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: 05 October 1900, Slaney Street, Wexford
Entered: 07 October 1918, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1934, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 15 August 1937
Died: 15 May 1964, Talbot Lodge, Kinsealy, Dublin

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

by 1929 in Australia - Regency

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
1927-1929 Sent to Australia, being assigned to St Ignatius College, Riverview as a teacher and Prefect of the Chapel.
1929-1931 Xavier College, Burke Hall as Prefect of Discipline and assistant Master of Ceremonies.
1931-1935 Returned to Milltown Park for Theology
1935-1936 Tertianship at St Beuno’s, Wales
1936-1938 He returned to Australia and St Aloysius College, Milsons Point as Minister and Director of the Crusaders of the Blessed Sacrament. He also edited the “Aloysian”.
1939-1946 He was appointed to Burke Hall teaching and Prefect of Discipline.
1947 Back in Ireland and spent the rest of his life as assistant Director of the “Ricci Mission unit”, helping with the periodical “Irish Jesuit Missions”.

He was a man noted for his wit and acting ability, but did not seem happy or successful as a classroom teacher.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 22nd Year No 2 1947
Clongowes :
Fr. W. Allen, of the Viceprovince of Australia, arrived in Dublin on 16th March, and is now teaching at Clongowes.
Irish Province News 39th Year No 4 1964
Obituary :
Fr William Allen SJ (1900-1964)

Fr. Allen was born in Slaney Street, Wexford, on 5th October 1900. He went to school first at the Mercy Convent, and later, when the family moved to Dublin, to the Christian Brothers School, Synge Street.
It was at a mission given by Fr. Tom Murphy, S.J. in St. Kevin's, Harrington Street, that Fr. Allen decided to become a Jesuit. Fr. Murphy arranged for him to see Fr. Michael Browne, of whom he wrote long after: “I was at once impressed and captivated by the sanctity of the priest”.
Fr. Allen entered in Tullabeg on 7th October 1918. After the noviceship he spent a year in the Juniorate before going to Rathfarnham and U.C.D., where he took his B.A. degree in 1924. For the next three years he studied philosophy in Milltown Park. In 1927 he went to Australia for his teaching, first in Riverview, then in Burke Hall, the preparatory school for Xavier, Melbourne.
In 1931 he returned to Milltown for theology, and was ordained on 31st July 1934. In 1935 he went to St. Beuno's for his tertianship, and in 1936 returned to Australia, teaching at St. Aloysius College, Sydney. In January 1937 he became Minister there, teaching, and in charge of the Crusaders and the Holy Angels Sodality. After some years he was changed to Burke Hall, prefecting and teaching, and in charge of the Apostleship of Prayer.
Fr. Allen returned to Ireland at Easter 1947, and went to Clongowes where during the summer he worked in the people's church. His Sunday sermons were appreciated by the people. However, already he was experiencing the defective hearing and consequent anxiety about Confessions, which were to restrict his work in the coming years. On the Status he was changed to Tullabeg, engaged in the work of the Ricci Mission Unit, as the Stamp Bureau was then called. He remained at this post till the end of his life, nearly seventeen years later. His heart was in Tullabeg, and although he greatly missed the philosophers when they went abroad in 1962, he was grateful to have been left in the place he liked best.
Shortly before Easter of this year he became unwell. An operation was found necessary, and was successfully undergone early in April. Throughout, he was in good spirits, “won all our hearts”, as the surgeon put it. He was sincerely appreciative of the kindness shown him during his illness by Fr. Rector, the doctors, nurses, and by Ours who visited him and supported him by their prayers. A good recovery followed. While waiting for a room in the convalescent home at Talbot Lodge, he spent some days in Milltown Park which he greatly enjoyed. He then went to Talbot Lodge, where every day he was up and about, and able to go out. But on Friday, 15th May, he collapsed and died.
Fr. Allen came of a family of whom two became priests - an Oblate Father, and himself a Jesuit - three became Christian Brothers, and three sisters became nuns in the Convent of the Incarnate Word, Texas.
He was a man of deep faith and simple piety. As a small boy, he used to serve Mass in the Franciscan Friary in Wexford. All his life he remained devoted to the service of the altar, training acolytes in the colleges, and later, when the scholastics left Tullabeg, instructing the small boys from around to serve in the people's church. It was with such younger boys that his work had mostly brought him into touch. His kindly ways, his jokes, won them to him, though their collective exuberance sometimes eluded his control.
The boys valued his kindliness. Some of them, some of their parents, kept in touch with him since his earliest days in Australia. Through the Advocate, coming each week from friends in Melbourne, through the college magazines carefully preserved in his room, through the catalogues and the Australian Province News, he followed with interest the careers of boys he had known, and the work of our Fathers in Australia.
In community life, he was always kindly, and, when in good spirits, cheerful even to infectious hilarity over stories, jokes, verses, sometimes of a nursery rhyme variety.
He preserved to the end and mellowed in that simple piety of childhood, a piety reflected in an exact observance of rule. In times of depression in these latter years, he sometimes, though always without a trace of bitterness, contrasted the little he seemed to himself to have achieved in life, with the accomplishments of others busy in active apostolate. He was consoled by the assurance that a hidden, prayerful life like his own, could do as much for God and souls as any absorbing apostolate.
He had learned well the lessons of his noviceship in Tullabeg, particularly about fidelity to the spiritual duties of rule. His day began with morning oblation and closed with visit after night examen.
In the people's church, which he loved so well and where he usually: said Mass, he celebrated with a prayerful reverence by which he will be best remembered.

Born: 12 September 1896, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 29 September 1913, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1928, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1933, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 13 July 1985, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway

by 1924 in Australia - Regency
by 1932 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Edward Andrews came to Australia at the end of his philosophy studies in 1922 and was sent to Riverview. From 1923-25 he was third division prefect, taught in the classroom and assisted with cadets, He seemed to be a born teacher and he enjoyed his time in Sydney.
His subsequent work in Ireland included being prefect of studies in The Crescent and Galway, as well as being rector at The Crescent, finally teaching for 42 years in schools. Andrews was an outstanding Irish scholar, and a fine musician.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 60th Year No 4 1985

Obituary

Fr Edward Joseph Andrews (1896-1913-1985)

Born on 12th September 1896. 29th September 1913: entered SJ. 1913-35 Tullabeg. noviciate. 1915-19 Rathfarnham: 1915-16 home juniorate, 1916-19 studying at UCD. 1919-22 Milltown, philosophy. 1922-25 Australia, regency at Riverview, Sydney. 1925-29 Milltown, theology. 1929-31 Galway, teaching 1931-32 St Beuno's, tertianship.
1932-40 Crescent, prefect of studies. 1940-42 Rathfarnham, minister of juniors. 1942-56 Galway, prefect of studies. 1956-62 Crescent, rector. 1962-85 Galway: teaching till 1972 doc. an. 42); house confessor; 1963-98 spiritual father to community; 1971-85 church and parish confessor.

Edward Joseph Andrews was born in Dublin on 12th September 1896. He was educated at Belvedere and entered the noviciate at Tullabeg on 19th September 1913. During his juniorate in Rathfarnham he took his degree in modern languages, and then went on to philosophy in Milltown. His first experience of college work was in Australia, at Riverview college, where for three years he was Third Prefect. He also taught and was in charge of the junior cadets. He returned to Ireland for theology and was ordained at Milltown Park in 1927.
After tertianship at St Beuno's Fr Eddie went to the Crescent as prefect of studies. He is recalled as having been very active, dedicated and successful. The number of pupils in the school had gone down considerably in previous years: he was responsible for building it up noticeably, especially by giving great attention to the junior classes. He established friendly relations with the parents, and enlisted their aid in securing that sufficient time was given to homework.
In 1940 Fr Eddie was appointed Minister of Juniors, but after two years was transferred to Galway as prefect of studies, which position he was to hold for the next fourteen years. This was probably the happiest and most successful period of his life. His eight years at the Crescent had given him valuable experience, and he was still young enough to undertake his new assignment with enthusiasm. The level of the Irish language was at its highest during these years, largely due to his efforts, and, as previously in the Crescent, he was on intimate terms with both the boys and their parents.
In 1956 he was appointed Rector of the Crescent. He held this position for six years with considerable success, but one gathers that the expectations aroused by his previous success as prefect of studies were not completely fulfilled. It was thought that there were changes in the air which he did not understand, and that his mentality was too greatly influenced by his long sojourn in Galway. At this time also his health began to deteriorate, arthritis making itself clearly shown.
In 1962 Fr Eddie returned to Galway, and was destined to give service to school and church for over twenty more years. For the first few years he did some teaching, but later devoted himself to work in the church, which he was able to continue, though on an ever-diminishing scale, to the end of his life. He had in this period several heart attacks, and his arthritis become more and more crippling. During the last year or so he became almost a complete invalid, and at this time was the recipient of most kind care from Br William McGoldrick and Sr Mary of the Little Sisters of the Assumption.
Towards the end of this year there was a noted deterioration in his condition. On 1st July (a Friday) he had been feeling particularly unwell, and decided not to offer Mass. Later in the evening he felt better and offered Mass at 8 pm, after which Br McGoldrick assisted him to bed. About 1.30 am he rang the emergency bell for assistance, and it was seen that he was near the end. He received the sacrament of the sick, and the doctor was immediately summoned but came only in time to certify death.
Looking back over the long and full life of Fr Eddie Andrews, one sees three outstanding points. Firstly, there was his love of the Irish language. He devoted much time to its study, and made frequent visits to the Gaeltacht, often accompanied by groups of his pupils, to whom he communicated his own genuine enthusiasm. Then there was his great musical talent. He was a good pianist and cellist, had a fine tenor voice, and was the leader of the Milltown choir during philosophy and theology. He encouraged music amongst his pupils, and, during his long period as prefect of studies in Galway, staged, in collaboration with Fr Kieran Ward, a whole series of musical plays. Lastly, one recalls with affection his cheerful and courageous disposition, which remained unchanged during his later years when ill-health made life so difficult for him.
Suaimhneas Dé dá anam.

Born: 1550, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 25 May 1581, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: c. 1577 Louvain, Belgium, - before Entry
Died: 19 February 1620, Irish College, Santiago de Compostela, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Uncle of James Butler - RIP 1639

2 yrs Theology in Rome, concentrating on Moral;
In the Roman College 1584; at Pont-à-Mousson as Minister and student confessor, Campaniae Province (CAMP) 1586-7- moved to Nancy 1587 due to danger of war;
First Rector of Salamanca;
famous Missioner in Ireland during “Tyrone war”;
Bruxelles et Castrensis Mission in 1590;
at Salamanca in 1603;
At Bilbao - Castellanae Province (CAST) - in 1614 - Prefect of Irish Mission;
Irish College Salamanca in 1619 and then died in Santiago 15 February 1620.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
First Rector of Salamanca ad great promoter of education; A Most celebrated man whose name was very dear to Irishmen, and with whom he possessed unbounded influence.
He was a famous Missioner in Ireland during the War of Tyrone
In 1617 he was in Castellanae Province (CAST).
Succeeded Fr Thomas White as rector of Salamanca 1592-1605
His name also appears incidentally in the State Papers, Public Record Office, London, 1592, 1594.
He is highly eulogised in a report of Irish Affairs addressed by Capt Hugh Mostian to Louis Mansoni, the Papal Nuncio for Ireland, towards the latter end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. (Oliver’s “Collectanea” from Stonyhurst MSS. Oliver also refers to several of Archer’s letters as still extant)
1606 Archer was constituted the first Prefect of the Irish Mission in the National College, Rome (Irish Ecclesiastical Record April 1872, July 1874 and a biography September 1874)

Note from Bl Dominic Collins Entry
After First Vows he was sent to Ireland as a companion to James Archer, who was a Chaplain to the Spanish invading force sent by Philip III of Spain. He was taken prisoner and rejected the overtures to reject his faith he was hanged (at Cork or Youghal).

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He had studied at Louvain and was Ordained some time before March 1577. Before he entered the Society he was already a Master of Arts. When he returned to Ireland in 1577, he remained for at least he next eighteen months. He was at Kilmallock, 21 August 1578, when he assisted the Franciscan, Father Conrad Rourke, the eve of his death “in odium fidei”
After First Vows, Archer was deputed to revise his studies at the Roman College and Pont-à-Mousson. At the latter place he served also as Minister of the community and the student-boarders. It would seem that his Superiors were grooming him for professorial duties - However...
1590 By May he was serving as a military chaplain at Brussels
1592 He was sent to Spain to take charge of the newly founded Irish College, Salamanaca.
1596 He returned to Ireland to raise funds there for Salamanca College but his contacts with the Irish chieftains won for him the repute of a political intriguer and the hatred of the administration at Dublin. There can be no doubt that his sympathies lay with the Old Irish whose cause he saw was bound up with the survival of the Catholic Church in the country. He seems to have met Hugh O'Neill about the time of the battle of the Yellow Ford and was later at the camp of the Earl of Desmond. The MacCarthy Mor stated that Archer, by letter, solicited him to rise in rebellion.
1600-1602 He left Ireland for Rome, 20 July, but returned with the fleet of Juan Del Aguila, 23 September 1601 and remained until July 1602. Before his return to Spain he reported to the General on the state of Ireland.
1602-1612 Returned to Spain he held various posts in the Irish College, Salamanca, but seems also to have spent much time questing for the support of the Irish students. For a time he was stationed at Bilbao to win the support of new benefactors of the Irish colleges of the Peninsula.
His later years were spent at Santiago where he died, 19 February 1620

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Archer, James
by C. J. Woods

Archer, James (1550–1620), Jesuit priest and administrator, was born at Kilkenny and belonged, it can be deduced, to a patrician family prominent in that city. To prepare for an ecclesiastical career he went (c.1564) to the Spanish Netherlands, to Louvain, a hotbed of the new militant catholic theology and a strong influence on attempts at extending the counter-reformation to England. On his return to Ireland (1577) he was considered by the English authorities there to be a danger to the Elizabethan church settlement. Undoubtedly he had some sympathy with principals of the Desmond rebellion.

In 1581 Archer entered the Society of Jesus in Rome, continuing his studies there before moving (1585) to Pont-à-Mousson in the duchy of Lorraine, where there was a small seminary for Irish and Scottish students. Showing talent mainly as a confessor and administrator, he was sent (1587) to minister to the 1,200 Irish, English, and Scottish soldiers in the so-called Irish regiment, whom their commander, Sir William Stanley (qv), had persuaded to forsake the English service for the Spanish. The activities of Stanley and his entourage were an aggravating circumstance in the Spanish threat to Elizabeth I's England. Archer was said to have been involved in an alleged plot to murder the queen.

At the close of 1592 he went to Spain. After visiting the royal court at Madrid, he settled in Salamanca, the seat of Spain's foremost university, and took over the administration of the Irish college being founded there. In 1596 he returned to Ireland to seek money for the college and to explore the possibility of re-establishing a Jesuit mission. He was obliged to lie low in the countryside and eventually to join Hugh O'Neill (qv), whose rebellion had been raging since 1593. On all sides he acquired a legendary reputation. Summoned to Rome (1600) to give an account of his mission, he acted also as an envoy of O'Neill. In 1601 he was back in Spain, involved in planning the Spanish military expedition to Ireland as well as settling differences among the Irish at Salamanca. Archer was a member of the force numbering 4,432 men that headed for Kinsale in September. For the defeat of the expedition he blamed the commander, Juan del Águila (qv). Archer left Ireland for Spain in July 1602; his views about the failure of the enterprise were heeded at first, but when Águila was exonerated and peace was made with England (1603) his career as a negotiator for Spanish aid for Irish rebels was over. Although his Jesuit superior would not allow him to return to Ireland, rumours abounded there of his presence.

The rest of his life was given, as ‘prefect of the mission’, to the Irish seminaries in the Iberian peninsula. Once again Archer had to deal with differences among the Irish catholics: the Old English were accused by the Old Irish of unfairness towards them, and the Jesuits were accused by other clerics of self-preferment. Archer's work in Spain bore fruit in 1610 when the Spanish authorities built a new college for the Irish in Salamanca, the Colegio de los Nobles Irlandeses, to which the king gave his support. Archer spent his last years at Santiago de Compostela. It was at the Irish college there that he died on 15 February 1620.

Although he was a man of no more than moderate ability and an indifferent scholar, Archer had qualities that served to make him an important figure in the Irish counter-reformation: he was phlegmatic and a good administrator; he had some influence at the Spanish court and, thanks to his experience in Ireland in the 1590s, the confidence of both of the rival groups of Irish Catholics – Old English and Old Irish. Only a few letters of James Archer survive, and there is no known portrait or even a verbal description.

Thomas J. Morrissey, James Archer of Kilkenny, an Elizabethan Jesuit (1979)

Note from Bl Dominic Collins Entry
In February 1601 he made his first religious profession and seven months later was appointed by his superiors to join the Irish mission, as Fr James Archer (qv) had specifically asked for him, perhaps due to his previous military experience and also his Spanish contacts. Archer had been described by Sir George Carew (qv), president of Munster, as ‘a chief stirrer of the coals of war’ (Morrissey, Studies, 318) and was being constantly sought out by government agents. Collins's association with him was to prove dangerous. He sailed with the Spanish expedition to Ireland on 3 September 1601, one of the commanders being Don Juan del Aguila, to whom Collins had surrendered Lapena in 1598. The flotilla with which he travelled arrived late at Castlehaven due to bad weather. After the defeat of the Irish and Spanish forces at Kinsale, Collins finally met Archer in February 1602 at the castle of Gortnacloghy, near Castlehaven

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/jesuitica-jumping-jesuits/

JESUITICA: Jumping Jesuits

Travellers in the Beara Peninsula will remember the Priest’s Leap, a mountain cliff in the townland of Cummeenshrule, where (around 1600 AD) a priest on horseback escaped from pursuing soldiers by a miraculous leap, which landed him on a rock near Bantry. Was the lepper a Jesuit? One tradition claims him as James Archer SJ; another as Blessed (Brother) Dominic Collins. In view of some dating difficulties, one can only say: pie creditur – a common phrase in Latin hagiographies, meaning “It is piously believed…”!

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1I 1962

FATHER JAMES ARCHER SJ 1550-1625
Few men played a greater part than Father James Archer in the tremendous effort to smash the growing power of England in Ireland that marked the closing years. of the sixteenth century. Arriving in Ireland in 1596, he found the country already in the throes of war. The Tudors. had by this time realised that England could not be safe unless Ireland were subjugated. By the end of the sixteenth century, England had shaken off the last shackles of medieval restraints and had emerged as one or the strongest powers in Europe, The threats of Spain and the Pope had been warded off, and England was looked upon as the leader and head of Protestant Europe. It was at this time that she turned her face in real earnest towards Ireland.

The history of the Reformation in Ireland during the sixteenth century can be told briefly. The reform movements of Henry VIII and Edward, his son, were a complete failure. Neither of these kings had sufficient political control outside the Pale to enforce their authority, and even within the boundaries of the Pale the movement made little progress. During the reign of Mary the Catholic Church again flourished, though the confiscated monasteries were not restored. In 1558 Elizabeth succeeded to the throne of England,. Prior to her succession, she had never shown any remarkable zeal for religion. As queen, what she desired pre-eminently was peace and harmony. For the first years of her reign, her position in England was too insecure to permit her to embark on any intensive persecution of the Catholics, The clergy, however, were subject to a persecution that varied all through her reign; it was intensified or slackened according to the political circumstances of the moment. Up to 1578 religion did not play a vital part in opposing the anglicisation of Ireland. Gradually from that time on, it became more and more important, until finally in the reign of James I the Catholics, both Irish and Anglo-Irish, clung to their faith as the only part of the heritage that had been left. So too it was religion that at the beginning of the next century was to unite the two races, by inciting them both to oppose the alien creed. Later it was on the rock of her Faith, preserved and enlivened at this time, that the nationality of Ireland was founded.

Perhaps before we examine the work of Fr Archer, a word on the state of religion in Ireland during the sixteenth century may not be out of place. It is certain that it was not a very vital force in the lives of many of the people. They were Catholics More by custom than by conviction. Here is one account left by Dr Tanner, who had to leave the Society of Jesus owing to ill-health and who was later appointed Bishop of Cork: “He (Dr Tanner) is assured by grave men that during all this time not a hundred Irishmen in all Ireland have been infected with heresy, though not a few ... attend the profane rites of the heretics, and the demoralisation of the people is such that a pious Catholic is hardly to be found; and no wonder since the clergy are the most depraved or all. Moreover, there is so little instruction to be had in the Christian Faith that few can so much as repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Articles of the Faith, or the commandments, and still fewer understand them. Sermons are so uncommon that there are many that have never so much as heard one. The Sacraments are rarely administered. In fine so gross is the ignorance of the people that there are many who, passing all their lives in the grossest sin, have grown accustomed thereto”.

In general we may conclude that religion was dormant in Ireland at the end of the sixteenth century. The people indeed had the Faith and seemed eager for instructions and there is no evidence of anti clericalism as in England. On the contrary, the priests were generally loved and would always find a safe shelter among the people, who had seen so many of them give up their lives for the Faith. But unfortunately, many of the priests were not active. The morals of the people were often depraved. There was little scope for Catholic education. The monasteries for the most part had been dissolved. The external organisation of the Church was shattered, and the wars had increased the laxity and poverty of the people. But the light of Faith had been kept glowing by the zealous labours of the Friars and the heroic priests and bishops who had endured persecution and death to shield, their flocks. This then was the state of the country, political and religious, when in 1597 Fr James Archer landed in Waterford to inaugurate what was to become the first permanent mission of the Society of Jesus in Ireland.

James Archer was born in Kilkenny in 1550. He attended the school of the famous Dr Peter White or that town, where the young Archer seems to have been a distinguished scholar. Very little is known of his career for the next fifteen years. In 1577 he was at Louvain, but in the following year he was back again in Ireland. On the 25 May 1581 he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome, and the next we hear of him is that in 1592 he was at Pont-à-Mousson with Fathers Richard Fleming, Richard de la Field and Christopher Hollywood, all Irish Jesuits. In the same year he was sent to Spain to collaborate with other Irish Jesuits in the foundation of the famous Irish college at Salamanca, which was instituted for the training of secular priests for the home mission. He remained there until 1596, when he was sent back to Ireland with Fr Henry Fitzsimon to re-open the Jesuit mission there which had lapsed for ten years.

Almost immediately after his arrival in Ireland, Fr Archer went northward to meet Hugh O'Neill, who was already in rebellion against Elizabeth. Archer looked upon the '”Nine Years War” as a crusade against the heretic queen. Therefore, during the few years that he was in Ireland, he strove to the utmost of his powers to unite the Irish under the leadership of Tyrone and to induce the Spaniards to send aid, His influence with the Irish chief's during these years was of paramount importance. He was looked upon by the English as one of their most dangerous enemies, and they laid several traps to ensnare him. If we were to rely on official contemporary documents alone, we should imagine that Archer was a traitorous intriguer and an enemy to all stability and good government. From other sources we can see that he was, first and foremost, a zealous missionary for the Faith.

In his first letter to his General in Rome, written on 10 August 1598, he gives an account of the precarious life he was leading even at this early stage. “The Government”, he says “hates me very much, hunts me very often in frequent raids, and has set a price on my head. This forces me to live in the woods and in hiding-places. I cannot even return to Spain, as merchants are afraid to receive me into their vessels, for they know well that there are spies in every port on the look-out for me”. Then he goes on to describe his missionary work: “I have already heard many thousand confessions, and have instructed an uncultivated and rude people. I brought back some to the Church and reconciled a noble person and his wife, and thus put a stop to dangerous dissentions which existed among members of both families who were leading men in the land, I administered the Sacraments in the camp, and it is marvellous to see the crowds that cone from the surrounding districts to hear Mass and go to Confession”.

In the beginning of the year 1598, the informer William Paule notified Lord Justice Loftus of the activities of Archer. He said that Jesuit lurked sometimes in Munster with Lord Roche and sometimes in Tipperary with Lord Mountgarrett. Paule urged Loftus to induce these Lords to betray Archer. Alternatively he suggested that the Protestant Bishop of Kilkenny should be ordered to capture him when he visited his friends in that town. Warning Loftus that Archer was wary, Paule informed him that the priest knew that his enemies were searching for him. Paule further suggested that he should have no scruple in killing Archer if he resisted arrest. Even at this early date, Fr Archer had attained to a position of outstanding influence with the Irish chieftains. He had already been universally accepted by them and an able adviser and true friend and had won the esteem and affection of the Irish people. He was equally hated and feared by their enemies.

In October 1598, Archer was mentioned in a despatch as “the chief stirrer of these coals (i.e., conspiracies) and promises to many the coming of forces from Spain”. He certainly did not spare himself in his effort to unite the Irish chiefs in their struggle against England, the common foe. In November 1598, he succeeded in inducing the Baron of Cahir to join the rebellion against Elizabeth. He hoped that by Easter 1599 “we, and such as be of our Catholic confederacy, shall be masters of all the cities, towns and forts in Ireland”. His reasons for the war throw a flood of light on his attitude to politics, and afford a convincing refutation of those who doubted his motives. They were first to restore the Catholic Church to its former position in Ireland; second, to repair the injuries done by the English to the Catholic nobility and gentry of Ireland; and finally to place a Catholic Prince on the throne of Ireland. Did Archer hope to set up Hugh O'Neill as High King of all Ireland or did he intend to make Ireland a vassal state of Spain? We do not know. The concepts of nationality, and a national state were only being moulded in the minds of men at this very time. It is even doubtful whether men like James Fitzmaurice or even Hugh O'Neill himself conceived it. Nationality in Ireland takes its origin from the religious persecutions of the seventeenth century; yet undoubtedly there existed in the sixteenth century some tendency towards local patriotism, especially as opposed to English tyranny. It is difficult to state definitely the motives and desires that agitated the mind of Archer during these years. One thing is certain that he considered freedom from English rule as essential to the spiritual welfare of Ireland.

In December 1598, Archer and his constant companion Bishop Creagh were accused of inciting the whole province of Munster to rebel. So great was his influence that his name had already come to the notice of Elizabeth, who charged him with “raising her subjects to rebellion”. Soon afterwards Elizabeth was again informed that the Irish priests, especially Archer “the Pope's Legate”, had assured the lords and chieftains who supported the queen or who remained neutral that after the war they would receive no better treatment from the English than the rebels. In this way they hoped to alienate her subjects from their allegiance. Rewards were offered for the capture of Archer, dead or alive. O'Neill's crushing victory at the Yellow Ford on the 15 August 1598 had shaken the loyalty of many supporters of the English. Archer's influence was more pernicious than ever. He was constantly on the move, visiting now one chieftain, now another. Several attempts were made to capture him, but all miscarried. Soon after his arrival in Ireland he had been arrested. He had managed to escape however and had determined never again to fall into the hands of his enemies. He can easily imagine the precarious position in which he was placed by the constant watch of spies, especially in areas where the Irish chieftains were not openly hostile to the Crown. But, through the goodwill and ever-watchful care of the Irish people, he escaped unscathed - though often at the last moment. His capture was looked upon by the Government as vitally important, his life being deemed of greater value to the Irish than those of the chieftains themselves. In 1600, in a report of Captain Hugh Mostian who had been won over by Archer from the English side, we read that “Archer by his sole authority as a private religious brought more comfort to the Irish than a great force of soldiers could do, and that the voice of the people gave him the title of Legate, At his nod the hearts of men are united and held together not only in the territory of Berehaven and all Munster, but in the greater part of the Kingdom ...”

In 1600 occurred a famous incident - the capture of the Earl of Ormonde by Owny O'More. The circumstances connected with the plot are fully described in the Calendar of Carew MSS. and elsewhere. Fr Archer happened to be staying with O'More when the latter captured Ormonde. There is no evidence to prove the charge that he was the instigator of the act. Naturally enough he was blamed by the English for having contrived the treachery and for refusing to liberate the Earl; although, according to them, some other Jesuits desired his release. He was also described as Ormande's “bed-fellow” and was said to have tried to convert him, which seems to be true. Several years later Ormonde was converted by two Irish Jesuits, Frs O'Kearney and Wale.

Early in 1600 Archer was summoned to Rome to give an account of the Irish Jesuit mission. It is strange that he should have been called away at such a critical juncture in the history of Ireland. Possibly the General in Rome did not fully realise what was at stake at the moment, or perhaps he night have thought that the final victory had already been won by the Irish. In a letter to the General, written by the Superior of the Mission, Fr Richard de la Field, an extremely cautious and conservative man, we read of Archer: “He has been a source of light and help in our work here. He has always lived with these Irish lords who are endeavouring to promote the interests of religion, and in consequence he is the object of an intense hatred of the Queen's officials and of the army. His presence here at the same time is very necessary for the advancement of the Catholic Faith in these calamitous times. It is important for us that he should be sent back as soon as possible. This letter is very valuable as coming from one who, at this time, was himself hesitating as to what side he should support in the conflict. It rightly stresses the spiritual nature of Archer's work, for it was that which predominated in all his other activity.

Of Archer's visit to Rome we know nothing. He was back again in Ireland in a few months, as his spies obligingly informed us. It was falsely reported to Cecil that Archer was returning from Rome armed with a Bull of Excommunication against all those who supported Elizabeth in the war. A few months later Cecil was again informed that Archer had landed in Ireland and was inciting the people to revolt. On his return he was again almost captured; but, as often before, he managed to escape his pursuers, Sir George Carew reported that Archer's arrival foreshadowed the advent of a Spanish fleet and the renewal of the war in Ireland. From an account given by his confrère, Brother Dominic Collins SJ, we learn that Archer actually did return to Ireland with Spanish help. His influence with the Irish soldiers was again evinced when, on the 29 May 1602, Carew informed Cecil that but for Archer many of them would have returned to their homes after the defeat at Kinsale or would have gone over to the side of the English. “Every day”', says Carew, “he devises letters and intelligences out of Spain, assuring them of succour, and once a week confirms new leagues and seals them with the Sacrament”. In another letter written by Carew we find the following amusing passage: “If Archer have the art of conjuring, I think he hath not been idle; but ere long I hope to conjure him. The country of Beare is full of witches; between them and Archer I do believe the devil hath been raised to serve their turn”. Even in defeat the English feared him. They seemed to have believed that he possessed superhuman powers, that he could walk on the sea and fly through the air. His name should have been not Archer but “Archdevil!” One can readily imagine the fate that awaited Archer, had he been captured. Shortly before this time he “was very near taken by a draught laid by the Lord Lieutenant, but happily escaped”.

In a report of Robert Atkinson, an informer and pervert, we got another account of Archer's activities. He says that he met Archer in Ireland when the latter was “chief commander of the Irish troops, horse and foot”. He also states that Archer commanded for his own guard as many men as he pleased, especially for “any bloody actions to be done upon the English Nation”. There is no evidence to show that Archer ever took part with the Irish soldiers in the actual fighting. Atkinson further states that Archer was commonly called the Pope's Legate and was Archprelate over all the clergy of the provinces of Munster, Leinster and the territory of the O'Neills. By others, he says, he was called Tyrone's Confessor, just as formerly he had been Confessor to the Archduke of Austria. For the rest we shall let Atkinson speak for himself: “Of all the priests that ever were, he is held for the most bloody and treacherous traitor, sure unto none in friendship that will not put his decrees in action by warrant of his Apostolic authority, as he calleth it, from time to time renewed by Bulls from Rome. He is grown to be so absolute that he holds the greatest Lords in such awe that none dare gainsay him”.

Even at the eleventh hour Archer's hopes did not give way. On the 14 June 1602 he was again supplicating for Spanish aid. For the next few weeks he remained with the Irish soldiers at Dunboy. Finally, on July 6th he left Ireland to induce the Spanish King to send another fleet to help a broken cause. He was more fortunate than his companion, Br Dominic Collins SJ, who was captured by the English and hanged in Cork on the 31 October 1602, being the third Jesuit to die for the faith in Ireland.

Fr Archer never again returned to Ireland. His life on the Continent we shall only review briefly. On the 6 May 1504 the General of the Jesuits appointed him Prefect of the Irish Mission in Spain. This appointment is clear proof that his Superiors held him in the highest esteem. They paid little attention to the lying reports that had been spread over England and Ireland in an effort, to blacken the reputation of one who was both a zealous priest and a great Irishman. In 1608, six years after his departure from Ireland, his name was still feared by the English. At this time he was accused of making preparations for another rebellion in Ireland. Chichester issued an order that spies be placed in various parts of the country to inform him of the arrival of Archer.

