Missionary for many years, he retired to Dublin in the early part of August, 1802, and died there on the 7th of December, the same year, aged 65. He was the author of the following works :

1. Early Rules for taking a Likeness. With plates, (from the French of Bonamici), 1 Vol. 8vo. pp. 59, London, 1792.
2. Oratio Acadcmica, Anglice et Latins conscripta. Octavo, pp. 21, London, 1793.
3. Euphonologia Linguae Anglicance, Latine et Gallice Scripta. (Inscribed to the Royal Societies of Berlin and London). 1 Vol. Svo. pp. 190, London, 1794. The author was honored with the thanks of the Royal Society, London.
4. Rule Britannia, or the Flattery of Free Subjects paraphrased and expounded. To which is added, An Academical Discourse in English and Latin, 8vo. pp. 60, London, 1798.
5. A Sermon preached at the Catholic Chapel of St. Patrick, Sutton Street, Soho Square, on Wednesday, the 7th of March, the Day of Public Fast. 8vo. pp. 34, London, 1798.
6. The Pronunciation of the English Language Vindicated. 1 vol. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1799.

Q. Was F. Adams the author of the following works mentioned in the catalogue of the British Museum :

1. The Elements of Reading, 12mo. London, 1791.
2. The Elements of Useful Knowledge. 12mo. London, 1793.
3. A View of Universal History. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1795.
   From a letter of his friend John Moir, dated Edinburgh, 11th Nov. 1801, as well as its answer, it is obvious that the Father had it in contemplation to publish his Tour through the Hebrides. He had been much disgusted with the Tour of that “ungrateful deprecating cynic, Dr. Johnson”.

Born: 10 January 1927, Campsie, Omagh, County Tyrone
Entered: 14 September 1944, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1958, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 02 February 1962, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Died: 27 November 2018, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Milltown Park, Dublin community at the time of death.

by 1951 at Berchmanskolleg, Pullach, Germany (GER S) studying
by 1960 at Nth American Martyrs, Auriesville NY (NEB) making Tertianship
by 1964 at Selly Oak, Birmingham (ANG) studying

Born: 07 August 1853, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Cheshire, England
Entered: 31 October 1877, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 22 September 1889, St Beuno's, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1897, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 14 March 1941, St Beuno's, Wales

Part of the Heythrop, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England community at the time of death

by 1888 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) studying
by 1895 at Roehampton London (ANG) making Tertianship
by 1923 at Campion House, Osterley, London (ANG) teaching
by 1927 at Mount St London (ANG) writing
by 1938 at Roehampton, London (ANG) writing
by 1941 at Heythrop, Oxfordshire, England (ANG) writing

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Browne, Henry Martyn
by Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood

Browne, Henry Martyn (1853–1941), classicist and Jesuit priest, was born 7 August 1853 in Claughton, Woodchurch, Cheshire, England, the second of four sons and one daughter of John Wilson Browne, hardware merchant, born in Portugal (1824), and Jane Susan Browne (née McKnight), one of eight children of Robert McKnight, farmer, and Jane McKnight (née McLean) from Kelton, Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire. Henry grew up in Birmingham, where his father set up in business. He lost his mother (d. 14 May 1859) when he was almost six; in 1862 his father married Agnes Bowstead and had another two children.

Brown was educated at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and in 1872 entered New College, Oxford, as a commoner. He took moderations in 1873, obtaining second-class honours in Greek and Latin literature, but left the university the following year, without taking his second public examination – he was granted a BA in 1891 (MA 1895) upon embarking on his academic career – having converted to the catholic faith and joined the Society of Jesus. He later gave an account of his conversion in The city of peace (1903). In 1877 he joined the Irish province and entered the novitiate at Milltown Park. He took his vows in 1879, remained for a year at Milltown Park as a junior, and taught at Tullabeg, Tullamore, Co. Offaly (1880–84). He was ordained in 1889 at St Beuno's, north Wales. Five years earlier he had begun a degree in theology at Milltown Park, which he completed in 1890. He was then appointed to teach classics at UCD, then run by the Jesuits, filling the post formerly held by Gerard Manley Hopkins (qv). During this period he published the Handbook of Greek composition (1885; 8th ed. 1921) and Handbook of Latin composition (1901; 2nd ed. 1907). At the founding of the NUI in 1908 he was appointed professor of Greek at UCD, a position he held until his retirement in 1922.

What characterised Browne's approach to classical scholarship was his interest in the ‘reality’ of the ancient world, which he tried to convey to students through visual and tactile materials (maps, lantern slides, photographs, artefacts, and replicas). He became an enthusiastic advocate of archaeology, and particularly of prehistoric archaeology. He gave public lectures on Minoan and Mycenaean archaeology and – a first for Ireland – he introduced these subjects into the university's syllabus. In his popular Handbook of Homeric study (1905; 2nd ed., 1908) he debated extensively the implications for Homeric studies of the recent archaeological discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean. His greatest legacy to UCD was the Museum of Ancient History (afterwards renamed the Classical Museum), inaugurated at Earlsfort Terrace in 1910. Browne built up his teaching collection of more than 5,000 Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities, replicas, and coins through his personal contacts with archaeologists and museums in England, through purchases on the antiquities market – an important purchase being that of Greek vases at the Christie's sale of the Thomas Hope collection in 1917 – and through loans from the National Museum of Ireland. He became a member of the committee of the British Association for Museums, and chairman of the archaeological aids committee of the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching. In this capacity he visited the USA in 1916 to inquire into the educational role of American museums, and included his observations in Our renaissance: essays on the reform and revival of classical studies (1917). His practical approach to the classics led him to experiment with Greek choral rhythms; he gave demonstrations at American universities, and regularly chanted Greek choral odes to his students. He had many extra-curricular interests. For several years he was in charge of the University Sodality. He played a major role in the foundation of the Classical Association of Ireland (he was its chairman in 1913) and served on the Council of Hellenic Studies. He was involved with the St Joseph's Young Priests Society and supported the work of the Mungret Apostolic School.

After his retirement from UCD Browne left Ireland, where he had resided at the Jesuit residence, 35 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, and was transferred to London, first to Osterley, then Farm Street in Mayfair, and in 1939 to Manresa House, Roehampton. During this period of his life he channelled his energy to the study of the English martyrs, and to catechism and conversion. He wrote The catholic evidence movement (1924) and Darkness or light? An essay in the theory of divine contemplation (1925), and tried to improve the fate of the under-privileged youth of Hoxton by organising and running a boys’ club there. He returned to Dublin a few times, and he wrote with Father Lambert McKenna (qv) a history of UCD, A page of Irish history (1930). His last publication was A tragedy of Queen Elizabeth (1937).

Browne died 14 March 1941 at Heythrop College, near Oxford, where he was evacuated because of the air raids on London. His brothers, all heirless, continued the merchant tradition of the family. His sister, Lucy Jane, died in a Birmingham asylum in 1917. His half-brother Arthur Edward Wilson died in South Africa in 1941 where he lived with his wife and five children. Browne's correspondence relating to the UCD museum is in the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Winchester College, and the NMI. Some papers are in the archives of the British Province, Mount Street, London. The whereabouts of a known portrait are uncertain; it was reproduced in his obituary in the magazine of the British Province with the caption ‘from a Dublin portrait’.

Browne family wills, inc. John Wilson Browne (1886) and Charles Knightly Browne (1926); census returns, United Kingdom, 1851 (Woodchurch, Birkkenhead), 1881 and 1891 (Solihull, Birmingham); ‘Browne, Henry Martyn’, New College, Oxford, Register for 1872; Oxford University Calendar, 1873, 1892, 1893; ‘The Cretan discoveries’, Freeman's Journal, 11 Feb., 17 Feb. 1905; National Museum of Ireland: letter books, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1921; University College Dublin: Calendar for . . . 1911–1912, 457–8; H. Browne, Museum of Ancient History: report, 1913 (1913); H. Browne, Museum of Ancient History: Report, 1914 (1915); H. Browne, Introduction to numismatics (1915); University College Dublin: Report of the President, 1922–1923, 3–4; Fathers of the Society of Jesus, A page of Irish history: story of University College Dublin, 1883–1909 (1930); ‘Obituary’, University College Dublin: Report of the President, 1940–1941, 16–17; ‘Obituary’, Irish Province News, iv (1941), 566–9; WWW; M. Tierney, Struggle with fortune: a miscellany for the centenary of the Catholic University of Ireland, 1854–1954 (1954), 37–8, 90; W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the classical tradition (1976), 65–6, 68–9, 168–9, 240; C. Haywood, The making of the classical museum: antiquarians, collectors and archaeologists. An exhibition of the Classical museum, 2003 [exhibition catalogue]

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 3rd Year No 1 1927
Jubilee : Fr Henry Browne
Fr Henry Browne was fêted at Leeson Street on November 1st. He had his share of College work in Tullabeg. But as far back as 1891 he was sent to University College, Dublin, where he played a full man's part in making that Jesuit establishment the first College in Ireland of the old “Royal”. Even “Queen’s” Belfast notwithstanding its enormous advantages, had eventually to acknowledge the superiority of the Dublin College, and the men who worked it.
Fr. Browne's Oxford training was a valuable asset in bringing University College so well to the front. He remained Professor in the Royal, and then in the National University to the year 1922, and is now engaged, amongst other things, in doing a work dear to the heart of men like Francis Regis, looking after the poor, especially children, in the worst slums of London.

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 expected 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.

Irish Province News 16th Year No 4 1941

Obituary :
Father Henry Browne
Father Henry Browne died at Heythrop College on March 14 1941. He had been in failing health for the past two or three years, and had recently been evacuated from Roehampton to Heythrop owing to the air-raids over London. To quote the words of an English Father who knew him well in these last years “here he occupied himself mostly in prayer, and on March 14th brought to a serene close eighty-eight years of arduous, enthusiastic, joyful, supernatural work for the Master”.

Father Henry Browne was born at Birkenhead on August 7, 1853 but his father, Mr. J. Wilson Browne, was a Birmingham man, his mother was Joan McKnight. Who's Who contains a notice of his grandfather, Captain J. Murray Browne, who “fought at Albuera and throughout the Peninsular War, and joined the Portuguese army where he became Assistant Quartennaster-General under Marshal Beresford.” Father Browne was educated at King Edward's High School, Birmingham, and went to New College, Oxford. He was received into the Church in 1874, when his undergraduate course was not yet completed, and was advised by Cardinal Manning to interrupt his studies. Je joined the Irish Province in 1877, and entered the novitiate at Milltown Park on October 31st. After his first vows he spent a year as a Junior at Milltown Park. In 1880 he went to Tullabeg, where he spent four years as master under two Rectors, Fr Sturzo and Fr. George Kelly. The Intermediate System was then in its early stages, and Mr. Browne taught Rhetoric and Mathematics (1880-81),
Humanities (1881-2) , 1 Grammar (1882-3), Syntax, Classics and English (1883-4).
From 1884-6 Father Browne studied Philosophy at Milltown Park, where he had Fathers Peter Finlay and William Hayden as his Professors. In 1886 he went to St. Beuno's, where he was ordained in the summer of 1889. He returned to Milltown for his fourth year of theology. and was then sent to University College to teach Latin and Greek, replacing Father Richard Clarke of the English Province.
From 1890 to 1909 (with the exception of one year, 1894-95, which he spent as a Tertian Father at Roehampton), Father Browne was kept busy in Dublin as Professor of Classics and Fellow of the Royal University of Ireland. His energy was simply amazing. Two early Handbooks of Latin and Greek Composition went through various editions, though they have since lost their vogue. His Handbook of Homeric Study was for many years counted the best popular introduction in English to the famous controversy, on which Father Browne
was never weary of lecturing his own students at U.C.D. He took a leading part in the foundation of the Classical Association of Ireland and was elected President of this body in 1913. He was also a member of the Council of the Society for Hellenic Studies, Chairman (for a time) of the Archaeologica Aids Committee of the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching, and member of the Committee of the British Association for Museums. In this connection he visited the U.S.A. in 1916 as a member of a special Committee to report on the American museum system, and his volume of essays (Our Renaissance : Essays on the Reform and Revival of Classical Studies), published in 1917 reflects his interests in these strenuous years. Father Browne's old students will not need to be reminded of his immense zest for all forms of archaeological research. He counted several of the leading English
archaeologists as among his personal friends. There had been an earlier stage when Greek music had attracted his attention - though it must be confessed that Father Browne's aptitude for musical theory was disputed by some of his colleagues. But who could resist so great a vital force? Father Browne would strum a piano for hours on end, convincing himself (and some others) that Greek music was most closely connected (through Gregorian music) with ancient Irish music as represented in Moore's Melodies. Who's Who contains the following condensed statement of this phase of Father Browne's activities “He has experimented in the melodic rendering of Greek choral rhythms giving demonstrations before the British Association at the Dublin meeting (1908) and at Columbia and Chicago Universities.
It seems a far cry from these external activities to the inner motive which explains the dual character of Father Henry Browne's life. But those who lived with him knew that he had other interests. For many years he was' exceptionally successful as Director of the Students Sodality in the old University College, giving monthly talks to large numbers. As early as 1896 he had been drawn into the work of Saint Joseph's Young Priests' Society by his lifelong friend and fellow-convert, Father Joseph Darlington. Father Darlington had to leave Ireland for a year to make his tertianship, and he succeeded (with some difficulty) in persuading Father Browne to take his place for one year. Those first hesitations were soon forgotten, and Father Browne continued to edit Saint Joseph’s Sheaf, and to be the life and soul of the Society for the next twenty-five years. He was particularly keen on the work of the Mungret Apostolic School, and deserves to be reckoned as one of the chief benefactors of that important work for the missionary priesthood. He was also a pioneer propagandist for the Chinese Mission here in Ireland. In 1915 he helped to re-organise Saint Joseph's Young Priests' Society as a national work, approved and commended by the Irish Hierarchy.
The last twenty years of Father Browne's life were spent outside of Ireland. Although he came back to Dublin more than once, and was always eager to keep in touch with the Leeson Street community.
A brief record of his activities during these years will help to complete the picture of this strenuous worker for Christ’s Kingdom. For the first two years Father Browne was stationed at Osterley, where he helped Father Lester up his work for late vocations (Our Lady's Young Priests), and taught Latin to some of the students. In a recent issue of Stella Maris Father Clement Tigar, who has succeeded Father Lester at Osterley, pays warm tribute to Father Browne's work for this good cause. He also wrote a pamphlet on the K.B.S. movement, and a very pleasant book on the recent work of the Catholic Evidence Guild (1924). This latter work made a special appeal to Father Browne - zeal for the conversion of Protestant England - and he soon threw himself heart and soul into the work of open-air lecturing and catechising. His older friends in Dublin, who knew him for the most part as the very type of an academic Professor of Greek were first startled, then amused to hear that Father Browne was exceptionally successful in this new role. He had a knack of answering casual hecklers in their own style - his answer was often so completely unexpected (and occasionally so irrelevant) that the heckler was left speechless with surprise, and unable to cause any further trouble. From Osterley, Father Browne was soon transferred to Farm Street, where he added a new field to his labours. This was a Newsboys' Club which he himself organised and directed at Horton one of the most difficult of London's slum areas. It was open to boys of every religious denomination. The mere labour of going down to Horton from Farm Street on several nights a week would have been sufficient to flaunt a younger and more vigorous man. But Father Browne now well on in his seventies, was indomitable.
In 1927 Father Browne came back for a visit to Dublin, to celebrate his Golden Jubilee with the Fathers of the Lesson Street community. In 1930 and 1931 he was here again, and was busily engaged on compiling a short history of the old University College, with the collaboration of Father Lambert McKenna. The book appeared in 1930 under the title “A Page of Irish History”. In the next year Father Browne took part in the Congress of the Irish Province which was held in University Hall, Hatch Street. for the purpose of studying the Exercises. He chose for his share in the discussion the subject of Ignatian Prayer - always a favourite topic with him in private conversation - and his comments will be found in “Our Colloquium”, pp. 129-131. He had already published a book on the theory of mystical contemplation under the title “Darkness or Light? : An Essay in the Theory of Divine Contemplation” (Herder, 1925). Many years earlier (1903) he had edited a volume entitled “The City of Peace”, in which he gathered together various autobiographical accounts of recent conversions to the Catholic Church. His own account of his conversion to the true Faith at Oxford is well worth reading for the light it throws on his own strong direct and outspoken character.
Hoxton Club and these many other activities filled Father Browne's life until 1984, when he was in his eighty-second year. He had already made plans for the transference of the Club to other hands, and it was finally passed over to the management of a joint committee of past students of Stonyhurst and the Sacred Heart Convent Roehampton. He himself felt that the end was near, but his energy was not yet spent. For the next few years he threw himself with all his old fire and enthusiasm into one last campaign for the conversion of England
through the intercession of Teresa. Higginson, in whom he had implicit faith. An adverse decision came from Rome some three years ago and Father Browne found this set-bask one of the severest trials in his long life. But he never hesitated in his obedience and submission to authority, and his faith in the ultimate conversion of his fellow countrymen never wavered for an instant. The present writer visited him frequently in the last years of his life, and it was impossible to resist the impression of a life that was more and more absorbed in the work of prayer for his fellow-Christians. Old memories of Dublin days would come back to him, but the conversion of England was his main preoccupation. He had asked to be moved from Farm Street to Roehampton, so that he might prepare himself for death in the company of the novices. But it was not to be. The air-raids on Roehampton made evacuation a duty, and Father Browne was transferred some months before his death to Heythrop near Oxford. Old memories of Oxford days. and of his own conversion, must have come back to him with double force. Those who knew him say that his last months were spent mainly in prayer. He was in his eighty-eighth year, but still unwearied in his zeal, when the end came at last, and he has been laid to rest at Heythrop College, which is now one of the most active centres of that campaign for the conversion of England which lay nearer to his heart than any other human cause. May he rest in peace. (A.G.)