During all this time, Fr Archer was actively engaged in Spain as Prefect of the Irish Colleges. These Colleges were founded by Irish Jesuits. at Salamanca, Lisbon, Santiago and Seville for the training of Irish secular priests. In 1617 he was the oldest Irish Jesuit alive, being seventy-two years of age. He was still Superior of the Mission in Spain. The date of his death is uncertain, but it occurred before 1626. Thus ended the career of one of the most remarkable Jesuits who laboured on the Irish Mission during these years.

If we are to assess the value of Archer's work in Ireland or the magnitude of the task he set before himself, we must not leave out of account the circumstances in which he lived. Although Archer's aim was first and foremost spiritual, he saw clearly that political independence of England was utterly essential to the religious welfare of Ireland. The idea of toleration was not yet born in Europe.
Neither Catholic nor Protestant was ready to brook the existence of the other. Even in Ireland the word “Counter-Reformation” connoted not only a spiritual movement within and without the Catholic Church, but also an effort to compel the return of erring souls by force of arms. Moreover the political and religious state of Ireland itself must also be taken into account. For almost a century the country has been a prey to disunion and internal strife. Religion too was not a vital force in the lives of the people, Had the persecution been as severe as it had been in England, or in other words, had political circumstances been favourable, Ireland might have succumbed to the new doctrines, All these facts were well known to Fr Archer when he arrived in Ireland in 1596. Thus we can understand why he strove to unite the country under O'Neill and to procure aid from Spain and the Pope.

Before concluding this article, it might not be out of place to discuss briefly how far Fr Archer influenced the wars of O'Neill, and, especially, the extent to which he influenced the Great Earl himself. One thing is certain, that Fr Archer was regarded by the English authorities as O'Neill's ambassador and representative not only at all the courts of the local Irish chieftains but in Spain and Rome. It is equally certain that he acted as intermediary between the Irish and Spanish several times, and even for years after the Irish collapse at Kinsale the English feared that he would again organise another Spanish expedition. Several years after that fatal day, the authorities had spies placed in all the Irish ports on the watch for Archer's return. Indeed many false alarms were given, and at one time the English actually believed that he had landed in Ireland. These precautions would not have been taken if the Government had not already experienced the powerful, stay that Fr Archer had over the people. How far were their fears justified? It is very probable that Hugh O'Neill did not realise what was at stake when he first launched his rebellion. In fact it seems that he would never have revolted and there been any alternative, What was he fighting for? An Irish Ireland, or a Catholic Ireland, or local independence? The problem has not yet been solved. But I think it is true to say that, whatever may have been his motive in starting the war, he never fully realised all that that war involved. Probably even he did not foresee that the struggle would take on a national aspect before its close; and it is far less likely that he realised that it would become part of a European campaign and would be looked upon by many nations on the Continent as just another element of the Catholic Counter Reformation. Moreover, if Hugh O'Neill did not realize all this, he would not have been able to combine all these forces in a vast movement against the common enemy. The problem could almost be stated thus: Was O'Neill the unconscious leader of a movement that was indeed begun by him, but whose consequences and ramifications he had not foreseen and perhaps did not even realise up to the last?

This question is difficult to answer. But I think some light is thrown on it by glancing at the part played by Fr Archer in these crucial years. Immediately after his arrival in Ireland, Fr Archer went direct to O'Neill, as we have seen. Coming from Spain, where he was well-known, he was suspected, probably rightly, of bringing a message from the Spanish Court. Soon after this he visited all the Irish chieftains, including O'Donnell, O'Sullivan Beare, Owny O'More, the Earl of Desmond, Florence MacCarthy, James Fitzthomas (who claimed to be the Earl of Desmond), Lords Barry, Roche and Mountgarrett, as well as the Mayors of the southern towns - including Cork, Waterford and Kinsale. The mention of these three towns is significant. They are on the coast nearest Spain. Why did Archer visit these chieftains? The answer is obvious. From the outset, he regarded the struggle as a Catholic crusade against England. Therefore his policy was to unite all the Irish under O’Neill and, if possible, secure help from Spain and Rome. His aim and purpose, as well as the means to achieve the end, were clear and decisive - unlike those of Hugh O'Neill. And it is well to remember here that O'Neill's environment, even if we allow for a period spent in England, was mainly the local life and tradition of a petty chieftain of Ireland with all the narrowness that it entailed. While Archer's background was not only Irish tradition modified by Anglo-Norman ancestry, but also an international education the best that Europe could offer, an almost first-hand realisation of what the Reformation meant to Europe, a partiality for things Spanish with a natural bias against England, and finally a full comprehension of the danger to the Catholic religion in Ireland in an English domination there. Unfortunately we have little reliable evidence to guide us. But from the information we have I think we can safely affirm that Fr Archer was responsible, at least partially, for the change of outlook that is so marked a feature in the development of O'Neill's character as the years went by. It is interesting to note that, in a report sent by the Bishops of Dublin and Meath to the King in June 1603, much of what I have said is corroborated. Having stated that O'Neill had revolted to defend his rights and privileges, they go on to assert that the Jesuits and other priests afterwards induced him to fight for the sake of the Catholic religion and to secure the aid of the Pope and King of Spain. In many other places in the official documents the Jesuits are blamed for spreading the revolt. We know now that, of the Jesuits of the time, only Fr Archer exerted any direct political influence on a wide scale. To him, therefore, we largely attribute the change that took place. Thus, as the English realised only too well, “to have Archer taken were a great service to both the realms (England and Ireland), he being a capital instrument for Spain and the poison of Ireland”.

Hated by the English, Fr Archer won the hearts of the Irish, both rich and poor. In all the references to him there is not one which in any way tarnishes his memory, except those that come from the hands of his political enemies. Had the Irish been victorious at Kinsale, James Archer would probably have been one of the most influential men in the country. But after the defeat of 1601, his position in Ireland was even more invidious than that of O'Neill's himself. The Great Earl could adapt himself to the new conditions and try to begin life all over again, but for Archer there were no alternatives but death or exile. He had been looked upon by the English as the symbol of the rebellion in Ireland, and in his person he crystallised the hopes and aspirations of the majority of the Irish people. He stands forth as one of the foremost champions of his time of the Catholic religion in Ireland. By the English he was believed to be the source of all the discontent in the country. He was the emissary of the King of Spain, the Pope's ambassador and a member of the Society of Jesus. For him there could be no forgiveness.

James Corboy SJ

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father James Archer SJ 1550-1626
Fr James Archer was known to the English as the Archdevil. So active was he o behalf of the Irish, and so adept at evading capture, that magical powers were attributed to him. He is the only Jesuit of those days of whom we have a personal description, due to the interest of his enemies in him. We read in the report of the spy that “Archer, the traitor, was small of stature and black of complexion, that his hair was spotted grey, that he had a white doublet, and that the rest of his apparels was of some colour suitable for disguise”. Indeed, we may say that we have a photograph of him for an engraving of him may be found in “The History of British Costume” : “He had black mantle, and the high-crowned hat of the times. He appeard in straight trouse”.

Born of one of the leading families of Kilkenny in 1550, Fr Archer was one of the most remarkable Jesuits who laboured on the Irish Mission. What Henry Fitzsimon was to the Pale, James Archer was to the native Irish. By his clear grasp of the political and religious situation, his tireless efforts to unite the country against the sworn enemy of her faith and culture and to enlist in her cause the support of Spain, Fr Archer deserves to be ranked with Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh o’Donnell as one if the leading champions of national independence and of the Catholic religion in the Ireland of his day.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
ARCHER, JAMES. In p. 301, History of British Costume (Library of Entertaining knowledge), is a delineation of O’More, an Irish Chieftain, and Archer, a Jesuit retained by him, both copied from a map of the taking of the Earl of Ormond in 1600. The Rev. Father is dressed in a black mantle, and wears the high crowned hat of the time. I read in a Report or Memorial of Irish Aflairs, addressed by Captain Hugh Mostian to Lewis Mansoni, the Papal Nuncio for Ireland, towards the latter end of Q Elizabeth s reign, “Unus Pater Archerus major fuit illis (Hibernis) consolatio, quam potuit esse magnet militum copia. Testis sum illius praesentiam tantum profuisse, ut vix aliud tantum : ad ipsius enim Nutum uniuntur et tenentur, corda hominum non solum in teritorio Beerhaven et Provincifc Australis : sed et in majori parte totius Regni.” “Father Archer alone was a greater comfort to his Irish countrymen than even a considerable reinforcement of troops. I am a witness, that his presence was almost more serviceable to the cause than anything else : for at his nod the hearts of men were united and bound together, not only in the district of Beerhaven and Munster, but in the greater part of the whole kingdom”
A few of F. Archer s letters have been fortunately preserved. The first is dated from the Camp, 10th of August, 1598. He states the difficulty of all Epistolary communication the intense anxiety and diligence of the Government to apprehend him; insomuch, that he was obliged to live generally in the woods and secret places, “ita ut in sylvis et latebris ut plurimum degam”. Still he never ceased from exercising the functions of his ministry - he had received two thousand general Confessions - he had instructed and confirmed many in the Faith, and reconciled several to the Catholic Church - that there was every prospect of an abundant harvest of souls, if he had some fellow-labourers; and that the gentry in the North and South parts of the island were most desirous of a supply. It seems that he had been ordered to Ireland to procure assistance for the Irish Seminary at Salamanca, “in subsidium Seminarii Hybernorum”, and that he had succeeded in sending over several youths with funds for their education. In conclusion he says that he was intending to proceed by the first opportunity to Spain from the North of Ireland. Iter in Hispaniam cogito prima occasione ex Septentrionali parte. NB : I find by a letter of F. Richard Field, dated Dublin, 20th of July, 1600, that he as Superior of the Irish Mission, had made F. J. Archer the actual bearer of that very letter to Rome. He recommends to him Mr. Robert Lalour, qui se socium itineris adjunxit Patri Jacobo (Archer.)
The second letter is dated, Compostella, 26th of February, 1606. It proves his active industry in procuring donations for the purpose of educating his countrymen, as also his zeal for the conversion of souls. He had just reconciled to God and his Church three English merchants.
The third letter to F. George Duras, the Assistant for Germany, is dated Madrid, 4th of August, 1607. He was then living at Court, “Ego in aula versor”, and had been successful in collecting Subscriptions.
The fourth letter is to F. Duras, from Madrid, 29th September, 1607. and is only subscribed by F. Archer, who, from illness, “prae dolore pectoris”, was obliged to employ a Secretary. He recommends the erection of an Irish Novitiate in Belgium. After treating of the business of the Irish Mission, he mentions “the conversion of three Scotchmen at Madrid : one was so desperate a Puritan, as often to declare that not all the Doctors of the World should ever withdraw him from his sect and opinion. Truth, however, had conquered : from a lion he became a lamb, and has chosen the life of a Capuchin Friars. I have others in hand in the suit of the English Ambassador, whom I will endeavour to reform”. Further particulars of this Rev. Father I have not been able to collect.

Born: 12 April 1717, New Street, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 27 November 1735, Nancy, France - Campaniae Province (CAMP)
Ordained: 22 September 1747, Rheims, France
Final Vows; 02 February 1753
Died: 29 September 1784, Dublin City, County Dublin

Cousin of William Doyle - RIP 1785 - Ordained with William X Doyle (his cousin) at Rheims 22 September 1747 by Bishop Joppensi
Grand-uncle of Myles Gaffney - RIP 1861 and John Gaffney - RIP 1898

1740-43 taught Humanities at Rheims
1746 Read Theology at Rheims
1749 taught Humanities at Poitiers and Prefect at Irish College
1750 came to Ireland by July
1770 mentioned in Nano Nagle’s letters
1784 RIP and buried at graveyard of St Kevin’s Protestant Church - monument erected
In French Dictionary of Musicians he is referred to as “le Père Augustin”

A famous Preacher and Teacher and was Prefect at Poitiers.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1746 At Rheims studying Theology
1750 Sent to Dublin
1754 In Ireland and teaching Humanities for five years.
His monument in St Kevin’s calls him :
“Pious. doctus, indeffessus, apostolicus confectus laboribus. Divites admonuit, pauperes sublevavit, juventutum erudivit, orphanis loco parentis fuit, de omni hominum genere praeclare meruit, omnibus omnes factus”.
Topham Bowden, and English Protestant, in his “Tour through Ireland” in 1791 says : Austin was a very remarkable character, of extraordinary learning and piety. he was a great preacher and injured his health by his exertions in the pulpit etc”. (cf Battersby’s “Jesuits” and Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS for the full Latin inscription)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Place of birth in New Street Dublin was then called Austin's Grounds near Kevin Street.
1737 After his Noviceship studied philosophy for two years at Pont-à-Mousson
1739-1744 Spent the next five years in regency at the College of Rheims.
1744-1747 He resumed his studies at Rheims where he was Ordained 22 September 1747.
1747 Sent to complete his theological studies at the Grand Collège, Poitiers . During these studies he lived at the Irish College and held the post of prefect of Discipline. It is likely that he made his tertianship at Marchiennes before he returned to Ireland in 1750.
1750-1784 Spent all of his Missionary life in Ireland at Dublin. He did many ministries, but is best remembered as a devoted teacher. He died on 29 September, 1784, and is buried at St. Kevin's churchyard, Camden Row, Dublin.

The inscription on his monument aptly sums up his ministry of thirty-four years in the city: “Pius, devotus, indefessus, apostolicis confectus laboribus. Divites admonuit, pauperes sublevavit, iuventutem erudivit, orphanis loco parentis fuit, de omni hominum genere meruit, omnibus omnia factus.”

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Note from the Myles and John Gaffney Entries :
Their Grand-uncle was the celebrated John Austin, a remarkable Jesuit in Dublin towards the middle of the eighteenth Century.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Austin, John
by C. J. Woods

Austin, John (1717–84), Jesuit priest, was born off Kevin Street, Dublin, on 12 April 1717. He showed promise as a youth, and was said to have come to the attention of Jonathan Swift (qv). He went to France and joined the Society of Jesus in the Champagne (27 November 1735). After a period of teaching the humanities and as prefect of the Irish college in Poitiers, he returned to Dublin (1750) and took his final vows (2 February 1754). Austin soon acquired a reputation there as a powerful preacher and as a friend of the poor. After the society was dissolved by the pope (1773), he was one of twelve Jesuits who wrote from Ireland accepting their new status as secular priests. Three years later he and the other fourteen former Jesuits then in Ireland formed a voluntary association to hold their resources in common, thus anticipating the revival of the society after 1800 and enabling it in 1814 to open its famous school at Clongowes Wood, Co. Kildare.

Austin is best remembered as founder (1760) of a classical school, in Saul's Court, off Fishamble Street, Dublin, which was so well thought of that it was used as the diocesan school for Meath as well as Dublin for preparing priests prior to their going to a seminary on the Continent. His pupils there included Daniel Murray (qv) the future archbishop of Dublin and Michael Blake (qv) who was to reopen the Irish college in Rome in 1824. John Austin died in Dublin on 29 September 1784 having acquired an exceptional reputation for ministering to the poor. He was buried in St Kevin's churchyard and a pyramidal stone erected over his grave. His portrait, by James Petrie (qv), was engraved by Henry Brocas (qv) and published by Bartholomew Corcoran (1792).

George Oliver, Collections towards illustrating . . . Scotch, English and Irish members, Society of Jesus (1835), 214; W. J. Battersby, The Jesuits in Dublin (1854), 94–100; Timothy Corcoran, The Clongowes Record, 1814 to 1932 (1932), 35–6, 39–41; M. J. Curran (ed.), ‘Archbishop Carpenter's epistolae, 1770–1780’, Reportorium Novum, i (1955), 164; Louis McRedmond, To the greater glory: a history of the Irish Jesuits (1991), 108–9

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1I 1962

FATHER JOHN AUSTIN SJ 1717-1784
We have a great deal of information about eighteenth-century Dublin, much of it trivial or stupid, practically all of it unconnected with the lives of the great mass of the people. In particular, we know almost nothing of the lives of the Irish Jesuits who worked in the Dublin slums. One of the most distinguished was John Austin, who was born in Dublin in 1717. There is a story told about him by Battersby, on what authority I do not know. About 1732 the boy was attending a school near the Deanery where Swift lived. The Dean, after seeing some verses the boy had written in defence of an old but faithful dog, sent for the parents, who said “they wished him to become a priest”. Swift recommended the parents to “send him to the Jesuits, who would make a man of him”.

John Austin entered the Jesuit novitiate at Nancy on 27 November, 1735. He made his vows on 28 November, 1737. He studied logic and physics at Pont-à-Mousson 1737-39. He then went to Rheims, where he was teaching 1739-44, repeated philosophy 1744-45, and studied theology 1745-17. He was ordained 22 September 1747. He studied theology for two more years in the Irish College, Poitiers. After which he presumably made his tertianship. He returned to Dublin in 1750, where he remained until his death: 29 September, 1784.

Of this thirty-four years' ministry in Dublin we know practically nothing. I have been able to find only two contemporary references. The dramatist, John O'Keeffe, who was born in 1747, says: “From the Greek, Latin and French acquired under Father Austin, to whose school in Cook Street I went, my fancy soon strayed to Shakespeare”. An English traveller, after seeing the monument over Father Austin's grave in St. Kevin's graveyard, wrote as follows:

I was surprised such a monument should be erected in this country to a Romish Priest, and was led to enquiries relative to Austin, I was informed he was a very remarkable character in this metropolis about twelve or fourteen years ago, of extraordinary learning and extraordinary piety; that he constantly dedicated all his acquisitions, which were very considerable, to the poor, visiting them in cellars and in garrets; never a day happy that he did not give food to numbers. The principal Catholics, knowing well his disposition, were liberal to him, and he kept his door open to all who were in want; and while the means lasted, was constantly on foot, administering relief to innumerable poor wretches, never resting while he had a single guinea. Besides this, he was a great preacher, and injured his health by his exertions in the pulpit. He was a most affectionate son to an aged mother, she died, and he was overpowered with affliction, he never afterwards raised his head, but dropped into a second state of childhood. He remained in this situation near three years, and would have perished were it not for his brother Jesuits, Messrs, Betagh, Fullam and Mucaile. When he died, his friends who neglected him on the bed of death, erected this monument to his memory.

Gilbert, in his History or the City of Dublin, says:
A portrait of Father Austin, engraved by Brocas, was published by B Corcoran, dedicated to the Roman Catholics of Dublin, and inscribed: “To you the poor were left and you became the guardian of the orphan”. A large house at the end of Archbold's Court in Cook Street was traditionally pointed out as having been occupied by Father Austin, after whose death the court became the residence of Father Magaulay, an excommunicated Catholic priest, by whom nearly all the clandestine marriages in the city were performed and who was commemorated in various popular ballads.

And that is all we know, he worked for thirty-four years in a back street of Dublin, ministering to the poor downtrodden - Catholics of his native city. The fruits of his educational work, in encouraging future priests: and! in forming lay leaders, must have been immense. One of his pupils, afterwards his fellow-worker, was the famous Thomas Betagh, who entered the Society in 1754, and died as Parish Priest of SS Michael and John in 1811.

In the Presentation Convent, George's. Hill, Dublín there have been preserved four letters of Father. Austin, which I have transcribed. As historical documents they are of no particular value. But they have their own interest as a precious memento of this zealous Dublin priest to whom we in these latter days of ease owe so much. In some ways - perhaps in their touch of prim “preachinessi” - they are not very different from the letters which a fervent Jesuit Scholastic might write today. But we see the writer's interest in Catholic education which was later to be his life-work, we can glimpse the life of Catholic Dublin which went on unobtrusively under the shadow of the Castle in spite of persecution. There are passing references to Rev Fr Austin - a well-known Dublin priest - Cousin Will, John Fullam, Peter Bullrill, Peter Cashel and various relatives, whose names, unrecorded in human annals, are written in the Book of Life. These simple letters, redolent of the piety and difficulties of our forejathers, deserve to find a place in an Irish Jesuit periodical :

LETTER I
Pont-à-Mousson, 29 December 1737

Dear and Honoured Parents,
I don't know whether my twelvemonth's silence has been disagreeable to you or not. However it be, I should not have failed to have writ once more this year past, were it not that I expected to hear from you beforehand. But as I waited in vain all the summer and no letter appearing I thought it as good to put off my writing till after my vows; which I have had the happiness to make the 28th of November here in the University of Pont-à-Mousson, where I am to reside in the study of Philosophy for two years, during one of which I shall have the pleasure of enjoying my dear cousin Will's - company for he has been here already one year, but I have not come hither from the Noviceship till the beginning of October last. We have (enjoyed) and do as yet by the grace of God enjoy both a perfect state of health and whether we are together or separated, we find nothing everywhere, both one and the other, but content and happiness. He desires earnestly to tender you his kind love and service.

A little after my arrival here he writ home, for we thought it best to write separately, to the end that if one letter should miscarry, the other might perhaps speed better. I send you this by the post; for though I sent last year's letter - according as I conceived Rev Mr Austin's directions - under cover to Mr. King at Paris, yet as I have received none since from you and consequently am not sure whether you have received mine or not. I have reason to doubt whether that I have not rightly understood the manner of directing which has been marked (for) me, or that it is not very sure, I beg you would be pleased to give my most humble respects to the Rev Mr. Austin, to whose bounty and kindness. I am so gratefully bound. If that manner of directing be sure, I would be glad to know in your first whether I might continue, it at least once a year. I have writ also to cousin Peter Cashel. He will be so kind as to direct yours to me, for I have given him the superscription which might serve whilst I am here, in case you can send by hand anywhere into France.

I should rejoice and give God Thanks to hear that you are in good health and peace of mind; ‘tis, I assure you, the continual object of my poor prayers. But your soul's welfare affects me yet more. Praise be to God I have no great subject of apprehension of that side on your part. I lay He be graciously pleased to augment more and more the care you have for your eternal salvation. It can't be sufficiently deplored how much people forget that only great necessary affair, which ought to be sovereignly preferred to a parcel of frivolous wordly beings that pass and perish every day before our eyes and the which they are sure to enjoy at most, for a short term of years. Pardon a son's boldness who would fain inspire a true sentiment of the necessity of seeking by all means possible. to assure a doubtful eternity - terrible doubt which makes tremble so many persons who live a retired and perhaps innocent life, and which of greater reason ought to imprint a salutary fear in those who are exposed to so many dangers in the world.

'Tis for young persons especially that all is to be feared, and for whom by consequence the most care is to be taken to inspire them . betimes with a great fear of God, a great hatred of vice, and an early love of piety. Redouble, I pray you, your pious industry in that point towards them young children, my dear little brothers and sister. I pray you to embrace them on my part, especially little Dicky - I suppose he begins to read at present. You are to be praised never to let your children want learning according to your means; for no one knows to what God might call him, and though you have too much piety to hinder a child's vocation, yet if he takes even to the world, learning is no burthen. Above all things care is to be taken to preserve his innocence and hinder his. manners from being corrupted; and it is not to be conceived how much one and the other is in danger even already in the very infancy of children, who have too much liberty and who take every ill impression like to wax, The best means you can take is to pray dails for their preservation from sin. Perhaps I make too much the preacher, but I assure you I am so touched with dangers to which I see exposed so many persons whom I love sincerely, that I can't forbear to speak iny mind thereupon. And I would to God that my weak words could prevail upon them who are very near to me and whom I have reason to apprehend stand in need of making such solid reflections for the welfare of their souls. A very pious practice in a family would be the frequent lecture of books of piety; the Introduction to a Devout Life (of S.Francis de Sales) is onė very proper and useful for that end.

I would be glad to hear how it is with my Uncle Simon's family. My love and service to them and all my uncles and aunts, friends and relations, particularly to dear Mrs Doyle and her good family; not forgetting cousin M Dod, to whose prayers I desire to be recommended. My thanks and kind service to all friends who shall be so kind as to inquire after me.

I would seem that I doubted of your prudence if I should caution you not to let inquisitive people know to what design I am away or what I am. You know already what dangerous consequences might hereafter ensue, even where you might apprehend the least. I would not be amiss even if those who know it already were advised to let it drop in silence.

My love to cousin C Maginnis and her family, and recommend to her great care of my little god-daughter. You might please to mark me how that child is. You would do well also to cast a charitable eye sometimes to see how it is with my other little one of Mr Balf's. Be pleased not to fail to let me know the good health of R Mr Austin. I shall expect yours as soon as possible. Don't forget me in your good prayers and those of other good friends. I shan't fail on my poor part, always remaining with God's will and pleasure, dear Father and Mother, your most affectionate .. and dutiful son,
John Austin

Be pleased not to forget my respects to Mr Milon and the other gentlemen

LETTER II
Pont-à-Mousson, September 9th 1738

Dear and Honoured Parents,

I suppose Cousin Will's letter is already received, for he has writ home about a week ago. If that be, I have no need to repeat to you that the Divine will which has joined us so happily is pleased at present to separate us for a while: he being destined to the in Picardy where he goes to teach, and myself remaining here as yet a year in order to finish my course of Philosophy. He parted this morning. Myself and some others accompanied him a small league out of town, where we quitted each other very cheerfully, considering that in our state we should rejoice rather than repine in accomplishing God's will and pleasure in what He ordains us for His greater glory.

Just as he was going off, your last letter arrived, so that we were already out of the town when it was sent after us. We have also received all the letters which you have made mention of this year. For since my last of April, two or three came into our hands; some of which had delayed somewhat on the road, as appeared by the date - one from Cousin Doyle was dated even of March, 1737. Don't think, dear Parents, that these letters are of any charge to us. Foe in that point as well as the rest that concerns the temporal, such is the bounty of the heavenly providence for us (that) all is paid and prepared to our hands without any care or other application on our part, besides that of our studies or exercises which may serve to our own proper sanctification and thereby put us in (the) state of procuring that or others.

But my so good fortune, far from being a matter of boasting, should rather give me a subject of humbling myself to think that in quitting the world I find myself in better circumstances than I could naturally promise me in embracing it.

I am really charmed and do heartily thank God for the pious sentiments which He has inspired you touching the education of your dear children, as well as by your personal example as by your wholesome instructions. A very important article, and which many parents neglect very often to their future sorrow, is to render the children supple and obedient to the smallest sign of their parents' good pleasure in whatsoever they bid them: so that as soon as ever they begin to have the usage of their self-will, they should be taught to renounce to it; since it is the only root of all sin and were there no self-will there would be no hell. However, it is rather by mildness than rashness that a child's stubborn humour should be thwarted, in ordering calmly but at the same time seriously and inflexibly even the smallest things - were it but to kiss the ground, to quit or take somewhat against his inclinations, or the like.

As I might seem too bold in suchlike discourse as well now as at other times, you may be pleased to consider that, a principal point of our vocation being the pious education of the youth as well as their instruction in sciences, we are wont to make there upon nore frequent and deep reflections than ordinary. And besides I can learn somewhat by the manner wherewith the children of the best families are elevated (=educated) here, where their parents send them in pension very young that they may be reared up more safely in the piety. To all which if you add that my first and chiefest zeal should be for those whom I am obliged before God to hold most dear, you will rather approve than blame this liberty which a sincere and ardent desire. of eternal welfare inspires me.

Then dear little Dicky can read - which perhaps he can already - without doubt you will make him every evening read a little in some devout book before you. If he be accustomed betimes, he'll do it hereafter of himself. There is nothing more capable to imprint the fear and love of God in the minds of old and young than pious lectures well reflected upon and meditated in the presence of God - such as you night see in the Introduction of St Francis Sales.

I am very sensible to the kindness of all my good friends and particularly of them gentlemen who did me the honour to remember me in your last (letter). I beg you will be pleased to give to them, every one in particular, my most humble respects and service as well as to all my relations: Uncle Christy, Uncle Richard, Uncle Robin, theirs and Uncle Simon's spouses and families; Cousins Mortimer, Magguinis, Savour, and their families, etc. My kind love and service to Mr and Mrs Fullam. I have lately heard from dear friend Johnny, and answered. I have writ to Mrs Doyle by Cousin Will's last, as we have both by the same to Cousin Molly Dodd.

We enjoy always, blessed be God, perfect health and contentment. Pray take great care of yours. I am, dear Father and Mother, your most respectful and affectionate son,
Jn. Austin.

P.S. - You'll please to direct henceforth: a Monsieur Austin demeurant au College, Pont-à-Mousson en Lorraine. I expect to write soon to Cousin Peter. Be pleased to give the following lines with my respects to Mr Austin.

LETTER III
Rheims, 7th October 1742

Most Dear and Honoured Mother,

I received with pleasure your last letter dated the 4th June, and have been obliged to wait ever since for an hour's leisure to write to you. But now that our yearly vacations begin, you may be sure that my first thoughts are to satisfy you. I sent immediately on the reception of your letter that inscribed to Cousin Will, with whom I have correspondence as frequent as we both please, His answer came shortly after; and as far as I can judge, Cousin Doyle need be no way alarmed as she seems to be at the light ailment of Cousin Will.

“Tis a kind of headache which at most hinders sometimes his application to certain studies, but the which neither interrupts his other occupations nor hinders his being as day and jovial as any other. Pray give my kind love and service to his dear mother and family, to whom I wish you may always acknowledge to your utmost power the obligations which bind me eternally to them. You will please to inform them likewise that Cousin Will goes this next year to dwell at Sens, a town of the Champagne, where he is to continue the same career which he has begun at Laôn and which I am to continue here next year also. They must not be Surprised at these changements of dwelling, for nothing is more common in our state which engages us to go to and fro wherever God's will and His glory calls us.

For my part, blessed be the Lord, I have enjoyed hitherto and enjoy still in these parts good health and contentment. When it shall please Him to treat me otherwise, I hope He will give me patience; but hitherto He has favoured my weakness. After a month's rest and recreation in town and at our country house, our usual application begins. Aid me with your prayers, wherein I have very much confidence; a good mother's prayers and blessing are ordinarily efficacious, and I am persuaded that I owe a great deal thereto.

Don't fail especially to pray every day for my little brothers and to offer them to God Almighty, that He may take them under His protection for what concerns their body and soul. Without His aid all the pains you'll take for their education will be employed in vain. But if God blesses then and gives then His love and fear in their hearts, all will surely prosper with them in the time and in the eternity. Tis what I ask Him each day for them and you. Pray never fail in your letters to inform me of their progress in learning and especially of their piety towards God and docility towards you. For what you have already told thereof has given me a great deal of pleasure and consolation.

I shall dwell here this next year with an Englishman of our family, who comes hither from Liège in Flanders for to study in Divinity. We shall prattle together in our tongue, and that will - serve to recall my English, For I have scarce as yet found time to read over two or three English books I brought hither. And though I have found here enough of English acquaintance, yet do I meet them but very rarely, and even then do they speak French, being partly habiting in this town for to learn that language.

For Johnny Fullam, I don't know whether he remains at Lyons next year or no.. He told me about April last that he expected to go to Poitiers, and that Mr Heneys had gave him so to understand. But as I writ since for to demand the confirmation thereof, and his next answer not having said a word upon that head, I am yet in doubt: thereupon. Pray give my kind service to his parents, and assure them that he was in good health about two months ago when he writ last to me.

We have in these parts this year plenty of corn, wine, etc. But we have this time past so wet and cold windy weather that the vintage, which is commonly finished before this time, is not as yet begun hereabouts, where we are just hard by the fine wines of Champagne and Montagne, For the wars, though we be nigher to them than you, yet I believe, you know as much in them parts by the newspapers as we do here.

My humble respects to Messrs Milan, Sweetman and to the other gentlemen as the occasion presents itself. My kind love and service to all my uncles, aunts, cousins and their families in general and in particular when you see them. My love to my dear little brothers, and charge then in my name to apply themselves heartily to their learning, and especially take great care that they know perfectly their Catechism and what concerns their religion and the fear and love of their Maker, and that it were better to die a thousand times than to offend Him.

I would willingly know what are become my uncle Simon's children, etc., as also if you could inform me - when you shall please to write - where is young Johnny Murphy and whether Laurence Walsh is as yet at Paris or no, or what youths you know of my acquaintance are, come overseas; whether you have had news from Cousin Mortimer or not.

Cousin Peter Bullfill has been partly cause that you have my letter so late. Tis above a fortnight ago since I write to him, and I began this letter immediately after. But as I had promised him in my letter to keep this till I could have news from him (which I have not had since a very long time), I have been obliged to tarry till now, whereas I might have had his answer in four or five days. But indeed he is to be excused, for, as he tells me, he has been sick these several months past and is as yet actually very weak and feeble the which has really appeared in his very short though very friendly letter. Be assured, dear Mother, that I am always, with the utmost respect, your most affectionate son,
John Austin

LETTER IV
Rheims, 22nd October 1743

(On Back.) To Mr Francis Fullam, dwelling in Bridge Street, to be furthered to Mrs Austin, Dublin, Ireland,

(At the top of the first page;) The enclosed is for Mr Milan . You'll please to send me his letter enclosed in yours, if he pleases to send me one. Or tell him my address if he desires to know it: à la Mr Jaquinet, Marchand Fabricant dans la rue Barbatre, pour faire tenir a Mr Austin a Reims en Champagne.

Most Dear and Honoured Mother,

I wrote to you a little before Easter, I suppose you have not writ since, for I have received no letter from you since that wherein you gave me account of my Uncle John's strange discovery. I remain here as yet for next year, and never enjoyed better health than I do at present, Pray let me know if yourself and all your family go well. Also especially I pray you to give me an exact account of my brothers' behaviour towards you, and for their other duties above all in what concerns the piety. Do they pray God heartily and exactly? Dicky should now be capable of reading my letters, and of writing to me even upon necessity. He must send me in your next, if you please, a little sketch of (=by) his hand. If he be not fit for learning Latin, he must read, write and cypher as well as possible he can learn. Let him never fail to read each day some time in a good pious book. When he can do it before you in the evening, twere the best, Make him learn the Catechism to his little brothers, which they must all know perfectly well before all things and as soon as they are capable of learning anything whatsoever. This point is very important, and parents in them parts seem not to know enough their great and strict obligations to have their children instructed principally in what concerns their religion. All the rest without that is not worth while, and yet commonly 'tis what's the most neglected.

If your children fear God, they will be also your consolation, Would to God there were means of giving to children in them poor countries the same Christian education which they receive in these parts. My heart bleeds to see and think upon the difference, without being able to amend it. We see here of how much piety and virtue youth are capable, and how much it depends on those who rear them (so as) to render them such, in keeping them from evil example, bad company and occasions, and in giving them early principles of piety, of good and Christian manners. Parents work and slave day and night for to get bread for their children and to establish them well in the world. Tis very well done. But if they are good Christians well instructed in the faith of an everlasting life (and) an eternal establishment, they should take a thousand times more pains for to procure to their children this latter establishment, and that their souls may be better provided for than their bodies. Many notwithstanding, who pass for very honest Christians in all the rest, are often very bad parents on this head, and have thereupon the most terrible accompts to render at God's tribunal. I could wish with all my heart that many persons who are dear to me were well convinced and frightened with this consideration; they would have reason to tremble thereupon but yet more to act in consequence thereon. Sometimes a letter as this or any other, read to a neighbour or relation seemingly without design, might make them take reflections on such a matter which is so important for the salvation of parents and which damns so many.

Cousin Doyle and. John Fullam are both in good health: the first at Sens and the second at Lyons, there they remain next year, They both salute your kindly. Give my kind love and service to both their families, and testify newly my acknowledgments to Mr Fullam's parents on their receiving always my letters, My love and service particularly to my Uncles Richard and Christy and families; Uncle Robin Walsh and family; Cousins Savour and Maginnis and families, And if anything worth while is arrived in those families, I pray let me know it. My love and service to Aunt Bridget and her family. And let me know if you have tidings of my Uncle Simon or not. My Aunt, does she still dwell with you? Are you in good intelligence together? Nothing more easy nor more natural for two sisters and widows.

All things have been abundant this year in these parts, Has it been so in Ireland and with your little spot thereof in particular? You see I am grown very curious. But nothing which concerns you or yours can be indifferent to me. I know not how I lost again my brothers ages; the pain won't be so great to send me then once more, and I’ll be more careful if I can. Embrace them all three for me and assure then that I pray for them and you every day of my life. If they and you remember me often in praying God, I shall prefer that remembrance to all the other tokens of tenderness ye can give me, All that is not good for the soul passes with the body and avails nought.

For you especially, dear mother, be assured that I have very much confidence in your good prayers. We must one and t'other also be constantly mindful to pray for my dear Father's soul. That piety will be better placed and more useful than a silly grief which serves for nothing, neither to the living nor the dead. Your young ones have especially more need of your prayers than you think. Ofter then each day to God that he may keep them in His love and service in the world or take them betimes out of the world. If you love them truly, that must be your constant wish. Wish me the same, I pray you, and believe me to be always with the greatest affection and respect, dear mother, your most loving and submissive son,
John Austin. Reims, the 22nd October, 1743.

Don't forget, I pray you, when occasion offers to tender my best respects to Mr Milan, and send me tidings of his health. What is become of Cousin Molly Dodd? And Mr Keary, lives he as yet? If Mr Atkins asks after me, give him my humble service.

Professor Alfred O’Rahilly

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Austin 1717-1784
Fr John Austin was born in New Street – then called Austin’s grounds – near Kevin Street Dublin on April 12th 1717. We are told that young Austin, who attended the school near St Patrick’s, one day rattled off impromptu verses to prevent some youngsters butchering a dog. Dean Swift heard about this, sent for the boy’s parents, and asked them what they intended for the boy. “The priesthood” answered his parents. Swift then told them to send him to the Jesuits, who would make a man of him. It is thought that the Dean paid for his education.

John became a Jesuit in 1735, returning to Dublin in 1750. He acted as curate to Fr John Murphy, PP of St Michael and John’s. Together with his PP Fr Austin opened a school, in spite of the law, in Saul’s Court in 1760. For several years this was the only and for 50 years the principal school for Catholics in Dublin, as well as being the nearest approach to a Diocesan Seminary.

On the Suppression of the Society, Fr Austin became one of the Trustees of the Province Funds.

He died on September 29th 1784, and was buried at St Kevin’s Churchyard. Two years later an obelisk was erected over his grave by the grateful citizens of Dublin. The following is his epitaph :
“To the Memory of Rev Father John Austin of the City of Dublin, priest and until the Suppression of the Society of Jesus a professed Jesuit. During six and thirty years a pious, learned and indefatigable labourer in the vineyard of the Lord, who after deserving well of the rich whom he admonished, of the poor whom he relieved, of the youth whom he instructed, of the orphan to who he was a father, of all ranks of men, whome he by making himself all in all, was active in gaining to Jesus Christ, on the 29th September 1784, closed, in the 66 year of his age, a life worn out in the sight of the Lord. Religion, weeping for her faithful Minister, on the 8th December 1786 with grateful hand erected this Monument”.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
AUSTIN, JOHN, was born in Dublin on the 12th of April, 1717, and joined the Order in Champaigne, on the 27th of November, 1735. After completing the high er Studies, he was employed in teaching Humanities for several years. In 1750, he reached his native city, and obtained a reputation for talents in the pulpit. On the 2nd of February, 1754, he was admitted to his religious Profession.
This good Father, dying on Michaelmas day, 1784, was buried in St. Kevins Church-yard, Dublin. A plain stone monument, of pyramidal form, stands over his grave ; and the following inscription is read on the West and South Panels of the Pedestal. On the opposite sides there is the English translation:
Viro Reverendo
Johanni Austin
Dubliniensi
Societatis Jesu, dum fuit, Sacerdoti
In Vinea Domini per annos 36,
Pio, Docto, Indefesso Operario,
Qui
III Calendas Octobris, A. D. 1784
Aetatis anno sexto et sexagesimo
Vitam
Apostolicis, confectam laboribus
Cum morte In conspectu Domini pretiosa
Commutavit

Cippum Hunc
Ministri fidelis Rcligio non immemor
VI Idus Decembris, A. D. 1786
Flens Possuit.
Divites admonuit
Pauperes sublevavit
Juventutem erudivit
Orphanis loco Parentis fuit
De omni Hominum genere
Praeclare meruit
Omnibus oninia factus
Ut
Omnes Christo lucrifaceret.

◆ Fr Joseph McDonnell SJ Past and Present Notes :
16th February 1811 At the advance ages of 73, Father Betagh, PP of the St Michael Rosemary Lane Parish Dublin, Vicar General of the Dublin Archdiocese died. His death was looked upon as almost a national calamity. Shops and businesses were closed on the day of his funeral. His name and qualities were on the lips of everyone. He was an ex-Jesuit, the link between the Old and New Society in Ireland.

Among his many works was the foundation of two schools for boys : one a Classical school in Sall’s Court, the other a Night School in Skinner’s Row. One pupil received particular care - Peter Kenney - as he believed there might be great things to come from him in the future. “I have not long to be with you, but never fear, I’m rearing up a cock that will crow louder and sweeter for yopu than I ever did” he told his parishioners. Peter Kenney was to be “founder” of the restored Society in Ireland.

There were seventeen Jesuits in Ireland at the Suppression : John Ward, Clement Kelly, Edward Keating, John St Leger, Nicholas Barron, John Austin, Peter Berrill, James Moroney, Michael Cawood, Michael Fitzgerald, John Fullam, Paul Power, John Barron, Joseph O’Halloran, James Mulcaile, Richard O’Callaghan and Thomas Betagh. These men believed in the future restoration, and they husbanded their resources and succeeded in handing down to their successors a considerable sum of money, which had been saved by them.

Born: 29 August 1786, Painestown, County Kildare
Entered: 21 May 1808, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: Palermo, Sicily
Final vows: 16 January 1820
Died: 04 July 1849, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner St, Dublin

Superior of the Mission : 1819

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of Charles. His brother William was an Officer in the Austrian Cuirassiers, and considered one of the best swordsmen in the service.
1814 He studied at Stonyhurst and Palermo, graduating DD there.
1816 Superior Dublin Residence, and again in 1822 and 1841
1817 Rector at Clongowes
1819 Superior of the Mission
1821 Lived at Dublin from 1821 to his death.
1829 At the laying of the foundation stone for Gardiner St
He was a good religious of indefatigable zeal and indomitable spirit.
He published some books, and promotes a society for the printing of Catholic works in Dublin.
There is a sketch of Father Aylmer in Caballero’s “Scriptores SJ” and de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Had studied at Stonyhurst before Ent.
He went to Palermo with Messers St Leger, Esmonde, Ferley, Butler and Cogan, graduating DD. He was present in Rome with the other Fathers at the establishment (Restoration?) of the Society in July 1814 by Pius VII.
1817 He was for a short time Minister at Clongowes, and then in 1817 appointed Rector by Father Grivelle, the Visitor.
1818 Clongowes was closed due to an outbreak of typhus, and immediately he built a Study Hall and Refectory.
1821 He went to Dublin where he remained until his death. He was Superior at the Dublin Residence in 1816, then 1822, and finally 1841. In 1829 the First stone of St Francis Xavier, Gardiner St was laid during his Rectorship. The Chapel at Hardwicke St was then converted into a school, and was the germ of the current Belvedere.
Father Aylmer was an edifying religious man, possessed of moderate but useful talents. He was a zealous, pious and indefatigable Missioner, a man of good sense, sound judgement and fortitude.
He promoted in Dublin a Society for the printing and distribution of cheap Catholic books of piety, when it was much needed.
He was subject to a hereditary disease of the heart which caused his death in a manner similar to that of his father. His end was very sudden.
His brother was an officer of the Austrian Cuirassiers, and considered one of the best swordsmen of that service.
There is a sketch of Father Aylmer in Caballero’s “Scriptores SJ” and de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Aylmer, Charles
by C. J. Woods

Aylmer, Charles (1786–1847), Jesuit priest, was born 29 August 1786 at Painstown, near Kilcock, Co. Kildare, the seat of his father, Charles Aylmer (1720?–1801), one of the county's representatives at the Catholic Convention held in 1792, and said in 1798 to be worth £1,600 p.a. He was the fourth son in a family of six sons, one of whom was William Aylmer (qv), and six daughters. His mother was Charles Aylmer's second wife, Esmay, daughter of William Piers of Castletown, Co. Meath, and his wife, Eleanor (née Dowdall). Charles Aylmer junior studied at the school conducted in Dublin by Thomas Betagh (qv) and at the catholic novitiate at Hodder, near Stonyhurst, Lancashire, moving in July 1809 to Palermo in Sicily to join the Society of Jesus, restored in that kingdom in 1805. While in Palermo he published with Paul Ferley and Bartholomew Esmonde, A short explanation of the principal articles of the catholic faith (1812) and The devout Christian's daily companion, being a selection of pious exercises (1812).

Aylmer's ordination to the priesthood came in Rome in 1814, the place and year of the formal restoration of the entire society, an event at which he was present. He returned to Ireland to become superior (1816) of the Jesuit house in Dublin, and rector (1817–20) of Clongowes Wood College, the Jesuit-run secondary school opened (1814) at a short distance from Painstown. In 1820 he took his final vows. He was again superior of the Jesuit house in Dublin in 1822, 1829, and 1841, as such presiding at the laying of the first stone of the Jesuit church – St Francis Xavier in Gardiner Street. From its origin in 1827 he was an active member of the Catholic Book Society and published further devotional works. On the death of his brother Robert in 1841, he inherited the Aylmer property at Painstown. Charles Aylmer died 4 July 1847 in Dublin.

W. J. Battersby, The Jesuits in Dublin (1854), 118–19; F. J. Aylmer, The Aylmers of Ireland (1931), 212; Timothy Corcoran, The Clongowes Record, 1814 to 1932 (1932); Timothy Corcoran, ‘William Aylmer (1778–1820) and the Aylmers of Painstown’, Seamus Cullen and Hermann Geissel (ed.), Fugitive warfare: 1798 in north Kildare (1998), 34–49

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Charles Aylmer 1786-1849
Charles Aylmer was one of the six novices who set out in 1809 for Sicily to study philosophy and theology on the Restoration of the Society there.

He was born at Painstown County Kildare on August 29th 1896. He was educated at Stonyhurst and entered as a novice at Hodder there in 1808. After his ordination he ministered to the British Army stationed at Palermo.

He witnessed the official Restoration of the Society at the Gesù in Rome :
“At eight o’clock in the morning, His Holiness came in state to the Gesù, where he celebrated Mass at the altar of St Ignatius, attended by almost all his cardinals and prelates, and about 70 or 80 of the Society. After his Mass and Thanksgiving, we ass proceeded to the Sacristy. None were admitted by the Cardinals, Bishops and Jesuits. Here the Bull, which reestablishes the Society all over the world was read. A soon as it was read, the Pope presented it with his own hand to Fr Pannizoni, whom he constitutes Superior in his own States, until the General shall otherwise determine. Drs Milner and Murray Archbishop of Dublin were present. Also the Queen of Etruria, and the King of Torino. Little did I expect to be present at so consoling a ceremony in the Capital of the World. O truly how sweet is victory after such a hard fought battle!”

Fr Aylmer returned to Ireland and held various posts at Clongowes and Hardwicke Street. He was Superior of the Mission 1817-1820. In 1829, while Superior, the foundation stone at Gardiner Street was laid. He, together with Fr Esmonde, did much for Gardiner Street Church, collecting money both at home and abroad for the building of the Church and Presbytery.

He also found time to write and is included in Caballero’s “Scriptores SJ” and de Baecker’s “Bibliotheque”.

He died of a hereditary disease of the heart on July 4th 1849.

Born: 01 October 1918, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 September 1936, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1949, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1954, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 19 March 2001, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Gonzaga College, Dublin community at the time of death.

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 108 : Special Edition 2001

Obituary
Fr Anthony (Tony) Baggot (1918-2000)
21st Oct. 1918: Born in Dublin
Early education at Dominican College, Cabra and Belvedere College
14th Sept. 1936: Entered the Society at St. Mary's, Emo
15th Sept. 1938: First Vows at St. Mary's, Emo
1938 - 1941: Rathfarnham, studying Arts at UCD
1941 - 1944: Tullabeg - studying Philosophy
1944 - 1946: Belvedere College - Regency
1946 - 1950: Milltown Park - studying Theology
31st July 1949: Ordained at Milltown Park
1950 - 1951: Tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle
1951 - 1953: Emo - Socius to Novice Director
1953 - 1959: Clongowes - Rector
2nd Feb. 1954: Final Vows
1959 - 1962: Rathfarnham - Spiritual Father to Juniors; Assistant Director of Retreat House
1962 - 1969: Leeson St. - Director Sodalities; Editor of Madonna
1969 - 1978: CIR - Superior
1978 - 1983: CIR - Director Marriage Courses,
1983 - 2001: Gonzaga - Director Marriage Courses, Courses in spirituality and relationships.

Tony was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge in July 1999 suffering from prostate cancer. He remained in reasonably good health until three months before his death, when walking became difficult for him. He died peacefully at Cherryfield at 3.30 a.m. on Monday, 19th March, 2001.

Myles O' Reilly preached at Tony's Funeral Mass...

We are all here because we have known Tony Baggot in some capacity - as a friend, a relative, a Jesuit colleague, a counsellor, a participant in one of his retreats or workshops, or a grateful reader of his writings, or a carer from the Jesuit nursing home in Cherryfield. We have all been deeply touched and enriched by his gentle spirit, by his wisdom, compassion and his kindness, We are here because we want to acknowledge our love for him and our gratitude to God for him. We are only a small fraction of the many thousands of people that Tony touched throughout his 64 years as a Jesuit. To Tony all this positive regard for him would be totally mystifying. He placed himself in the lowest seat at the table of the Lord, but we intuitively know that Jesus will place him in the highest seat - “Well done good and faithful servant, come and inherit the kingdom which God has prepared for you since the beginning of the world”.

Tony had a secret weapon that enabled these qualities that endeared him so much to others to shine forth and through him. A prayer that he loved and said everyday and that he said frequently at his weekly Mass with the boys and the teachers here in Gonzaga for the last 15 years of his life, barring the last two when he got sick. It is a prayer he often used during his Retreats and Workshops also. It goes like this:

Lord Jesus I give you my hands to do your work
I give you my feet to go your way
I give you my ears to listen like you I give you my tongue that I may speak your words
I give you my mind that I may think like you I give you my heart that you may love in me
I give you my spirit that you may pray in me
I give you my whole self that you may grow in me So that it is you, Lord Jesus, that may live, love and pray in me.

What we loved in Tony were the qualities of Jesus shining through him - the Beatitudes - poor in spirit, gentle, merciful, a peacemaker etc. There are many eras to Tony's life, an only child born to Patrick and Harriet Baggot. Tony a Belvederian, who as a boy was a splendid pianist and tennis player, joined the Jesuits at the age of 18 and did the usual training. He was ordained in 1950 and only then did his interesting and varied pastoral life begin. He started with two years as Socius to the Novice Master in Emo.

Then, at the age of 32, he was made Rector of Clongowes for 6 years - he was the youngest Rector ever in the history of the Irish Province. One of our Jesuit Gonzaga community remembers at the age of 11 going to Clongowes and Tony was the first Jesuit he shook hands with. Little did he know that he would be the last Jesuit to hold Tony's band before he died last Monday night - on the Feast of St Joseph, patron of the dying.

After Clongowes Tony went back again to formation work, to being spiritual father to the young Jesuit Juniors in Rathfarnham for 3 years, and also to being a retreat director at the retreat house there. Then, in 1962, he was appointed as Editor of the Madonna, which came on in leaps and bounds under his control. That was where I first met Tony through his writings in the Madonna. I used to marvel, as a novice and a Junior, at his ability to weave passages from novelists like Graham Greene and Morris West into his articles and show how all that is, is Holy, and that God is the deepest inside of us.

Then, in 1969, Tony went to NCIR from where he became director of the Jesuit pre-marriage course for 17 years. He became a legend in his own time in his work. On some of his courses he had over 100 couples, and had no difficulty in filling the Milltown Park hall for a public lecture on marriage. During this time he wrote 3 books on marriage that were best sellers in their day, “To have and to hold”, “You and your marriage” and “Enjoy a happy marriage”.

Tony was a great listener and was particularly sensitive to women. He was an intuitive feeling type, as in the Myers Briggs personality definition, rather than a rational thinker. He learned from experience more than from principles. I am currently chaplain to a group of young married couples that meet every fortnight to help one another grow in their marriage. Only last month one of them read “To have and to hold”, and was enthralled by it, and wants it to be one of the prescribed books for the group. During these 17 years Tony gradually got into counselling, and helped hundreds, if not thousands, of couples.

One of those couples who met Tony 38 years ago, and who are here today, went to Tony with a dilemma – The mother of the Bride to be, who was not too keen to let her daughter go, said her daughter was too young and wasn't ready to get married etc. Tony paused for a while then broke into a grin. “Why don't you go to the maternity boutique in Leeson Street, and buy a maternity dress and hang it up in your wardrobe - that will surely help her to let go!!!”

Tony came to Gonzaga here in 1983 and continued his marriage work for 3 more years. After that he became a full time therapeutic counsellor and ran courses on spirituality and relationships in Tabor House, Chrysalis Conference Centre, and in the Dominican centre in Sion Hill. He became very interested in healing early childhood wounds and pioneered some splendid work in this area, which is still carried on in Chrysalis today.

He never charged any money for his work but he received so many donations that he refused to take a state pension – “Others might need it more than me”, he would say. All this wonderful productivity and creativity came from Tony's depths and from his spirituality. Some quotations from Tony's writings will give us an idea of what resonated with Tony.

Inevitably we live in the presence of holy mystery, a presence we cannot escape, for we are immersed in it. In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness, I can see what we call God in all these things."

I said to the cherry tree, “Tell me of God”, and the cherry tree blossomed. That is more eloquent than any definition of God for me.

When I address God I do not address one who is outside. God is the deepest inside of everything, myself included, and the goal of personal growth is the birth of God in the soul. Life itself is the primary sacrament. Religious faith is human life seen as a disclosure of God.

What is called losing the faith is often not so, but a search for a deeper one.
God speaks from the depths of the heart, not the top of the head.
The movement of God, or the movement, which is God, activates me, flows through me.
Rather than governing from without, God is enlivening from within.
This one work has to do - Let all God's glory through (G M Hopkins)

Spiritual life is the flowering cosmic energy and Jesus, as the high point of God's presence, released a new spiritual power - the Christ power. That presence which radiated from his physical body in Palestine is to radiate through his mystical body in the world now.

He was one who, precisely by being human in the fullest degree, was God's existence in the world -- His divinity or godly quality was not something different from his humanity but was his humanity at its highest point. The Ignatian description for Tony's spiritual journey during these fruitful years would be that he lived the grace of the Second Week. That is, working and labouring with Christ in bringing about his kingdom in the world. But little did he know that, like his master, Jesus, his last few years would be a sharing in the sufferings of Christ before he entered into his glory.

Tony gave his last retreat almost three years ago. From then on his health went slowly into decline. The slow onslaught of what turned out to be cancer of the bone began. Tony lost all his physical energy, he lost all taste for things he liked - gardening, reading and writing. His memory was deteriorating, too. He could no longer do his counselling. He loved being a priest and felt he understood it more richly than ever. He cried with frustration at the loss of not being able to minister any more.

The black dog of depression set in with bouts of scrupulosity. He felt so guilty at occupying a room in Cherryfield at such expense. Surely he wasn't sick enough. He was, like Christ on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”. He felt so empty. The days were so long - nothing to do - nothing to live for – he couldn't pray, read, think.

Even though this was his inner state most of the time, he was always so gracious with the nurses, never failed to be aware of any act of kindness and always quick to thank them. Thank you for your care' he used to say and they grew to love him. They could see that there was something special about Tony, a childlike transparency, a constant sincere gratitude, a freedom from pretence, an honesty of feeling whether positive or negative, never a sharp or nasty word - always gentle. Their acts of kindness were his experience of God during those last dark years, as also were the visits of his friends that he so much appreciated.

Last September a change came about in Tony - a peace came into his soul and it came from saying over and over again this simple prayer every night in the dark of the chapel for half an hour. There was more surrender and humble simplicity in this prayer than in the previous one. Through this prayer he found the peace and the capacity to accept what was happening to him.

I place my hands in yours. I place my will in yours, Lord
I place my will in yours. I place my days in yours, Lord
I place my days in yours. I place my thoughts in yours, Lord
I place my thoughts in yours. I place my heart in yours, Lord
I place my heart in yours. I place my hands in yours, Lord I place my hands in yours.

Angela Ashwin

Whenever his friends would visit him in Cherryfield he would always be glad to give them his blessing before they left. He would always say with a sign of the Cross on the forehead - May Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit guard you and guide you on your way'. One day, close to his death, I was with him, and was about to leave, but Tony wasn't offering his blessing. “Aren't you going to give me your blessing?” He looked confused. The words wouldn't come to him. And then, after a pause, he said “My suffering is my prayer for you”. We can be sure that his sufferings were offered for all of us, not just me.

All he had left to give were his sufferings and his gratitude. Like his saviour on the cross, on Monday night, surrounded by a few friends Tony's work was finished. With Him he could say “It is finished. Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit”. “Lord Jesus receive my soul”. A few hours before he died, Tony's eyes came back from their unconscious glazed state, and focusing, looked intently across to the far window as if he was seeing somebody, he smiled and sank back into his glazed look again. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. Happy indeed, the Spirit says. Now they can rest forever after their work, since their good deeds go with them. (Apoc. 14.13) We surely have an advocate in heaven in Tony Baggott.

◆ The Gonzaga Record 2001

Obituary
Tony Baggot SJ

The Community and College gladly mourn Fr. Tony Baggot SJ, who died peace fully after a long illness on the 19th March, the feast of St. Joseph: gladly, because he richly deserves to be with his Lord; mourn, because we have lost a truly gentle man, who brought peace, comfort and solace to so many of us and others over a long life. Tony's main work throughout his 64 years of Jesuit life was in relationship counselling, especially marriage and personal development counselling. Through his pre-marriage courses, which he directed for 17 years, he let Christ touch many thousands of lives and relieved so many from wrongful perceptions of God; Tony's love and care modelled God's love for them.

Tony came to Gonzaga in 1983 to continue his very extensive counselling prac tice. He joined in with the College pastoral programme by helping with the daily Morning Mass, the sacrament of Reconciliation and other liturgical celebrations, especially at Christmas and Easter and Graduation. His stately figure roamed the grounds, engaged many in conversation, pointing out God's gesture to us in the environment; Tony contributed to beautifying the environment by his work on the rockery beside the tennis courts and the flowerbed at the house. Tony's knowledge of the trees, their provenance and characteristics, was amazing, but only to those who did not appreciate his integration of the whole of creation with God's caring provision for all our needs, body, mind and spirit.

Tony's touchstone prayer reveals the man and the spirit he would have us live by:

Lord Jesus I give you my hands to do your work
I give you my feet to go your way
I give you my ears to listen like you
I give you my tongue that I may speak your words
I give you my mind that I may think like you
I give you my heart that you may love in me
I give you my spirit that you may pray in me
I give you my whole self that you may grow in me
So that it is you, Lord Jesus, that may live, love and pray in me.
(From Fr. Myles O'Reilly's homily)

Tony's Funeral Mass in the college was attended by his cousins, a goodly number of his Jesuit confreres, and a not surprisingly large number of friends and acquain tances. The occasion was graced by an excellent homily by Fr. Myles O'Reilly SJ and the Senior Choir, under the baton of Mr. Potts and organist Mr. Murphy. Fr. Rector and the Community would like to thank all who participated in celebrat ing Tony's life and who have conveyed their sympathies.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

Fr John A Dunne SJ

Born: 29 December 1829, Roosky, County Roscommon / Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 09 January 1865, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 16 June 1853 - pre Entry
Final Vows: 02 February 1876
Died: 14 July 1913, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin

2nd year Novitiate at Leuven, Belgium (BELG)
Chaplain in American Civil War

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Born in Roosky, but his mother was only visiting from Dublin at the time.

On the evening of his death the Telegraphy published an article on him headed “A Famous Irish Jesuit - Chaplain in American War” :
“The Community of the Jesuit Fathers in Gardiner St have lost within a comparatively short time some of their best known and most distinguished members. They had to deplore the deaths of Nicholas Walsh, John Naughton, John Hughes and Matthew Russell, four men of great eminence and distinction, each in his own sphere, who added luster to their Order, and whose services to the Church and their country in their varied lines of apostolic activity cannot son be forgotten. And now another name as illustrious is added to the list. The Rev John Bannon, after two years of inactivity, of sufferings patiently borne, passed away in the early hours of this morning. His death had not been unexpected, but his calm endurance and powerful vitality sustained him to the end, retaining his consciousness and interest in life up till a few hours before he passes away.
Father Bannon was a man of no ordinary gifts. He was a personality of massive character, with a keen intellect, and a mind well stored from his world-wide experience and extensive reading in Theology and literature of the day. Add to this a commanding presence, which compelled reverence and admiration, especially over those over whom his influence was more immediately felt, and the possession of a voice of peculiar sweetness and power, and he stood out as a man fully equipped as a pulpit orator of the very first rank, with a force and charm rarely equalled. He had a vast experience of life, garnered in many lands. Connected by family ties with Westmeath (he was a cousin of Bishop Higgins of Ballarat), his early years were passed in Dublin, where in due time he passed on to Maynooth, where after a distinguished course, He was ordained Priest by Cardinal Cullen in 1853, and he used to recount with pride that he was the first Priest ordained by that eminent churchman. After his Ordination, he came under the influence of Bishop Kenrick of St Louis (from Dublin), to whom he volunteered for work in America.
During the twelve years before the Civil War he led the active and full life of a parochial missionary in St Louis, wit a zeal and energy that are not yet forgotten. The stress of events caused him to cast his lot with the Southern Army, to whose memory he was ever loyal and true, and as Chaplain to the Confederates he went through all the hardships and sacrifices of the campaign, saw all its phases, faced all its dangers, until its final stages ended in peace.
The vicissitudes of life led him back to Europe, where in 1864, on his return from a visit to Rome, he joined the Jesuit Order as a novice in Milltown 09 January 1865, being 35 years of age, and in the full flush of his power and usefulness. After his Noviceship he was sent to Louvain for further studies, and returning to Ireland he was appointed to the Missionary Staff. Few Priests were better known than he was during the years when, as companion of Robert Haly and William Fortescue, his apostolic labours had for their field, almost every diocese in Ireland. After years of arduous toil in the missionary field, many positions of trust in the Order were committed by his Superiors to him in Belvedere, Tullabeg, UCD and at length he was appointed Superior of Gardiner St in 1884. Here for upwards of thirty years he laboured with an ardour and energy characteristic of his powerful will and kindly heart. During all these years his work of predilection was the formation and direction of his great Sodality for Commercial Young Men. To this work he devoted a zeal and energy which were only equalled by the devotedness and affection of those for whom he so unselfishly laboured. Many will have cause to regret in his loss a true friend, a generous benefactor, a wise and comforting adviser. But to his brothers in religion, to those who knew him in the intimacy of his daily life, his memory will remain as that of a man of deeply religious feeling, of profound humility and simplicity of character, and, added to great strength of will, a heart as tender as a mother’s.”

Note from Edward Kelly Entry :
He was ill for a very short time, and died peacefully and happily at Gardiner St. The Minister Father Bannon and Father Joe McDonnell were present at his death.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Bannon, John
by Patrick Maume

Bannon, John (1829–1913), catholic priest and Confederate chaplain, was born 29 December 1829 at Rooskey, Co. Roscommon, son of James Bannon, a Dublin grain dealer, and his wife, Fanny (née O'Farrell). Bannon had a brother and at least one sister. He was educated locally in Dublin, at Castleknock College (1845–6), and at St Patrick's College, Maynooth (minor seminary, 1846–50; theology course, 1850–53). He was ordained to the priesthood on 16 June 1853; some months later he received permission to transfer to the archdiocese of St Louis, Missouri.

Bannon arrived at St Louis early in 1855; after serving as assistant pastor at the cathedral for some months he became assistant pastor of the church of the Immaculate Conception, and in January 1857 pastor. He appears to have been recognised as a man of ability, for in September 1858 Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick (qv) made him secretary to the Second Provincial Council of St Louis (a meeting of the bishops of the American midwest), and the following November appointed him pastor of St John's parish in the west end of St Louis, with a commission to build a large new church and auxiliary bishop's residence. Bannon proved an effective pastor and fund-raiser; the church was largely complete by March 1861. He also became chaplain to a Missouri state militia company.