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Henry Browne SJ 1853-1941
Fr Henry Browne was born of Anglican parents at Birkenhead, England, on August 7th 1853. He was educated at King Edward’s High School, Birmingham and New College Oxford, and entered the Catholic Church in 1874. Three years later he joined the Irish Province of the Society at Milltown Park. He pursued his higher studies at Milltown Park and at St Beuno’s, North Wales, and was ordained priest in 1889.

In the following year he began his long association with University College Dublin as Professor of Ancient Classics and Fellow of the Royal University of Ireland. During these fruitful years, 1890-1922, Fr Browne’s talent as lecturer, writer, organiser found its full scope. In addition to a very useful volume dealing with Greek and Latin composition, he was the author of “A Handbook of Homeric Studies”, which held its own as the best secular introduction to a famous controversy. He took a leading part in the foundation of the Classical Association of Ireland, and was a member of the Council of the Society for Hellenic Studies and of the Committee of the Irish Association of Museums.

Another side of Fr Browne’s activities in Dublin during these years was the zeal he displayed in promoting vocations to the missionary priesthood. As early as 1896 he had been drawn into the work of St Joseph’s Young Priests Society, which he served for a quarter of a century.

The last twenty years of Fr Browne's life were spent outside Ireland, and marked what we might call its Second Spring. He helped Fr Lester in his work for late vocations at Osterley, London, and in open-air lecturing and catechising. In these years date his very pleasant book on the work of the Catholic Evidence Guild. On his transfer to Farm Street, he added a new field to his labours, a newsboys club in Hoxton in the East End of London.

He remained in touch with the Irish province during this period of his life, and wrote an account of the old University College in “A Page of Irish History”. The story about his own conversion to the faith is told in “The City of Peace” (1903), and also in a chapter of a book “Roads to Rome” by Rev John O’Brien. Deserving also of special mention is Fr Browne’s work on the theory of mystical contemplation entitled “Darkness or Light” (1925).

Fr Browne closed his strenuous apostolic life on March 14th 1941 at St Beuno’s, North Wales, where he had been evacuated during the air-raids of World War II, interested to the end in the work for the conversion of Protestant England.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1941

Obituary

Father Henry Browne SJ

The death of Father Browne on the 14th March, 1941– St. Joseph's month - at the Jesuit House of Studies, Heythrop, Oxford, brought to a close a long and fruitful life.

Born in Birkenhead in 1853 and educated at New College, Oxford, he was received into the Church in 1874. Three years later he entered the Novitiate of the Irish Province and from that date till his retirement in 1922 he was engaged in educational work in Ireland. As a scholastic he taught in Belvedere and Tullabeg. He was ordained in 1890 at St Beuno's, Wales, and when his studies were completed we find him back once more in Ireland.

There is no need to chronicle here the scholastic attainments of Father Browne or his part in the great work for university education in Ireland. These are matters of history. But it is well to recall his close association with the early days of the Apostolic School. Brought into contact with Mrs Taaffe and her great work, Father Browne, at first very doubtful about the success of the venture, became one of the pillars of St Joseph's Young Priests Society. Realising the need of missionary priests and the possibilities of the work, he threw himself into the enterprise with all his characteristic thoroughness. His lantern lectures were utilised to make the work known and by these he was instrumental in having the Moloney Burse completed and handed over to the Apostolic School.

Shortly after his retirement in 1922 from the University, he returned to England and worked mainly in London.

The later years of his life were spent in the peace and quiet of Manreso and Heythrop College.

Born: 10 June 1909, Cork City, County Cork
Entered: 01 September 1926, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1941, Milltown Park
Final Vows: 02 February 1944, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 19 August 1983, Kilcroney, County Wickow

Part of St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street community at time of death.

Early Education at Presentation Brothers College, Cork City

1933-1934 Caring for Health
by 1967 at West Heath Birmingham (ANG) working
by 1970 at Southwark Diocese (ANG) working
by 1971 at St Ignatius, Tottenham London (ANG) working
by 1972 at Deptford London (ANG) working

Tertianship at Rathfarnham

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 58th Year No 4 1983

Gardiner Street
The summer months saw the passing of two members of our community. Fr Johnny McAvoy († 26th July), who had given us an outstanding example of cheerful endurance during his long struggle with ill health, was the first to go. As noted in our last report, he had had to return to Cherryfield Lodge some months ago, to receive special care. At the very end, however, he moved to Our Lady's Hospice, where he died after a brain haemorrhage which mercifully saved him from prolonged suffering.
Fr Paddy Coffey, who died almost a month later († 19th August), was also attached to our community, though he had been living at St Joseph's, Kilcroney, or many years. It is no exaggeration to say that he was a legend in the Province for his amazing will-power and persistence. It would have been fascinating to listen in to his last battle of with the Lord! His ever-widening circle of friends will miss his gentle but determined winning ways.
May he and Johnny rest in the the serenity of eternal peace.

Obituary

Fr Patrick Coffey (1909-1926-1983)

Paddy Coffey arrived in Tullabeg on 1st September 1926: a sporty little Corkonian ready for anything, a bony little flier at football who would go through you with delight, kicking the shins off you in his passage. He seemed to lose a lot of this zest in the he had a period of pious “broken head” - a term which older Jesuits may have to explain to younger, less pious ones.
As far as I recall he was well while in Rathfarnham, where he got an Honours BA, but after that he was seldom free from illness and disability. In philosophy at Tullabeg he had a long and serious illness, during which he was reduced almost to the state of a vegetable. It is said that the authorities thought he should leave the Society, but Paddy dug his heels in. That dogged and even obstinate determination became a well-known characteristic of his. He began philosophy in 1931, but his was so interrupted that it did not end until 1936.
After Tullabeg he spent two years in Mungret, where he was prefect of Third Club and teacher. After theology in Milltown, where he was ordained in 1941, in 1943 he returned
to Mungret, where by far the greater part of his life was to be spent: indeed, he became identified with Mungret. For two years he was prefect of First Club. The boys used to mimic a saying from a pep-talk of his: Rugby is a game of blood and mud! When there was a difference of opinion about policy or a fixture, he would fight quite fiercely to the last and when he yielded, it was from his religious spirit.
Besides teaching, he also edited the Mungret Annual. This was his greatest work in and for Mungret. He had a great feeling for the boys - I never heard him running them down - and an exceptional involvement with the Past: probably the reason he was made editor of the Annual. Indeed, he founded and produced the Mungret Eagle for the Past. This was a brochure of about 8 to 12 pages,containing photographs and all the bits of news that could be gathered about their whereabouts and activities, with a section about the Present. It was sent out free several times a year, and was eagerly read.
I don't think any function of the Mungret Union took place without him. Later on, in Gardiner street, he asked Fr Kieran Hanley if he might go to the Mungret Union dinner. When that benign and not easily outwitted superior, said, “Certainly,Paddy, in fact you ought to go”'. Paddy added, with his little grin, “It's in London, you know”.
Paddy's life-story is less than half told without mention of his serious accident. He was on a supply in the Dartford area of Kent in August 1953: the date was the 16th. His motor-bike stalled as he was crossing the highway, and a speeding car crashed into him. He was unconscious for at least a week and a leg had to be amputated. The hospital staff said that in his situation any ordinary person would have died, and they were astonished at his exceptional determination, which gradually carried him through. He never learned to use the artificial leg as it could be used, but when he returned to Mungret, he had obviously resolved to carry on as if nothing had happened. He got a bicycle made with one loose pedal crank, and on it he propelled himself shakily with one leg into town almost every day. He also insisted on keeping his room at the very top of the house, until the community could no longer bear the nerve-racking sound of him stumping up the stairs at midnight or later. It was during these years that his notable work with the Union and the Annual was done. He also taught (at least until 1964), but was quite likely to fall asleep in class.
He was well-known to be quite shameless and even peremptory in 'exploiting' his friends of the Past with regard to motor transport by day or by night. When he had left Mungret (which he did in 1966), I happened to be with a group who were jokingly recalling the occasions when they were commandeered, and it made me wonder when they ended up saying unanimously “All the same, he was a saint”. I have always suspected that he gave a good deal of his presence to less well-off people in Limerick, but Paddy played his cards so close to his chest that one never
knew the half of his activities,
Mention of cards reminds me that he loved card games, “hooleys”, sing songs, hotels, and visiting his friends. Yet I always felt that though he was ready for any escapade that didn't involve excommunication, with himself he was a very strict religious, unswervingly faithful to the way he was brought up.
I don't think anyone expected that he would ever leave Mungret as well again, but in 1966 he launched out, “wooden leg” and all, to Birmingham, where he did parish work for three years, then for six more years did the same in Deptford (Southwark diocese). In 1975 he joined the Gardiner street community, but lived in some kind of accommodation in North Summer street and worked in Seán McDermott street parish.
He was about a year in Dublin when he suffered a stroke which left: one arm useless and affected his leg. With his unconquerable determination he soldiered on in St Joseph's, Kilcroney, for seven long and trying years, keeping in touch with his friends by continual letters, getting taken out at every opportunity, even when he was reduced to using a wheelchair. He was always glad to see members of the Society. The last, almost inaudible, words I heard from him, a few hours before he died (19th August 1983), were “Coffee, piles of it, but don't tell the nurse!”
May he rest in peace at last, and may his long sufferings and indomitable spirit merit for him 'above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.