Missouri was a slave-holding state, and as the southern states threatened to secede from late 1860 tension developed between supporters and opponents of secession. In May 1860 the St Louis militia units (which had been mustered in camp by the pro-southern governor) were surrounded and forced to surrender to Federal troops supported by union volunteers. Father Bannon may have been among the prisoners (who were subsequently released on parole). During the fighting between Confederate and Federal forces in autumn 1861, many of the disbanded militia made their way south to join the Confederate army. On 15 December 1861 Bannon joined them (without the permission of Archbishop Kenrick, who maintained strict neutrality); Bannon had earlier expressed Confederate views from the pulpit, which placed him in danger of arrest. Bannon's admirers tend to emphasise his pastoral concern for his militiamen and his abandonment of bright chances of promotion in St Louis. In his writings and sermons he presented the Confederacy as defenders of Christian–agrarian civilisation against an aggressive, materialistic North.

Bannon reached the Confederate army near Springfield, Missouri, on 23 January 1862. He was attached to the Missouri light artillery but served as a chaplain-at-large to catholic soldiers; since he was not a regimental chaplain he did not receive official recognition (or a salary) until 12 February 1863, when his appointment by the Confederate war department was backdated to 30 January 1862. He kept a diary of his experiences as a chaplain, which he gave to an American historian in 1907; it is now in the University of South Carolina archives and formed the basis of Philip Tucker's The Confederacy's fighting chaplain (1992). He also wrote ‘Experiences of a Confederate chaplain’ (published in Letters and Notices of the English Jesuit Province, Oct. 1867, 202–6).

Bannon was present at the battle of Elkhorn Tavern, Missouri (7–8 March 1862), and accompanied his unit through the fighting around the strategic rail depot of Corinth in northern Mississippi in 1862–3 and on its posting to Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi river, in March 1863. Broad-shouldered and standing over six feet tall, Bannon was a conspicuous figure on the battlefield and many sources testify to his zeal and physical courage in performing his religious duties during the fighting. (He also served as an artilleryman at moments of crisis.) He remained at Vicksburg throughout the siege until the fortress surrendered on 4 July 1863 and its occupants were taken prisoner. After his release on 4 August Bannon went to Richmond, where on 30 August he was asked by Jefferson Davis and the Confederate secretary of state, Judah Benjamin, to undertake a mission to Ireland to discourage recruitment for the Federal forces.

Bannon arrived in Ireland in November 1864. He wrote to the Nation under the pen name ‘Sacerdos’, supplied John Martin (qv) with material for a series of pro-southern letters, and circulated to parish priests and intending emigrants documents defending the southern cause and quoting pro-Confederate statements by prominent nationalists. In February and March 1864 he toured Ireland giving political lectures. His reports to Benjamin (preserved in the Pickett papers, Library of Congress) claim considerable success in discouraging emigration. The Confederate congress voted him its thanks.

In June 1864 Bannon accompanied Bishop Patrick Lynch (qv) of Charleston on a visit to Rome seeking papal diplomatic recognition. By the time his mission was completed it was clear that the Confederacy faced defeat, and neither the civil nor ecclesiastical authorities in St Louis were likely to look favourably on Bannon. He therefore undertook the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola (in a thirty-day retreat) and at their conclusion successfully petitioned for admission into the Irish province of the Jesuit order. He spent a year in the Jesuit novitiate at Milltown Park, Dublin (1865–6), and studied dogmatic and pastoral theology at Louvain (1866–7). In 1867–70 he travelled Ireland as part of the Jesuit team of missionary preachers. Thereafter he founded several sodalities in Dublin. The best-known of these was the Young Businessmen's Sodality, to which he remained attached until 1911; he may have been the model for the preacher Father Purdom in the story ‘Grace’ by James Joyce (qv). Bannon was regarded as a particularly eloquent preacher and continued to travel widely within Ireland, holding retreats and giving sermons on special occasions. He served as minister at Tullabeg College in 1880–81 and at the UCD residence in 1882–3, but he proved to lack administrative ability. He may have been the John Bannon who wrote a short life of John Mitchel (qv) published in 1882.

Bannon was superior of the Jesuit community in Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin (1883–9), where he spent the remainder of his life. He never returned to St Louis but continued to correspond with, and receive visits from, old military acquaintances and southern historians. In November 1910 he suffered a slight stroke, which left him partially paralysed. He died 14 July 1913 at the Jesuit residence in Upper Gardiner Street and was buried in the Jesuit plot at Glasnevin cemetery.

‘Experiences of a Confederate chaplain’, Letters and Notices of the English Jesuit Province (Oct. 1867), 202–6; Philip Tucker, The Confederacy's fighting chaplain (1992); William Barnaby Faherty, Exile in Erin: a confederate chaplain's story: the life of Father John Bannon (St Louis, 2002); James M. Gallen, ‘John B. Bannon: chaplain, soldier and diplomat’, www.civilwarstlouis.com/History/fatherbannon; http://washtimes.com/civilwar (websites accessed 10 May 2006)

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/jesuitica-confederate-priest/

As he lay in prison after the defeat of his troops in the American Civil War, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, received a small token of comfort from Pope Pius IX. It was a crown of thorns, together with a portrait of the pontiff, as a sign of sympathy and support. The man most likely responsible for bringing Davis so firmly to the Pope’s attention was an Irish Jesuit, Fr John Bannon. Fr Bannon became a prominent leader of the Irish community in St Louis and an indefatigable chaplain during the war. He was sent by Davis to Ireland to urge emigrants not to sign up with the Union, and he used his time in Europe to visit the Pope. He had several long audiences with Pio Nono, during which he pressed – successfully, apparently – the Confederate cause.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Bannon 1829-1913
At Roosky County Roscommon on December 29th 1829 was born Fr John Bannon. He was the first priest ordained by Cardinal Cullen in Maynooth in 1853. He came under the influence of Archbishop Kendrick of St Louis USA, and thus came to volunteer for work in America.

For twelve years he led the active and full life of a parochial missionary in St Louis, with a zeal and energy not yet forgotten. The came the American Civil War and Fr Bannon became a chaplain to the Confederate Forces with whom he sympathised.

Having done valiant service in this war until its close, he returned to Europe, where he joined the Society becoming a novice at Milltown Park in 1866, being then 35 years of age.

His first appointment was to the Mission Staff where his companions were Frs Robert Haly and William Fortescue. After years of arduous toil in the missionary field, he held various posts of trust, in Belvedere, Tullabeg, University College, until finally he was made Superior at Gardiner Street in 1884. Here for upwards of thirty years he laboured with his characteristic energy and zeal. He founded and directed for years the Sodality for Commercial Young Men,

The last two years of his life were years of inactivity and suffering patiently borne, and he died peacefully on July 14th 1913.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 113 : Autumn 2002

LEST HE BE FORGOTTEN : JOHN B BANNON

Kevin A Laheen

On 29 December 1829, Mrs. John Bannon was travelling to Dublin to visit her sister who was ill. On reaching the village of Rooskey she went into labour and gave birth to her son, John.

He was educated at Castleknock College, and later on entered Maynooth College to prepare for the priesthood. Just short of his twenty fourth birthday, he was ordained by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Paul Cullen. After a few months of pastoral work in the diocese of Dublin, he received permission from the same Archbishop to transfer to the diocese of St. Louis, USA, where Archbishop Peter R Kenrick was experiencing a shortage of priests in his diocese.

It was not long before the people and priests of St. Louis realised that John was a very gifted preacher. He was said to have “possessed a commanding pulpit presence”, standing as he did, well over six feet in height, and possessing a voice that needed no amplification. While still in his mid-twenties he was appointed pastor and built the magnificent parish church of St. John in downtown St. Louis. This church serves the people of that parish to this day. Very soon there was a feeling among the clergy that the next diocese that fell vacant would be filled by him. However, John had other ideas. He resigned from his parish and joined the confederate army as chaplain.

Stories of his courage, which at times bordered on the imprudent, are legion in the accounts of the various campaigns in which he was engaged. Frequently he crossed into enemy territory to absolve and anoint some of the enemy soldiers who had fallen in battle. When warned about this rashness he merely replied that when God wanted him he was ready to go. There were times when he had escapes which others described as miraculous, such as the time when a federal shell crashed through the church where he was offering mass for the troops.

At the end of hostilities Father Bannon was technically a prisoner of war and confined in his movements. However at the invitation of the southern president, Jefferson Davis, he ran the blockade and crossed the Atlantic in the Robert E. Lee. This was the ship's last escape. The British captured it on its return journey. In 1863 Bishop Patrick Lynch, Bishop of Charleston, and Father John formed a delegation to Pope Pius IX to explain the cause of the Confederacy, which was more friendly to the Catholic Church than the northern states.

When he returned to Dublin he spent much of his time dissuading young prospective emigrant Irishmen from joining the northern cause as he had first-hand knowledge of how young emigrant men were used as cannon fodder by the Federal army. Some New York papers had stated “we can afford to lose a few thousand of the scum of the Irish”. He also exhorted parish priests to influence young men in a similar manner. While in Rome he had made a retreat and also met the Jesuit General. He felt drawn to the Society and on 9th January 1865 he entered the recently opened Jesuit novitiate at Milltown Park.

Most of his life as a Jesuit was spent in Gardiner Street where he was Superior from 1884-90. His reputation as a preacher was well known and he was in constant demand nationwide for his services when sermons on special occasions were needed. Canon McDermot of the diocese of Elphin was a great church-builder and when he died many of these churches were still very much in debt. In November, 1871, Father Bannon preached a charity sermon in Strokestown to help reduce the debt on the new parish church. The Sligo Champion reported that the sermon was such a success that the church debt was almost wiped out. Being, as he was, a native of the diocese, the people regarded him as one of their own, and this may have moved them to be more than normally generous.

After many years of service in Gardiner Street, he died there in July 1913. The Irish Catholic reported that seventy nine priests attended his funeral Mass, and that over a thousand members of his famous Sodality walked behind his coffin on its way to Glasnevin cemetery. As they laid him to rest, he left behind him a life that was as fruitful as it had been varied.

Note: The definitive biography of this great priest is at present being written, and will be launched in St. Louis this autumn.

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

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

Transcribed : HIB to ASL 05/04/1931

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

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

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

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

Born: 1588, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1611, Rome, Italy
Died: 20 September 1621, Holy House of Loreto, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)

Educated at Irish College Douay - Rhetoric and Logic
1614 at Holy House of Loreto (ROM) as Penitentiary
1615 Fr Holywood recommends as fit agent for Irish Mission in Rome
1619 at College of Loreto (ROM) studying Theology

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1614&1617 At Loreto
1615 Fr Holywood recommends him as a fit agent of the Irish Mission to reside in Rome (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Began studies at Douai before Ent 23/10/1604 Rome
1611 Ordained but not allowed to return to Ireland until his studies were complete. Then appointed to Loreto as Confessor
Recommended by Fr Holywood to be Procurator of Irish Mission, but was prevented from taking up this position due to ill health and died Loreto, 20 September, 1621

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BARNEWALL, EDWARD, This Father was Penitentiary at Loretto late in 1614. His Superior, F. Christopher Holiwood, recommended to the General, Claudius Aquaviva, to call him to Rome as agent for the Irish Mission, as he had a good opinion of his zeal and distinction.

Born: 13 December 1903, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny
Entered: 31 August 1921, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1935, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 02 February 1938
Died: 07 March 1944, Dublin

Part of Clongowes Wood College SJ community at time of his death.

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1937 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 19th Year No 2 1944

Obituary :

Father Charles H Barrett SJ (1903-1944)

Fr. Charles H. Barrett (1903-1944). Fr. Barrett was born in Kilkenny, but spent most of his early life in Tralee where his father was Manager of the Provincial Bank. He came to Clongowes in 1916 and left in 1921. During that time be gave promise of a distinguished future; he was a prize-winner in the College Debating Society, he won the Palles Gold Medal for Mathematics, and he secured an exhibition in the Senior Grade Intermediate examination.
He entered the Society on August 31st, 1921, at Tullabeg, and after his noviceship he studied for the B.Sc. Degree at Rathfarnham, obtaining Honours at the Degree examination in 1926. He completed his Philosophy course with distinction at Milltown Park, and in 1928 returned to Clongowes as a Scholastic, teaching Mathematics in the honour's classes with conspicuous success. It was while he was at Clongowes that he revealed his great organising abilities which he was to devote so generously to God's service later on during the relatively short years of his priesthood. He went to Milltown for Theology in 1932 and was ordained in 1935. After the Tertianship in St. Beuno's, he was appointed Prefect of Studies in Mungret in 1937, and remained there until 1941 when he came to Clongowes again to hold the same position there.
In both Colleges he brought his systematic mind to bear on the special problems that confront every school, and the splendid examination results obtained in each under his direction are a proof of the success of his method. Masters and boys who worked under him will long remember his unflagging interest, his wise counsel, his industry and bis complete lack of consideration for himself. Those who knew him best will recall his solid piety and the edifying regularity of his religious life. Nor will they forget his readiness to help others in their difficulties and, one of his most characteristic traits, his continual good humour and cheerfulness.
For many years Fr. Barrett had not known a day's illness, and so the shock for those who knew him was all the greater when death, with tragic suddenness overtook him. On Tuesday, March 7th, he cycled quietly to Dublin to see the Senior Schools' Cup match against Blackrock College. Although the match was being closely contested, Fr. Charlie showed no signs of great excitement but was talking calmly to a friend who stood beside him. Suddenly he collapsed, unconscious, and was attended to immediately by two doctors, one of them a former pupil of his own. They quickly saw that he was dying, and Fr. Rector at once gave absolution. Fr. Barrett was carried into the pavilion and there anointed. He never regained consciousness, and died within five minutes of his falling down. His body was removed to St. Vincent's Hospital and on the next day brought to Clongowes. A very large number, including the Blackrock College team, were present at the removal of the remains.
The funeral at Clongowes was most impressive, and, in spite of transport difficulties, was attended by a representative gathering of the clergy, religious and secular. Fr. Provincial presided at the Office and officiated at the grave, while Fr. Rector sang the Requiem Mass. Several of the Theologians from Milltown Park were present in the choir. The boys, by their own wish, carried the coffin to the grave while the rosary was recited. The College L.D.F., in which Fr. Barrett had taken great interest, provided a Guard of Honour. Very many letters and telegrams of sympathy, and a large number of Mass Cards, testified to the widespread sorrow that was felt at the sad news of Fr. Barrett's death. R.I.P.

◆ The Clongownian, 1944

Obituary

Father Charles Barrett SJ

Fr Charlie Batrrett was a Clongownian of the Clongownians. Yet not in any irritating or bigoted sense; for Mungret boys will long remember his love and service of their school; and he had a most genuine interest in the welfare of Irish Education, extending beyond the classrooms of Clongowes and showing itself in the careful, thorough work on draft-reports and schedules which he so often prepared for our educational authorities. But it remains that the old school had a very special place in his heart, and nothing that touched its interests escaped his attention or failed for lack of his assistance.

As a boy at school he had been an out standing figure in a very gifted group and gave promise of a distinguished future. He was a prize-winner in the Debating Society, he won the Palles Gold Medal for Mathematics, and he secured an exhibition in the Senior Grade examination. He was already universally respected, not only as a member of the Sodality, but as one whose avowed intention of becoming a Jesuit was something which boys felt did honour to him and to the Order.

On his return to Clongowes as a Scholastic, he at once undertook the teaching of the Senior Honours Mathematical classes, then, as now, a very difficult task as the high standards demanded by the programme were within the reach of only a comparatively small minority. He combined always an excellent judgment of the talent required and a clear, methodical exposition which enabled the maximum number to profit by the special training which advanced Mathematics affords. To this task, as to all other tasks, he brought a most conscientious industry that was an example to pupil and colleague alike. During this time the enforced absences of the Prefect of Studies because of ill-health gave Mr Barrett an opportunity to show, as an unofficial understudy, a marked capacity for organization and for loyal co-operation.

On the completion of his theological studies, Fr Charlie went to Mungret, and there for four years was a most successful Prefect of Studies, bringing his systematic mind to bear on the special problems which confront every school and exploiting to the full the special advantages Mungret offered. It was far more than a splendid examination record that the College owed to him, though that record was certainly a proof of the success of his method.

It was therefore not until the war-years were upon us, with their many trials and few advantages, that he came to Clongowes to take over the office previously held by Fr Rector. Though Fr Barrett himself was one who would have passionately repudiated the notion that any individual is necessary to God's plans for Clongowes, yet it must be owned that his early loss was and is a real blow to the school. For in a brief time he had made it quite clear that he possessed many, indeed, almost all the qualities needed for a great Prefect of Studies, and possessed them in remarkable abundance. Not a few foresaw for him a long life of ever-growing efficiency, authority and honour. God took the beginnings in token of the finished work.

The first and most obvious virtues which he brought to the position were the mathe matician's qualities of a clear head, a mind patient to drudgery, ordered thought and a capacity for long planning. No detail was too small for him, nothing was forgotten or mis placed. His tidy desk was the symbol of his orderly school. But he was much more than a routine administrator, If he possessed in a : remarkable degree the official mind, with its affection for the written memorandum, the schedule, the procedure, he had also an exceptional willingness to innovate after all the pros and cons of innovation had been con sidered. To take only a few examples, and those deliberately chosen outside his own proper sphere, it is right that Clongownians should know how enthusiastically he supported the inauguration of the LDF in the College; with what care and patience he arranged the method by which our boys might take a practical part in the country's agricultural revival. Indeed it is remarkable to look back and see how vivid was his interest in and support of every activity in the school life : his unfailing attendance at debates, his assistance in play productions, his now only too clearly tragically realized interest in the school games. To this was added a very strong will, so that he was unalterably fair, very rarely, if ever, over severe, while he had no temptation at all to gain an easy popularity by spoiling boys or by extravagant concessions or remis sions. Of a most happy and equable temper, he was entirely free from any form of personal dislike, appreciated “straight talk” and encouraged it from boys and masters, and was accessible to all and at all times.

A picture, therefore, emerges of a man giving himself wholly and entirely, without other interest or preoccupation, to the boys whom God had entrusted to his case. This they realized, if not always at once, at any rate in time, when his constant preoccupation had followed each one with an amazing and generous solicitude into the affairs of their after-lives. For no trouble was too great for him to take if he could help one of his old boys whether of Clongowes or Mungret. He was no orator and is better remembered, perhaps, reading those balanced and faintly ironical reports that he delivered on prize-giving occasions.

But many of us will remember the sincere and simple words in which he called us to a duty not romantic but noble, the example he gave us to that end in his too short but laborious life, and the promise of a better reward than prizes or medals--that reward which he was never slow to hold up equally before the schoolroom plodder and the schoolroom genius whose lives were motived by supernatural ideals. It is his glory to have been something of both, and his own life so inotived will surely have a great reward.

We tender our deepest sympathies to his mother in her tragic loss.

MB

◆ Mungret Annual, 1944

Obituary

Father Charles H Barrett SJ

With sorrow we pay our tribute to the memory of Father Barrett. He was with us so recently and he was so very much a part of our lives here that his loss was in the deepest sense personal. He spent four years here and in that time, apart from his routine work which was unremitting and exact, he identified himself with Mungret. Every thing which concerned the boys and the school was of interest to him and became an object of his zeal. Every boy was a personal problem for him and his help followed them out of class into the world. The whole school felt the impact of his energy and all responded to that nice combination of drive and good humour which was his peculiar gift. It is scarcely necessary to say that the boys recognised his ability and his interest in them. They knew that he was working to make them not only successful men, if that were possible, but better still, good Christian men. His name is a household word in Mungret yet, and Mungret will not forget him in their prayers, Holy Mass was celebrated for the repose of his soul, the whole school attending. RIP

Born: 25 December 1890, Grange, County Limerick
Entered: 07 September 1906, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 15 August 1922, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1925, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Died: 17 May 1955, St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin

Part of St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois community at the time of his death.
by 1911 at Cividale del Friuli, Udine Italy (VEM) studying

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 30th Year No 3 1955

Obituary :
Father Stephen Bartley 1890-1955
Born on Christmas Day, 1890, at Grange (Boher), Co. Limerick, Fr. Stephen Bartley was educated at the Crescent and entered the Society at Tullabeg in 1906, where he also did his juniorate before going to Cividale in Italy for philosophy. His years of regency were spent in Clongowes and in 1922 he was ordained at Milltown Park. With the exception of one interval as Minister in Milltown his whole priestly life was to be spent in Tullabeg, where he was Minister, Procurator and Rector, and in Emo, where he was Procurator for the last eleven years of his life. He died in St. Vincent's Hospital on May 17th.
Many of the qualities that went to make the man as we knew him came with the boy Stephen Bartley from the Co. Limerick farm: a traditional Irish Catholic faith, simple and undemonstrative though rooted deep; a loyalty to men and causes that, once given, was unwavering; a reserve shy to the: verge of secretiveness; an asceticism which had much of stoicism; a memory retentive of facts and a keen mind to order them; an eye for the best in man and beast and soil and a shrewd sense of money which, while never mean, had the millionaire's conviction of the value of a farthing. Those were talents out of the ordinary and within the limits of chronic ill-health-and at times beyond Stephen Bartley traded with them to the full. As Minister, Rector and Procurator he served the Province and the three houses in which his life was lived with devoted loyalty; and few, if any, excelled him in the heroic art of reading the greater glory of God from the prosaic pages of journals and ledgers. His antique battered fountain-pen has the quality of a relic. Barred from the pulpit by ill-health he was to find in the Confessional the spiritual outlet for his zeal. For 17 years his “box” in the People's Church in Tullabeg was a place of pilgrimage; and it would be hard to overestimate the veneration and esteem in which people of every walk in life held him. In Emo he became the valued confessor and confidant of the local clergy and he directed and consoled by letter many of the clients of his Tullabeg days. Many too are those in his own communities who must bear him lasting gratitude for his prudent and kindly guidance. Heroic in the quality of his hidden service to the Society and to souls, he was no less heroic in his acceptance of almost constant discomfort and suffering, Only in the last years of his life was it possible to get round him to make any real concession to his needs. His fire was a community joke; the few medicines he bothered to take were asked for with the simplicity of a novice; he had to be forced to take a holiday. It is probably true to say that no one ever heard him complain - certainly not of anything that concerned his personal requirements.
His very deep love for the Society found a suitable expression in his devotion to community life. His pleasure in recreation was a pleasure to see and save, when overwhelmed by numbers, he took full part in it. Secretly addicted to the reading of P. G. Wodehouse and Curly Wee, he had an unexpected turn of humour that stood him in good stead when parrying the recreational thrusts of his brethren or avoiding coming to too close quarters with some importunate query or request. His answers in such dilemmas have become part of the Province folk-lore. To a Father commiserating with him on the poisoning of a cow he replied gravely: “As a matter of fact, Father, we had one too many”. And after 20 years, one must still chuckle at the discomfiture of the scholastic who asked leave to go to a hurling match : “It wouldn't be worth it, Mr. X. All the best hurlers have gone to America”.
His peaceful and undemonstrative death was utterly in keeping with his life. The humour perhaps was in grimmer key when he begged his Rector not to allow an operation: “I'm not an insurable life, Father”. But his life's dedication to obedience's appointed task was all of a piece. Almost the last words he spoke were: “Everything will be found in order. I have brought the books up to date”. We cannot help being convinced that they are echoed in eternity.

Born: 26 December 1906, Rahan, County Offaly
Entered: 31 August 1923, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1936, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1939, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 27 June 1990, Dublin

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

Full Name James Stephen Bates

by 1938 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

Born: 1582, Drogheda, County Louth
Entered: 23 October 1604, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: c1610, Rome, Italy
Final Vows: 05 September 1622
Died: 15 June 1649, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny

Of the “Villa de Drochedat” Meath
Educated at Irish College Douay
1610-1611 Sent from Rome as Professor of Spirituality and Scholastic to Irish College Lisbon
1617 in Ireland
1622 in Meath or Dublin
1626 in Ireland
1637 described as fit to be a Superior, but has choleric temperament
1649 in Kilkenny aged 70

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was a learned and most edifying priest and had rendered great service “by sea and by land”.
He was Rector of the Drogheda Residence.
He went thrice to Rome on behalf of the Irish Mission
Socius to the Mission Superior.
He was forty-five years on the Mission, and from Drogheda worked throughout Ulster in the midst of many perils. (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had started his studies at Douai before Ent at 26 October 1604 Rome
After First Vows he was sent to complete his studies at Roman College and was Ordained c 1610
1610 Sent to Lisbon to be Prefect of Studies and Spiritual Father at the Irish College
1612 Returned to Ireland and assigned to Dublin Residence - possibly stationed at Drogheda
1621 Working in Drogheda, during which time he became entangled in the dispute between the Vicar General and the Franciscans.
He retired from Drogheda in the early 1640's and spent his last years at Kilkenny where he died, 15 June, 1649. He was named amongst the six Jesuits who resisted the censures of Rinuccini.
Regularly asked to conduct Irish Mission business in Rome
For many years Robert was Socius to the Superior of the Mission.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Robert Bath 1581-1649
Robert Bath was one of the most distinguished Jesuits who worked in Ireland during the period 1610-1649.

Born in Drogheda in 1581 of a family which gave a martyr to the Society, he entered the Jesuits in 1604. His work was mainly centred around Ulster, and for a long period he was Superior of the Drogheda Residence.

Three times he went to Rome to report on the state of the Mission.

Worn out after a ministry of 45 years, he died in Kilkenny on June 15th 1649.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BATH, ROBERT. In 1624, he had been settled for about two years at Drogheda, where he instituted the Sodality of the B. Virgin Mary. He was thrice sent to Rome for the good of the Irish Mission. Worn out with age and infirmity, he died at Kilkenny, on the 15th of June, 1649.

Born: 25 July 1818, Mountbellew, County Galway
Entered: 11 February 1850, Issenheim, Alsace, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1856, Montauban, France
Final Vows: 03 December 1866
Died: 18 March 1867, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner St, Dublin

Older brother of Michael RIP 1868

by 1853 at Vals, France (TOLO)
by 1854 in Cologne, Germany (GER) studying Theology 1
by 1855 at Malta College (ANG) for Regency
by 1857 at Montauban, France (TOLO) studying Theology
by 1860 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) studying Theology

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Son of an Irish Baronet (probably the Galway Parliamentarians of the 18th and 19th Centuries). Older brother of Michael RIP 1868. Their home was frequently visited by Jesuits, and this helped develop a great love in Christopher for the Society.
After his early education in Grammar and Humanities, he went to Trinity. As he was an eldest so, his family wanted to prepare him as the future representative of the family in an understanding of Society and Politics. So he also travelled much in Europe for that purpose.
In about 1840 a “fashionable marriage” was announced in the Press between the eldest son of and old Catholic Baronet, and the eldest daughter of an old Protestant Baronet, Sir John Burke of Marble Hall. All preparations were in place and the bridegroom went to Clongowes to make a Retreat before his marriage. His younger brother Michael, already being in the Society, meant that the interest of the Community is Christopher was higher than usual. he impressed all with his piety. Waiting for news of the marriage, it seemed to have been delayed, and after a while, there was a rumour that he was in a Novitiate on the Continent. Apparently an issue had arisen which had proven a stumbling block, namely Christopher’s insistence that any children should be raised Catholic. He communicated this to his bride whilst on retreat. A suggestion came back from her family that perhaps any girls would stay with the mother’s religion. Christopher responded by saying that he could not accept this arrangement. He wrote again indicating that the only solution was to relieve her of her promise, and to declare arrangements at an end. Her family wrote back acceding to his request that the children would all be Catholics, but this letter arrived too late - he had left Clongowes, and nobody knew where he was. For some years he did not return to Ireland, and when he did, he was Rev Christopher Bellew SJ. In the meantime, Miss Burke had herself become a Catholic, and lead a very holy life, remaining single, and devoting her life to charitable works.
Christopher joined the Society at Issenheim in France, and after First Vows, began studies in Philosophy at Vals, France. He was later sent to teach Grammar at a TOLO College. While there he became ill, and so was sent to Malta, where he remained as a Teacher for two years. He then returned to France and was Ordained there 1856 at Montaubon.
He then returned to Ireland and spent three years teaching at Colleges.
1859 He was sent to the Dublin Residence as Operarius, and remained there until his death 18 March 1867. He had been very zealous in the hard work of the Confessional.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Christopher Bellew 1818-1867
The life of Christopher Bellew reads like some edifying romantic tale. He was born in Mount Bellew County Galway, the eldest son of Sir Michael Bellew, Baronet. From his earliest years he had a great knowledge and love of the Society, for during his father’s lifetime “Ours” used frequently visit the family mansion, and stay a few days there.
Having completed his early studies, he was sent by his family to Trinity College Dublin, where he went through a distinguished course. He then travelled extensively on the continent to complete his education.
About the year 1840, his forthcoming marriage to the eldest daughter of Sir John Burke of Marble Hall, was announced in the Press. The bridegroom came to Clongowes to make a retreat prior to his marriage. Needless to say the Community at Clongowes were intensely interested in the matter, especially as Christopher’s younger brother Michael was already a Jesuit. Weeks passed, and still no account in the papers of this fashionable marriage. At length a rumour started which grew into a certainty, that the bridegroom was in a Jesuit noviceship somewhere on the continent.

What had happened was this : All the preliminaries to the marriage had been settled except one, the religion of the children, as the intended bride was a Protestant. According to a custom, which rightly or wrongly existed at the time, the bride’s family insisted that the girls of the marriage should follow the religion of their mother. To this condition the bridegroom would not agree, and he wrote to say that he released the young lade from her promise and that the negotiations were at an end.

The upshot of this was that the young lade became a Catholic and led a holy life in single blessedness, devoting her time to works of charity.

Christopher entered the noviceship at Issenheim in Alsace. He was ordained priest at Montaubon in 1856. Recalled to Ireland, he taught for three years in the Colleges, and then was stationed for the rest of his life at Gardiner Street. There he was an outstanding operarius, zealous and untiring in the confessional.

He died on March 18th 1867. He succeeded his father Sir Michael Bellew in 1855, and is listed in Burke’s Peerage as the Reverend Sir Christopher Bellew.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father Christopher Bellew (1818-1867)

Was master at the Crescent from 1860 to 1861 and again from 1862- to 1864. He was the eldest son of Sir Michael Bellew, Bart, of Mountbellew Bridge, Co Galway. After his studies at Clongowes, he entered Trinity College, Dublin and later got a commission in the army. He was heir to the title and family property but resigned his claims in 1850 to enter the Society. The story of his call to the religious life is curious, if not even romantic. From his family's viewpoint, he had made an excellent match in becoming engaged to the daughter of Sir John Burke of Marble Hall, Co Galway. Unfortunately, his bride-to-be was a Protestant, and her family insisted, according to the custom of the time, that any daughters born of the marriage should follow their mother's religious beliefs. Young Bellew, as the time for the marriage-ceremony approached, decided to return to Clongowes to make a retreat under one of his old masters. During his stay at Clongowes, he wrote to Sir John Burke, insisting that all children of the marriage must be Catholics. The Burkes replied that they could not accede to his demands. Bellew now intimated that he felt bound in conscience to terminate the engagement. This time, the Burkes, anxious that the marriage should be gone on with, waived their demands on the religion of their future grand-daughters. But the letter arrived too late to find him. Christopher Bellew had gone abroad. Later it was learned that he had entered the Society in Alsace. On the completion of his noviceship, he entered on his philosophy studies at Vals in the Lyons Province of the Society, and is next heard of as master in a Jesuit College of the Toulouse Province and later in Malta. He returned to France for the study of theology and was ordained at Montauban. Here, it can be recalled, that his former bride-to-be, Miss Burke of Marble Hall, on learning of Christopher's vocation, became a Catholic herself. She never married but spent her life in works of zeal and charity.

Father Bellew's priestly life was short. After his time in the Crescent, he was transferred to Gardiner St Church where he died three years later. Old newspapers of the time refer to him as “The Rev Sir Christopher Bellew, Bart, SJ”. He never used the title himself, although he could not legally renounce it. He was long remembered at Gardiner St Church as a zealous priest, especially in the laborious work of the confessional.

Born: 27 July 1825, Mountbellew, County Galway
Entered: 28 August 1845, St Andrea, Rome / Issenheim, Alsace, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1858
Final Vows: 02 February 1865
Died: 29 October 1868, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin

Younger brother of Christopher RIP 1867

by 1855 in Palermo, Sicily Italy (SIC) studying Philosophy
by 1856 Studying at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG)
by 1859 at Paderborn Germany (GER) studying Theology
by 1868 at Burgundy Residence France (TOLO) health

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Son of an Irish Baronet (probably the Galway Parliamentarians of the 18th and 19th Centuries). Younger brother of Christopher RIP 1867, but Entered four years before him. Their home was frequently visited by Jesuits, and this helped develop a great love in Christopher for the Society.

He was sent to Rome for his Novitiate, but he was not long there when his strength began to fail. General Roothaan, seeing how valuable a man he might be in the future, sent him to Issenheim (FRA) to complete his Noviceship. When he had completed his study of Rhetoric, he came to the Day School in Dublin, where he trained the boys to great piety. Then he was sent to Clongowes as a Prefect.
1855 He was sent to St Beuno’s for Theology, spending his 2nd Year at Montauban, his 3rd at Belvedere, and his 4th at Paderborn.
After Ordination he was sent to Belvedere for a year.
1860 He was Minister at Tullabeg
1861 He was an Operarius and teacher in Galway.
1864-1867 He was appointed Rector at Galway 26 July 1864, taking his Final Vows there 22 February 1865.
1867 His health broke down, and he was sent to the South of France - James Tuite was appointed Vice-rector in his place. When he returned to Ireland, he stayed at Gardiner St, and died there 29 October 1868.

Born: 08 May 1738, Kells, County Meath
Entered: 03 November 1754, Nancy, France - Campaniae Province (CAMP)
Ordained: 24 May 1766, Pont-à-Mousson, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1772
Died: 16 February 1811, SS Michael and John, Dublin

1761 Master of Arts from Metz College and taught Humanities and Rhetoric for 3 years.
1765 Teaching Humanities at Pont-à-Mousson - not yet ordained.
1767 in Ireland

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was of the Betagh family of Moynalty, but “the hospitable mansion, the ample patrimony, had become the portion of plunderers” (Dr Blake’s funeral oration)
A sketch of his life with an engraved portrait is given in “Watty Cox’s Magazine”, March 1811, and in a funeral oration by Doctor Blake, Bishop of Dromore.
His monument, with an inscription, is in the Church of SS Michael and John.
He was Vicar General in Dublin; a celebrated and indefatigable Preacher. A Priest glowing with charity for the poor.
His name in Dublin was still synonymous with learning, piety, zeal and philanthropy (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Received a classical education at John Austin’s school in Dublin.
After First Vows he was sent for studies to Pont-à-Mousson, graduating MA, and then taught for 4 years Regency before being sent for Theology at Pont-à-Mousson where he was Ordained 24 may 1766.
1767 Sent to Ireland and became an assistant Priest at SS Michael and John, Dublin. While there he worked with Frs Austin, Mulcaile and Fullam at Saul’s Court Seminary
1773 At the Suppression he was appointed a curate at SS Michael and John, Dublin
1781 Founded a free parish school for boys at SS Michael and John, Dublin
1799 Appointed PP at SS Michael and John, Dublin and Vicar General of the Diocese until his death 16 February 1811
His memorably large funeral took place (temporarily) at the vaults of St. Michan's. Later his remains were brought back for reburial in the vaults of the newly-finished parish church of SS Michael and John

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
The name “Betagh” is Biadhtach” in Irish, which signified a hospitable man. In the early days of Christianity in Ireland, it was customary that the “proprietor of the soil” who lived close to the high roads, to keep an open house for the entertainment of passing travellers, who would otherwise find it inconvenient, and in many instances fatal, to travel through the country. These people were called Biadhtach. It was very common practice, and suggests that communication between different parts of the kingdom must have been frequent.
The Betagh family held possession of a large tract of land in Moynalty, near Kells, undisturbed until 1641. When Cromwell had killed the King, Thomas’ father fought against him, as one of many Catholics who fought against the regicide, and on behalf of the Stuarts. He was requited for his bravery and loyalty. He had also sent his son to Paris at the start of the Cromwellian war for education. The land was taken by Cromwell and given to one of his followers. When Charles II was restored, the dispossessed were invited to reclaim their lands, and an application was received from a young Thomas Betagh, though the English possessor claimed he did not have the right, as he was a rebel, and the possessor prevailed in Court. His father then lived as a tanner in Kells.
In Paris, Thomas received his early education and then entered the seminary at Pont-à-Mousson, and progressed very rapidly through his studies. He became remarkable for his extraordinary literary attainments. he was highly esteemed in the seminary, never contradicting anyone unless it was a mater of dogma or morality. He had great self possession, and was heard to say “from the age of fourteen, Providence seemed to encompass him with an impervious shield, or barrier, which secured him against the attacks of the enemy of mankind”.
He remained in France until the Suppression by Clement XIV, and had been appointed a Professor of languages. He had intended to remain in France but for the Suppression. He returned to Ireland in 1773, and opened a Latin school with John Austin in Sall’s Court, Fishamble St. He was later appointed as curate at St Michael’s, called Rosemary Lane, where he earned a great reputation for sanctity and apostolic zeal. His main focus was the poor, and he seemed to have a great capacity to communicate with them, and at the same time, he retained his scholarship. He subsequently became PP at St Michael’s and also a Vicar General of the Diocese. All of this while he suffered from a severe infirmity, and protests from his physicians. He also established an “Evening School” in Skinner’s Row, primarily for the poor, and in an effort to support them from the punitive laws of the time. From that school he chose a certain number, whom he thought might at some future time be appropriate for the priesthood. In many ways he is the link between the Suppressed and Restored Society. The same year that he died, his protégée Peter Kenney, founder of the restored Society, finished his Theological studies.
An obit in “The Dublin Magazine” March 1811
His death was looked on as a public calamity. On the days of his funeral, many shops were closed, and a huge number followed his remains to their resting place.
Nicholas Sewell SJ to Thomas Betagh SJ 07 July 1809 :
“About three weeks ago I informed you that we proposed, towards the end of this month, sending some of the Irish Eleven to Palermo, in order to finish their studies there, and to obtain ordinations. For this end, we wrote to our friend Mr George Gifford, at Liverpool, to inquire whether there would be any ship sailing from thence for Palermo, about this time. Mr Gifford, finding a good ship, with proper accommodations, ready to sail, engaged with the captain to take six of our young men , binding himself to forfeit the whole passage money if he did not get on board by the 5th of this month. Thus we were obliged by the contract to send the young men immediately to Liverpool, and by a letter from one of them, they were going on board the ship on the 4th, and I suppose the have sailed before this. The names of the young men are : Bartholomew Esmonde from Kildare; Paul Ferley Dublin; Charles Aylmer from Kildare; Robert St Leger, Waterford; Edmund Cogan, Cork; James Butler, Dublin. The first two are not on the Irish Establishment. It was the free voluntary choice of them all to go. They are all young men of abilities, have done very well in their studies here, and are likely to do credit to their country, and Mr Plowden speaks much praise of them all. A time was pressing, we could not wait for your answer to my last letter, which I hope you received. The Rev mr Stone will return home tomorrow. We are all very well, and our new building rises fast and well..........

◆ Fr Joseph McDonnell SJ Past and Present Notes :
16th February 1811 At the advance ages of 73, Father Betagh, PP of the St Michael Rosemary Lane Parish Dublin, Vicar General of the Dublin Archdiocese died. His death was looked upon as almost a national calamity. Shops and businesses were closed on the day of his funeral. His name and qualities were on the lips of everyone. He was an ex-Jesuit, the link between the Old and New Society in Ireland.

Among his many works was the foundation of two schools for boys : one a Classical school in Sall’s Court, the other a Night School in Skinner’s Row. One pupil received particular care - Peter Kenney - as he believed there might be great things to come from him in the future. “I have not long to be with you, but never fear, I’m rearing up a cock that will crow louder and sweeter for you than I ever did” he told his parishioners. Peter Kenney was to be “founder” of the restored Society in Ireland.

There were seventeen Jesuits in Ireland at the Suppression : John Ward, Clement Kelly, Edward Keating, John St Leger, Nicholas Barron, John Austin, Peter Berrill, James Moroney, Michael Cawood, Michael Fitzgerald, John Fullam, Paul Power, John Barron, Joseph O’Halloran, James Mulcaile, Richard O’Callaghan and Thomas Betagh. These men believed in the future restoration, and they husbanded their resources and succeeded in handing down to their successors a considerable sum of money, which had been saved by them.

A letter from the Acting General Father Thaddeus Brezozowski, dated St Petersburg 14 June 1806 was addressed to the only two survivors, Betagh and O’Callaghan. He thanked them for their work and their union with those in Russia, and suggested that the restoration was close at hand.

A letter from Nicholas Sewell, dated Stonyhurst 07 July 1809 to Betagh gives details of Irishmen being sent to Sicily for studies : Bartholomew Esmonde, Paul Ferley, Charles Aylmer, Robert St Leger, Edmund Cogan and James Butler. Peter Kenney and Matthew Gahan had preceded them. These were the foundation stones of the Restored Society.

Returning to Ireland, Kenney, Gahan and John Ryan took residence at No3 George’s Hill. Two years later, with the monies saved for them, Kenney bought Clongowes as a College for boys and a House of Studies for Jesuits. From a diary fragment of Aylmer, we learn that Kenney was Superior of the Irish Mission and Prefect of Studies, Aylmer was Minister, Claude Jautard, a survivor of the old Society in France was Spiritual Father, Butler was Professor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology, Ferley was professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Esmonde was Superior of Scholastics and they were joined by St Leger and William Dinan. Gahan was described as a Missioner at Francis St Dublin and Confessor to the Poor Clares and Irish Sisters of Charity at Harold’s Cross and Summerhill. Ryan was a Missioner in St Paul’s, Arran Quay, Dublin. Among the Scholastics, Brothers and Masters were : Brothers Fraser, Levins, Connor, Bracken, Sherlock, Moran, Mullen and McGlade.

Trouble was not long coming. Protestants were upset that the Jesuits were in Ireland and sent a petition was sent to Parliament, suggesting that the Vow of Obedience to the Pope meant they could not have an Oath of Allegiance to the King. In addition, the expulsion of Jesuits from all of Europe had been a good thing. Kenney’s influence and diplomatic skills resulted in gaining support from Protestants in the locality of Clongowes, and a counter petition was presented by the Duke of Leinster on behalf of the Jesuits. This moment passed, but anti Jesuit feelings were mounting, such as in the Orange faction, and they managed to get an enquiry into the Jesuits and Peter Kenney and they appeared before the Irish Chief Secretary and Provy Council. Peter Kenney’s persuasive and oratorical skills won the day and the enquiry group said they were satisfied and impressed.

Over the years the Mission grew into a Province with Joseph Lentaigne as first Provincial in 1860. In 1885 the first outward undertaking was the setting up of an Irish Mission to Australia by Lentaigne and William Kelly, and this Mission grew exponentially from very humble beginnings.

Later the performance of the Jesuits in managing UCD with little or no money, and then outperforming what were known as the “Queen’s Colleges” forced the issue of injustice against Catholics in Ireland in the matter of University education. It is William Delaney who headed up the effort and create the National University of Ireland under endowment from the Government.from the Government.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Betagh, Thomas
by Dáire Keogh

Betagh, Thomas (1738–1811), Jesuit priest and educator, was born in May 1738 in Kells, Co. Meath, into a family of tanners whose ancestors had lost their estates in the Cromwellian confiscation. He received his early education at Kells, but was enrolled in the Jesuit academy in Saul's Court newly established by Fr John Austin (qv) when his family moved to Dublin. In 1755 he entered the Jesuit seminary at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, France, where he taught theology and languages following his ordination in 1762.

Betagh returned to Ireland in 1769 and began his ministry as a teacher at Saul's Court. His arrival in Dublin coincided with the revival which characterised late eighteenth-century Irish catholicism; Fr Betagh was in the vanguard of this movement. Throughout, his priority remained education. In 1784 he succeeded Austin as rector of Saul's Court, and his graduates included Daniel Murray (qv), later archbishop of Dublin, and the Jesuit Peter Kenney (qv), founder of Clongowes Wood College. In addition to this academy for the ‘better sorts’, Betagh founded evening, day, and Sunday schools, first in Schoolhouse Lane and finally in Smock Alley. In this ‘Free School’ he was, in the words of his funeral oration, ‘father, physician and director’ to three hundred boys.

Following the suppression of the Jesuits by Clement XIV in 1773, Betagh served as a priest of the diocese, first as a curate in SS Michael and John in Rosemary Lane. In time he became a vital collaborator of successive archbishops, as vicar-general to the reforming Archbishop John Troy (qv) and advisor to Archbishop Daniel Murray, his former pupil. In Jesuit history he forms a bridge between the Old Society, of which he was the last survivor and guardian of their funds, and the restored Society, whose revival, in 1814, he facilitated by sending a number of his students, including Peter Kenney, Bartholomew Esmonde, and Charles Aylmer (qv), to Stonyhurst and Palermo. A renowned preacher, he was also influential in nourishing the vocation of the young Catherine McAuley (qv), who founded the Sisters of Mercy.

Betagh lived through troubled political times. In the radical politics of the revolutionary age he was ranked, in 1796, among the ‘moderates’ by Dublin Castle informer William Corbet (qv) (d. 1838?). Recommended to the English traveller William Reed as ‘the most learned and best informed man in Ireland’, he was prominent in the anti-veto faction of the post-union era.

Betagh died 16 February 1811 at his home in Cook Street. In an age of increasing sectarianism, an obituary in Walker's Hibernian Magazine celebrated ‘this truly great man . . . as much esteemed by the Protestants as he was beloved by his own flock’. His funeral, attended by upwards of 20,000 people, was among the largest seen in the city. His remains were placed in the Jesuit vault in old St Michan's church. In 1822 they were transferred to the crypt of the new SS Michael and John chapel, Essex Street, the foundation of which he laid in 1810. His resting place was marked by an elaborate monument executed by Peter Turnerelli (qv). In 1990, when that church was deconsecrated, his remains were removed to the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery.

A stipple and line engraving likeness by John Martyn (d. 1828) (after William Brocas (qv)), published in 1811, is in the NGI, as is a pencil drawing by William Brocas; while the monument by Turnerelli in SS Michael and John, Dublin, has been dismantled, the medallion remains.

NAI, 620/25/170; Archives of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, Dublin, Betagh MSS; ‘Prosopography of Irish Jesuits’, Archives of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, Dublin; Monologies, 1800–99, Archives of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, Dublin; Walker's Hibernian Magazine (Feb. 1811); Cox's Irish Magazine (Mar. 1811); W. Reed, Rambles in Ireland (1815); M. Blake, Sermon preached on the lamented death of V. Rev. Thomas Betagh (1821); W. J. Battersby, The Jesuits in Dublin (1854); G. A. Little, Father Thomas Betagh (1960); ODNB

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962 & ◆ Irish Jesuit Directory 1934

FR THOMAS BETAGH, SJ
(And the Popular Schools of the Irish Jesuits in Dublin during the late Penal Times)

The eighteenth century was the epoch of triumph for the English State Church of the Protestant Colony in Ireland. That triumph was seen most strikingly in their joint action against Catholic Education. Evidence of this, as conclusive as it is laconic, may be adduced in the following excerpts from the Roman Records of the Irish Jesuit Mission during twenty-five years, the years when the Penal Code was wrought with care to its iniquitous perfection, 1692 to 1717.

On November 25th, 1694, Father Antony Knoles, SJ, Superior in Ireland (May 15th, 1694, to his death at Waterford, August 14th, 1727), writes to his personal friend, Thyrsus Gonzalez, General of the Order, at Rome : “ Very great is the diligence of our adversaries, and it is nou most intense, to prevent members of the Order from giving education to boys. But their zeal is enough to urge then to face the work and its danger with courage; they toil in secret”.

Father Knoles writes again to Rome, February 17th, 1695, telling how “at Kilkenny the State officials have committed to prison the colleagues that I had, because they carried on the education of a few boys”.

On February 12th, 1717, the Triennial Account sent to Rome states that “Father Michael Murphy is taking the risks of giving education to young people at this time in the capital of the country. He has taught Greek and Latin throughout the last five years, and is doing so at present”.

There is no need to set out here the ingenious thoroughness of the Penal Laws under which this educational work was being done through the eighteenth century. But it may be serviceable to insist upon the proved fact that the laws on education were being enforced by both the Cromwellian State and its State Church. There are fragmentary portions of the Grand Jury Records available for three or four counties of Munster, 1712 to 1724. They show continuous action by Grand Juries and Magistrates. In County Limerick alone, from 1711 to 1723, nineteen Popish schoolmasters were “presented” by the Grand Jury. With an absolutely Protestant common jury, and a Protestant judge of the new type this indictment meant conviction and transportation for life to serve as a bondsman on the cotton and tobacco plantations in America. Rewards were voted to informers. Scores of Catholic parents were also indicted at Assizes, as we know from the surviving patches of the “Record Books” for Galway and Clare and Kerry. We have the testimony, in “Reports to the Dublin House of Lords, November, 1731”, as to the activities of the prelates of the State Church, testimony given under their own hands and seals, Henry Naule, Bishop of Derry, declares that in his diocese, even in its mountainous areas, no Popish schoolmaster is allowed to teach. If they try to do so, they are constantly threatened with indictment at Assizes: and “they generally think proper to withdraw”. Edward Synge, State Archbishop of Tuam, Administrator of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh, in three separate reports confirms the evidence from Derry in precise detail. Then one Popish schoolmaster was recently convicted, he says, the effect was very salutary; the rest “absconded”.

A new policy of Constructive Aggression dated from 1733. In addition to these persecuting activities, the Parliament and Government at Dublin, with the enthusiastic support of Prelates and Press, Deans and Grand Juries, set on foot the Charter School system in 1733, and gave it liberal public grants from 1714. The Irish Jesuits had in very deed additional reasons for being active in education. Their reports to Rome at this period show fully that they realised this need. Rarely as many as twenty in number, they were at work in many or the former Anglo-Norman cities and towns, places no longer as Catholic as they had been, for they were very thoroughly cleared of Popish inhabitants both under William and under Anne. The need of schools, however, was greatest in Dublin. Aggressive proselytism, both under State auspices and by independent societies, has always been conspicuous in the capital of Ireland. Its preferred region for action has always been the poorest part of Dublin, from the Coombe northwards across the River Liffey to Henrietta Street and Bolton Street. From 1714, Dean Swift was thus active around the deanery house beside the Coombe; he had the constant support of Archbishop Willian King, 1702-1729, from his palace hard by. From 1727-30 the same work was powerfully pressed forward from his town residence by Primate Hugh Boulter of Armagh, the real governor of Ireland, from 1730 to 1750, the originator of the Charter Schools in the years 1730 to 1733.

This work of evil was combated on the spot by the Irish Jesuits, who, in the lanes and alleys of oldest Dublin, conducted schools all through the later Penal period, 1750 to 1810. They combined elementary with classical education, as did the country schools of that epoch, all over Ireland. There was then no talk of the educational ladder for the gifted children of the Catholic poor of Ireland. They had a broad highway, and the enemy knew it well. Samuel Madden wrote of it in 1738 in his “Reflections from the Gentlemen of Ireland, as landlords and as Members of Parliament”. In close collaboration with Bishop Berkeley and with Thomas Prior, he founded in 1731 what became the Royal Dublin Society. The determination of the Irish people to have full opportunities for a liberal education disgusted him. “Crowds of the Irish”, wrote the founder of the Madden Prize in Trinity College, Dublin, “waste their time and their substance as poor scholars. If only their spiritual governors were effectively removed, and their Church government by that means subverted, this would finish the work for us”. This “work” was repeatedly defined, in the Protestant school documents of the epoch, as to make the whole nation Protestant and English.

But even in that sorely-beset region of Dublin, commanded by the Castle, the King's Inns of Court, the two Protestant cathedrals, in addition to their two deaneries and the residences of the State Archbishops of Dublin and Armagh, Catholic schools managed to operate throughout that terrible century. The older Religious Orders, as the Carmelites from 1758, did great work in the cause of popular Catholic education. So did many hundreds of humble Catholic teachers, laymen and women, who conducted illegal schools among the very poor, north as well as south of the river. There was a sequence of efforts to conduct schools in the cities and larger towns from 1690 to 1720 and the ensuing decades. In 1750, John Austin, SJ whose name was long held in reverence, opened in Saul's Court, off Fishamble Street, a classical school. By 1770, with the aid of his brethren, such as James Philip Mulcaile and Thomas Betagh, a boarding house for pupils from the country was set beside Father Austin's school. It became, formally or virtually, the Diocesan School for Dublin, Meath, and adjoining counties. It produced such men as Daniel Murphy and Michael Blake, both determined opponents of the Veto proposals, 1799 to 1825.

The work for Catholic education, thus developed on what may well be termed the front line of action, was maintained all through their long lives by such men as Fathers Mulcaile, Austin, and Betagh. The alteration of ecclesiastical status which supervened for them, when, in the autumn of 1773, the Order to which they belonged was suppressed by the Holy See, made no difference in their daily service of popular education. When thus advanced to the rank of the pastoral or diocesan clergy, they acted as assistant priests in the same populous areas as before. Their school system expanded from Saul's Court into Skinner's Row, Hoey's Court, Smock Alley, Archbold's Court, and Schoolhouse Lane, while Father Mulcaile's energies were spent chiefly north of the River Liffey, in the lanes around George's Hill, Phrapper's, Ball's, Fisher's, and others besides.

Father Austin was the first of these school-men to be called to his reward. His death evoked a wonderful manifestation of regard from Catholic Dublin, Twelve years afterwards, 1789, a Protestant English traveller, Charles Topham Bowden, visited Dublin during an extended Tour in Ireland (London, 1791). Having come upon Father Austin's epitaph in the parish Cemetery of St. James, he recorded its text in full, and added :
“I was led to make inquiries relative to Austin, and was told he was a very remarkable character in this metropolis about twelve or fourteen years ago, of: extraordinary learning and extraordinary: piety; that he constantly dedicated all his acquisitions, which were very considerable, to the poor, visiting them in cellars and in garrets, never a day happy that he did not give food to numbers”.

Even more remarkable is the record and the popular recollection :of the great educational no less than the great ecclesiastical work done on to the very last week of his long life by the surviving Irish Jesuit of the Old Society, Tatler Thomas Betagh (1738-1811). When the Order was ejected from its 108 colleges in French, in 1762, by the arbitrary decrees of Louis XIV, at the instigation of Choiseul and Pompadour, Betagh was a student in Theology, just ordained at Pont-á-Mousson in Lorraine. The Irish Jesuits were well known at that ducal University as far back as 1592. Then one of their number, Richard Fleming, was Chancellor there, having among his students Pierre Tourier, the staunch Lorraine patriot, who became a notable organiser of schools for the children of the countryside, and who was canonised in our own times. Having given up his whole energies to work among the Catholic poor or St Michan's* parish, Father Betagh became its parish priest late in life, and was also Vicar-General of the diocese of Dublin some years before his death in February, 1811. Two aspects of his career have impressed themselves very distinctly on local tradition. He was a determined opponent of the “Veto” movements that would have subjected the entire religious administration of Catholic Ireland to the intervention of a Protestant, civil power, bitterly hostile in all its official instruments, and in all its political and social connections in Ireland, even more than in England, to everything Catholic and Irish. His courageous and outspoken views on this vital issue were a main determinant of the definitive rejection of the “Veto” by the Bishops of Ireland in 1808; and he was naturally a centre, of strength and influence for the whole country on that and on cognate questions. He exercised this influence, no less than he practised the noble work of popular education, up to the end. Unsuspected external evidence has recently been acquired:which sets his position forth very clearly; it may be here drain on in an abbreviated form. Among the numerous English travellers in Ireland who printed some account of their experiences on their return was a Baptist minister, William Reed, of Thornbury, in Gloucestershire. Reed landed at Cork in September, 1810, reached Dublin in November, and the very rare volume of his travels appeared in London, 1815. Of Father Betagh he writes thus:
“I desired to be better acquainted with the real character of the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland. On arriving in Dublin, I was desired to consult Dr Betagh, who was said to be the most learned and the best informed man in Ireland, and who added to these accomplishments an amenity of manners that was almost enchanting. Accordingly, one morning I knocked at the door of this venerable monk, but could not have access to him then, as he was giving audience to two Bishops. The next morning I found him alone. Requesting to know my business, he desired me to draw my chair nearer to the fire, and we soon entered into the depths of the most serious conversation. I questioned him on the subjects of Purgatory, Indulgences, the use of Holy Water, Praying for the Dead, Transubstantiation, Praying to the Saints, and particularly of the Virgin Mary, whom they call the Mother of God. I found him very eloquent. He defended every part of his system with an acuteness and force, ingenuity and masterly address, that astonished me. He had received me with the greatest politeness”.

His Baptist visitor did not have occasion to see Father Betagh at work in those schools of his, schools of the parish where he laboured and that still bear his name. But we may draw on Mr Reed's text to show how popular education then fared in the South of Ireland, along the roadside. It will serve to illustrate, by immediate comparison, the arduous service which the parish priest and Vicar-General of Dublin rendered during that autumn of 1810, which was to be the last in his earthly life. He taught his scholars in the cellars of Cook Street. The work was thus severer than that seen by Mr Reed on his way to Dublin in 1810, through Munster.

“A desire for education manifests itself, and very generally, among the lower orders of the people. In any wanderings through the country I found several very humble seminaries, called Hedge Schools. Not having any other convenience, the scholars are taught reading, writing, etc., in the open air, under the shade of some embowering hedge, or branching tree; and very often the green bank and the smooth shelves of the rock answer purpose of the bench and the desk”. - (Ramples Through Ireland, London, 1815, p.52).

The urban counterpart of the Munster Hedge Schools was described in the sermon on Father Betagh's life and work. It was delivered on Palm Sunday, 1811, by his own scholar, his colleague in the pastoral work of Dublin City, that Father Michael Blake, who was afterwards Bishop of the northern diocese of Dromore, down to 1860, He recorded with emphasis his experience of the poor among whom he, and his master, had worked for many years. “Our poor”, said Dr. Blake, “are the most interesting people on the earth, the most noble-minded, the most grateful, and most hospitable, the most considerate, and the fondest of learning”. To that decisive finding may be subjoined two sentences spoken by Dr. Blake on Father Thomas Betagh, the Dublin parish priest whose name and work have survived to this day on the lips of the poor and plain Catholics of the oldest city regions:
“Look to that Free School, where three hundred boys, poor in everything but genius and spirit, receive their education every evening, and where more than three thousand have been already educated. Can you estimate sufficiently the value of the man who established that institution; who cherished the objects of it; who supervised their instruction; who rewarded the most promising of them with a classical education; who, at the age of seventy three, would sit down in a cellar to hear their lessons?”

The Irish Jesuit, the last of the Old Society of 1540-1773, who provided and who taught in that Free Popular School for elementary and for classical education, died in February, 1871, at 92 Cook Street, Dublin. Just a year later, in 1812, Father Peter Kenney SJ, pupil of Father Betagh, the first Superior of the Restored Irish Mission of the Society of Jesus, reached Dublin after completing his ecclesiastical studies at Palermo in Sicily, and took up work at Mary's Lane Chapel, north of the River Liffey. His seven fellow-students, all of whom had been Father Betagh's scholars, followed him home, from 1811 to 1814.

Timothy Corcoran SJ
*Addendum for St Michan's read “St Michael’s”
◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Thomas Betagh SJ 1738-1811
Fr Thomas Betagh was the last survivor of the Irish Jesuits of the old Society. Like many another Irish family, his forefathers had been deprived of their estate, Moynalty, near Kells, for their loyalty to the Stuarts and their Faith. They were reduced to the state of peasantry. Thomas’ father was a tanner at Kells. He was born on May 8th 1738, and having received a grammar school education in Father John Austin’s school in Saul’s Court, Dublin, he was sent at the age of fourteen to the Jesuit Seminary at Pont-á-Mousson, in Lorraine, in 1752. He had a brilliant course here and ended up as professor of Classical Languages at the Ecclesiastical University. On the Suppression of the Society, he returned to Ireland and resumed his teaching activities with his old master, Fr Austin in Saul’s Court.He was appointed a curate at St Michael’s parish in Rosemary Lane, and succeeded as Parish Priest and Vicar General in 1799.

His work as a pastor and educationalist was unflagging, in spite of continual ill-health, for which he suffered all his life with a hernia. In addition to the ordinary school at Saul’s Court, which served as the sole source of education for Catholics in Dublin, and as the Seminary for the Diocese, he instituted his famous night-schools for the poor, in Schoolhouse Lane, in Hoey’s Court, Smock Alley, Derby Acre and Skinners Row. With good reason he did become a legend to the people. A friend once voiced the sentiments of the public “Oh Betagh, what will become of us when you go to heaven?” With his brilliant student Peter Kenney in mind, he replied “No matter; I am old and stupid; there is a cock coming from Sicily that will crow ten times as loudly as I could”.

He died at twelve o’clock on the 16th of February 1811, at his residence in 80 Cook Street, Dublin, aged 73. His remains were finally deposited in the old chapel at Rosemary Lane. A monument was erected to him there and subsequently removed to a new Church of SS Michael and John. It is estimated that no fewer that 20,000 people walked at his funeral.

◆ Clongowes Wood College SJ HIB Archive Collection - SC/CLON/142

Thomas Betagh 1738-1811
Thomas Betagh, born 8 May 1738 of an old Meath family, once Lords of Moynalty, received his classical education at Father Austin’s school in Dublin before he entered the Society at Nancy 3 November 1754. After his noviceship he studied at the University of Pont-à-Mousson where he graduated M.A. He entered on his regency in the same city and having professed rhetoric there for four years he studied theology, He was ordained priest at Spire on 24 May 1766. He was recalled to Ireland the following year and appointed assistant priest in the parish of St Michael and John He also collaborated with Fathers Austin, Mulcaile and Fullam in Saul's Court seminary.
On the Suppression of the Society he was incardinated in the diocese and appointed curate at St Michael and John's. As curate of the parish he founded in 1781 his free school for boys. In 1799 he was appointed parish priest and Vicar General of the diocese. Shortly before he resigned his parish in 1810 he laid the foundation stone of the parish church. He died on 16 February 1811 and was buried temporarily in the vaults of St.Michan's church. His remains were later reburied in the vaults of the new church and remained there until the deconsecration of the venerable church building. He now sleeps in the great Jesuit plot at Glasnevin. He was the last to die of the ex-Jesuits of the Third Irish Mission but he lived long enough to know that the first Jesuit of the Irish Mission soon to be restored, Peter Kenney,one of his own former pupils, was already ordained priest and ready to return from Sicily to Dublin.