Born: 24 February 1913, Ballinrobe, County Mayo
Entered: 07 September 1931, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1945, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1948, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 23 August 1990, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny

Part of the Milltown Park community, Dublin at the time of death.

by 1967 at Holy Family Birmingham (ANG) working
by 1969 at Aston, Birmingham (ANG) working
by 1970 at Monterey CA, USA (CAL) working
by 1971 at Carmel CA, USA (CAL) working

Born: 12 February 1905, Handsworth, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Entered: 31 August 1923, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 28 August 1935, Florennes, Belgium
Professed: 02 February 1938
Died: 16 June 1971, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India - Madurensis Province (MDU)

HIB to TOLO 1924 to MDU

by 1924 at Senbahanoor, India

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Went to Madura Mission, Toulouse Province, February 1924

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1932 : Golden Jubilee

A Day in an Indian Missionary College : St Francis Xavier, Palameottah, S India

Bernard Coyle SJ

It is 4.59am. Imagine yourself in a large hall, 150 feet by 35. There are three hundred boys in the land of dreams, not on your fine spring beds, but on the floor, each lying on a small mat made of coco-nut or palm leaves, their faces completely hidden by a white sheet to protect them from the innumerable bugs and the ubiquitous mosquito, A “concord of sweet sounds” fills the otherwise silent hall. The prefect, dressed in a white cassock and red sash, stands in the centre of the hall, watch in hand, waiting the stroke of 5 am.

A few vigorous claps of the hands, followed by a stentorian “Benedicamus Domino”, arouses the sleepers, and three hundred sleepy voices answer discordantly “Deo Gratias”. In less than five minutes every boy has rolled up his mat and placed it in the specially provided stands, and goes for his morning wash. This for an Indian boy is more a washing of teeth than anything else. Charcoal, cigar ashes or powdered red brick is his tooth paste; his fingers, his brush.

At 5.20, following the signal of the prefect, the boys again assernible in the dormitory, which now, by the opening of large wooden doors, becomes the chapel. Prayers are recited and canticles in Tamil sung during the Mass, It is a fine sight to see, morning after morning, the greater part of these boys receiving, in Holy Communion, their Divine Master.

After Mass the boys march in silence to their respective study halls. Study goes on till 7.30 am, during which time each division takes its morning bath, quite a simple affair on week-days, but on Sunday rather tedious, During the week the boys assemble around large concrete troughs, clad only in loin cloths; the prefect blows his whistle, and every boy begins to pour can after can of water over himself, occasionally giving himself a rub down with soap. At the second whistle all leave the tubs and dress, falling into line as they finish. When all have finished, they return to the study hall, and the other divisions take their bath after the same fashion.

On Sundays the boys indulge in an oil bath. After undressing, as on week-days, each boy receives a measure of oil, whereupon he begins to rub himself as if with soap. When all are nice and oily, the whistle goes and the water process begins. Strict silence is enforced during bath time, and breaches of silence are severely punished. But let us get back to the week days.

Breakfast at 7.30 am in the same hall which has served as Dormitory and Chapel. The boys arrange themselves according to caste, as a boy of one caste will not eat sitting next a boy of another caste. During meals they sit on the floor and eat with their fingers, never with knives and forks. Two boys of each caste are appointed to serve out the rice and curry to the other boys of their own caste.

After breakfast all assemble in the grounds in front of the Statue of St Francis Xavier, to recite a “Hail Mary”, after which the prefect gives a signal, and the recreation begins. Up to this time strict silence has been observed, even during meals. At breakfast an English book is read, at supper a Tamil book. During dinner the boys may talk, as they have only one hour free between morning and evening classes.

The separation of divisions is strictly enforced, except on the greater feasts, though, with the prefect's permission, a boy may talk with a boy of another division. Study commences again at 8.30 am, and goes on until 9.45, when fifteen minutes recreation in the study hall is given before class. This is the only time that talk is allowed in the study hall. At 10 am, Catechis class till 10.30, followed by classes on different subjects until 1 pm. Catholics and Pagans attend class together. At 1 pm Angelus and dinner, followed by a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Then recreation till 2 pm. Classes again until 4, followed by Spiritual Reading for fifteen minutes.

Then comes the recreation to which all look forward, even the prefect - Hockey, Football, Badminton, and Volley Ball are the chief games. At 6.15 comes study till 8. The prefect has to keep on the alert to answer permissions. “Thumbs up” is to ask permission for a drink, a permission never refused in India, save during the quarter of an hour following a football or hockey match. The drinking water is kept in large earthen ware pots in the Study Hall. “Little finger up” is permission for confession, granted during evening study only. Two hands raised is permission to get a book from another boy.

At 8 pm comes supper, followed by night prayers in the chapel, after which the Third Division retire to bed; the Second and First Divisions return to study. At 9.30 the Second Division retires, and at 9.40 the First.

At 9.45 lights are extinguished, and the prefect feels a sense of relief to see all the boys quietly lying down once more after a day's hard work.

Born: 21 February 1931, Preston, Lancashire, England
Entered: 07 September 1949, Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 23 August 1964
Final vows: 02 February 1967
Died: 19 January 2015, Preston, Lancashire, England

by 1993 came to Belfast (HIB) Tertian Instructor 1993-1998

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/rip-ron-darwen-sj/

Remembering Ron Darwen SJ
On Thursday, January 29th, Jim Culliton SJ and Brendan Comerford SJ, attended the funeral Mass of the late Ron Darwen SJ in Preston, Lancashire, England. Both Jim and Brendan had been former tertians (Jesuits in final year of formation) of Ron’s, as had many other Irish Jesuits, including Irish Jesuit Provincial, Tom Layden SJ, in the last decade.
During his Jesuit life, Ron held many diverse posts within the Society of Jesus – school teacher, parish priest, local superior, worker in ecumenism, missionary in South Africa, novice director, Socius to the British Provincial, and tertian director (not necessarily in that order!).
Ron became tertian director along with the late Fr. Paddy Doyle SJ in the late 1990s. Together, they devised a tertianship based in Northern Ireland where the tertians lived in small inserted communities in Belfast, Coleraine and Derry. The three groups met for conferences three days a week in the pastoral centre in Maghera. After Paddy Doyle became ill, the late Senan Timoney, SJ became co-tertian director with Ron.
According to Brendan Comerford SJ, “They complemented each other beautifully”. He added, “Ron was a fine Jesuit. His common sense, obvious love for the Society, broad experience of Jesuit life over the years, and his sense of humour, made Ron an ideal tertian director. We, his former tertians, owe him a great deal. May the Lord reward him for his generous service to the Society and to so many other people unknown to us!”

Born: 17 August 1889
Entered: 27 June 1914, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Died: 09 March 1976, The Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, Hagley Road, Birmingham, England

Left Society of Jesus: 03 April 1917

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

by 1884 came to UCD (HIB)

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at Cholmeley Grammar in Highgate. He later studied Classics under the famous Dr Jowett at Balliol, Oxford. He had a keen interest in drawing, ever since his aunt introduced him to Layard, and he never ceased drawing and painting, as well 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 Balliol 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 and 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, buried in Glasnevin.

Though constantly engaged by both 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, for 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 of 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 the 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)

“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

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.

Born: 11 January 1856, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 06 October 1891, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1898, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 25 March 1909, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 19 July 1945, Mungret College, County Limerick

Youngest brother of Robert I - RIP 1929 and T Patrick - RIP 1918
Cousin of Joseph McDonnell - RIP 1928

by 1894 at Enghien Belgium (CAMP) studying
by 1895 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1908 at Drongen Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship
by 1919 at LLandrindod, Wales (ANG) working

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Youngest brother of Robert I - RIP 1929 and T Patrick - RIP 1918
Note from Robert I Kane Entry :
“Father Robert Kane SJ, well known as ‘the Blind Orator’ died at Milltown Park.... The son of William J Kane of Dublin and his wife Mary MacDonnell of Saggart ... he was a nephew of Sir Robert Kane, distinguished Irish scientist, author of “The Industrial Resources of Ireland”, and first cousin to the famous Admiral Henry Kane.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 20th Year No 4 1945

Obituary :

Fr. William Kane (1856-1891-1945)

On July 19th, 1945, at Mungret College, Limerick, Fr. William Kane peacefully died in the 90th year of his age and the 54th year of his religious life.
Fr. William Kane was born in Dublin on January 11th, 1850. He was a nephew of the celebrated scientist Sir Robert Kane, F.R.S., and first cousin of Rear-Admiral Sir Henry Kane, world-famous as commander of H.M.S. "Calliope," which by his skill he saved from destruction in a tornado that swept over Apia Harbour, Samoa, on March 17th, 1889. Having completed his secondary education at Stonyhurst College and at the Oratory School, Birmingham, then under the direction of Newman, he studied law at Trinity College, Dublin, taking out his degrees of B.A, and LL.D. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1879. In 1888 he accompanied Sir James Marshall to the Niger Territories as a Junior Judge, and subsequently succeeded Sir James as Chief Justice. He resigned this post in 1889; and on his return to Europe, was called to the English Bar. Two years later he joined the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, of which two of his brothers, Frs. Robert and Patrick Kane were already members. He studied Philosophy at Jersey and Theology at Milltown Park, Dublin. He was ordained priest in 1898, and made his solemn profession in 1909.
Having spent two years at Milltown Park as Professor of the Short Course of Theology, Fr. Kane joined the staff of Mungret College in 1901. With the exception of his year of tertianship at Tronchiennes, another year as Professor of Philosophy at Milltown Park, and a short period of parochial duty at Llandrindod Wells after the death of his brother Fr. Patrick, Fr. Kane was a member of the Mungret community until his death last July. He taught in the secondary school and in the classes preparing for the Arts and B.A. degree examinations of the Royal University. He was Editor of the Mungret Annual for several years. But the greater part of his life in Mungret was devoted to the intellectual and professional training of the Apostolic students as Professor of Philosophy. Advancing age obliged him at length to retire from active life, but to the end he was an assiduous reader, and retained his faculties unimpaired to within a day or two of his death.
Fr. Kane's acute and vigorous mind embraced a variety of recondite branches of learning-Philosophy, Theology, Physics, Astronomy, Botany, higher Mathematics. Anything ke knew, he had thoroughly mastered ; and his memory, even in extreme old age, was amazingly fresh and accurate. Ever eager to impart the rich stores of his knowledge, he was prepared at a moment's notice either to range at large over wide fields of knowledge or to discuss some abstruse problem in minute detail. A year or two before his death I was taking a stroll with him on the Philosophers' Walk in Mungret. It was the month of May, and the Philosophers were seated here and there under the trees preparing for the oncoming examinations. Two of them approached us and said to Fr. Kane: "Father, we have a difficulty which we would like you to solve for us"; and they stated it. Fr. Kane replied at once “Schiffini deals with that point”, and then and there cleared up the whole matter in a few words. It struck me at the time that if he had received a day's notice in which to consult his authorities, he could not have given a more complete and satisfactory answer.
Yet while his learned ‘sock’ was ever on, Fr. Kane's social gifts made him an excellent community man. He had a large fund of good stories and amusing anecdotes, and was always ready to cap a witticism with one better. He took part in concerts and entertainments, singing with great go, and biretta pertly cocked on the side of his head, a Latin version of "Father OʻFlynn." He was a keen cricketer, fielding brilliantly at "point" with quick eye and sure hand. He took a prominent part in the activities of a villa, especially in mountaineering. I have often heard him say that he had climbed to the summit of Carrantuohill on four different occasions. Few, I think, have made the ascent so often.
Not the least pleasing features of Fr. Kane's character were his harmless drolleries. Lacking to some degree in a sense of humour, he would take almost any statement literally, a fact wbich laid him open to much "leg-pulling.” He had made a careful study of the topography and antiquities of Limerick, and misstatements, usually deliberate, I fear, regarding the streets and bridges of the city, invariably elicited from him a vigorous and uncompromising correction. On such occasions you took your life in your hands, for when the interests of truth were at stake, Fr. Kane gave no quarter. His previous legal training manifested itself in the cross-questioning to which he subjected you on apparently unimportant details connected with some incident you were relating. Or again, if you proposed some problem calling for lengthy explanation, you might expect to be served with sheets-usually the backs of envelopes-filled with facts, references, charts, etc., more or less undecipherable.
But these foibles of the “old Judge”, as we loved to call him, were but the surface of things. Beneath was the man of high intelligence, wide and deep culture, a gentleman in the full meaning of Newman's analysis of that term, a religious in accordance with the Institute of the Society. Of the virtues with which he was adorned I shall mention but one, the greatest of all, namely his charity. Fr. Kane was a man of strong character and convictions ; yet though I have lived with him for over twenty years, I cannot recall having ever heard him say an unkind word of anyone, or speak with disparagement either of his religious brethren, or of the general body of the clergy or laity, or of men in public life. Eternal rest and light to his soul; and may God continue to bless our Province with men endowed with the eminent talents and solid piety of Fr. William Kane.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father William Kane 1856-1945
Fr William Kane, the third of the famous Jesuit trio of the Kanes, was commonly known as “The Judge” for the fact that he had been a judge in Nigeria before entering the Society.

Born in Dublin on January 11th 1856, he received his early education at Stonyhurst and The Oratory Birmingham. At rthe suggestion of Newman, he studied Law at Trinity College Dublin, taking his BA and LLD degrees. He was called to the Irish Bar in1879, and ten years later to the English Bar. Meanwhile he held the post of Chief Justice iun Lagos Nigeria. In 1891 he became a Jesuit.

He professed the short course at Milltown for two years, and then in 1901 he went to Mungret, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was so long there that he became a symbol of the place, being especially dear to generations of Apostolics to whom he professed philosophy for so long.

He was a man of deep, one might almost say rigid religious conviction, a scholar and a gentleman, in the full meaning of Newman’s definition of that term. He was never known to criticise anybody publicly though he could inveigh with vehemence what he thought was improper or incorrect.

As Spiritual Father his Triduum to the scholastics at Christmas was always on the Three Wise Men, and especially on the mysterious star. Indeed, more often than not, like the Wise Men, he used lose the guiding star of his discourse.

Active up to the last two years of his life, he passed on to his reward on July 19th 1945, after a strenuous life of faithful service.

Fr Kane’s Memento for the Living was always made at length and aloud, and included even those in high places with whom he disagreed in politics. It is hoped that his many pupils all over the world will remember him in their Memento for the Dead.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1926

Mungret Jubilee

Father William V Kane SJ

It is twenty-five years since Father William Kane was placed on the staff of Mungret College, and since then his connection with the School has been practically continuous. It would be very ungracious - to say the least.. to let such an anniversary pass without some acknowledgment.