◆ MacErlean Cat Miss HIB SJ 1670-1770
Loose Note : Thomas Betagh
Those marked with were working in Dublin when on 07/02/1774 they subscribed their submission to the Brief of Suppression
John Ward was unavoidably absent and subscribed later
Michael Fitzgerald, John St Leger and Paul Power were stationed at Waterford
Nicholas Barron and Joseph Morony were stationed at Cork
Edward Keating was then PP in Wexford

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BETAGII, THOMAS. This very Rev. Father and Vicar General of the Archdiocess of Dublin, entered into his rest in the Irish Metropolis on the 16th of February, 1811, aet. 74. The vast attendance of Citizens and Clergy at his Funeral Obsequies was a public testimony to his worth and charity. His monument was to be seen in the Old Chapel, Rosemary Lane, and now in the New Chapel of SS. Michael and John, Lower Exchange street, Dublin, on the Epistle side of the Altar. The inscription is as follows :

" Glory to God, most good, most great."
" THIS MARBLE,
CHRISTIAN BROTHER, PRESENTS TO YOUR VIEW, THE LIKENESS OF
THE VERY REV. THOMAS BETAGH, S. J.
(VICAR-GENERAL OF THE ARCHDIOCESS OP DUBLIN,)
AND DURING MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS
THE EXCELLENT AND MOST VIGILANT PASTOR OF THIS PARISH,
WHO GLOWING WITH CHARITY TOWARDS GOD AND HIS NEIGHBOUR,
WAS EVER INDEFATIGABLE IX HIS MINISTRY,
TEACHING, PREACHING, AND EXERTING ALL HIS POWERS
TO CONFIRM THE TRUE CHRISTIAN IN THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS, AND TO BRING BACK THE STRAYING INTO THE WAYS OF SALVATION.
HIS CHIEF DELIGHT AND HAPPINESS IT WAS
TO INSTRUCT THE YOUNG, ESPECIALLY THE NEEDY AND THE ORPHAN,
IN RELIGION, PIETY, AND LEARNING,
AND TO FORWARD AND CHERISH THEM WITH AFFECTION TRULY PATERNAL.
HIS ZEAL FOR THE SALVATION OF SOULS CONTINUED TO BURN WITH UNDIMINISHED ARDOUR,
UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT OF HIS LIFE,
WHEN WORN DOWN BY LINGERING ILLNESS, AND INCESSANT LABOURS,
THIS GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT DELIVERED UP HIS SOUL TO GOD
IN THE YEAR OF HIS AGE, 73, AND OF OUR REDEMPTION 1811.
MAY HE REST IN PEACE.
TO THIS MOST DESERVING MAN, THE OllNAMBNT OF HIS PRIESTHOOD AND HIS COUNTRY,
THE CLERGY AND PEOPLE OF DUBLIN WHO ATTENDED HIS FUNERAL,
WITH MOST MOURNFUL SOLEMNITY AND UNEXAMPLED CONCOURSE,
HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT AS A LASTING MEMORIAL OF THEIR LOVE AND GRATITUDE."

N.B. Brocas has engraved the Portrait of this Apostolical Father, whose name is still synonymous in Dublin, with Learning, Piety, Zeal, and Philanthropy. In the Freeman s Journal of the 17th of October 1815, is the following description of the Monument:
"DR. BETAGH’s MONUMENT,
“The Monument erected to the memory of the late Rev. Dr Befagh, in the Chapel of St. Michael and St. John, was Sunday opened for public inspection. It was executed by Turnerelli, of London, who is, we understand, a Native of Ireland. The composition of this elegant piece of Sculpture, consists of two figures in beautiful statuary marble ; the one a female, representing religion in a pensive attitude, with the usual symbol of redemption, the cross ; the other, an orphan whom religion seems to protect, and who is resting on an urn that stands between them. The Boy s countenance is expressive of that sorrow, natural to the impression on the mind, when a benevolent protector no longer exists. So far the group is connected : but the Medallion of the deceased, attached to the Pyramid of black marble, appears at the top and this rests on a plinth, supported by fluted pilasters, with the inscription title in the centre. Much simplicity of character pervades the whole of this specimen of art, at the same time the recollection of departed worth, and its grateful tribute, are well sustained by the chaste power of the chisel. And every person of taste will rejoice, that the calm delights of science are not totally extinguished in this country”.

Born: 19 April 1818, Dublin
Entered: 14 August 1834, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Ordained: 1846
Final vows:16 January 1853
Died: 05 November 1896, St Joseph's College, Philadelphia, PA, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 26 June 1896, Great Denmark Street, Dublin
Entered: 31 August 1914, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1931, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1934, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 02 November 1973, Milltown Park, Dublin

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1933 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Bodkin, Matthias McDonnell
by Felix M. Larkin
found in Bodkin, Matthias McDonnell (1849–1933), journalist and lawyer, was born in October 1849 at Tuam, Co. Galway

Bodkin married (1885) Arabella Norman (c.1854–1931), daughter of Francis Norman, solicitor, of Dublin, and Margaret Norman (née Adrian; c.1820–1883). They had two sons and four daughters, of whom the eldest, Thomas Patrick Bodkin (qv), was director of the NGI 1927–35. Their youngest daughter, Emma Bodkin (1892–1973), was one of the first women chartered accountants in Ireland. Two other daughters became Carmelite nuns. The youngest of the family, also Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1896–1973), was a Jesuit priest and author. Born 26 June 1896 in Dublin and educated at Belvedere College and Clongowes Wood College, he entered the Jesuit noviciate in 1914 and was ordained 1932. For many years a teacher in Clongowes, Mungret College, and Belvedere, he served as a Royal Navy chaplain during the second world war in Derry and for a brief period in the Pacific on board HMS Anson. Afterwards, his eyesight failing, he undertook mainly retreat work and counselling. He died 2 November 1973 at Milltown Park, Dublin. Like his father, he was a prolific writer – largely on religious themes, but also of adventure stories for boys. His most substantial book, a life of fellow-Jesuit Fr John Sullivan (qv) (The port of tears (1954)), did much to spread Fr Sullivan's reputation for sanctity. So as to differentiate his own from his father's work, Fr Bodkin never used his second Christian name.

NAI, private accession no. 1155; NLI, MS 10702 (F. S. Bourke collection: letters to M. McD. Bodkin and his wife, mainly 1880–1910), MSS 14252–64 (manuscript literary remains of M. McD. Bodkin); Freeman's Journal, 24, 25, 28–30 Jan. 1908; A considered judgment: report of Judge Bodkin forwarded to Sir Hamar Greenwood and read in open court at Ennis, Co. Clare, on Sat., 5 Feb. 1921 (1921); Another considered judgment: second report of Judge Bodkin (1921); Ir. Independent, Ir. Press, Ir. Times, 8 June 1933; Ir. Independent, 3 Nov. 1973; Lawrence W. McBride, The greening of Dublin Castle: the transformation of bureaucratic and judicial personnel in Ireland, 1892–1922 (1991); Frank Callanan, The Parnell split, 1890–91 (1992); Eamonn G. Hall, ‘Introduction’, M. McDonnell Bodkin, Famous Irish trials (1997 ed.); Anne Kelly, ‘Perfect ambition: Thomas Bodkin, a life (with particular reference to his influence on the early development of Irish cultural policy’ (Ph.D. thesis, TCD, 2001); Felix M. Larkin, ‘Judge Bodkin and the 1916 rising: a letter to his son’, N. M. Dawson (ed.), Reflections on law and history (2006)

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
Note from Daniel Fitzpatrick Entry
He was sent to Mungret in Limerick for his education. He had very fond memories of Mungret, especially his Jesuit teachers, like Mattie Bodkin, who had a significant influence on him.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 10th Year No 3 1935

Works by Father Mattie Bodkin SJ :

1. “Flood-tide” - A school story
2. “Lost in the Arctic” - A translation from the German of Svenson's " Nonni and Manni”.
3. “Studies in Sanctity” - Biographical essays
   Pamphlets
4. “The Stop Gap” - School story
5. “The Captain” - School story
6. “Saint Robert Southwell” - Hagiography
7. “Saint Bernadette” - Hagiography
8. “Blessed Peter Faber” - Hagiography
9. “Father Stanton” - Biography
10. “Forest and Jungle” - Biography
11. “Father De Smet” - Biography
12. “The Black Robe” - Biography
13. “Guy De Fontgalland” - Biography
14. “The Soul of a Child” - Biography

Irish Province News 16th Year No 1 1941

Clongowes :
Fr. Bodkin is to be congratulated on the production of his latest book, “Halt, Invader.” Its publication caused great interest here. We hope that his present work of contemplation and stimulation of youth at study will keep the springs of inspiration bubbling.

Belvedere :
An enthusiastic welcome has been accorded Father Bodkin's novel. “Halt Invader” whose hero is a Belvederian. One member of the Community believes that the Government should
subsidise the book and give a copy of it to every Irish citizen seeing that the book is, in his opinion, an exposition of the ideology of Irish mentality in the present war.

Irish Province News 49th Year No 1 1974

Obituary :

Fr Matthias Bodkin (1896-1973)

By way of preface to the appreciation proper we offer some salient dates and details of Fr. Bodkin's earlier years ;
He was born in Dublin - Great Denmark St - June 26th, 1896, the younger son of Judge Matthias McDonnell Bodkin. He was one of a family of six, one brother, Tom, a sister, Emma, of both of whom more anon, two sisters who became Carmelite nuns and a sister who became Mrs John Robinson. Fr Mattie was the last survivor of his generation.
He got his early schooling at Belvedere, practically adjoining his home and thence he later went to Clongowes and from there he entered the novitiate at Tullabeg on August 31st 1914. He was one of the “Twelve Apostles” of whom he himself gave some account in the obituary of Fr Fred Paye, from his hand, which appeared in the July number of the Province News, 1972. (He was an excellent panegyrist, and was frequently applied to to formulate an appreciation and readily obliged, despite the incapacity in later years of poor eyesight.) From Tullabeg after a brief period in the - home Juniorate, then usual, he advanced to Rathfarnham where he got a distinguished degree at the University in History. Thence to Milltown for Philosophy and in 1924 back to Clongowes and later to Mungret, Doc. Among his pupils in Mungret was Tadhg Mannion, Archbishop and Cardinal to be, who on a recent occasion visiting his Alma Mater affectionately recalled Mr Bodkin, as he then was, and wished particularly to be remembered to him. Milltown again for Theology and ordination 1932. On returning to Clongowes after the Tertianship he acquitted himself with success as Prefect of Studies for four years and later at Belvedere as teacher. One of the chores which regular fell to his lot was the editorship of the College Annual and in his leisure time he produced several school stories of dimensions of novels, “Flood Tide” being the more popular. He likewise wrote a memoir of Fr John Sullivarı... “The Port of Tears'.

Fr Bodkin's death in the night between All Saints' Day and the Commemoration of All Souls, when by a special effort he had said the customary three Masses for the Dead, after midnight, was in many ways a fitting end to a long life during which he had always been notable for the energy with which he threw himself into whatever task assigned him,
Those who saw the memorial card which was made after his death were somewhat taken aback to realise how much Fr Mattie's face had changed in appearance during his long, strenuous and often hard life. No man was better able to enjoy fun or any form of relaxation that appealed to him but there was always a sense of duty to be done, and done generously, at whatever cost to himself. He had a real gift of friendship and he was never short of friends. Whether as a teacher or a preacher, naval chaplain or confessor, in his last years, to more than one community of young Irish Christian Brothers, he gave himself heartily to each. The free independent judgment which was always a marked characteristic of his advice made him in old age an admirable confessor, just as in his youth the same independent judgment made him, to use a phrase from one who knew him many years ago in Belvedere, a superb teacher of history and English literature. Clongowes and Belvedere were very much the centres of Mattie’s life down to the year 1940 when he volunteered as a naval chaplain in Derry and in the Far East.
The fact that he was one of a very well known and respected Dublin family and that he lived in or near Dublin for so many years gave him a great advantage in forming the friendships which meant so much to him personally and which were so marked a feature of his apostolic work. He lived more than seventy years of life in Dublin at a time when Dublin was very much the centre of modern Irish life and his memory (usually but not always accurate in detail) made his conversation a stream of reminiscences that were always vivid to himself and of interest to his hearers, Again and again it was remarked that what Mattie remembered was almost always some kind word spoken to him or some good deed which had made an impression on him, possibly long years ago. He was quick to complain of some passing episode that irritated him but his wide ocean of personal memories seemed full. to overflowing of kind and generous thoughts.
The failure of Fr Bodkin's eyesight which was so heavy a cross for him to bear in the years after his return from service in the English Royal Navy exacted more from him than from most other sufferers from this affliction for all through life he had been a great reader of books and a lover of fine pictures. As a boy, in his father's house he had the good fortune of knowing Sir Hugh Lane, then at the height of his influence in Irish artistic life and in later years, he had the constant stimulus of his brother Tom's example, first as Director of the National Gallery in Dublin, then of the Barber Institute in Birmingham
But there was another strand of the family tradition: if Tom Bodkin's name will always be remembered in connection with theNational Gallery and the controversy that arose over the final disposition of Hugh Lane's bequest to Dublin the name of his sister, Emma, was even more closely linked with Frank Duff’s apostolate and work for the Legion of Mary at home and abroad. It was probably Emma's influence which first turned Mattie's thoughts to the welfare, spiritual even more than temporal, of the young girls who for one reason or another had been left without family or friends to help and advise them. What Fr Mattie did for those girls and often for many years successively, when they turned to him as to a friend upon whom they could always count, is known only to God. Emma predeceased him by a few months here in Dublin. Both, we are confident, have received in Heaven the reward which the Lord promises to those who give and give generously to children and to those in need. Requiescant in Pace.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1974

Obituary

Father Matthias Bodkin SJ (1896-1973)

Fr Bodkin's death in the night between All Saints Day and the Commemoration of All Souls, when by a special effort he had said the customary three Masses for the Dead, after midnight, was in many ways a fitting end to a long life during which he had always been notable for the energy with which he threw himself into whatever task assigned him.

Those who saw the memorial card which was made after his death were somewhat taken aback to realise how much Fr Mattie's face had changed in appearance during his long, strenuous and often hard life. No man was better able to enjoy fun or any form of relaxation that appealed to him but there was always a sense of duty to be done, and done generously, at whatever cost to himself. He had a real gift of friendship and he was never short of friends. Whether as a teacher or a preacher, naval chaplain or confessor, in his last years, to more than one community of young Irish Christian Brothers, he gave himself heartily to each. The free independent judgement which was always a marked characteristic of his advice made him in old age an admirable confessor, just as in his youth the same independent judgement made him, to use a phrase from one who knew him many years ago in Belvedere, “a superb teacher” of history and English literature. Clongowes and Belvedere were very much the centres of Mattie's life down to the year 1940 when he volunteered as a naval chaplain in Derry and in the Far East.

The fact that he was one of a very well known and respected Dublin family and that he lived in or near Dublin for so many years gave him a great advantage in forming the friendships which meant so much to him personally and which were so marked a feature of his apostolic work, He lived more than seventy years of life in Dublin at a time when Dublin was very much the centre of modern Irish life and his memory (usually but not always accurate in detail) made his conversation a stream of reminiscences that were always vivid to himself and of interest to his hearers. Again and again it was remarked that what Mattie remembered was almost always some kind word spoken to him or some good deed which had made an impression on him, possibly long years ago. He was quick to complain of some passing episode that irritated him but his wide ocean of personal memories seemed full to overflowing of kind and generous thoughts.

The failure of Fr Bodkin's eyesight which was so heavy a cross for him to bear in the years after his return from service in the English Royal Navy exacted more from him than from most other sufferers from this affliction for all through life he had been a great reader of books and a lover of fine pictures. As a boy, in his father's house he had the good fortune of knowing Sir Hugh Lane, then at the height of his influence in Irish artistic life and in later years, he had the constant stimulus of his brother Tom's example, first as Director of the National Gallery in Dublin, then of the Barber Institute in Birmingham.

But there was another strand of the family tradition: if Tom Bodkin's name will always be remembered in connection with the National Gallery and the controversy that arose over the final disposition of Hugh Lane's bequest to Dublin the name of his sister, Emma, was even more closely linked with Frank Duff's apostolate and work for the Legion of Mary at home and abroad. It was probably Emma's influence which first turned Mattie's thoughts to the welfare, spiritual even more than temporal, of the young girls who for one reason or another had been left without family or friends to help and advise them. What Fr Mattie did for those girls and often for many years successively, when they turned to him as to a friend upon whom they could always count, is known only to God. Emma predeceased him by a few months here in Dublin. Both, we are confident, have received in Heaven the reward which the Lord promises to those who give and give generously to children and to those in need. Requiescant in Pace.

◆ The Clongownian, 1974

Obituary

Father Matthias Bodkin SJ

Early on the morning of All Souls' Day, 1973, Fr Mattie Bodkin died at Milltown Park. He had arranged to say after midnight the customary three Masses for the dead, so as to leave himself free for some apostolic work in the morning. He had been in poor health for the past few years, and this final effort proved too great. It was a fitting end to a long life of devoted and strenuous work as a priest.

Mattie Bodkin was at Clongowes from 1910 to 1914. His father, Judge Matthias McDonnell Bodkin, was an old Tullabeg boy, and his brother Tom, later Professor of Fine Arts in the University of Birmingham and Director of the Barber Institute, had preceded him at Clongowes by some ten years. Mattie entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1914, took his MA in history in University College, Dublin, taught for some years in Clongowes and Mungret, and, after the usual theological studies was ordained in 1931.

The next ten years of Fr. Bodkin's life were spent teaching or directing studies in Clongowes and Belvedere. His work was characterised by energy and originality. To give an example of the latter characteristic, when prefect of studies in Clongowes, he was responsible for three institutions all of which were, for those days, distinctly forward-looking. These were the “Society of St Patrick” which put the senior boys into touch with charitable institutions in Dublin, in the hope of their being enlisted, a lending library of non-fictional books which the boys could carry about with them, and a special meeting room for the Irish Society in which all the furniture and decorations were examples of Irish craftmanship. He was a stimulating teacher, and was indefatigable in guiding boys to suitable careers, getting them openings and keeping in touch with them in after life. This personal relationship with his pupils and past pupils was perhaps the greatest apostolate of Fr Mattie's life.

In 1943 there was an urgent request from the head chaplain of the British forces for a naval chaplain. The post was offered to Fr Bodkin, who willingly accepted it. He acted at first as Port Chaplain in Derry, where he had a very friendly reception from the then bishop, Dr Farren. His work there was varied by a strenuous patrol journey to Iceland on a destroyer. He then joined HMS Anson, and did duty in many parts of the world, Malta, Australia, Hong Kong - where he arrived just as the last Japanese were leaving, and where he met the Irish Jesuit missionaries who had survived the ordeal of the occupation - Japan and Singapore. Though he never saw fighting, he had innumerable adventures and had constant opportunity for priestly work.

He was demobilized towards the end of 1946, and spent the next twenty years giving missions and retreats. To this work he applied himself with characteristic vigour, and became well known to the clergy throughout Ireland. During all this time he kept up his friendships with his former pupils, and contracted many more, among all walks of life, as a result of his unfailing readiness to help those who were in trouble. But as years went on, his eye sight gradually deteriorated, and finally he had to live a more or less retired life at Milltown Park. Fr Mattie, however, could never be idle, and to the last he endeavoured to carry on some literary work. He had, for instance, planned an article for 1974 to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Hugh Lane, whom he had known when he was a boy. It also gave him great happiness to be able to carry on his priestly work to the end, acting as spiritual adviser to several communities of young Christian Brothers.

Fr Bodkin was a man of wide and varied interests and talents. His special subject was history and here his quite phenomenal memory stood him in good stead - but he had also an encyclopediac knowledge of English literature, and was himself a prolific and able writer. As a young man, he published three excellent stories for young people,” Floodtide”, “The Treasure of the Mountain” and “Halt Invader”, and in later life an historical novel, “Borrowed Days”, in the background of which figured houses he had lived in, Emo Park, Belvedere, Clongowes, Among his other works were a study of the life and spirituality of Fr John Sullivan, “The Port of Tears”, which recreated in a striking way the Victorian background of Fr Sullivan's early life, and a particularly attractive illustrated book, “A Christmas Novena”. He was also the author of many excellent painphlets on the lives of the saints, amongst them St Bernadette, St John Berchmans, St John de Brébeuf and Blessed Ralph Corby.

A minor work of his was a first-class piece of literary detection. This was a paper which he read to the Royal Irish Academy in 1924 on a memorandum preserved in the Clongowes library. It is obviously the work of a confidential agent, and expresses in very frank terms the writer's opinion of the members of the Irish House of Commons in 1773. Fr. Bodkin identified the author as Sir John Blaquire, secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Harcourt, and also gave an enlightening view of the contemporary political situation.

Fr Mattie had also a fine artistic taste. He had a wide knowledge of the great artists and paintings of every age, and in parti cular had made a special study of the art as well as the history of Egypt. Through his association with his brother Tom, he had come to know many contemporary Irish artists, in particular Jack B. Years, on whose work he was invited to lecture on several occasions at the Sligo Yeats Festival.

Born: 19 March 1869, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 November 1886, Dromore, County Down
Ordained: 27 July 1902, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1905
Died: 17 October 1953, Canisius College, Pymble, Sydney, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

by 1897 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
Came to Australia for Regency 1889
by 1904 at Drongen Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship
by 1905 returned to Australia

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
He entered the Society at Dromore, Northern Ireland under John Colgan.

1888-1889 He studied Rhetoric at St Stanislaus, Tullabeg
1890-1894 He was sent to Australia and St Aloysius Sydney, teaching fourth grade.
1895-1896 He taught at Riverview and was involved in Theatre, Choir, Music and Debating.
1897-1899 He was sent to Leuven for Philosophy
1899-1903 He was sent to Milltown Park Dublin for Theology
1903-1904 He made Tertianship at Drongen, Belgium
1904-1906 He was Director and Editor of the Irish Messenger, taught and was Prefect of the Gymnasium at Belvedere College SJ.
1906-1919 Because of chronic bronchial problems he was sent back to Australia and Xavier College Kew. There he taught, was Hall Prefect, and Prefect of Studies from 1908-1917. He also edited the Xavierian 1915-1917, and wrote a popular school novel “The Heart of the School”, a light commentary on social life at Xavier.
1918-1949 He began his most remarkable position as Editor of the “Australian Messenger of the Sacred Heart” and “Madonna”. During this time he was stationed at St Patrick’s, Melbourne, where he also served as rector and Prefect of Studies from 1919-1921. He also held the job of National Director of the “Apostleship of Prayer” and promoter of the Marian Congregation within the vice-Province. During this time he built a fine entrance hall and science block, which also contained the Messenger building.
1949-1953 His final years were spent at Canisius College Pymble, where he continued to write.

Throughout his life he was afflicted with deafness, and soon after Ordination he became almost totally deaf. He continued to give retreats and hear confessions, but it was only late in life that he received real help from hearing aids. He had a most joyful nature that endeared him to people. He was a good writer, a fine editor and a popular retreat giver.

Note from Vincent Johnson Entry
Father Eustace Boylan did not seem to have the necessary financial acumen to balance the books, but Johnson soon sorted out the financial situation and restored balance to the financial department.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 29th Year No 1 1954

Obituary :
Father Eustace Boylan (1869-1953)
On October 17th, the Feast of St. Margaret Mary, Father Boylan, who had devoted so many years of his life to spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart, died at Canisius College, Pymble.
He was born in Dublin in 1869 on the feast of St. Joseph, was educated at Belvedere College and entered the Novitiate at Dromore, Co. Down, on 7th November 1886. Four years later he went to Australia and spent the next six as master at St. Aloysius' and Riverview Colleges in Sydney. He studied philosophy at Louvain and theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained priest in 1903.
He made his Tertianship at Tronchiennes, and then became editor of the Messenger of the Sacred Heart, and taught as well at Belvedere, during the years 1905-7. In the following year, owing to bronchial trouble he was transferred to Australia and was prefect of studies at Kew College 1908-18. In the latter year began his long association with St. Patrick's, Melbourne, where he was Rector during the years 1919-22 and editor for 32 years of the Australian Messenger. For 30 years he edited as well the Madonna, organ of the Sodality, and was National Director of the Apostleship of Prayer. His rare literary talents were thus given full scope. In addition to regular editorial articles, he found time to write many booklets on religious and apologetical subjects. His pamphlet on the Inquisition was a best seller. He was author of two well-known works of fiction : Mrs. Thunder and Other Tales and a 400-page school story dealing with Kew College, entitled The Heart of the School, which was hailed by competent critics as the finest school story since Tom Brown's School-Days. His latest work, entitled What is Chastity, which suggests a method of instructing the young in the matter of purity, will appear shortly from the publishing house of Clonmore and Reynolds.
Fr. Boylan represented the Australian Province at the Jesuit Congress held in Rome in the autumn of 1948 in connection with the work of the Apostleship of Prayer and on that occasion he spent some months in our Province. He was an ardent admirer of the late Fr. Henry Fegan, who had been his master in the old days, and during his stay in Dublin Fr. Boylan gathered material for a Memoir of his patron, and for that purpose interviewed many who had known Fr. Fegan well, both Jesuits and laymen.
Admirers of Fr. Boylan claimed for him the distinction of having won for himself the widest circle of real friends ever formed in Australasia : a large claim, assuredly, but, given his genius for friendship and the opportunities that were his during a long and busy life, that claim may not be unfounded. Certain it is that his long association with the Messenger and Madonna brought him into thousands of homes.
The hope has been expressed that selections from his writings will be given permanent form in a Volume for publication ; his excellent prose writing would thus be preserved from oblivion to the advantage of the rising generation. R.I.P.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Eustace Boylan 1869-1953
On October 17th 1953, on the Feast of Margaret Mary, Fr Eustace Boylan, who had given so many years of his life to the devotion of the Sacred Heart, died at Canisius College, Pymble, Australia.

Born in Dublin in 1869, he was educated at Belvedere, and entered the Noviceship at Dromore in 1886.

After his ordination he was editor of the “Irish Messenger” from 1905-1907. Then owing to bad bronchial trouble he went to Australia.

In Australia he became Rector of St Patrick’s Melbourne 1919-1922. Retiring from the Rectorship he began his long career of 32 years as editor of the Australian Messenger and for 30 years editor of the Madonna. He was a prolific writer. His pamphlet on the Inquisition was a best seller, while his school story “The Heart of the School”, was hailed by critics as the finest school story since “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1954

Obituary

Father Eustace Boylan SJ

Fr Eustace Boylan, who died in Australia last October, brings us back a long way in our search for his first connection with Belvedere. It was in 1884 that he came to the College, and after two years he entered the Society where he was to give 67 years of devoted service to God. It has been pointed out to us that last year's “Belvederian”" unwittingly overlooked his distinction of being the oldest living OB. This he undoubtedly was at the time the article concerned was written, and had he lived to read it, we can well imagine the chuckle with which Fr Eustace might have said: “I am not dead yet”. Alas, he himself had corrected the error two months before publication, and had handed on his distinction to his old school-mate, Fr Lambert McKenna.

After the usual training Fr Boylan was ordained in 1903. In 1905 he was back here to teach and to edit the Messenger of the Sacred Heart for two years. It was at that time that the late Fr Bernard Page, then a Scholastic, founded and was the first Editor of the “Belvederian”. He was indeed fortunate in having by his side Fr Boylan, who had already begun a lifetime of editing.
Fr Boylan left his native Dublin in 1907 for Australia, where he had earlier spent some years teaching. This time he was to remain, beginning as Prefect of Studies and Master in St Francis Xavier's College, Melbourne. In 1919 he became Rector and Prefect of Studies of St. Patrick's College in the same city, and a few years later he began 32 years as Editor of the Australian Messenger of the Sacred Heart, during 30 of which he also edited the Madonna. Throughout this period he lectured and wrote books and pamphlets with considerable success, but his principal work was always the Messenger, and we conclude with part of an appreciation which appeared in it after his death.

Father Boylan was a merry man. He had no place for the gloomy or pessimistic view of things. Perhaps this was because he never ceased to have the heart of a boy. He knew the boy's heart well and was at his best describing it. He had the power of seeing the humour of things quickly, and his vivid imagination would work on any odd phrase or act and draw the greatest fun from it. His optimism, which led him always to see the best of things, together with his childlike simplicity, prevented him from ever being cynical in his judgment of others.

Eustace Boylan has gone to his reward : the reward of a life of 84 year's lived for God. Before him have gone the works of those years, the Masses offered and Sacraments conferred innumerable times, students helped through difficulties, and sinners helped to Grace, troubled souls counselled and encouraged; partners helped on to marriage and many lives brightened. If the Kingdom of Heaven is for those who are as little children, he enters truly into his glory. May he rest in eternal peace."

Born: 14 March 1795, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1811, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: c 1826, Fribourg, Switzerland
Final Vows: 15 August 1831, Rome, Italy
Died: 30 January 1867, Clongowes Wood College SJ, County Kildare

Vice-Provincial of the Irish Vice-Province of the Society of Jesus: 1836-1841

in Clongowes 1817
Vice Provincial 1836
not in 1840 Cat

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Much prized by Father Betagh, was distinguished in Classics at Stonyhurst, and Theology in Switzerland.
Father Plowden predicted that he would be the “limen et ornamentum” of the Society in Ireland.
Taught Humanities, Philosophy and Theology at Clongowes and was Rector of Tullabeg.
1636-1641 Vice Provincial
He was held in great esteem by the clergy on account of his “extensive and almost universal erudition”.
He left a great number of MSS on various subjects, among them, “Memoirs of the Irish Jesuits during the Suppression”.
Loose leaf note in CatChrn : Entitled “Left Stonyhurst for Castle Brown” : 03 Sep 1815

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at a Dominican Primary School - which had produced many remarkable Priests. He showed himself to be very able there. He was in contact with Thomas Betagh, who was stationed at SS Michael and John, and since he had the old Jesuit Fund available to him, he sent Patrick to Stonyhurst to continue his education. At Stonyhurst he showed himself very able, and was ahead of most in his class. Aged 16 he declared that he wished to become a Jesuit, and so Ent at Hodder 07/09/1811.
The Novice Master at Hodder Father Charles Plowden predicted that he would be the “limen et ornamentum” of the Society in Ireland. After First Vows, he studied Philosophy at Stonyhurst.
1816 He was sent to Clongowes, then a very new school, and there he taught a very large Grammar class. He was not very successful, for though he paid attention to the level of each pupil, he was too strict and punished very severely, so none of the boys liked him. At that time the Professor of Theology was an exiled Pole (Casimir Hlasko), and some Irish and English Scholastics were his students. Patrick joined them, and apparently displayed great ability. He was very subtle in argument, and spoke Latin beautifully.
1823 he was sent to Fribug, Switzerland for his final year of Theology.
He then returned to Clongowes teaching general classes, and Philosophy for a year. Later he was sent to Rome for Tertianship, and he pronounced Final Vows in front of General Roothaan in Rome, at the altar of St Ignatius.
He then taught Theology to Ours (where? - possibly in Rome?)
1836 He was appointed Vice-Provincial, an office he held for five years.
1843 He was appointed Rector of Tullabeg and was very successful. there was a lot of sickness and poverty in the country at that time, and though the number of pupils diminished, he managed the finances very well.
1850 He was sent again to Clongowes, devoting his remaining years to study and prayer. Towards the end he suffered greatly from dropsy, but was ever patient and resigned. He died peacefully in 30 January 1867 at Clongowes, and had been in the Society 56 years. He left a name that will be spoken of with great praise.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Patrick Bracken SJ 1795-1867
Born in Dublin in March 1795, Patrick Bracken received his early education in a school run by the Dominican Fathers, where he imbibed the elements of Latin so well, that he was afterwards in the Society remarkable for mastery of that language, not merely in writing it, but also speaking. He was a protegé of Fr Betagh who sent him on to Stonyhurst. He entered the Novitiate in 1811.

When Clongowes was in its infancy, he was sent there to teach the classics to a very large grammar class, with little success however, as he was too strict with the boys. He next joined the Theology class, which at that time was taught at Clongowes by Fr Hlasko. His course in Theology was completed at Friburg, Switzerland.

On his return he taught classics and philosophy at Clongowes. He became Vice-Provincial of the Province 1836-1841. During a very trying period, 1843-1850, he was Rector of Tullabeg. It was the time of the famine. The number of boys diminished, but Fr Bracken managed to steer the College safely through these shoals.

He spent the remaining years of his life at Clongowes, where he died on January 30th 1867. During his period at Clongowes he was Master of Novices to the Brothers, and he turned out a great line of spiritual hardworking Brothers. The Province owes a debt of gratitude towards his work of compiling a history of the Society in Ireland.

He left a great amount of MSS behind him, including “Memoirs of the Irish Jesuits during the Suppression”.