Fr Kane has given to Mungret the service of a quarter of a century. He has expended generously, without counting the cost, his talent and energy; he has laboured long and unselfishly in a field where the sower does not. always-nor often-see his harvest. For some years past he has not been teaching the Intermediate classes, and thus has not been in direct contact with the Lay School. He no longer plays the games - “old boys” wlio are not yet too venerable will remember how steadily he batted in Community matches and whát a dangerous man he was at point - but he has still the deepest interest in all that concerns the Lay School.

But his principal work has been done in the Apostolic School. For over fifteen years as the chief teacher of Philosophy, he has been the constant and principal influence in the intellectual and professional training of the Apostolics; and scarcely less considerable has been the influence he has exerted by his activity and interest in the debates and academies.

The Philosophers have been not merely his pupils; they have also been his friends. They write to him from all parts of the world, from All Hallows, Dalgan, Genoa, Rome - if they are at their studies : from America, South Africa, Australia, India, China, where they are at work on the mission. It is scarcely an injustice to anyone to say that for the great majority of the Apostolics who have passed through Mungret since 1900, Fr Kane is the figure that first springs to their mind at the mention of their “Alma Mater”. He is the one figure, too, that they have been certain to find before them when they came back on a visit. Rectors and Moderators have come and gone, but Fr Kane was permanent.

His work for the “Mungret Annual” can not be left unmentioned. He has been connected with it as Editor or Manager for nearly twenty years. What it has cost him in time and worry and labour, only those can guess who have some experience of such work.

The service which Fr Kane has given for 25 years to Mungret is not the service which men usually notice and reward; but there is One Who seeth in secret and will repay. And in the meantime, the “Mungret Annual”, which owes so much to him, speaking for the authorities of the College and expressing the sentiments of his many Mungret pupils and friends, in Ireland and in other countries, wishes to make here a simple acknowledgineot of esteem for his character and of gratitude for his services. May he be long spared to give himself to God's work

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1946

Obituary

Father William V Kane SJ

The death of Father William Kane, I which took place on July 19th, 1945, has broken a golden link with Mungret's glorious past, and taken from amongst us a saintly priest whose personality and influence are closely entwined with generations of Mungret's alumni, priests and laymen, both at home and in distant lands.

Father William Kane was born in Dublin on January 11th, 1856. He was a nephew of the celebrated scientist, Sir Robert Kane, FRS, and first cousin of Rear Admiral Sir Henry Kane, world-famous as commander of HMS “Calliope”, which, by his skill he saved from destruction in a tornado that swept over Apia Harbour, Samoa, on March 17th, 1889. Having completed his secondary education at Stonyhurst College and at the Oratory School, Birmingham, then under the direction of Newman, he studied law at Trinity College, Dublin, taking out his degrees of BA, and LLD. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1879. In 1888 he accompanied Sir James Marshall to the Niger Territories as a Junior Judge, and subsequently succeeded Sir James as Chief Justice. He resigned this post in 1889; and on his return to Europe, was called to the English Bar. Two years later he joined the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, of which two of his brothers, Fathers Robert and Patrick Kane were already members. He studied Philosophy at Jersey and Theology at Milltown Park, Dublin. He was ordained priest in 1898, and made his solemn profession in 1909.

Having spent two years at Milltown Park as Professor of Theology, Father Kane joined the staff of Mungret College in 1901. With the exception of his year of tertianship at Tronchiennes, another year as Professor of Philosophy at Milltown Park, and a short period of parochial duty at Llandrindod Wells after the death of his brother, Father Patrick, Father Kane was a member of the Mungret community until his death last July. He taught in the secondary school and in the classes preparing for the Arts and BA degree examinations of the Royal University, and was Editor of the “Mungret Annual” for several years.

But the greater part of Father Kane's life in Mungret was devoted as Professor of Philosophy to the intellectual and professional training of the students of the Apostolic School. A man of keen and subtle intelligence, and profoundly versed in many recondite branches of knowledge - Theology, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics - he was fully competent to deal with the great problems of Metaphysics, and to appreciate their bearing and influence on other sciences. As a result, Father Kane imparted to his pupils a thorough grasp of first principles, as well as habits of clear and orderly thinking. To his training was due, in no small measure, the success achieved in Rome, Louvain and other. centres of theological study, by Mungret men, so many of whom gained the highest academical distinctions, gratefully acknowledging the debt which they owed to Father Kane.

While devoted to Philosophy and Science, Father Kane at the same time took a prominent part in the activities of College life. He attended and spoke at the boys Debating Societies; and at House Concerts he delighted all by the verve and “go” with which he sang a Latin version of “Father O'Flynn”. He was a keen cricketer, fielding brilliantly at “Point” " with quick eye and sure hand. These manifold contacts with the everyday lives of his pupils, his sterling qualities, and his charming if uncompromis ing personal character, endeared him to all, When past Mungret students from distant parts of the globe revisited their Alma Mater, one of their principal objects was to meet Father Kane and talk over old times, with him.

Advancing age at length obliged Father Kane to retire from active life. During the placid evening of his days, spent at Mungret under the devoted care of Nurse Corrigan, the College Matron, Father Kane maintained his interest in the many depart ments of learning of which he had obtained so thorough a mastery. To the end he retained all his faculties unimpaired. Death came peacefully. On a quiet night during the summer holidays he passed to his eternal reward. RIP

JM SJ

Born: 19 May 1929, Tullamore, County Offaly
Entered: 07 September 1946, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1961, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1964, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 15 January 2021, Coptic Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia - Zambiae-Malawi Province (ZAM)

Part of the St Ignatius, Lusaka community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

Son of Michael Joseph Kelly and Agnes Sheehy. Studied at UCD.

Middle Brother of Bob Kelly (ZAM) - RIP 2005 and Joseph A Kelly - RIP 2008

Ordained at Milltown Park

1946-1948 St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1948-1952 Rathfarnham Castle - Studying
1952-1955 St Stanislaus College Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1955-1958 Chikuni, Zambia - Regency, studying language then teaching at Canisius College
1958-1962 Milltown Park - studying Theology
1962-1963 Rathfarnham Castle - Tertianship
1963-1971 Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia - teaching; (1964-1970) Proncipal (1966-1969) Rector
1971-1973 Birmingham, England, - studying Child Psychology
1973-1974 Ireland
1974-1975 Jesuit House, Handsworth Park, Lusaka, Zambia -
1975-1976 Moreau House, Mazabuka, Zambia
1976-1978 UNZA Hostel, Lusaka, Zambia - Professor of Education at UNZA; Education Consultant;
1978-1986 Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia - Professor of Education at UNZA; Education Consultant; Writer re HIV AIDS; (1975-1979) Dean, School of Education; (1979-1983) Deputy Vice Chancellor
1986-1987 Rue de Grenelle, Paris, France - International Institute of Education, planning visitng fellow
1987-2011 Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia - Education Consultant; Writer re HIV AIDS;
2011-2012 Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin - recovering health
2012-2020 Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia - Professor of Education at UNZA; Education Consultant; Writer re HIV AIDS
2020-2021 St Ignatius, Lusaka, Zambia

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions
Fr. Michael Kelly Honorary Degree Conferring
Honorary Degree Conferring, RCSI, 6th June 2012
In accepting the honorary doctorate that RCSI has just now conferred on me I feel greatly honoured, greatly humbled and greatly privileged: honoured that RCSI should recognise in this way the limited contributions I have been able to make in advocating for more and better education for girls, a better deal for orphaned children and a more coherent response to HIV and AIDS; humbled that I should have been singled out from the great number of people world-wide who are dedicating themselves so wholeheartedly to efforts to stem the AIDS epidemic and who see girls’ education as central to this; and privileged that I can represent in some way so many thousands of wonderful people across the world whose lives have been darkened by the shadows of HIV or AIDS but who never lost heart.
Ladies and Gentlemen, forty-nine years ago the great Martin Luther King shared with the world his dream that, among other things, one day his four children would live in a nation where they would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
Dr. King’s dream speech inspired his people and transformed the face of the United States to such an extent that less than four years ago the country elected its first ever black President, who could affirm: “Where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people, Yes We Can!”
Ladies and Gentlemen, Graduating Students, our vision for global health is also a dream, a dream which strongly reaffirms that the enjoyment of good health is a fundamental human right and that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment the actualisation of this right remains a possibility. In the words of Barack Obama, we here at this RCSI conferring ceremony can affirm with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of this great institution - yes, we can.
Yes, we can eliminate infant and child mortality, and ensure universal vaccination coverage against measles, polio and other diseases.
Yes, we can roll back the malaria which affects over 200 million people each year.
Yes, we can reduce and eventually eliminate the almost nine million new cases of tuberculosis that occur each year.
Yes, we can reach the global targets of zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS deaths and zero HIV-related discrimination.
Yes, we can even address the enormous challenges of neglected tropical diseases which currently affect more than 1,000 million people and thrive in the poorest, most marginalised communities.
Yes, we can ensure the access of all peoples - here and in all other parts of the world - to a level of health care that will help them lead a satisfying, full and productive human life.
Yes, we can do it and we are doing it.
Let me speak for a few moments about my own country, Zambia, where just three months ago a team of nine doctors successfully removed a fourteen-and-a-half kilo tumour from the back of a young man. Of course, the tumour should never have been allowed to grow to such size, but that it could be successfully removed speaks well for the medical services that a developing country can provide .
In recent years, Zambia has also seen considerable improvements in many of the markers for health care:
A significant reduction in child mortality;
• HIV infection rates falling steadily and substantially among young women and young men;
• About 90% of adults who are in need of anti-retroviral therapy receiving it, the result being fewer AIDS-related deaths;
• Among infants a dramatic reduction in deaths arising from the transmission of HIV from parent to child;
• More widespread use of anti-malarial drugs, an increase in the numbers sleeping under anti-mosquito impregnated bed-nets, and more widespread spraying of mosquitos.
Yes, we can do it and we are doing it. But we need to do it more quickly. We need to do it more
quickly for the sake of the millions whose lives are being blighted by preventable ill-health. We need to do it more quickly for the sake of our own human integrity since we have made promises that too often we honour more in the breach than in the fulfilment.
And for this we need more financial and material resources. We need more civic and political commitment. We need more human resources.
Believing, as RCSI does, that the person is at the centre of everything we do, we need a more enlightened priority system that ranks health, education, social services and job creation higher than bailing out questionable financial institutions, and certainly higher than squandering public resources on doomed investments and extravagant and even corrupt undertakings.
And that requires that every one of us here today pulls together to make this a better and more decent world. It requires that we become radically committed to eliminating scandalous inequalities in the access of people to health care. It means that we firmly believe that each one of us can make a difference for the better.
George Bernard Shaw once said: “Some look at things that are, and ask, why? I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, Graduating Students, let this conferring day be memorable for the way it motivates each one of us to dream of something that never was - a peaceful, healthy and more just world - and ask “why not? Why can’t I do something to make it so? What am I doing to make this a better world? What more can I do to ensure peace and health and basic justice for all people?”
I thank you.
Michael J. Kelly, S.J. Lusaka, Zambia

24 October 2012
Irish Jesuit, Fr Michael Kelly SJ, was conferred with The Order of Distinguished Service by Zambian President Edgar Lungu, in State House, Lusaka on 24th October.

The honour was given to Fr Kelly in acknowledgment for his tireless commitment to ending HIV and AIDS in Zambia. He has worked for decades to educate people about the virus and to promote safe behaviour among youth and those most at risk in Zambia, sub-Saharan Africa, and abroad. He has been active in developing strategies for HIV prevention, and human rights, and has been a consultant to international organisations including UNESCO, UNICEF, the FAO, UNAIDS, Oxfam and Irish Aid.

Fr Kelly went to Zambia as a Jesuit missionary in 1955 and spent most of his working life there in education, as a teacher and administrator at secondary and university level. He felt from the outset that it was home and that he was welcomed there. He became a Zambian citizen in the 1960s, a decision he says he never regretted. In later years, he was deeply saddened by the numbers of people who were dying because of the country’s AIDS epidemic and vowed to address the problem, through the schools.

This is not the first honour that Fr Kelly has received due to his outstanding work. He was awarded an Honorary Degree by University College Dublin in 2006, and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 2012. Since 2006, Irish Aid has honoured Father Michael’s achievements through the Annual Father Michael Kelly HIV/AIDS Event, timed to coincide with World AIDS Day (1st December)

A JESUIT’S WORK WITH HIV AND AIDS
Michael J. Kelly, S.J., was one of the first ten recipients of the new Presidential Distinguished Service Awards at Áras an Uachtaráin on 15th November 2012.
President Michael D. Higgins said the new Award allowed the State to formally honour exceptional individuals and to recognise the “sacrifice, support and commitment to Ireland of the wider Irish diaspora in all its diversity”.

Fr Michael J. Kelly writes below about his campaigning struggle against the global epidemic of HIV/Aids :
When AIDS exploded on the world in the 1980s, I was lecturing in education at the University of Zambia. It soon became obvious to me that I would have to take account of this new disease in my teaching, research and priestly work.
Deaths and funerals were becoming the order of the day. Across the country people were dying in large numbers, most of them parents with young families, leaving behind them children to be reared and educated by communities which were being overwhelmed by the great number of orphans. Teachers and education administrators were also falling sick and dying in large numbers.
I quickly saw that the courses I was teaching had to say something about this totally new situation. They had to speak about adjusting to the potential loss of teachers, about the great numbers of orphans that would be coming into the schools, about teaching children traumatised by the loss to a dehumanising sickness of greatly loved family members, about communities shattered and bewildered and impoverished by the sickness and deaths of their most productive members.
But the courses also had to suggest how the very process of education could help check the disease and what could be done to protect the education system itself against the disease’s destructive impacts. From then on, my work was guided by what I termed education’s “minimax” response to the pandemic: minimise the potential of HIV and AIDS to harm the education sector, maximise the potential of the education sector to control the disease and reduce its harmful effects.
This was a new approach at the time, so new that the University of Zambia has the distinction of being one of the first universities in the world to take account of HIV and AIDS in its teaching programmes. Increasingly, I began to study, write and give presentations about AIDS and education. It was not long until we began to speak about the potential of education to provide a “social vaccine” against the disease, an approach that UNAIDS, the highest world authority on the disease, still strongly advocates.
Gradually I found myself being drawn more and more into national and international discussions on the two-way interaction between AIDS and education, into advocacy and awareness-raising in regard to orphans, and eventually into a wide spectrum of AIDS-related areas, almost all of them with strong social justice implications – stigma, poverty, the subordinate status of women, human rights, the marginalisation of whole categories of people, unfair north-south trade and other practices, food security, environmental protection, global failure to deal honestly with several AIDS-related issues.
The outcome was a greatly extended engagement on my part with the pandemic and extensive commitments to activities across the world on its educational and other implications. As the demands became greater, it eventually became necessary for me to retire from the University of Zambia so that I could dedicate myself more wholeheartedly to the work of confronting HIV and AIDS nationally and globally. And it is to this work that I remain committed. AIDS is not yet over. People are still dying. AIDS continues to consume them. It also consumes me, not in body but in spirit, and challenges me with the great Jesuit questions: “What have I done for Christ who is suffering with HIV and AIDS? What more should I be doing so that there is less AIDS and more chance that people can live with greater human dignity in a world that comes closer to being the happy world God had planned it to be?”
In many ways the answers are simple. There is need for more honesty in dealing with central AIDS issues. There is need to avoid complacency and recognise how far the world is from seeing an end to the pandemic. There is need for an uncompromising stand on making social justice a reality for every child, woman and man. There is need for more resources for those affected by the pandemic and for research that will lead to its control.
To the extent that I can respond to any of these needs I must do so. The miracle of those living with HIV or AIDS demands this of me. For as long as one person remains with HIV or the disease deprives one child of a parent, I cannot stop. Until God calls me, or AIDS ends, I simply must keep going.

22 August 2015
August 22nd will be the 60th anniversary of my first arrival in Zambia in 1955. I was young and inexperienced then, but greatly excited at the prospect of sharing with others my life and whatever expertise I had and thereby communicating the Good News of Jesus Christ.
A spirit of céad míle fáilte
I am now old and somewhat decrepit, but blissfully happy that I can still share myself and the word of God with my Zambian sisters and brothers. I am deeply indebted to them for the sincerity with which they welcomed me into their lives and society. The spirit was always that of céad míle fáilte. I felt this right from the outset, though the feeling was deepened when I became a Zambian citizen in the mid- 1960s, a step that I never for a second regretted, though I recall the tears it caused to my mother!
I spent most of my working life in Zambia in education — teaching and administering — at secondary school and university levels. It is a great pleasure today to meet so many who had been “through my hands” at school or university and to see them successful in life, most of them happily married and parents of lovely families, some of them grandparents, and some of them priests or religious.
But there is also the sadness of knowing that many have died, especially that many died from AIDS. Very soon after the world became aware of this terrible scourge, I saw that it was a challenge that we would have to do something about through our schools, not only in Zambia but all over the world. This realisation drew me into thinking, teaching, writing and speaking about the give-and-take between AIDS and education, into speaking out on behalf of orphans, and eventually into a wide range of AIDS-related areas.
In my AIDS work I have met and been influenced by many remarkable people infected with the disease. I don’t think I could have continued were it not for them, above all the women and the children. I felt driven by their suffering and the way it had undercut their very humanity. But equally I felt driven by their resilience, their spirit, their determination, their courage, and their cheerfulness.
Brigitte Syamalevwe: fearless and powerful
Most uplifting of all was Brigitte Syamalevwe, a highly educated Zambian woman who was diagnosed with HIV in 1992. Instead of staying at home feeling sorry for herself, Brigitte travelled around, speaking fearlessly, feelingly, and powerfully about the epidemic and her situation. She refused to take life-saving anti-retroviral drugs when these were offered to her, saying she would do so only when the poor of Zambia, and particularly the women, could also have access to such treatment. Even at the very end, when I had paid for the drugs that could save her, she told her family not to collect them but to leave her in God’s hands. And so, overwhelmed by grief, weariness and illness, she died quietly and peacefully, letting her great spirit soar to the God whom she had loved and served so well.
Brigitte was an Easter witness in the darkness of HIV and AIDS. You just had to be inspired by her. She and people like her show the strength of the human spirit and give real promise that we can make this a better world.
Sixty glorious, happy, fulfilling, satisfying years
Coming back to myself and thinking about my 60 years in Zambia, I wouldn’t ask for a minute of them to have been any different for me. They have been 60 glorious, happy, fulfilling, satisfying years and I thank God for every second of them. Of course there were setbacks and difficulties, very especially the grief and anguish of seeing the way AIDS was ravaging the people. But the overwhelming picture is one of joy and gladness and an awareness that God is working all things together for good.
I ask you to join with me in praising and thanking God that it has been so.

June 2016
A MUSEUM PIECE OR A HERO?
Early in May a new state-of-the-art interactive-type museum, EPIC Ireland, was opened in the vaults of the docklands CHQ building in Dublin. The new museum focuses on the Irish abroad and the Irish diaspora, what they have done and what they are doing in various parts of the world.
The Museum Director has informed me, as a matter of courtesy, that they are featuring my story in the visitor experience and will continue to do so for the coming ten years. I have no idea what aspects of my ‘story’ are touched on, but it is reassuring to know that at last I have found my proper niche - as a museum piece!
Distinguished Visitor visits ‘her hero’
On May 25th, which was Africa Freedom Day, I was greatly honoured when the former Irish President Mary Robinson, called at Luwisha House to see me. She was in Lusaka for a few days to speak to a top- level meeting of the African Development Bank on ecological, clean power and climate-change issues. Noting that I was not present when she met some members of the Irish community shortly after her arrival in Lusaka, Mrs. Robinson asked the Irish Ambassador if she could come to see me as I was ‘her hero’ (https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/410-irish-men-behind-the-missions-fr-michael-j-kelly-sj). God save the mark!
To talk of many things
During her stay of about an hour she and I talked about many things – progress against HIV and AIDS, the empowerment of women, the problems faced by children, clean energy and solar power, population growth, and even family.
Unfortunately I had to acknowledge that so far we here at Luwisha House had done nothing about installing a solar power system, even though we are very suitably placed to do so, with the sun beaming down on us all day almost every day of the year.
But I was able to redress the balance a little by drawing attention to the work being done by the Jesuit Centre for Ecology and Development in Malawi (http://jcedmw.org/jced-as-a-new-project-of-the-jesuit- fathers/) and the development there of a cooking stove that is very economical in its use of charcoal, something that Mrs. Robinson said she had heard about.
It was indeed a great honour to receive this surprise visit from such an eminent and busy person. I greatly appreciated it.
Michael J. Kelly SJ, Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia. June 2016

20 July 2020
MICHAEL J. KELLY FEATURED ON STAMP
The pioneering work of Irish Jesuit, Michael J. Kelly SJ, as an educator and a campaigner for HIV/AIDS in his adopted home of Zambia, has been honoured on a postage stamp from An Post (https://www.anpost.com/AnPost/media/PDFs/The-Collecto_1st-Ed_2020_AW_FOR-WEB.pdf) which is part of a set to mark St. Patrick's Day.
The Irish Abroad series of five stamps, marks the contribution that emigrants from Ireland made to their respective communities overseas. Fr Kelly (1929-), who was born in Tullamore, shares the stamp with award-winning author Edna O’Brien (1930-) from Co. Clare, and also with Cork-born humanitarian worker Mary Elmes (1908-2002) who saved the lives of 200 Jewish children in France during the Holocaust.
In 1955 Fr Kelly left Ireland for Northern Rhodesia, which would become the Republic of Zambia in 1964. Over the next 60 years, he held a series of appointments across the country, which resulted in his nomination as Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Zambia in 1980 and a promotion to Professor of Education in 1989.
He worked tirelessly to get rid of the stigma of HIV/AIDS through education and advocacy work across Zambia and further afield.
Very soon after the world became aware of this terrible scourge [HIV/AIDS], I saw that it was a challenge that we would have to do something about through our schools, not only in Zambia but all over the world. This realisation drew me into thinking, teaching, writing and speaking about the give-and-take between AIDS and education, into speaking out on behalf of orphans, and eventually into a wide range of AIDS-related areas.
In my AIDS work I have met and been influenced by many remarkable people infected with the disease. I don’t think I could have continued were it not for them, above all the women and the children. I felt driven by their suffering and the way it had undercut their very humanity. But equally I felt driven by their resilience, their spirit, their determination, their courage, and their cheerfulness.
In 2006, the Irish Government established the annual Father Michael Kelly Lecture on HIV and AIDS, which is now an annual event. In 2019 the theme was 'HIV & AIDS: Women, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights'. (https://globalhealth.ie/womens-sexual-and-reproductive-health- rights-leaving-no-one-behind/)Fr Kelly delivered a compelling video message to the audience about the need to educate women and girls in Zambia to protect themselves from HIV infection. (https://globalhealth.ie/womens-sexual-and-reproductive-health-rights-leaving-no-one-behind/)
Fr Kelly has been the recipient of many awards, in Ireland and abroad for his aid work. In recognition of his contribution to education in Zambia and worldwide HIV advocacy, the Association of Commonwealth Universities presented him with the Symons Award in September 2003. He has received several honorary degrees including Doctor of Science (2004), from the University of the West Indies, Doctor of Laws from NUI (2006) and an honorory doctorate from the Royal College of Surgeons (2012).
The Forum for Women Educationists in Africa (Zambia Chapter) awarded him the first ever Kabunda Kayongo Award for “immense contribution through research on girls’ education” (2006) and the First Lady of South Africa, Madame Thobeka Zuma, presented him with a Humanitarian Award for commitment to health and HIV and AIDS in the southern African region (2010).
He received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award from President Michael D. Higgins (https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/241-fr-michael-j-kelly-sj-receives-new-presidential-award) at Áras an Úachtaráin in November 2012, which honours the Irish diaspora in recognition of its sustained and distinguished service abroad. (https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/241-fr-michael-j-kelly-sj-receives-new-presidential-award)
Fr Kelly's is also one of over 320 emigrant stories that is featured at EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum (https://epicchq.com/)in the CHQ Building in Dublin.

Born: 09 June 1915, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1933, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 30 July 1947, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, College of Industrial Relations, Ranelagh, Dublin
Died: 08 November 1999, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Sacred Heart, Limerick community at the time of death.

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

??Brother of James Kent; Ent 01/09/1928; LEFT from Juniorate 22/12/1930; both at Clongowes?

by 1949 North American Martyrs Retreat House, Auriesville NY USA (NEB) making Tertianship

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Kent, Edmond
by David Murphy

Kent, Edmond (1915–99), Jesuit priest and economist, was born 9 June 1915 at 15 Rostrevor Terrace, Rathgar, Dublin, son of Pierce Kent, civil servant and later commissioner of the board of works, and Mary Catherine Kent (née Connolly). Educated at Clongowes Wood College, Kildare, he entered the Society of Jesus at Emo on 7 September 1933, taking his first vows in September 1935. He lived at the Jesuit community in Rathfarnham 1935–9 while studying economics at UCD. In 1939 he moved to Tullabeg, where he studied philosophy, before returning to Dublin, where he studied theology at Milltown Park (1944–8). Ordained priest on 30 July 1947, he spent his tertianship (1948–9) at Auriesville, where he completed further studies in social sciences.

Returning to Dublin, he became assistant-director at University Hall (1949–52) while also teaching extramural classes in economic science at UCD in a diploma course for trade unionists. He had long been interested in the trade union movement and was often criticised by members of the Federated Union of Employers, who accused him of being too left-wing. In fact his convictions were firmly based in his Christian faith. He once remarked: ‘I honestly believe that we can have no industrial peace unless people are living truly Christian lives' (Interfuse, no. 104, 29). The Jesuit order had founded (1946) an education programme for workers, and Kent spent a period in New York observing Jesuit initiatives in the labour colleges there. On his return to Dublin, he worked as a lecturer in the newly founded Catholic Workers College (est. 1951), later renamed the National College of Industrial Relations. Teaching trade unionism and acting as prefect of studies, he had a great impact on students and union officials, helping them formulate and present their cases in the Labour Court.

In 1969 he moved to the Jesuit community at Leeson St. and, although he still continued to lecture at the Catholic Workers College, gradually moved away from his trade union activity. He took over as director of the Messenger office (1969–89), and several of his colleagues thought that he would find the transition difficult. He threw himself into his new work with enthusiasm, however, travelling around the country promoting the Messenger while also giving seminars on devotion to the Sacred Heart. Preaching in numerous parishes around the country, he also conducted seminars at the adult education centre in Birmingham. He later served as chaplain at St Vincent's private hospital in Dublin (1983–9).

In his later years he suffered from failing eyesight and had a bad fall (1989) while visiting Cherryfield Lodge, the Jesuit retirement home in Dublin. On his release from hospital he became a permanent resident there, taking care of the home's accounts and reorganising its library. He died at Cherryfield Lodge, 8 November 1999, and was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery.