Born: 03 September 1935, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1953, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 10 July 1968, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1973, College of Industrial Relations, Dublin
Died: 15 April 2014, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1970 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/jesuit-economist-honoured/

John Brady SJ was conferred with an Honorary Fellowship by the National College of Ireland on Friday 20 Nov,’09. Many former colleagues, Jesuits and friends were there to celebrate his achievement. John Brady SJ spent thirty years of his life at the NCI which was formerly known as the National College of Industrial Relations, based in Ranelagh. According to Dr Tony White of the Milltown Institute, who gave the citation, John Brady was a moderniser. He said it was mainly during his time that the college moved from being a college of adult education to a mainline third-level institution. He also oversaw the employment of lay staff along with Jesuits.”That expansion of course increased the cost base but John’s skills extended to ensuring that the College increased its financial resources to pay for this expansion. He may have had a vow of poverty, but he understood money. After all he is an economist!” Click here to read the full text of Tony White’s speech.
Citation for Reverend John Brady SJ on the occasion of the conferring of an Honorary Fellowship by the National College of Ireland , 20 November 2009
It is very appropriate that we should today be conferring an honorary fellowship on Father John Brady. John Brady is somebody who has made an immense contribution to developing this college and bringing the National College of Ireland to its present position, and it is right that we should acknowledge this contribution in a tangible way.
John Brady is a northside Dubliner. He was educated at Kostka College in Clontarf. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1953. Following two years of novitiate at Emo he continued his studies of economics and history at University College Dublin where he graduated in 1958. Three years of the study of philosophy followed at Tullabeg, after which he spent four years teaching at Crescent College in Limerick and Belvedere College. He then went to Milltown Park to study theology and was ordained there in 1968.
He came to this college in 1970; at that time it was known as the National College of industrial Relations and was located in Ranelagh. He would remain a member of the college staff for thirty years. During his first two years he completed a master’s in economics at University College Dublin. In 1972 he was appointed Director of the College and he held that position for ten years.
John Brady was a moderniser. During his time as Director NCIR made the transition from being primarily a college of adult education to becoming a mainline third-level college. The College had opened as the Catholic Workers College in 1951, and it developed from the skills and contacts of a small and remarkable group of Jesuits in the 1950s and 1960s.
Most of them were still at the College when John joined the staff. He built on the tradition they had established. He consolidated relations with the social partners, and the National College of Industrial Relations became a meeting point for unions and management. John Brady helped to make it very much a crossroads and a good place for what we now call networking.
The College built up a unique niche for itself in industrial relations nationally. John had the diplomatic skills to enable the College to maintain good relations and respect with both sides of industry, no mean achievement in the Ireland of that time. The traditional links with the trade union movement which had been there from the beginning were built on further , and in addition the College became a nationally recognised centre of excellence for teaching what was then referred to as personnel management, and what is today called human resource management.
That was the point at which the College made the transition to becoming a third level institution. John Brady saw the need for external accreditation and recognition of the College’s awards and under him NCIR had its first experience of state recognition with the National Council for Educational Awards, the forerunner of what is now HETAC The National Diploma in Industrial Relations Studies achieved recognition in 1976. This was a major breakthrough because there were at that time many, including a number of influential public servants, who were reluctant to see private colleges like this college achieving state recognition. Under John planning also began on the next phase, which was the move upwards to degree work which took place in the 1980s. These steps constituted the largest and most important transformation in the College’s history and they happened under John’s leadership.
While John was the driver in transforming the College into a third level institution and meeting all the quality inputs, demands and targets that this required, it was also a priority for him that the College would not neglect its roots and that its newly acquired status would not choke the important role which it had always given to access, to looking after those who were often overlooked by the rest of the higher education system. For him the commitment to access, to ensuring that people could have a second chance at achieving their potential, was something of a mission. He ensured that this would remain a college where so far as possible every individual, regardless of what their previous educational history had been, would be afforded an opportunity to develop their full potential. More than anyone else he helped maintain that balance which saw this college achieve genuine third level status, while at the same time maintaining that commitment to offering a very wide level of access to higher education that has put NCI into the unique position nationally which was recognised by the OECD report in 2004.
By the same token John was good at spotting talent, and good also at letting people have their head. In his time as Director the staff grew significantly and he was the one who introduced the first cohort of lay staff. Previously the staff had been almost exclusively Jesuit. That expansion of course increased the cost base but John’s skills extended to ensuring that the College increased its financial resources to pay for this expansion. He may have had a vow of poverty, but he understood money. After all he is an economist.
John Brady has also during his career been a regular contributor to newspapers and journals on economic and social matters. His primary interest was economics, but he was one of those economists whose scope was wide and who wrote on political economy and the social impact of economic decisions and trends. He was also one of those people who reflected and wrote about how the problems of Northern Ireland might eventually be brought to resolution. He was not just a highly practical and effective administrator but by his writing and his activity in the public arena he helped to create the acceptance of this college as one where serious scholarship and intellectual reflection took place.
Asked what characterised John Brady, one of those who worked with him in the early years of the College suggested that he was somebody who offered calm leadership to very strong individuals. He is indeed a calm, gentle and courteous man, a widely – read man and someone with a great interest in music. You are liable to bump into him regularly at the National Concert Hall. Nevertheless behind that gentle exterior there was the passion, the determination, the steel and the vision that tend to be marks of successful leaders of complex institutions like this College.
It is fitting then that this serious scholar and far-seeing manager should be numbered among the honorary fellows of this College, and it is my privilege and pleasure to commend Father John Brady SJ for this distinction.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 156 : Summer 2014

Obituary

Fr John Brady (1925-2014)

3 September 1935 : Born in Dublin
Early education at Holy Faith Convent and Kostka College
7 September 1953: Entered the Society at Emo
8 September 1955: First Vows at Emo
1955 - 1957: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1957 - 1961: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1961 - 1963: Crescent College, Limerick - Teacher
1963 - 1965: Belvedere College - Teacher
1965 - 1969: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
10 July 1968: Ordained at Milltown Park
1969 - 1970: Tertianship at St. Beuno's
1970 - 1984: College of Industrial Relations
1970 - 1972: Lecturer; Post-grad. Studies in Economics (MA from UCD)
1973 - 1982: Director of CIR; Lecturer
15 August 1973: Final Vows
1982 - 1983: Sabbatical year
1983 - 1984: Lecturer in Economics at C.I.R.
1984 - 2014: Gonzaga College - Lecturer in Economics at NCIR; Writer
1987 - 1994: Lecturer in Economics at NCR; Writer; Research Lecturer
1994 - 2000: Chaplain and Lecturer in Economics at NCIR; Writer; Research
2000 - 2001: Writer; Research Lecturer
2001 - 2004: Co-ordinator, Cherryfield Lodge; Sacred Space contributor
2004 - 2010: Co-ordinator, Cherryfield Lodge; Prefect of Health; Writer
2010: Prefect of Health. Assistant Chaplain Cherryfield Lodge; Writer, Emeritus
2010 - 2011: Assistant Chaplain at Cherryfield Lodge; Writer, Emeritus Lecturer at NCI
2011 - 2012: Emeritus Lecturer at National College of Ireland.
2012 - 2014: Resident, Cherryfield Lodge. Prayed for the Church and the Society

Fr. Brady was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge on 26th October 2012 when he needed nursing care. His condition deteriorated over time, more so over the last couple of months. He died peacefully before 6:00 am on l5th April 2014. May he rest in the Peace of Christ

Fr John Brady died in Cherryfield Lodge on 15 April, at the age of 78. The big crowds at his Removal and Funeral Mass were a reminder of his range of interests, and of the affection with which so many regarded him. He was educated at an interesting school with Jesuit roots, Kostka College in Clontarf, founded and managed by Louis Roden who had been a Jesuit novice. John entered the Jesuits at 18. Son of a civil servant, with roots in Cavan and Meath, his Jesuit life was mainly centred round the College of Industrial Relations, where he was first a lecturer in Economics, then director of the college from 1973-1982, then, for a further 17 years, lecturer and chaplain. His publications, in clear and dispassionate prose, centred mainly on questions of economic and social policy, in the Republic and in Northern Ireland.

He had joys and interests outside his work, notably in art, tennis, music and sailing (he was active in the Glénans organisation, first as an apprentice sailor, later as an instructor). John was open-minded, supportive of younger colleagues, and with a keen curiosity about the world he lived in. As a scholastic in Crescent College in 1962, he had shown a capacity for strategic thinking and action. Brendan Staunton, then a Fifth Year pupil, remembers how John was introduced to the tennis team as their new coach. “He looked the part, with his dazzling head of blond hair. His speaking style however was new to us, and his knowledge of tennis sounded esoteric, most un-Limerick-like. The team progressed to the final, in which they beat Glenstal. At a school assembly John Brady was acclaimed for his shrewd knowledge of the game and his team. What we didn't realise until well after our win was something John Brady did behind the scenes. Glenstal had played their previous rounds on hard courts. John quietly managed to have the final played on grass, in the Club where four of the team were members. And that made all the difference!”

In his homily at John's Requiem Mass, Bill Toner noted the same capacity for strategic thinking:

I was only head-hunted once in my life, and that was by John, who had just been appointed Director of the College of Industrial Relations. He was very strategic in his approach to the job. One aspect of that was that he kept an eye out for young Jesuits who might be persuaded to work in the College. I had studied accountancy in my younger days, and John had just finished designing a National Diploma course in industrial relations which included a subject called 'Financial Control Systems'. So I was quickly in his sights. Anyway the result was that I spent 17 happy years in the CIR, and for the first seven John was my boss.

John was great to work with. When I look back at it now I imagine he must have found me insufferable at times, but he never showed it. He was very humble, and that is why the Beatitudes came to me when I was suggesting a Gospel for the Mass. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. I was full of new ideas when I arrived and I must have frequently strayed onto his patch, but he never pulled rank or said I am the boss here. He seemed to enjoy the contribution made by the various young Turks, Jesuit and lay, who came to work in the College. He was not himself a revolutionary by temperament, but he was greatly fascinated by people who wanted to shake things up and rock the boat and was always ready to give them their head. The result was that there was a great atmosphere of freedom and bold ideas in the College. Lecturers were, to my knowledge, never reined in. If a lecturer was reported to have said something outrageous, rallying people to the cause of the class war or something like that, John would find it amusing rather than shocking. He presided every week at extraordinary faculty meetings - I mean extraordinary in the sense of bizarre rather than unscheduled - which Fr. Bill McKenna used to call the weekly blood letting. These were an occasion for outrageous statements and the taking of indefensible positions. I don't think John could always have found these amusing, but he presided over them with great calm and dignity. I think he regarded them as part of the cut and thrust of academic life. It is said that Henry Kissinger was once given a choice between being president of an American university or working to solve Vietnam conflict and he chose Vietnam as the less stressful of the two. In the end indeed the pressures of being Director of the College for nine years began to tell on John and he gave up the job in 1981, confining himself after that to lecturing in economics.

As Director, John had a great relationship with the students. He took very seriously the characteristics of Jesuit education which have been developed over centuries. In the current Jesuit document on education we can read: The human person, understood in the context of his or her eternal destiny, is the central focus of the Jesuit college. Jesuit education insists on individual care and concern for each person. It invites each student onto their unique journey of personal, moral and spiritual development. Our Mission is to help the students grow holistically. John really believed in that. He encouraged us on the staff to get to know all the students personally, never regarding meetings with individual students as a waste of time. In the early days many of the trade union students had left school at 14 but John was always quick to spot potential and he would talk to them and encourage them to go as far as they could and as far as they wanted to. Many people owe the flowering of their personal academic development to the College and to John. John brought the same concern for the personal care of students to his work as a member of the board of Greendale Community School in Kilbarrack.

John was every inch a Jesuit. He loved the Society. I could say that he was very faithful in going to functions in various Houses, but it was much more than that – he really enjoyed meeting the brethren. In fact he was exceptionally good at meeting people from all walks of life and maintaining firm friendships. He had great friends in the trade union movement, and also in management. John was not naïve. He knew that there were many people in the trade union movement who didn't trust the College and what it was doing, seeing it as an effort to de-radicalise the trade union movement. On the other hand he knew that there were employers and managers who didn't like us because we were giving their workers strange ideas and teaching them to speak up for themselves. The college brought many of these people, managers and union officials, together under the one roof. I can remember one occasion when the lights were on all night in the college. It marked a pause for breath during an E.S.B. strike. The College was chosen as a neutral venue where the E.S.B. unions and management could hammer out an agreement, which they did at 7 a.m. A number of commentators, some critical and some not, have suggested that the College played an important role in developing the concept of partnership in the conduct of industrial relations in Ireland. Although national wage agreements may now be a thing of the past, they probably played a crucial role in the steadying of the ship after some of the disastrous and destructive labour and management disputes of the 60s.
It is interesting to note that seven national wage agreements were negotiated during the period that John Brady was Director of the College. Although John was not directly involved in these, he and the College were definitely making a contribution, big or small, to the creation of a climate where people in industry could talk to one another. John had so many interests outside the College that it would be impossible to list them all. He was a man of deep culture. He had Norah McGuiness paintings hanging in the College tea room before most people had even heard of Norah McGuiness. He loved the theatre and good books. He was passionately interested in politics. He came to the College just as the conflict in Northern Ireland broke out, and he was a leading member of the Jesuit network, Jesuits in Northern Ireland, where he made very thoughtful contributions, with interesting angles on difficult questions. Blessed are the peacemakers - John tried his best to be a peacemaker whether in the field of industrial relations or in the Northern Ireland conflict.

John's basic discipline was economics, and he did his master's degree in the economics of transport in Ireland, a subject which fascinated him. He was an academic in the best sense of the world, not because he liked arguing about arcane concepts, but because he could see the power of ideas-and-solid-arguments to bring about change. He was a very popular lecturer in the college. Remarkably, considering his success as a Director, he suffered from a very bad stammer, and nothing showed the determination in his character more than his refusal to let that prevent him from doing anything he wanted to do, whether it was saying a public Mass, or giving a public lecture, or addressing the students at conferring. It was in itself a lesson to all of us not to let some real or imagined problem pull us down. Again, only a very humble person could deal with something like that – he was not too proud to let his fragility show.

John was a very generous person, and could rarely resist helping a poor person who asked him for help. Some would say that he was generous to a fault, but perhaps that accusation would also be laid at the feet of Jesus Christ. St Paul said of Jesus: "Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us”. I don't think John's generosity was a fault that he needed to worry about when he went to meet his maker.

It was sad that John's last years were blighted so much by illness and by memory failure. A time like this is a good time to remember him at his very best, as a good and talented and prayerful Jesuit, to thank God for the contribution he made to the economic and cultural life of his country. We pray for the consolation of his relatives and friends, especially Luke, his brother, his sister in law Catherine, his niece Lisanne, and his nephew Colin. And we pray for John himself that he is now at eternal peace with God.

Bill Toner

Born: 01 July 1926, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1944, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1958, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1962, Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Died: 22 October 2007, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin - Sinensis Province (CHN)

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

Transcribed HIB to HK : 01 January 1968; HK to CHN : 1992

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1954 at Hong Kong - Regency

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Scholar and missionary to Hong Kong dies in homeland
Father Peter Brady
R.I.P.

Father Peter Brady of the Society of Jesus, died peacefully in Ireland on 23 October 2007 at the age of 81. A published writer and a teacher of ethics, he first set foot in Hong Kong in 1952, finally returning to Ireland in 2001.

Born on 1 July 1926, Father Brady joined the Jesuits in 1944, and earned a bachelors’ degree in philosophy at University College Dublin. He then came on mission to Hong Kong in 1952, where he spent two years studying Chinese and another year teaching at Wah Yan College, Wanchai.

Returning to Milltown Park, Ireland, he studied theology and was ordained on 31 July 1958. Two years later he arrived back in Hong Kong and took up the post of assistant to the editor of China News Analysis while continuing his Chinese studies. From 1961 to 1962 he lectured on the history of philosophy and sociology at the Holy Spirit Seminary College in Aberdeen before heading for Melbourne, Australia, for a year to work on his masters degree in modern philosophy.

Upon his return to Hong Kong, Father Brady taught philosophy at the seminary as well as ethics at Wah Yan College in Kowloon.

Ethics would become his life’s work and he taught the subject at Wah Yan, until 1973, then subsequently at the seminary from 1973 to 1996.

He wrote and published several books which were also translated into Chinese: Practical Ethics (1970), Love and Life (1979), Introduction to Natural Family Planning (1980), Medical Ethics (1983) and Ethics (2001), as well as textbooks on ethics for secondary schools.

In later years Father Brady worked on weekends at St. Joseph’s Church in Central, where he made many friends. He had a great sense of humour and was loved by everybody.

In 2001, poor health saw him returning to Ireland where he stayed at a nursing home for Jesuits. He enjoyed receiving visitors from Hong Kong and kept up-to-date on the territory through the weekly editions of the Sunday Examiner.

A memorial Mass was celebrated for him at Ricci Hall Chapel on 10 November 2007.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 11 November 2007

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He joined the Society of Jesus in 1944. After the usual Jesuit studies graduating BA at UCD and then studying Philosophy, he was then sent to Hong Kong in 1952.

1952-1955 he began studding Chinese for two years before spending a year teaching at Wah Yan College Hong Kong.
1955-1958 He was back in Ireland and Milltown Park, studying Theology and he was Ordained in 1958.
1960-1962 He returned to Hong Kong and took up a post as Assistant to the Editor of the China News Analysis, as well as continuing to study Chinese. He was then appointed to the Regional Seminary in Aberdeen as a Lecturer in the History of Philosophy and Sociology.
1962-1963 He went to Australia where he graduated MA in Modern Philosophy (at Campion College, Kew, Australia)
1963 Returning to Hong Kong, he lectured at the Seminary in Aberdeen, and at the same time he was teaching Ethics at Wah Yan Kowloon (1965-1973).

According to Freddie Deignan : “During that time Peadar wrote and published several books which were translated into Chinese : “Practical Ethics” (1970); textbooks on Ethics for Secondary Schools : “Love and Life (1979), “Natural Family Planning” (1980), “Medical Ethics” (1983), and “Ethics” (2001). He also wrote many articles on sexual ethics and natural family planning for CMAC. In his latter years he loved his weekend apostolae at St Joseph’s Church, where he made many friends. he had a great sense of humour and was loved by everybody.

Due to ill health he left Hong Kong and went to Ireland in 2001, where he lived at the Jesuit nursing him in Cherryfield Lodge.

Born: 08 July 1846, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1868, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 1880, St Beuno's, Wales
Final Vows: 02 February 1889, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 05 January 1917, St Vincent's Hospital, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin

Part of the Tullabeg, Co Offaly community at the time of death

Older Brother of Thomas - LEFT 1872

Ent Milltown; Ord 1880;
by 1871 at Roehampton London (ANG) studying
by 1873 At Vals France (TOLO) studying
by 1874 at Brussels College Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1875 at Mount St Mary’s (ANG) Regency
by 1877 at St Francis Xavier Liverpool (ANG) Regency
by 1879 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) studying
by 1886 at Roehampton London (ANG) Making tertianship
by 1904 at St Mary’s Rhyl (ANG) working
by 1905 at St Wilfred’s Preston (ANG) working
by 1907 at Lowe House, St Helen’s (ANG) working

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He had a younger brother Thomas who also Entered, but left for the Dublin Diocese and was Ordained, but unfortunately at his parish in Dundrum he was thrown from his horse and killed instantly. He also had a half-brother John Brady CM, a Vincentian based at Phibsborough.

Early Education was at Castleknock College.

After his Noviceship he studied Rhetoric at Roehampton, and Philosophy at Vals, France.
He did his Regency at Mount St Mary’s (ANG)
1879 He was sent to St Beuno’s for Theology and was Ordained there.
After Ordination he was sent to Belvedere and Clongowes teaching for some years. He also taught for many years at Mungret and Galway.
He then joined the Mission Staff, and then went to work in the ANG Parish at Preston.
His last year was spent at Tullabeg. he had a serious deafness problem and an operation was advised. he died at the Leeson Street Hospital 05 January 1917, and buried from Gardiner St. A large number of Vincentians attended his funeral out of respect for his half-brother John Brady CM of Phibsborough.

Born: 15 September 1712, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 23 April 1735, Lima, Peru - Peruvianae Province (PER)
Ordained: 08 September 1742
Final Vows 08 October 1751
Died: 21 January 1767, Peru - Peruvianae Province (PER)

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ :
Following his ordination, the rest of his life was devoted to work among the pagan Indians. He died about 1762.

Born: 02 November 1854, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 19 October 1875, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 15 June 1889
Final Vows: 02 February 1894, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 16 June 1941, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin

Early education at St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg

by 1880 at Laval France (FRA) studying
by 1881 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1888 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 16th Year No 4 1941

Obituary :
Father James Brennan
Few men of the Irish Province have given it a more loyal and devoted service than did Fr. James Brennan during the 86 years of his membership of it. He filled many important positions in most of its houses, in four of which, Clongowes, Galway, Belvedere and Rathfarnham he was Superior. During the last years of his life when he had ceased to hold office, he continued his interest in the Province, its welfare and its activities, showing this by the earnestness and enthusiasm with which he devoted himself to his work as Editor of the Province News. All who had dealings with him in this capacity will recall how glad he was to receive any news of Ours and of their doings, and how glad he was to publish anything that would edify and encourage us in our work.
Fr Brennan was at school in Tullabeg for 6 years (1869-75), and if these be added to his 68 years in the Society, the grand total of 71 years of connection with the Irish Province is reached. It is thus no wonder that he was so loyal and devoted a member of the Society and the Province. His noviceship was passed in Milltown Park under Fr. Charles McKenna, and at its conclusion he was sent to Clongowes with three others, Messrs. Fegan, Manning and Elliott, for his juniorate under the guidance of Fr. Zimmerman. The four juniors lived in the old Infirmary, since burnt down, and only mixed with the rest of the Community on special occasions. His second year of Juniorate was spent in Milltown Park. He then went to Laval for Philosophy, but he had to leave there the following year when the members of the Society were driven out of France. The French Jesuits had acquired the Imperial Hotel in St Helier, Jersey, and opened it as a Scholasticate, and there Mr Brennan spent the year 1880-81. Life, However, in foreign houses had not agreed with him, so he finished his Philosophy in Milltown Park.
His regency was spent in Clongowes () where he was at first Third Line Prefect, then four years Master, acting as assistant to the Prefect of Studies during portion of the time. During this time, the amalgamation of Clongowes with his old school, Tullabeg, took place, and Mr Brennan had much to do with the success of the venture. He proved himself an excellent and very successful master, and was very popular both inside and outside the classroom.
In 1887 he went to Milltown for Theology, but again his health failed, and he had to continue his studies privately in Tullabeg, which had just been opened as a Noviceship and Juniorate. He was then ordained in 1889, and went to Belvedere, where he spent three years, 1889-92, as Master and the third as Minister. In 1892 he went to Tullabeg for his Tertianship, being at the same time Socius to the Master of Novices.
The year 1893 saw the beginning of his long connection with Clongowes where he was Higher Line Prefect for a year, then Minister for six years, becoming Vice Rector in 1900. The period of his Rectorship saw many important improvements effected in the College. The chief of these was the acquiring of the temporary church at Letterkenny and erecting it in Clongowes where it still does duty as gymnasium, theatre, examination hall, and luncheon room on the Union Day.
We next find him on the Mission staff (1904-06) with his headquarters at the Crescent, Limerick, but it was not long before he was in office again. being appointed Rector in Galway in 1906, and two years later Rector in Belvedere (1908-13). It was during this time that Belvedere purchased the grounds at Jones Road which have proved such a, valuable acquisition to the College.
In 1913 Rathfarnham Castle was purchased and opened as a House of Studies for our scholastics attending lectures in University College, Dublin. The important position of Superior of the new house was entrusted to Fr Brennan, and everyone agreed that no better choice could have been made. The characteristics which had made him so successful in his previous positions were to be still more conspicuously displayed in this new sphere of duty. His paternal rule mingling kindliness and generosity with insistence upon observance of discipline, made him an ideal Superior of young men fresh from the noviceship.
After six years in office he ceased to be Superior, but remained in Rathfarnham, with the exception of one year (1920-21), when he was Spiritual Father in Clongowes, until the end. During the earlier portion of this period he suffered much from vertigo and had to give up saying Mass. His cure which he believed to have been obtained by the prayers of a Nun to Fr. Willie Doyle, is one of the most remarkable of the many favours attributed to Father Willie.
In 1925 the Province News was started and Fr.Brennan was appointed. Editor, holding that position until his death which took place on June 17th. He had been for almost 30 years in Rathfarnham, and it will be hard to imagine The Castle without his cheery presence. He was so interested in everybody and everything connected with the place, so edifying, so helpful as an advisor and as a confessor that he will be sorely missed. May he rest in peace.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father James Brennan 1854-1941
The kindly face of Fr James Brennan will long be remembered by those young scholastics to whom he ministered for 30 years of his Jesuit life in Rathfarnham. Sixty years in all he spent in the Society, years of fruitful and lasting work.
He was closely associated with Clongowes in his early days in various capacities, finally as rector. It was he who acquired the temporary church at Letterkenny, and had it erected in Clongowes to serve for many years as a gymnasium, theatre and examination hall. He was the first Editor of the “Province News”.
He passed peacefully to his reward on June 17th 1941.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1942

Obituary

Father James Brennan SJ

Fr James Brennan, Rector of Belvedere from 1908 to 1913, died at Rathfarnham Castle on June I7th, 1941. He had given 66 years of loyal and , devoted service to the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, and of these years not a few were spent in Belvedere. His early education was received at Tullabeg, and after he had entered the Society in 1875 he studied at Clongowes, Laval in France, Jersey and Milltown Park. He said his first Mass in Belvedere in 1889 and then came here for three years, being at first a Master and afterwards Minister for one year. In 1908 he came back as Rector, after two years as Superior of Galway. His Rectorship was a very important one for the College in many ways. One of his first actions was to start the Debating Society which since then has been such a useful training ground for budding orators. Then, too, he was responsible for the separation of the Senior House from the Preparatory School, and for giving to each a separate staff. When Fr Brennan came to Belvedere the playing fields were situated at Croydon Park, in Fairview, but in 1910 he purchased the grounds at Jones's Road which we still use. The benefits of having grounds so near the College were soon evident, for the JCT won its first Rugby Cup two years later.

All those who came in contact with Fr Brennan during this period of his life retain for him a most affectionate memory, and it is of interest to record here that his kindliness was shown even to those differing in religion, as was witnessed by Dr William Anderson, formerly Headmaster of Mountjoy, who, as he said in a kind letter of sympathy, “came to know and appreciate Fr Brennan” during the years of his Rectorship.

Fr Brennan spent six years as Rector of Rathfarnham Castle after he left Belvedere and he remained there, with the exception of one year, until his death. He will long be remembered by those who met him there as a most kindly and sympathetic confessor, as a holy and edifying priest, and as one whose cheery presence was the greatest blessing to the House. May he rest in peace!

◆ The Clongownian, 1942

Obituary

Father James Brennan SJ

Among Clongownians of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the present century, the name of Fr James Brennan is a household one, while his connection with Tullabeg goes back much further, as he was a very prominent boy in the school in the early seventies. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he came to Clongowes in 1882, where he spent five years as a Scholastic. He was a very successful Junior Grade teacher and was able to inspire his boys with interest, and even enthusiasm, over their Latin and Greek lessons. He was in Clongowes during the Amalgamation year, and, as an old Tullabeg boy and a present Clongowes master, he helped very considerably to bring about the successful union of the two schools.

In one incident during this period Mr Brennan played a prominent part. The fire which destroyed the study hall and refectory wing took place on April 9th, 1886. No one worked harder than he to save as much as possible, but, in spite of all efforts, nearly all the desks in the study hall were burnt, together with the contents - mostly school books. It was concluded by many, to whom the wish was father to the thought, that, as there were no school books, there could be no work done for a long time. On the next day, however, which was a play day, Mr Brennan went to Dublin, returning with. sufficient books to enable classes to be resumed the next day. Some boys were not as grateful to him as they might have been.

After his ordination to the priesthood he returned to Clongowes as Higher Line Prefect in 1891-2. Those who were here during that year will remember his interest in, and enthusiasm for, gymnastics and musical drill, in which during the night play hour for a considerable portion of the year the greater number of the boys were engaged. The following year he became Minister, and held that post for five years, until he was appointed Rector during the Christmas term of 1900. Few of those who were in Clongowes at the time will have forgotten the scenes of enthusiasm which showed how popular was his appointment. During his term of office (1900-04) he effected many improvements. He laid down a completely new system of sewerage, he tiled the Higher and Third Line galleries, he put in the large window over the hall door of the Castle, and, most useful of all, he purchased the building that had been used as a church in Letterkenny while the Cathedral was being built, and erected it here, where, during the last forty years, it has served as gymnasium, theatre, examination hall, skating rink, and, at times, as infirmary.

Having completed his term of office as Rector here, he was appointed Rector of St Ignatius College, Galway (1906-8), of Belvedere College, Dublin (1908-13), and of Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin (1913-19). He spent one more year in Clongowes (1920-21) as Spiritual Father. The last twenty years of his life were passed in Rathfarnham Castle doing such work as his poor health would allow. He passed away very peacefully on June 17th last year. May he rest in peace.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father James Brennan (1854-1941)

A native of Dublin, spent two years (1904-1906) at the Crescent as a member of the small mission band resident here before World War I. During his long life, Father Brennan occupied many positions of trust in the Province: Vice-Rector of Clongowes (1900-1904); Rector of St Ignatius', Galway (1906-1908); Rector of Belvedere College (1908-1913). He was the first superior appointed over the Jesuit scholasticate at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin (1913-1920).

Born: 23 September 1920, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1957, Kaiserdom Sankt Bartholomäus (Frankfurter Dom), Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Final Vows: 15 August 1964, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 03 July 2002, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1949 at Laval, France (FRA) studying
by 1955 at Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt (GER I) studying
by 1978 at Toroto ONT, Canada (CAN S) sabbatical

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 2002

Obituary

Father Jack Brennan SJ (OB 1937)

My brother, Jack, was born on 23rd September, 1920, at 7 North Frederick Street, Dublin, our mother's home town. He was christened John Francis Joseph Brennan - sometimes, particularly with and to me, he was Seán Ó Braonáin. At that time, the family, of which he was the fourth child, was living in Caherciveen, Co. Kerry, our father's home town. He was about six months old in May 1921 when our father's house and others in Caherciveen were blown up by the English Army towards the end of the War of Independence in what were called “official reprisals”. The family then moved to Dublin, which is how Jack came to be educated at Belvedere College. He also spent a brief period at St Vincent's College, Castleknock.

Following school, Jack worked for a time with the Hibernian Insurance Company. After the outbreak of the Second World War, during the Emergency as it was called here, Jack joined the Irish Army, rising to the rank of Captain. The family lore tells, somewhat humorously, that initially when he was a Private, the Hibernian paid him the difference between his army pay and what he had been paid by the company. This did not happen in the case of our eldest brother, Charlie, our first Belvederian, who also joined the army, having been working in our father's insurance brokerage! Jack joined the latter in 1945 after leaving the army.

On 7th September 1946, about a fortnight before his 26th birthday, Jack entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Emo where he took his first vows two years later. He then spent a year in the Jesuit Juniorate, College St Michel, in Laval, France, after which he went to St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Co Offaly, to study philosophy. He was a scholastic in Belvedere College from 1952-'54, following which he went to the Jesuit college, Sankt Georgen, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to study theology and was ordained there on 31st July 1957. He returned in 1958 to Dublin, for his year's Tertianship in Rathfarnham Castle, then went to Mungret College, Limerick (1959-'64) where he took his final vows on 2nd February 1964. I believe, and heard from some of his fellow Jesuits, that, in his period as Minister there and subsequently as Principal in University Hall, Hatch Street, Dublin (1964-68 and 1978-'95); as Rector in Milltown Park (1968-'71); and as Rector in Clongowes Wood College (1972-'77), his talents for organisation, administration, and dealing with others were helped by his experience in the Irish Army. With regard to the latter, he celebrated the annual Mass for many years in commemoration of the tragic accident in the Glen of Imaal which happened at the time he was in the army.

Jack had a very fruitful and varied life. It was a life of true spirituality, generous helpfulness and unfailing good humour, a life which touched the lives of so many others. He was involved in the Samaritans, of which he was Director in Ireland (1970-'72). He had a particular interest in the second Vatican Council and was noted for his sympathy and understanding on the one hand and his encouragement on the other, in relation to those considering or dealing with its varied aspects. He was also noted for his commitment to ecumenism. He spent a sabbatical studying at Regis College, Toronto (1977-'78) where he obtained an MA in Theology. He enjoyed his spells of summer parish work in the state of New York, where he brought the word of God to many in his quiet, humorous and spiritually effective way. Messages of sympathy and great affection came to us from the friends he made there.