Ir. Times, 20 Nov. 1999; Paul Leonard, SJ, ‘Father Kent and the Messenger Office’, Interfuse (Jesuit in-house publication), no. 104 (2000), 29–33; Interfuse, no. 105 (2000), 21–4; further information from Fr Fergus O'Donoghue, SJ, Jesuit archives, Dublin

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Note from Tommie O’Meara Entry
Fr .Eddie Kent did him a great service by supplying him with books of varying interest for him, spiritual, Irish and so forth. Dormant interests were awakened and life surely was made a little more bearable; concelebrated Mass with other ailing Jesuits in Cherryfield and the many daily rosaries also helped him.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 24th Year No 1 1949

LETTERS :

Fr. Edmund Keane, writes 27th September, from Our Lady of Martyrs Tertianship, Auriesville, New York :
“On the eve of the Long Retreat (it begins this evening) I write to commend myself in a special manner to your Holy Masses and prayers. Auriesville certainly affords all the exterior aids for a faithful retreat : peace, coolness, and the wide open-spaces so welcome after the heat and hurried tempo of New York, and one can depend on the weather to behave. After four weeks Fr. Kent and I are now well settled into the Tertianship, and both are in good health, D.G. The house is very comfortable and well appointed, food excellent, and surroundings from a scenic point of view very beautiful. In all there are 43 Tertians, of whom only about 8 hail from Provinces other than American, so there are no language difficulties. Fr. Keenan is our Instructor, and I am glad of the opportunity of spending a year under his direction.
Yesterday, the Feast of the Matryrs was marked by special celebrations, and during the day the number of pilgrims that flowed in through the Shrine must have been over 10,000. Solemn High Mass coram Episcopo (Most Rev, Dr. Gibbons of the Albany diocese) in the Coliseum at noon, preceded by a procession into it of various bodies, the Knights of Columbus, The Order of Alhambra and the A.O.H., etc. A sermon was preached by Fr. Flattery, Director of the retreat-house. The celebrant, deacon, subdeacon and M.C. were Filipino, Canadian, Italian and Dutch respectively Tertians). Supply work comes round about every third week : one regular week-end call brings us a distance of 150 miles, and so we are armed with the faculties of three dioceses - New York, Albany and Syracuse. Some hospital work, too, may likely fall to my lot, such work, apart from its value as an experimentum, should be rich in experience ..."

Irish Province News 24th Year No 3 1949

LETTERS :
From Fr. R. Ingram, Holy Family Rectory, 1501 Fremont Ave., South Pasedena, Cal., U.S.A. :
“I have just missed a trip to the Marshall Islands and Hawaii. Shell Ox Co. is sponsoring a world-wide experiment op gravity observations to be taken simultaneously at many different stations. We had arranged a party to take the observations in the Pacific, they were to be made every 1 hour, and the Navy had agreed to co-operate by flying the personnel and instruments to the locations. But an automatic recorder was perfected by La Coste (the designer of the ‘gravy-meter’) and off he went alone. God bless American efficiency! Instead of flying across the Pacific a party of us have charge of the observations for the Los Angeles region. We hope to get a lot of information.
I plan to leave the West for St. Louis at the end of July. I sail for Ireland with Frs. Kent and Keane on 7th September”.
(Fr. E. Kent has been acting as Assistant Chaplain in City Hospital, New York.)

◆ Interfuse No 105 : Special Edition 2000 & ◆ The Clongownian, 2000

Obituary

Fr Edmund Kent (1915-1999)

1915, June 9: Born in Dublin.
Early education: Clongowes Wood College.
1933, Sept 7: Entered the Society at Emo.
1935, Sept 8: First vows at Emo.
1935 - 1939: Rathfarnham, studying Economics at U.C.D.
1939 - 1942: Tullabeg, studying philosophy.
1942 - 1944 : Mungret College, teaching.
1944 - 1948 : Milltown Park, studying theology.
1947 30th July: Ordained priest at Milltown Park,
1948 - 1949: Tertianship at Auriesville, and Social Studies.
1949 - 1952: University Hall, Asstd. Director and giving extra mural courses at UCD & Catholic Workers' College (NCI).
1952 - 1954: Milltown Park, Dir. Catholic Workers' College.
1954 - 1969: Catholic Workers' College, Minister, Prefect of Studies, Lecturer in Trade Unionism, etc.
1969 - 1989: Leeson St., Lecturer at C.I.R. (NCT); Messenger Office: in charge of sales and promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart
1983 - 1989: Chaplain, St. Vincent's Private Hospital.
1989 - 1999: Cherryfield Lodge, Treasurer and assistant Province Archivist for some years, Writer.

Father Kent first went to Cherryfield Lodge for lunch. But while taking a walk around the grounds, and with impaired eyesight, he fell on a high wall and had to be hospitalized. He returned to Cherryfield Lodge as a convalescent and then remained on as a permanent resident. At first he did the books and then reorganized the library. Gradually he lost his sight and became increasingly infirm.

He died peacefully at Cherryfield Lodge on 8th November 1999.

May he rest in the peace of Christ.

The following obituary appeared in the Irish Times, Saturday, November 20th, 1999

Father Edmond Kent SJ, who died in Dublin on November 8th, played a seminal role in establishing and moulding the ethos of the National College of Industrial relations (formerly known as the Catholic Workers' College), to which many leading figures from the Irish trade union movement - past and present - and some top business men are indebted for their tertiary education.

The son of a senior civil servant, who became a Commissioner of the Board of Works, he was sent to Clongowes Wood College, the Jesuit school and afterwards entered the Order's novitiate at Emo at the age of 18.

Unusually for the time, he was asked to study for a degree in economics - the norm for Jesuit students was to take a degree in a subject that they could go on to use as teachers. He focused on agricultural economics for his master's degree - taking “the dual purpose cow” for his thesis.

As early as 1938 - and again in 1946 - the General Congregation of the Jesuit order directed that a Centre of Information and Social Action be set up in all its provinces, including Ireland. The catalyst for this was the papal encyclicals on social teaching, Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931). The essential philosophy was based on the need for "strong democracy" as the way to bring about reconstruction of the social order.

Worker education was to be the key ingredient. Father Kent was sent to New York for a year to find out what his fellow Jesuits were doing in the labour colleges there. He returned to teach alongside Edward Coyne SJ, on the social and economic science diploma course for trade unionists at UCD. It is significant, however, that the Catholic Workers College did not open its doors before 1951. This would suggest that the Jesuits were motivated much less by anti-communism in the Catholic ethos of the time than by Alfred O'Rahilly of UCC, for example, who had set up a similar diploma course for workers in Cork in 1946.

Father Kent had an impact from the start on students and trade union leaders alike. He shared a real empathy with and concern for workers, motivated by the belief that people should be enabled to assert their just rights, regardless of status or social class: the establishment of the Labour Court in 1946 meant that union representatives had to be articulate in presenting their members' cases.

It was an ethos that did not endear Father Kent to the upper echelons of the Federated Union of Employers who regarded the Jesuit ground breaker as being much too left wing. He never saw himself as being anything other than orthodox, however.

His was the “mustard seed” in those early years that gradually helped to create a vibrant and educated industrial relations environment in the Republic, over the following decades, culminating in the current era of social partnership - as the college went on to cater for both sides of industry. The NCIR continued to be run by the Jesuits until 1988 when it became a company limited by guarantee.

Fr Edmund Kent: born 1915, died November 1999

Born: 16 October 1916, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1934, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1949, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1953, Sacred Heart College SJ (Crescent), Limerick
Died: 04 March 2008, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Milltown Park, Dublin at the time of death

Dermot Peakin - by 1985 Diarmuid Ó Peicín;

by 1967 at Handsworth, Birmingham (ANG) working
by 1968 at Erdington, Birmingham (ANG) working
by 1970 at Walthamstow, London (ANG) working
by 1971 at London, England (ANG) working
by 1975 at Dockhead, London (ANG) working
by 1976 at Redcross, London (ANG) working
by 1977 at London W2 (ANG) working
by 1978 at Rotherhithe London (ANG) working

Born: 11 October 1956, Oughterard, County Galway
Entered: 04 October 1975, Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin
Ordained: 20 June 1987, Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
Final Vows: 24 January 1996, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 07 January 2018, Gonzaga College SJ, Ranelagh, Dublin

by 1980 at Osterley, London (BRI) working
by 1981 at Manresa, Birmingham, England (BRI) studying)
BY 1988 at Cambridge MA, USA (NEN) studying

1977-1979 John Sullivan House, Monkstown - Studying Philosophy at Milltown Institute
1979-1980 Isleworth, London, UK - Residential Care work at Lillie Road Centre
1980-1982 Manresa House, Harbourne, Birmingham, UK - Studying Youth and Community Work at Westhill College
1982-1984 Coláiste Iognáid, Galway - Regency : Teacher
1984-1986 Luís Espinal - Studying Theology at Milltown Institute
1986-1987 Rutilio Grande - Studying Theology at Milltown Institute
1987-1988 Avon St, Cambridge, MA, USA - Studying Theology at Weston School of Theology
1988-1993 Coláiste Iognáid, Galway - Teacher; Chaplain; Subminister; Pastoral Care Co-ordinator; Studying H Dip in Education at UCG (88-89)
1989 President “An Club Rámhaoicht”
1993-1994 Belfast - Tertianship
1994-2001 Belvedere College SJ - Minister; Chaplain; Pastoral Care; Teacher; Social Integration Committee; Cherryfield Board
1995 Vocations Promotion Team
1996 Vice-Principal Junior School
1998 Pastoral Care Co-ordinator
2001-2018 Gonzaga College SJ - Minister; Teacher; College Spiritual Father

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/god-love-kennedys-mantra/

‘God is love’ – Kennedy’s mantra
The Funeral Mass of Kennedy O’Brien SJ took place at the Church of the Holy Name, Ranelagh, on Saturday 13 January before a packed congregation, with crowds outside in the cold. A native of Galway, Kennedy (aged 61) devoted his Jesuit life to teaching.
Mourners at the Mass included a large number of students from Gonzaga College SJ, where the Kennedy taught English and served as chaplain and retreat leader. The College choir provided the music, and a number of students removed the pall from the coffin. Irish Provincial, Leonard Moloney SJ, was the main celebrant.
At the end of a traumatic week for Gonzaga (with the deaths of both Kennedy and his fellow-Jesuit Joe Brennan, who had taught in the college for many years), Principal Mr Damon McCaul spoke at the Mass. “For me personally, he [Kennedy] was a friend, a confidant, a sounding board. What I really appreciated – and Kennedy was good at this – was being told when he thought things could be done better, or differently. In that, Kennedy was the embodiment of Magis [the Jesuit principle of more or greater]... a half job was never enough.”
With good humour, Mr McCaul reminded the congregation of Kennedy’s initial reluctance to come to Gonzaga. He taught in his alma mater, Coláiste Iognáid, in Galway and in Belvedere College in Dublin beforehand. However, he said of Kennedy: “He went where the need was greatest; he threw all of himself into Gonzaga, to such an extent that he loved it in spite of himself”. He then expressed his gratitude for the care and support the school had been given in recent days. Mr McCaul finished by asking the Gonzaga students to join him in reciting Kennedy’s favourite Gospel message, one he used to repeat at every College Mass: “God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him or her”. Kennedy had a wide range of hobbies and interests, including heraldry, gardening, rowing, cricket and the poetry of G M Hopkins. His popularity and regard as a priest was attested to by the number of weddings, baptisms and funerals at which he was asked to officiate. He was buried at Glasnevin Cemetery following the Funeral Mass.

Born: 22 June 1830, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Entered: 15 October 1851, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1864
Professed: 02 February 1869
Died: 18 July 1914, Holy Name, Manchester, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1904 came to Clongowes (HIB) working

Born: 21 November 1869, Monivea, Athenry, County Galway
Entered: 07 September 1889, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 10 July 1905, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1908, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Clane, County Kildare
Died: 12 December 1953, Our Lady's Hospice, Dublin

Part of the Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin community at the time of death

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1893 at St Aloysius, Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1900 at Stonyhurst, England (ANG) studying
by 1907 at Drongen, Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 2nd Year No 4 1927
Clongowes :
Fr. G. Roche has been appointed Rector of Clongowes. The College is not absolutely new to him. He was there for six years as a boy. As a Jesuit he was gallery prefect, third line prefect, lower line prefect for four years, and higher line prefect for nine. He put in the rest of his time as minister and prefect of discipline at University Hall, and as Rector of Mungret.

Irish Province News 29th Year No 2 1954
Obituary :
Father George R Roche
George Philip Redington Roche was the sixth of the eight children of Thomas Redington Roche J.P. and Jane Redington Roche, and was born on Nov. 21st, 1869, at Rye Hill, Monivea, Athenry, Co. Galway. This property had belonged to his grandmother, Eleanor Redington, whose family originally came from Mayo, and whose husband was Stephen Roche of Cork. George Roche's mother, before her marriage, was a Miss Cliffe, of Bellevue, Macmine, Co. Wexford. She belonged to one of those prominent High Church Protestant families whose conversion to the Catholic Church caused such a sensation just a hundred years ago. The most notable of these were the Rams of Ramşfort, and an interesting account of their conversion and also of that of the Cliffes was published by Burns & Oates in 1901 under the title. Some Notable Conversions in the County of Wexford. The author was Rev. Francis J. Kirk, an Oblate of St. Charles, formerly Protestant Rector of Gorey. The book contains a long letter from Jane Redington Roche describing the almost simultaneous though independent conversion of all the members of her family and their reception into the Church in Paris by Père de Ravignan in 1856. Mrs. Roche was a most fervent Catholic and a woman of strong character. She was noted for her imperturbable calm, a characteristic which her son inherited.
At the age of about ten George Roche was sent to school at Oscott. After two years the school was closed to lay pupils and he went for another two to Ushaw, but in 1883 was transferred to Clongowes together with his elder brother Charles, who as a young man went out to the Gold Coast and died there in 1897. The records state that George commenced his studies in Third of Grammar, his Professor being Mr. Richard Campbell.
There is little information available about his school days. A master with whom he was particularly friendly was Fr. James Colgan, who frequently visited his home and is thought to have influenced his vocation. He manifested an early enthusiasm for his favourite sport of cricket. It occupied all his spare time in the holidays and he showed no taste for country sports. He used to relate how on one occasion the Clongowes cricket XI played a match against the Mental Home in Carlow. George was bowling and the batsman, a patient, was palpably 1.b.w. However the umpire, an attendant, unhesitatingly gave him “not out” whispering to George, “I'll explain to you later”. When the batsman was finally bowled out, the attendant explained, “That man thinks he's a pure spirit. He’ll let you put him out any other way, but he can't be 1.b.w.”.
George Roche left Clongowes in 1889 and entered the noviciate at Tullabeg on September 7th of that year. Fr. John Colgan was his Master of Novices and Fr. David Gallery Sociuş. They were succeeded in the following year by Fr. W. Sutton and Fr. R. Campbell. Amongst his fellow novices were Fathers O. Doyle, J. F. X. O'Brien, H. and F. Gill, J. Kirwan, D. Kelly, J. Casey, L. Potter and T. Corcoran. He did a year's juniorate at Milltown and one year of philosophy at Jersey, returning to Clongowes in 1893 as Third Line Prefect, under Fr. Devitt as Rector and Fr. Fagan as Higher Line Prefect, two men whom he always admired. He also figures in the Catalogue as cur. instrum, mus. Fr. George's best friends will agree that the duties of this office must have been purely administrative. From 1894 to 1899 he was Lower Line Prefect and master. He then completed his two remaining years of philosophy at Stonyhurst and returned to Clongowes in 1901 for a year as Higher Line Prefect under Fr. James Brennan as Vice-Rector, From 1902 to 1906 he studied theology at Milltown, being ordained in 1905. After a year of tertianship at Tronchiennes, he once more returned to Clongowes, at the close of Fr. Devitt's second period of Rectorship, as Higher Line Prefect. He remained in this office for ten years under Fr. T. V. Nolan and Fr. N. J. Tomkin. It was during this period that he built the Higher Line pavilion which has since done such useful service. In 1915 he took over the Principalship of University Hall. In 1922 he was appointed Rector of Mungret, leaving there in 1927 to become Rector of Clongowes and Consultor of the Province. At the end of his term in Clongowes he worked for a year as Operarius in Gardiner St., 1933-34, then went to Rathfarnham as Spiritual Father and Assistant Director of the Retreat House. He was back once more in Clongowes from 1938 to 1945 as Spiritual Father to the Community, Assistant Procurator, Director of the junior sodalities and editor of The Clongownian. In 1945 his health began to fail and he was transferred to Rathfarnham so that he might more easily receive treatment for the diabetes which had long troubled him. In December 1950 he had a slight stroke and was removed to St. Vincent's Nursing Home. He never recovered and in April 1951 it was decided to move him to Our Lady's Hospice, Harold's Cross. He grew steadily weaker, though suffering no pain and retaining all his usual placid cheerfulness.
On December 9th, 1953, he was anointed by his Rector, Fr, P. Kenny, and died on December 12th at 8.15 p.m.
The mere recital of the various offices held by Fr. Roche during his long life gives an indication of the worth of his work for the Province, There was nothing spectacular in it but it was all most solid and valuable. Wherever Fr. Roche went he did his job conscientiously and successfully and handed things over in good shape to his successor. Throughout the long span of his life be kept on doing the ordinary things. well ; one never expected him to be spectacular, one could not picture him as anything other than reliable.
If any portion of his work is to be singled out for special praise, it would obviously be the influence he exerted over boys and young men. He had almost all the gifts that make a man acceptable to the young. He was--to use a hackneyed but here applicable phrase-& man's man. He was straightforward to the degree of bluntness, ostentatiously courageous, able to preserve his good humour in adversity, incapable of harbouring a grudge, healthily unsentimental yet possessed of a really tender kindness which was all the more attractive because it was manifested in deeds rather than in words. A mother sending her son to Clongowes asked a friend, an old Clongownian, to write to Fr. Roche: and ask him to be kind to the boy. “You needn't worry”, was the reply. “George Roche couldn't help being kind to everyone”. He had, naturally, a particular interest in and special ties with Clongownians since he spent altogether just forty years of his life at Clongowes and had a deep attachment to his Alma Mater, but old Mungret boys and past students of the Hall can testify also to his sincere solicitude for their interests.
I have spoken of the placidity he inherited from his mother. This did not mean that he was incapable of emotion. To some he may have appeared stolid, but his imperturbable manner was not due to lack of feeling. On him, as Rector of Clongowes, there devolved the anxious task of carrying through the erection of the New Building which went on from September 1929 until the summer of 1933. There was a period when serious difficulties arose. I happened to meet Fr. Roche in Dublin at that time, I asked him conventionally how he was and I can recall the revelation he made to me when he replied in his usual almost brusque way, “Worried to death”. He knew the family history of almost every boy who had passed through his hands, and no one was capable of greater sympathy in the inevitable misfortunes that life brings to every family.
Another characteristic I have mentioned was his courage. This was manifested particularly during the time when he was Principal of University Hall, 1916 to 1922. It was a disturbing time in the history of our country and Fr. George had a difficult task since many of the young men under his care were involved in the political movements of the day. One instance will give an idea of the situations that arose and the way in which he dealt with them. The Hall was raided one night by the Auxiliary police. Fr. George's sister, Miss Isabella Roche, the only now surviving member of his family, was living nearby and . from the fact that the lights in the Hall were on all night knew that something untoward was happening. Next day Fr, George came to give her an account of the raid. A tremendous knocking came at the door and when Fr. Roche opened it he found a large force of the Auxiliaries, mostly in a state of inebriation and waving automatic pistols. He asked what they wanted and the leader replied : “We have come to search this house”. “Well”, said Fr. George, as imperturbably as if he were addressing a crowd of unruly Higher Liners, “you needn't make such a row about it”. The words were recorded by himself and those who knew him will recognise them as authentic and realise the courage they manifested.
Fr. Roche was a man of deep, if unostentatious piety. He was completely unworldly, simple and unpretentious. Though he worked untiringly to help his old pupils on in the world, one always felt that his paramount interest was their spiritual welfare, that the first question he wanted an answer to was "were they keeping straight?" His characteristic spirituality is manifested in two little works which he published, Meditations on the Passion, published in two parts by the Irish Messenger Office and now in its eighth edition (eighty-first thousand) and The Divinity of Jesus Christ, published by the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland. They are both solid, straightforward works, largely based on Scripture and breathing that warm, simple, virile devotion to the Person of Our Divine Lord which was the mainspring of the author's devoted life. In him the Province has lost one of its most loved and revered members.

◆ The Clongownian, 1954

Obituary

Father George Redington Roche SJ

Father George Roche was called home to his reward on the evening of December 12th, 1953. He had reached a fine old age at the time of his death, but he will long be missed by his religious colleagues and the countless friends be made through out his long connection with Clongowes,

George Redington Roche, sixth child of Thomas Redington Roche was born at Monivea, Athenry on Nov. 21st, 1869. His early-school years were spent at Oscott and Ushaw but in 1883 he came to Clongowes where he was to spend the next six years.

He entered the noviceship at Tullabeg in 1889 and, after his first religious profession, was sent for his earlier studies to Milltown Park and the house of the Paris province at Jersey. He then returned to Clongowes as Third Line Prefect and after a year was advanced to the management of the Lower Line. The years 1899 1901 were spent at his philosophical studies in Stoneyhurst but he was here for another year as Higher Line Prefect before he began his theological studies in Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1905. On completing his tertianship at Troncbiennes, he returned once more as Higher Line Prefect to Clongowes and filled that post until 1915. One tangible memorial of his term of office is the Higher Line Pavilion, which has given so many years of useful service while it forms a graceful landmark in the grounds of the College.

In 1915, Father Roche left Clongowes to take up the wardenship of University Hall where he remained until his appointment to the Rectorship of Mungret in 1922. He came back to Clongowes again, this time as Rector, in 1927. The tangible memorial of his rectorship is the New Building which was begun in 1929. Succeeded by Father Fergal McGrath as Rector in 1933, Father Roche spent the next four years in Dublin but returned for his last period in Clongowes in 1938. He was now close on the scriptural sepuaginti anni, yet we find him posted as Assistant Procurator, Director of the Junior Sodalities and Editor of the Clongownian. He returned, however, to Rathfarnham, in 1945, as he was suffering from diabetes and needed the treatment which could be got more easily in the city than in a country house. The last three years of his life were spent at The Hospice for the Dying, Harold's Cross.

From the foregoing account, it will be seen that for many years of his active life, Father Roche filled posts of responsibility. It is unnecessary for the present writer to emphasise the fact that he filled success fully the positions of trust given him by the Society. The fathers and mothers of boys who were entrusted to his care, past pupils on the threshold of life's responsibilities and in need of a steadying band and a word of kindness, can all testify to the deep understanding and humanity of this great priest. But his religious colleagues, too, will long cherish the memory of Father Roche, both as Superior and as colleague.

-oOo-

The Late Fr George Redington Roche

An Appreciation

Father George halted on the ground floor gallery at Rathfarnham Castle where he had been walking with no little difficulty. When I asked him if he was getting better his reply was unhesitating “I have no ambitions about getting well - I am ready”. Shortly afterwards, a severe stroke added to his other infirmities and necessitated his removal to the Hospice for the Dying at Harold's Cross. His speech and memory were gone and it seemed as if the end was only a matter of days. Yet, almost two years afterwards he was still alive. During a visit to the Hospice his nurse said to me “We never had a more gentle or obedient patient”, and she might have added “more resigned”. What astounded those who called to see him was the fact that, despite his helplessness and sufferings, never did they hear a complaint uttered by him. Shortly after his arrival at the Hospital, Father George, greatly to every one's surprise, improved considerably in his speech and his memory made a remark able come-back. True, he was looked after with devoted care.

I set down here some few impressions of visits paid him. We were conversing one day for some little time when I said : “Father George, you must be in your present state, the winner of great blessings for the Society's missionary efforts”. With touching simplicity he answered : “I hope so”. On a visit to the Hospice some time later, full of admiration for the extraordinary patience with which he accepted everything, I suggested suddenly, but quietly : “Father George, you, as his Rector, gave Father John Sullivan the final absolution and consolation as he was about to die, so Father John must be at help to you now”.. Caught off his guard, his answer came. unhesitatingly “Indeed he is, and constantly very near me”.

Father Roche looked forward to visits from his friends and at all times was. interested in any news, however trivial, about Clongowes where a long part of his life, from boyhood to Rector, was spent. With Old Clongownians, he had amazing contacts, far and near. He seemed to have a genius. for finding out the weaker type who found it hard to stand up to the world's cruel usage. In his own undemonstrative way he proved a tower of strength to that weaker member who needed advice, encouragement and help.

Father George loved a quiet joke and this, coupled with a delicate sense of humour, made him a pleasant companion. He had a simple directness which marked a natural shyness. Until one came to know Father George well, his shyness tended to embarrass others. Yet, it came to be almost an endearing trait, when one entered into his friendship.

A life-long interest of his was, of course, the Clongowes Rugby and Cricket Teams which he knew intimately all over the years, either as a player himself when a a boy or afterwards as a Line Prefect. He told me that he played as a boy on the first Rugby Fifteen that Clongowes ever turned out. I never tired of the story, which I set down here with the typical questions and answers :

“Did you score!” “No”. “Where did you play?” “Full back”. “Who won the match?” “Nobody”. “Why?” “We never finished it”. “What happened?” “The Match was abandoned”. “Why?” “One of the Opposition Players died on the field”.

Again, when he played Cricket in Galway for the Community when on holidays :

“How did you get on?” “Not too well”. “Why?” “None of us did too well”. “Why?” “Our Opponents fared worse”. “Was it the weather?” “No”. “Why?”! “The crease was wretched”. “Did you enjoy the match?” “Not so much until it was over”. “Why?” “One of the other side said the ground was very poor, which the farmer owner overheard and indignantly objected, saying: ‘It was the best land in Galway’.”

In the evening of his life at the Hospice for the Dying, it was a long way back to his achievement in 1895, when, playing for the Community at Clongowes, he got four consecutive wickets in five balls for no runs.

The beautiful Pavilion ·which he, as Higher Line Prefect, and his great friend, the late Tom Cullen, erected in the Cricket grounds and is so much admired on Union Day, was built on the profits of the shop, or if you prefer so to put it, on the innumerable bars of chocolate which the boys consumed in those days of plenty and cheapness. This will be, for many years to come, please God, a worthy memorial of this great man who loved Clongowes so deeply. I leave to historians of Clongowes in the future, the story of his part in building the new Clongowes. He was Rector when this gigantic undertaking was got under way and before he relinquished office he saw the boys housed in a building that is the justifiable pride of Clongowes today.

He lies in Glasnevin. The life of a great soul, a great gentleman and a kind-hearted confessor has passed peacefully to its close. Full of charity, full of years and full of sympathy for all who came his way, he will be sadly missed. His long weary wait at the Hospice was eased by the skill and constant care of the nursing staff and consoled by and comforted by the devoted attention of his Rector, Father P J Kenny, whose care it was to bring to his old Higher Line Prefect the last comforts and Rites of Holy Church.

Sidney B Minch

Born: 29 March 1931, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1949, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1963, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 23 May 2003, Saint Brigid's Hospice, The Curragh, County Kildare

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

Older Brother of Adrian B Winder - Ent 07/09/1953; LEFT 19/09/1964

by 1985 at Rome, Italy (DIR) Sabbatical Biblical Inst
by 1991 at Frankley Beeches, Birmingham, England (BRI) working
by 1994 at Worcester England (BRI) working

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 117 : Special Issue November 2003

Obituary

Fr Perrcy Winder (1931-2003)

29th March 1931: Born in Dublin
Early education at Muckross Convent, CBS Westland Row and Belvedere College
7th Sept. 1949: Entered the Society at Emo
8th Sept. 1951: First Vows at Emo
1951 - 1954: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1954 - 1957: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1957 - 1960: Mungret College - Regency (Teacher)
1960 - 1964: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1963: Ordained at Milltown Park
1964 - 1965: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1965 - 1990: Clongowes -
1965 - 1976: Teacher; Spiritual Father
1976 - 1984: Teacher; Prefect
1984 - 1985: Sabbatical Year
1985 - 1990: Teacher;Prefect; Spiritual Father
1990 - 1993: Birmingham - Parish Curate.
1993 - 1998: Besford Court, Worcs. - Hospital & School Chaplain; Ministry to elderly, bereaved, mentally ill and housebound people
1998 - 2000: Birmingham - Parish Curate
2000 - 2003: Clongowes - Minister; Guestmaster; Ministered in People's Church
23rd May 2003: Died at St. Brigid's Hospice Unit, Curragh, Co Kildare.

Percy was in remission from prostate cancer for the past seven years, in early January his condition deteriorated. He accepted news of his terminal illness with great faith and kept saying that he wanted to “fly like a butterfly as he was tired of walking like a caterpillar”. His condition deteriorated seriously after Easter, culminating in his transfer to St. Brigid's, where he received 24 hour care for his last two weeks and died peacefully on the evening of Friday 23rd May 2003

Frank Doyle writes:
That Rhetoric 1 (6th Year) class of 1949 in Belvedere was probably unusual even for those days. Out of it came five Jesuits, two Opus Dei priests and a candidate for Clonliffe. The Clonliffe seminarian opted for the married life and the responsibilities of the family business. He was Peter Dunn, younger brother of the later to be famous Fr Joe. Of the Opus Dei priests, one has left us and the other is a nephew of the late Gen. Richard Mulcahy. Of the five Jesuits, four entered together on the same day – Harry Brennan, Frank Doyle, Denis Flannery and Percy Winder. The fifth – Donal Doyle – stayed in Belvedere for the Seventh Year and then, if I am not mistaken, did a year of pre-med before going to Emo. In the course of time, Harry also felt called to be a different kind of father.

I had known Percy, however, all during my secondary school days in Belvedere. I would not say we were very close in those days. Outside of class, our extracurricular interests were somewhat different. Percy, like his older brother Frank before him, was a great supporter of the school's Field Club. I, together with Denis, gravitated to Fr Charlie Scantlebury's Camera Club. I ended up in the school opera; Percy never made any claims to any musical talent.

Percy, Denis, Harry and myself all arrived in Emo on 7th September, 1949. As fellow-novices, Percy and I were thrown more together and got to know each other better. When Percy was made the last Beadle of our second year, I was his Sub beadle. Our term of office coincided with Major Villa, and, with the Novice Master away, there were some (perfectly harmless, I hasten to add) high jinks which Fr Donal was not pleased with when they were brought to his notice on his return. We thought they were great fun - and they were. (If only Denis Flannery were still around to remind us of the details!)

It would have been difficult not to have some fun when Percy was around. His conversation was peppered with a never ending chuckle. I never saw him depressed but that is not to say life always went smoothly. He was afflicted with a particularly distressing migraine, which came on at regular intervals. Then he would have to retire to his room and remain in darkness until it eased off. But he never complained or felt sorry for himself.

After Emo, we were in Rathfarnham together for three years though not doing the same subjects. That was the time when I was probably closest to him. Many is the time we walked together around the “track” in deep conversation. Along one side of the track there was a wire fence. Behind this was a row of evergreen trees and behind them part of the golf course. Percy regularly kept an eye out for golf balls that had been driven into the trees where it was difficult for the player to retrieve them. These Percy picked up and passed on to Fr Dick Ingram, who was a keen golfer, and who, as a result, never had to buy a golf ball.

Both in Rathfarnham and Tullabeg, Percy kept up his interest in nature, particularly in birds and butterflies. There were a lot more butterflies to be seen in those days.) At the end of philosophy, our ways parted and we seldom met during the ensuing years. He went to regency and I went to Hong Kong. We were together for one more year in Milltown for theology, and then I left to continue in the Philippines.

It must be for others to describe Percy's long and fruitful time in Clongowes. During that time he was Lower Line Prefect for 8 years before taking a sabbatical in the Holy Land. After many years as chaplain to the students, he felt it was time for a career change. I understand he had been going to Birmingham for many years to do a summer supply. It was obvious that a more permanent form of service would have been more than welcomed by the bishop, whom he knew well. Obviously, it was a great way to spend his “troisieme age”.

On one of my furloughs back from Asia (in 1990), I went to St. Beuno's in North Wales to do the “3M” course as part of a sabbatical. During the three months, there was a break when we could get away for about a week. Percy invited me to join him in Birmingham, where I was able to see first hand some of the work he was doing. He was mainly acting as chaplain to a number of institutions for the sick and elderly and also helping out in the local parish. In fact, due to the tragic death of the parish priest about that time, Percy was acting pastor. One could see how marvellously he related with the parishioners, especially the ladies, and how much they loved him. It was not surprising; he was an extremely lovable person. I suppose because he gave out so much enthusiastic love himself.

I believe that it was while in Birmingham that he got the first warnings of cancer. This eventually led him to return to his beloved Clongowes and the less strenuous responsibility of the People's Church. Here again his gift of winning friends and influencing people shone out and made a wonderful conclusion to a life of bringing hope and cheer into people's lives. He was also minister to the community.

Perhaps this very inadequate memoir is best concluded by some words from the homily given by his superior, Michael Sheil, at the funeral Mass. Michael had accompanied Percy on his final journey and was with him when he finally slipped away. Percy had written his own eulogy in touching letters he wrote to friends when he learnt that his condition was terminal and Michael quoted from these.

"Strangely”, Percy wrote, “the news didn't upset me at all. There comes a time - especially when God has given us the gift of deep and strong faith – when it is easy and exciting to accept the Good News that our destined life journey from God to God is coming to a close and that soon we'll be home. At Mass every day before Communion we ask God to keep us in peace “as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ”. Why ever should we dread the destiny for which God so lovingly created us? I feel so happy as I look back on such a happy life walking with friends and trying my best to be helpful - happy to be close at last to even greater and more unimaginable love. God is Love - and I value His embrace. As journey's end appears over the horizon, I'm happy and excited to be going home. I've no fears and no regrets - just hoping to have the strength, to using my remaining time, sharing my happiness with those I love. For the moment, I'm content to take and enjoy each day as it comes.

God does not make mistakes – nor does He make junk. We are NOT mistakes - God is moulding us into His masterpiece, delighting in His creation. So, no tears for me please -- only a song of thanksgiving that at last God is putting the final touches to that masterpiece. As St Paul says: 'We are God's work of art!

If you choose to pray for me, ask that I may have a reasonably comfortable dying and that I won't be too much of a burden. Of course, I've no more idea than you as to what heavenly life might be like. I'm content to wait and see. For me, what St Paul says is good enough: “What eye has not seen nor ear heard - these are the things that God has prepared for those who love Him”. So this is not a final Good-bye - far from it!”

Au revoir, Percy. It is not easy to say Good-bye to Percy. Two days ago someone asked me for some information and I was about to say: Well, I'll ask Percy about that! He was so much part of our lives for the past three years – he was the Homemaker of the Community -- that my reflexes had not yet attuned to the fact that he was no longer of this world. His metaphor of the caterpillar and the butterfly is well known by now - and I think that he would approve of St Paul's image that “when the tent that we live in on earth is folded up, there is a house built by God for us .... in the heavens”.

When we received Percy's Remains back home here in Clongowes on Saturday evening, I shared with you the – still fresh - memory of one of the very privileged moments of my life, as I sat at his bedside the previous evening at exactly 18.18. I was the intimate witness of two realities – one, the loss of a dear Companion in the Lord and the other, the fulfilment of Percy's dream-in-faith that God would be faithful to His promise that where I am, you also may be.

I summed up the past 5 months as Percy's living the dream - when his failing health seemed only to serve to strengthen his faith. On Friday evening as I sat beside his sick, frail, stricken and diseased body, I could only reflect on and marvel at the spirit enclosed therein, as he sank slowly and without resistance towards the destiny of us all. No struggle, no stress, simply low regular breathing......, until I had occasionally to check to ensure that he was still alive - before that unforgettable moment when I realized that, without a sound, just like his butterfly taking off, his spirit slipped away from the prison of corruptible mortality to enter into the glory of an everlasting home not made by human hands, in the heavens.

It is not easy to try to do justice to the person Percy was in the few short lines of a homily. But I am fortunate in having in my possession two letters of his from some months ago - when he was informed that his illness was terminal – letters in which he wrote to his friends of how he felt. This, surely, is Percy's act of faith - his legacy as he speaks to us this morning - the proclamation to all the world that God is faithful and near to him. So this is not a final Good-bye - far from it! For Percy's heart was not troubled – for he believed in Jesus' promise: I am going to prepare a place for you -- and I shall return to take you with Me so that where I am you may be too.....

Percy was a very active, apostolic Jesuit and priest, who, while in good health, brought God's love into the lives of many. And in the lengthening twilight of his terminal illness, God continued to use him to bring about yet another miracle of His love, as He drew from those who looked after him in the Hospice service a quite extraordinary concern for someone in need of so much medical care. Their lives have been graced by the generosity of their giving - and on behalf of us all I want to say how much their loving care for him meant to us, to whom Percy meant so much himself.

How we would have liked him to be cured and remain on with us. We made a novena in honour of Fr John Sullivan. Percy was too ill to start it off for us – but he came down on the last morning to thank us for our efforts on his behalf. At that time he said he was willing to hang around for a while longer (If it will give Fr John a leg-up!, he said) - but he had just received good news and would be quite happy to go. Perhaps to-day, he is in a better position to give the most distinguished of his predecessors, as Spiritual Father and Minister of the People's Church, that leg-up towards canonization!

Our thanks to Percy, too, for the legacy of his life of love – and of his written testament of faith. We thank God for His gifts to him - and for the gift of him to us. In his own words - This is not a final Good-bye ....... far from it. So often in life we say Good-bye ........... it comes from the ancient wish or prayer: May God be with you [Dominus vobiscum) ........... and to-day we say it to Percy at this, his last Mass.

And so we pray:
May Christ enfold you in His love - and bring you to eternal life. May God and Mary be with you. We will pray for you, Percy - may you also pray for us.

◆ The Clongownian, 2003

Obituary

Father Percy Winder SJ

Fr Percy Winder, who died at St Brigid's Hospice Unit, Curragh, Co Kildare on 23rd May 2003, was in remission from prostate cancer for the past seven years. In early January his condition deteriorated. He accepted the news of his terminal illness with great faith and kept saying that he wanted to “fly like a butterfly as he was tired of walking like a caterpillar”. His condition deteriorated seriously after Easter, culminating in his transfer to St Brigid's, where he died.

The Rhetoric class of 1949 in Belvedere was probably unusual even for those days. Out of it came five Jesuits, two Opus Dei priests and a candidate for Clonliffe. Of the five Jesuits, four entered together on the same day - Harry Brennan, Frank Doyle, Denis Flannery and Percy Winder. The fifth, Donal Doyle stayed in Belvedere for the Seventh Year before going to Emo. Percy, Denis, Harry and myself all arrived in Emo on 7th September 1949. As fellow-novices, Percy and I were thrown more together and got to know each other better. When Percy was made the last Beadle of our second year, I was his Sub-beadle. Our term of office coincided with Major Villa, and, with the Novice Master away, there were some high jinks, which Fr Donal was not pleased with when they were brought to his notice on his return.

It would have been difficult not to have some fun when Percy was around. His conversation was peppered with a never-ending chuckle. I never saw him depressed but that is not to say life always went smoothly. He was afflicted with a particularly distressing migraine, which came on at regular intervals. Then he would have to retire to his room and remain in darkness until it eased off. But he never complained or felt sorry for himself.

After Emo, we were in Rathfarnham together for three years though not doing the same subjects, That was the time when I was probably closest to him. Many is the time we walked together around the track in deep conversation. Along one side of the track there was a wire fence. Behind this was a row of evergreen trees and behind them part of the golf course. Percy regularly kept an eye out for golf balls that had been driven into the trees where it was difficult for the player to retrieve them. These Percy picked up and passed on to Fr Dick Ingram, who was a keen golfer, and who, as a result, never had to buy a golf ball.

Both in Rathfarnham and Tullabeg, Percy kept up his interest in nature, particularly in birds and butterflies. (There were a lot more butterflies to be seen in those days.) At the end of philosophy, our ways patted and we seldom met during the ensuing years. He went to regency and I went to Hong Kong. We were together for one more year in Milltown for theology, and then I left to continue in the Philippines. Percy spent a long and fruitful time in Clongowes during which time he was Lower Line Prefect for eight years before taking a sabbatical in The Holy Land.

After many years as chaplain to the students, he felt it was time for a career change. He had been going to Birmingham for many years to do a summer supply. It was obvious that the bishop, whom he knew well, would have more than welcomed a more permanent form of service. It was a great way to spend his “troisieme age”. On one of my furloughs back from Asia (in 1990), I went to St. Beuno's in North Wales to do the '3M' course as part of a sabbatical. During the three months, there was a break when we could get away for about a week. Percy invited me to join him in Birmingham, where I was able to see first hand some of the work he was doing. He was mainly acting as chaplain to a number of institutions for the sick and elderly and also helping out in the local parish. In fact, due to the tragic death of the parish priest about that time, Percy was acting pastor. One could see how marvelously he related with the parishioners, especially the ladies, and how much they loved him. It was not surprising; he was an extremely lovable person. I suppose because he gave out so much enthusiastic love himself.

It seems that it was while in Birmingham he got the first warnings of cancer. This eventually led him to return to his beloved Clongowes and the less strenuous responsibility of the People's Church. Here again his gift of winning friends and influencing people shone out and made a wonderful conclusion to a life of bringing hope and cheer into people's lives. He was also minister to the community.

Born: 09 April 1932, Shanghai, China
Entered: 30 April 1955, Manila, Philippines (Neo-Ebiracensis Province for HIB)
Ordained 15 June 1967, Woodstock, Maryland, USA
Final Vows: 02 February 1973
Died: 06 June 1998, Murray-Weigel Hall, New York, NY, USA - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed HIB to HK: 03 December 1966

by 1962 at St Gabriel’s Birmingham (ANG) studying
by 1966 at Woodstock MD, USA (MAR) studying