Jack is remembered with affection by our family and by his Jesuit family, to whom we are so closely tied; by those who looked after him so well and so lovingly during his year of reasonably good health at first and eventual last illness in the Jesuits' nursing home, Cherryfield Lodge; and by all who knew him at home and abroad. I was privileged to be among those of the family and of the Jesuit community who were with him when he died peacefully on 3rd July 2002. My other Jesuit brother, Joe, now of Gonzaga College, asked me to compose the prayers of the faithful to be recited by three of Jack's nieces and by one of his nephews (my son Cormac) at the funeral Mass. Cormac, who had frequently visited Jack with me, added his own composition which I include here as it reminded us of that good humour which Jack showed so often:

“Some of you may know that in his room, Jack had a plaque which said, ‘Working for the Lord doesn't pay much, but the retirement benefits are out of this world’! Let us pray that he is now enjoying those benefits”.

l and many fellow-Belvederians and others join in that prayer with certain hope and in gratitude to God for bringing Jack among us. Guim Solas na bhFlaitheas ar a anam uasal, dilis.

Anraí Ó Braonáin (O.B. 1949)

Born: 02 January 1709, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 02 January 1726, San Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1740, Rome, Italy
Final Vows: 02 February 1743
Died: 09 November 1773, College of Immaculate Conception, Derbyshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Son of Dr Peter Brennan, founder of the Meath Hospital;
1740 came home to Ireland with a case of relics!
1743 Professor of Theology a the Grand College Poitiers
1743 to 1753 distinguished preacher in Dublin
1754 Rector Irish College, Rome to 1754 and again 25 February 1758 succeeding Fr Michael Fitzgerald (or was Rector from 01 May 1757 to 1759)
1758-1762 Operarius at Seminary in Poitiers, then 1762 Minister and Procurator at Irish College in Poitiers
1763 Prof of Theology at the Grand College Poitiers
1768 On the mission at Barborrough, near Chesterfield, England (poss Barlborough?)
1769 Rector of College of Immaculate Conception Derbyshire, England

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ :
1740 Sent to Ireland (in pen)
1744-1754 Distinguished Preacher in Dublin
1754 Rector of Irish College Rome
1763 At Poitiers and Professed Theology at Grand Collège Poitiers
1769 Rector of College of Immaculate Conception, Derbyshire
(cf Arrêt de la Cour du Parliament de Paris)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
DOB 02 January 1709 Dublin; Ent 01 January 1726 Rome; Ord 1740 Rome; RIP c 1773 Derbyshire

Son of Daniel and Mary Anne née O'Sullivan
1729-1732 After First Vows he was sent for one year of Rhetoric and then he studied Philosophy at the Roman College.
Regency was spent at Montepulciano, Orvieto and Loreto
1737 Returned to Rome for Theology and was ordained in 1740
1740-1744 At Montepulciano again for one year teaching and then three years at Teramo
1744 Sent to Ireland and spent 10 years as assistant Priest at St Mary’s Lane Chapel Dublin
1754-1759 Appointed Rector of Irish College Rome
1759 Appointed Procurator for the Society in France until the dissolution of the Society in France
Then joined ANG and was on the Mission in Derbyshire when died a few months after the Suppression in November 1773

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BRENNAN, THOMAS, of Dublin, was born on the 20th of December, and entered the Roman Province of the Society on the 1st of January, 1725. Returning to Ireland after completing his studies, and being admitted to the Profession of the Four Vows, he was employed in one of the Parishes of Dublin, for nearly ten years, and gained distinction as a Preacher. He was called to Rome in 1754, to govern the Irish Seminary in that City. At the expiration of his Superiority, he became aggregated to the English Province, was appointed to a Mission in Derbyshire, and was declared Rector of his Brethren, in the College of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, on the 6th of June, 1769. He died in Derbyshire, shortly after the Suppression of his Order ; but the exact date I cannot procure.

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

Born: 26 September 1630, Newtown, Dublin
Entered: 20 September 1652, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: 1658/9, Salamanca, Spain
Final Vows: 15 August 1668
Died: 28 August 1686, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Alias James Bruno

1655 at Compostella studying Philosophy for 3 years
1658 at Salamanca studying 3rd year Theology
1660 Magister Seminarii at Villagarcía
1665 at León College (teaching Philosophy?)
1669 at Villagarcía Teaching Philosophy and Moral Theology
1678 Teaching Theology at Compostella
1681 Teaching Grammar & Humanities Theology & Philosophy at Compostella

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he was sent to complete his studies at Compostella and Royal College Salamanca and Ordained there 1658/1659.
Immediately following Ordination he taught Humanities at Valladolid, León, the Juniorate in Villagarcía and Copostella.
1674-1686 Teaching Philosophy and Theology at Villagarcía
In contemporary documents he is described as one capable of teaching with distinction the Sacred Sciences as well as Humanities

Born: 05 November 1793, Gillmoss, Lancashire, England
Entered: 07 September 1813, Hodder, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: December 1819, Dublin City, County Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1834
Died: 13 May 1875, Stonyhurst, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII

Brownbill, Francis, Father, a native of Gillmoss, county Lancaster ; born November 5, 1793 ; educated at Stonyhurst College;entered the Society at Hodder, September 7,1813. After the usual scholastic course,he was ordained Priest in Dublin,December1819. Then filled the offices of Prefect, Professor of Mathematics,& c.,and became Minister of Stonyhurst College. He was made a Spiritual Coadjutor,August 15, 1834;August ,1835, Superior of the Residence of St. Michael. From 1838 to 1842 (when he was again appointedMinister of Stonyhurst College) he was both missioner and Superior of St. George's Residence, Worcester, and likewise Superior of the College of St. Francis Xavier. In September, 1847, Superior at the Seminary (St. Mary's Hall),Stonyhurst. From September 6,1843,until 1863,he was missioner at Newhall,Chelmsford. In December, 1864 , Superior at the Little College, Hodder. His health now declining, after several changes cur val ,he was removed to Stonyhurst College, where he died May 13,1875, æt.82.

◆ The English Jesuits, 1650-1829: A Biographical Dictionary

by Geoffrey Holt

Brownbill, Francis. Priest.
b. November 5th, 1793, Gillmoss, Lancashire.
s. of George and Margaret (Spenser). br. of James (2) and Thomas.
e. Stonyhurst 1807-13.
S.J. September 7th, 1813.
Hodder (nov) 1813-5.
Stonyhurst (phil and theol) 1815-9.
Ordained priest December 1819, Dublin.
Stonyhurst 1820-6. London 1826.
Stonyhurst 1826-32. Hodder (tert) 1832.
Stockeld Park 1832-8. (Superior,
Residence of St Michael 1835-8).
Worcester 1838-42. (Superior,
Residence of St George 1839-42).
Stonyhurst 1842-7. St Mary's Hall 1847-8.
New Hall 1848-63.
London 1863.
Exeter 1863.
Hodder 1864-8 (Superior).
Lincoln 1868-9.
Skipton 1869-72.
Accrington 1872-3.
Stonyhurst 1873-5.
d. May 13th, 1875, Stonyhurst. bu. Stonyhurst.

(Fo.7; Stol; Nec; CRS.6/183; 115).

Born: 11 August 1912, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1931, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1944, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1949, St Ignatius Leeson Street, Dublin
Died: 15 September 1998, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1946 at St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Savage, Roland (‘Ronnie’) Marcus Anthony Burke-
by David Murphy

Savage, Roland (‘Ronnie’) Marcus Anthony Burke- (1912–98), Jesuit priest and editor, was born in north Dublin on 11 August 1912, son of Matthew Burke-Savage, medical doctor, and his wife Alice (née O'Connor). Educated at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, he entered the Society of Jesus at Emo Court, Co. Laois, on 7 September 1931. He lived with the Jesuit community in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, while he studied arts at UCD (1933–6), where he was Hutchinson Stewart scholar in English literature (1934) and graduated BA (1936) and MA (1941) with first-class honours.

Professed of his first vows in March 1934, he moved to Milltown Park in Dublin, where he studied theology (1941–5). Ordained on 31 July 1944, he spent his tertianship at Milltown, before moving to the Leeson St. community in 1946 as a writer and assistant editor of Studies. He published his biography of Catherine McAuley (qv) in 1946 (reprinted, 2nd ed., 1955), a work of which he was justifiably proud. In 1947 he took over the editorship of the Irish Monthly (1947–50), while still continuing to work on Studies, of which he became editor in 1950. During his tenure as editor of Studies he reorganized the journal's administration and encouraged a new generation of contributors, including Garret FitzGerald. Towards the end of his term as editor it was thought by some that Studies had become less critical of the catholic hierarchy than it had been previously. In 1968 he handed over the editorship.

Having served as superior of the Leeson St. community (1951–9), he was appointed in the latter year director of the Central Catholic Library from which he resigned in 1968. Moving to Clongowes, he worked as house historian, writer, and editor of the Clongownian. He served later as college archivist and curator of the college museum. In failing health he moved to the Jesuit nursing home at Cherryfield Lodge, Sandford Rd, Dublin, in 1997 and underwent an operation. He never really recovered and died there 15 September 1998. He was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery. Throughout his life, Ronnie Burke-Savage suffered from depression and found life more difficult as he grew older. His affliction often manifested itself in reclusiveness and difficult relations with his colleagues.

ITWW; Louis McRedmond, To the greater glory (1991); Ir. Times, 16 Sept. 1998; Studies, lxxxvii, no. 348 (1998); Interfuse (Jesuit in-house publication), no. 101 (1999); information from Fr Fergus O 'Donoghue SJ and Dr Thomas Morrissey SJ

◆ Interfuse No 101 : Special Edition 1999 & ◆ The Clongownian, 1999

Obituary

Fr Roland (Ronnie) Burke-Savage (1912-1988)

11th Aug. 1912: Born in Dublin
Early Education at Clongowes
7th Sept. 1931: Entered the Society at Emo.
13th Mar. 1934: First Vows at Emo.
1933 - 1936: Rathfarnham - Arts at UCD, MA
1941 - 1945: Milltown Park - Theology
31st July 1944: Ordained at Milltown Park.
1945 - 1946: Tertianship
1946 - 1968; Leeson Street
1947 - 1950: Assist Editor Studies; Editor Irish Monthly, Writer.
1950 - 1951: Minister, Editor Studies.
1951 - 1959: Superior; Editor Studies.
1959 - 1968: Director Central Catholic Library,
1968 - 1997: Clongowes - Editor Clongownian; Writer; House Historian.
1973 - 1976: Writer; Curator College Museum.
1976 -1997: Writer; College Archivist; Curator College Museum.
1997: Cherryfield Lodge - Prays for the Church and the Society

Father Burke-Savage had been in Cherryfield Lodge for the last year. He underwent a serious operation last May and never fully recovered. Although in good form he deteriorated over the week-end and died peacefully in Cherryfield Lodge at 6.10 a.m., Tuesday, 15 September 1998.

Homily at the Funeral Mass of Fr. Burke-Savage
The popular writer, Fr. John O'Donohue has a wonderful image of birth and death.

“Imagine if you could talk to a baby in the womb and explain its unity with the mother. How this cord of belonging gives it life. If you could then tell the baby that this was about to end. It was going to be expelled from the womb, pushed through a very narrow passage finally to be dropped out into vacant, open light. The cord which held it to its mother's womb was going to be cut and then it was going to be on its own for ever more. If the baby could talk back, it would fear that it was going to die. For the baby within the womb being born would seem like death."

Death is a kind of re-birth. We cling to the cord of life but eventually we must let go and then we enter a new world where time and space are utterly different, a world without shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation or pain. We are at home with the God from whom we came and to whom we go. We are in God's world of goodness, unity, beauty , truth and, above all, absolute love. The Trinity, Absolute Love, Absolute Giving and Receiving, Absolute Intimacy and Creativity is where all the longings of the human heart at last find fulfillment.

It is to that world that Ronnie, as he was affectionately known in the Society, has now gone. Roland Marcus Anthony, to give him his full name, was born in Dublin in 1912. Somehow that name fits for, in many ways, he was a renaissance man. Educated here in Clongowes, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1931. He took a first class honours BA in UCD and later a first class honours MA also in UCD. While in UCD, he was president of the Literary and Historical Society and thought nothing of bringing the likes of the poet T.S. Eliot to speak to the students. In 1946 he became the assistant editor of the Jesuit review “Studies” and at the same time he published a life of Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, a book of which he was very proud.

In 1950 he became the editor of Studies. During his years as editor he was embroiled in many controversies. At the same time he got to know many of the students in UCD and had a deep and lasting influence on many of them. Some later rose to prominence in Irish public life.

In 1959 he became the Director of the Central Catholic Library and in 1968 he retired to Clongowes where he was the college archivist and curator of the college museum.

All his life, Ronnie suffered from one major cross. He was prone to deep depression but he bore this cross with great constancy and faith. It was his faith that sustained him and gave him the courage and will power to continue.

In many ways his life, particularly in his later years, can be illustrated by two stories. The first is a Taoist tale.
The carpenter said to his apprentice: “Do you know why this tree is so big and so old?” The apprentice said: “No. Why?” Then the carpenter answered: “Because it is useless. If it were useful it would have been cut down, sawn up and used for beds and tables and chairs. But because it is useless, it has been allowed to grow. That is why it is now so great that you can rest in its shadow”.

Ronnie, in his periods of depression, often felt that he was useless. But as he grew to accept himself for what he was - when he ceased to link his own value and worth to past achievements or to work he could or could not do in the present, as so many people tend to do - then, like the tree, he achieved a serene and gentle maturity as, in these latter years especially, he quietly prayed for the Church and his brother Jesuits. Another story sums up his life:

The Master was in an expansive mood so his disciples sought to learn from him the stages he had passed through in his quest for the divine. “God first led me by the hand”, he said, “into the Land of Sorrows; there I lived until my heart was purged of every inordinate attachment. Then I found myself in the Land of Love whose burning flames consumed whatever was left in me of self. This brought me to the Land of Silence where the mysteries of life and death were bared before my wondering eyes”. “Was that the final stage of your quest?” they asked. “No”, the Master said. “One day God said, ‘Today I shall take you to the innermost sanctuary of the temple, to the heart of God himself. And I was led to the Land of Laughter’.”

May Ronnie's joy now be complete, all the longings of his heart fulfilled as he joins the Lord he served for so long in that Land of Laughter.

Philip Fogarty

Born: 26 December 1893, 9 Rathdown Terrace, Dublin
Entered: 17 February 1913, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1926, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1929, St Ignatius College Riverview, Sydney, Australia
Died: 14 September 1958, Lewisham Hospital, Lewisham, Sydney, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Part of the St Ignatius College, Riverview, Sydney, Australia at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

by 1917 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1921 in Australia - Regency
by 1928 at St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales (ANG) making Tertianship
◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
His early education was at Belvedere College SJ before he entered the Society at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg.

1915-1916 After First Vows he was at University College Dublin for his Juniorate
1916-1919 He was sent for Philosophy to St Aloysius, Jersey and Milltown Park, Dublin
1919 he was sent to Australia for Regency. He spent one year at Xavier College Kew (1919-1920) and then to St Ignatius Riverview as an Assistant Prefect of Discipline and a Teacher (1920-1922)
1922-1927 He returned to Ireland for Theology at Milltown Park.
1727-1728 He made tertianship at St Beuno’s, Wales.
1929-1946 He returned to Australia and St Ignatius Riverview, where he was assistant Minister, Senior Science Teacher and took care of the Rowing.
1945-1950 He was appointed Assistant Director of the Observatory at Riverview
1950 He was appointed Director of the Observatory at Riverview after Daniel O’Connell was appointed to the Vatican Observatory. He was particularly good at interpreting seismic patterns, and he picked up the Bikini atomic explosion, which was considered a security risk at the time he informed the US authorities. he was also the author of a number of scientific papers, the best known of which was probably “The Seismological and Related Aspects of the 1954 Hyrdogen Bomb Explosion”, which he wrote in conjunction with Professor KE Bullen, and was published in the “Australian Journal of Physics” in 1957.
He was a keen scientist. Teaching Physics he improvised brilliantly. he created the “Gaffoscope”, a device to illustrate the action of magnetic lines. His chief interest probably lay in Biology. he was very interested in wild life, especially snakes, which he dealt with fearlessly. But the most valuable part of his teaching probably was his devotion to truth that he instilled in his students and the appreciation he gave them by his own example of meticulous and untiring work.

As a Spiritual Father to the community, he was remembered for his monthly talks. They were simple, practical and solid, and expressed in an English of rare dignity and beauty, but more importantly their impact came from the fact that they were so clearly the principles that ruled his own austere life, the life of a man clearly dedicated to God and the truth.

He was a reserved man, very faithful to his duties and was an exemplary religious.. His observance of obedience was very strict, and he worked until just before his death. He was also a gentle man, considered too sensitive for the boys of Riverview who did not treat him kindly.

◆ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University online :
Burke-Gaffney, Thomas Noel (1893–1958)
by G. P. Walsh
G. P. Walsh, 'Burke-Gaffney, Thomas Noel (1893–1958)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/burke-gaffney-thomas-noel-9632/text16989, published first in hardcopy 1993, accessed online 1 July 2020.

Died 14 September 1958 : Lewisham, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

astronomer; Catholic priest; schoolteacher; seismologist

Thomas Noel Burke-Gaffney (1893-1958), Jesuit priest, seismologist and astronomer, was born on 26 December 1893 at 9 Rathdown Terrace, Dublin, fourth son of Thomas Burke Gaffney, valuer, and his wife Jenny, née O'Donnell. Educated in 1901-12 at Belvedere College, Dublin, Noel entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tullabeg on 17 February 1913. He attended science lectures at the National University of Ireland in 1915-16 and in 1917-19 studied philosophy at Jersey, Channel Islands, and at Milltown Park, Dublin. After teaching at St Francis Xavier's College, Melbourne, in 1921, and at St Ignatius' College, Riverview, Sydney, in 1922-23, he returned to Ireland to complete his theology studies at Milltown Park where he was ordained priest on 31 July 1926.

In September 1928 he returned to Riverview where he taught science until becoming assistant-director of Riverview College Observatory in 1946 (director from 1952). Although Burke-Gaffney was a dedicated and unorthodox teacher of physics who used ingenious devices like his 'gaffoscope' to illustrate degaussing, he was a poor disciplinarian in the classroom, 'too gentle for the boys of Riverview'. Nevertheless, he was loved by his pupils and famed for his little zoo of native animals—his 'gafferoos' as he called them—which delighted a loyal and devoted following of country boys. He possessed 'an uncanny ability to tame wild creatures', and instilled into his boys the importance and nobility of the natural sciences.

A keen and devoted scientist, Burke-Gaffney published papers on the seismicity of Australia, on the detection of S waves in the earth's inner core and on special phases from New Zealand earthquakes. His most notable contribution was four papers written with Professor K. E. Bullen on the seismic aspects of nuclear explosions, studies which attracted worldwide attention. Burke-Gaffney was the first to discover that nuclear explosions detonated at or near ground level showed up on seismographs. A council-member (1954-58) and vice-president (1957-58) of the Royal Society of New South Wales, he unstintingly helped many young seismologists and did valuable work as secretary-convenor of the sub-committee on seismology of the Australian national committee for the International Geophysical Year (1957-58).

Father Burke-Gaffney also carried out extensive work on variable stars. A man of great faith, he found it hard to understand how an astronomer could ever be an atheist: 'Astronomy', he said, 'constantly impresses you with the majesty of the Almighty, and the regularity of its laws presupposes the Lawgiver'.

Slightly built and somewhat self-effacing, Burke-Gaffney lived quietly and austerely. Few outside his college friends and scientific colleagues got to know him well, but those who did found him 'a charming and liberal-minded man, graced with a gentle dignity and a delightful humour'. Revered as an outstanding community member, he was truly—vir Deo deditus et veritati (a man dedicated to God and to the truth). He died of Hodgkin's disease on 14 September 1958 in Lewisham hospital and was buried in Gore Hill cemetery.

Select Bibliography
E. Lea-Scarlett, Riverview (Syd, 1989)
St Ignatius College, Riverview (Sydney), Our Alma Mater, 1952, 1957, 1958
Nature (London), 15 Nov 1958, p 1343
Australian Journal of Science, 21, 1958, p 133
Royal Astronomical Society, Monthly Notice, 119, 1959, p 344
Royal Society of New South Wales, Journal, 93, 1959, p 86
Belvederian (Dublin), 1959
Sydney Morning Herald, 16 Oct 1948, 9 Sept, 4 Oct 1952, 25 Apr 1953, 4 Mar 1954, 8 June, 3 July, 19 Sept 1957, 15 Sept 1958

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 34th Year No 1 1959
Obituary :
Fr Thomas Noel Burke-Gaffney (1893-1958)
With the death of Fr. Burke-Gaffney Australian geophysics and Jesuit science suffered a great loss. He was the director of the Riverview College Observatory since 1952, when the former director, Fr. D. O'Connell, was appointed to the Vatican Observatory, Castelgandolfo. He maintained and increased the reputation of Riverview as a first class observatory and the most important in the southern hemisphere. He carried on the work of his predecessors, the routine observations and measurements of stars and earthquakes, as begun by Fr. Pigot and continued by Fr. O'Leary and Fr. O'Connell.
Educated at Belvedere College, Fr. Burke-Gaffney entered Tullabeg, on 17th February, 1913, studied at the National University, did philosophy in Jersey and theology in Ireland and returned as a priest to Australia. At Riverview he was appointed senior science master. Always a scientist, his earlier interest was in biology and his “200” is remembered by former generations of Riverview boys. He taught physics for many years and in 1946 was appointed assistant to Fr. O'Connell in the observatory, Here he quickly mastered the routine work and became expert in the reading and interpretation of the records. As director he continued this work which is summed up in, the bulletins issued by the observatory. This should be reckoned his most important contribution to science on account of the excellence of the records and the accuracy of his measurements.
Fr. Burke-Gaffney played a valuable part in the Australian I.G.Y. programme on the national committee for seismology and was for several years a member of the council of the Royal Society of N.S.W. His published work includes seven papers on seismology mainly written in collaboration with Professor Bullen of the University of Sydney. The papers were concerned with the seismicity of Australia, the problem of discovering S waves in the earth's inner core, special phases from New Zealand earthquakes, and seismic aspects of nuclear explosions, The last work attracted world-wide attention, he was the first to publish the recordings of atomic explosions. Professor Bullen, in his presidential address to the International Association of Seismology in Toronto, 1957, on Seismology in Our Atomic Age paid full tribute to this work of Fr. Burke-Gaffney and in Nature (15th November, 1958) described him as one who “lived austerely and was one of Australia's most unassuming scientists and a man of quiet gentle dignity”. He was, moreover, spiritual father of his community, his exhortations are described as simple, practical, solid and expressed in English of rare dignity and beauty. He died on 14th September and was buried in Gore Hill cemetery. R.I.P.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1959

Obituary

Father Noel Burke-Gaffney SJ

With the death of Fr Burke-Gaffney, Australian geophysics and Jesuit science suffered a great loss. He was director of the Riverview College Observatory since 1952, when the former director Fr D O'Connell, was appointed to the Vatican Observatory, Castelgandolfo. He maintained and increased the reputation of Riverview as a first-class observatory and the most important in the southern hemisphere. He carried on the work of his predecessors, the routine measurements and observations of stars and earthquakes begun by Fr Pigot and continued by Fr O'Leary and Fr O'Connell.

He was born in Dublin and educated. at Belvedere. Having completed his initial training in the Society of Jesus, which he entered in February, 1913, he attended lectures at the National University and did his course of Philosophy, partly in Ireland and partly at Jersey, Channel Islands.

He went to Australia in 1921 and after some years teaching returned to Ireland for Theology at Milltown Park. He was ordained priest there on July 31st, 1926. He then returned to Australia and was Senior Science Master at Riverview until 1946 when he became Assistant Director of the College Observatory and Director in 1952.

Fr Burke-Gaffney was a keen scientist, yet his chief interest lay probably with biology and he was famous among the boys of Riverview principally for his “zoo”. Teaching Physics, he improvised brilliantly and was a master in the devising of equipment. But the most valuable part of his teaching was surely the devotion to truth he instilled into his pupils and the appreciation he gave them, by his own example of meticulous and untiring work, of the importance and nobility of the natural sciences - “The heavens proclaim the glory of God”.

He played a valuable part in the Australian IGY programme on the national committee for seismology and was for several years a member of the council of the Royal Society of New South
Wales. He wrote many scientific papers the chief of which were concerned with the seismicity of Australia, the problem of discovering S waves in the earth's inner core, special phases from New Zealand earthquakes, and seismic aspects of nuclear explosions. The last work attracted world-wide attention, he was the first to publish the recordings of atomic explosions. Professor K E Bullen, in his presidential address to the International Association of Seismology in Toronto, 1957, paid fuil tribute to this work of Fr Burke-Gaffney.

His fellow religious have paid tribute to his qualities as a religious and as a man. He was always a wonderful community man. It was one of his greatest consolations during his last illness that he was allowed to return for a few weeks to be with them at Riverview. He had been Spiritual Father to the Community there and had been much valued for his practical, solid talks, valuable chiefly in that they were so clearly the outcome of the principles that ruled his own austere life, the life of a man completely dedicated to God and the truth. - Vir Deo deditus et veritati.

Born: 17 December 1896, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 13 October 1920, Guelph, Ontario, Canada - Canada Superioris Province(CAN S)
Ordained: 31 July 1930, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1967
Died: 14 January 1979, St Vincent’s Nursing Home, Windsor Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - Canada Superioris Province (CAN S)

by 1929 came to Milltown (HIB) studying 1928-1931

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1979

Obituary

Father Walter Burke Gaffney SJ

Colonel J J Burke-Gaffney has released some cuttings about the life of his brother Walter S.J. We reprint one from the Halifax Star, and follow this with the panegyric preached by the Most Rev Dr Joseph Hayes, Archbishop of Halifax Nova Scotia. The Halifax Star concentrates on Fr Walter's formidable academic achievements; the strong light which the bishop directs from the side, shows up some new depths in the image.

We will perhaps be pardoned for proudly drawing attention to the few simple words: “the Canadian Martyrs Church” ... Those martyrs are Jesuit martyrs, and some of the most glorious martyrs in the history of the Church! Not a cape, not a headland, not a river estuary in Eastern Canada exists, that was not rounded, tramped, waded, splashed, cut-through and beaten down by French Jesuits. They were among the first Europeans on the “location”. A total world away from their native land, among natives of matchless cruelty and savagery, their intense spirituality and total dedication might almost make St Lawrence envy them. In fact their actual slow-fire martyrdom, their actual lack of cooperation with their torturers in not responding with screams, is strongly reminiscent of the accounts of the death of St Lawrence Martyr: “This side is cooked, turn me over ...”, “... now eat me!” In the case of St Lawrence Martyr there may be some exaggeration, but in the case of saints Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brebeuf, and Companions, Jesuit Martyrs, there is none. (One wonders who named the St Lawrence River? Was it so named by these first European explorers because of what they foresaw of their likely end?)

We repeat our apology, but protest that we are proud to belong to a company that produced such men as these, the “Canadian Martyrs”. Fr Walter, in life, was proud to be numbered in such a group, and surely, his spiritual life during forty years in Canada must have been influenced by such glorious roots.

From The Halifax Star 16.1.1979

Rev Michael Walter Burke Gaffney, well known teacher, engineer and astronomer at St Mary's University, died Sunday in St Vincent's Guest House, Halifax, He was 82.

A native of Dublin, Ireland, Father Burke Gaffney was one of the original group of Jesuit priests who arrived in Halifax in 1940 to begin teaching and administration at Saint Mary's.

He studied at Belvedere College and University College in Dublin and graduated from the National University of Ireland with the degree of Bachelor of Engineering in 1917.

Attached to the British war office and air ministry in London from 1917 to 1920, he constructed aerodromes in Britain during the First World War.

He later designed bridges in Manitoba before making the decision to enter the Society of Jesus in 1920...

...Ordained a priest in 1930 he took a Master of Science degree in 1933 and two years later his doctorate in astronomy, both at Georgetown University, Washington.

Following four years as a lecturer at the Jesuit Seminary in Toronto and a year at St Paul's College, Winnipeg, he came to Saint Mary's in 1940. He was dean of engineering for eight years and dean of science for four years. He was professor of astronomy from 1955 to 1965 when he became professor emeritus.

He was a past member of the board of governors and the senate of the Nova Scotia Technical College. He was the first Canadian to hold membership in the International Academy of the History of Science and in 1951 he was elected honorary president of the Nova Scotia Astronomical Society, an organisation he helped to found.

A member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the American Astronomical Society and the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia, he has written books and articles about astronomy and engineering for scholarly journals.

An astronomical observatory unit atop Saint Mary's academic residence was named in his honour.

He is survived by a brother, Lieutenant-Colonel John Joseph Burke-Gaffney, Dublin, and 14 nieces and nephews. Besides his parents he was predeceased by six brothers and three sisters.

The body will be at the Canadian Martyrs Church from 2 p.m. today, Office of the Dead will be recited this.evening at 8 o'clock.

Funeral liturgy will be celebrated at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Canadian Martyrs Church, Most Rev James M. Hayes, Archbishop of Halifax presiding.

The address of Archbishop Hayes

In the second reading from I Corinthians, St. Paul is speaking like a scientist of his day. He goes to the scientific facts commonly known and held to help his readers understand the mystery of God's great gift of new life and of a future resurrection. Biology or botany (the seed and the plant) astronomy: (the make-up of human beings) he uses all to teach what was for Him a deeper and more basic truth. The dead will rise again.

It seems to me most appropriate that we should hear Paul speaking in this way when we come to the funeral liturgy for our departed brother Michael Walter Burke-Gaffney. The sciences have advanced a lot since Paul's day but the eternal truths revealed to us by God in His Son Jesus, have not changed at all. The good man whom we come to remember and honour today used the scientific knowledge which he possessed to pass on the same eternal truths about God and His saving work.

In the passing of Father Burke-Gaffney, we have lost a friend or an associate or a brother in the priesthood and we all feel his passing in a different way. But no matter what our association was, we all mourn a good man, an accomplished scientist and author, who was first and always a priest and a devoted religious member of the Society of Jesus.

A store of scientific knowledge he possessed; and he was always ready to share it with others. But all his talents and knowledge were, in his mind, to be used only for one purpose, to teach the kingdom of God and bring it to his students, his Listeners, his readers.

Just yesterday, his latest publication came from the press. It is an account of the devotion of our Lady among the missionaries and early settlers in New France from 1634 to 1641. This essay was awarded first place in a Canadian history contest held during the Marian year in 1954.

We learn in the scriptures that the tiny seed must die to produce a rich harvest. Otherwise it remains alone in the earth and barren. Jesus used this exam ple to point to His own self-giving, His own death and resurrection. We christians believe that those who die believing in Jesus will rise with Him to a new life. We celebrate these funeral rites today, precisely because we believe these truths. As we look back over the life of our departed friend and brother, it is not hard to make the comparison. Here is a man, who for the almost 40 years we in Halifax have known him, gave himself generously to be of service to others as a teacher, a counsellor, a community builder, a priest. It can be said without equivocation that Father Burke-Gaffney literally gave his life for others. His service was complete, his dedication total, so that he served others as long as his physical and psychic strength permitted him to do so. Even after it was difficult for him to read, his fertile mind continued to Speculate on so many things, things he liked to share with his visitors. Doing his life's work as he did joyfully for the sake of Jesus, we confidently believe that the servant and the master are united. That the glory of the resurrection is now to be the fruit of a life generously and gladly given.

It was as an astronomer that Father Burke Gaffney received public acclaim in Halifax. The advent of space travel gave him ample scope to deepen and share his knowledge of the heavens and the stars. I remember my first contact with him 38 years ago, to hear him lecture on “New stars”. I am told that he showed delight recently when he heard that his 1937 article on the “Star Of Bethlehem From An Astronomer's Point Of View”, is still quoted as a reference for scripture scholars.

This interest in astronomy like all the others, was used by this good man to bring other people to know God better. For him every star, like the Star of Bethlehem was a means of bringing wise men nearer to Jesus, “The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork”. (Ps. 19)

I don't think we would be far wrong in saying that now, when the limitations of the mortal body have been thrown oft, Father Gaffney will realise, make real, the word of the Lord spoken through Daniel: “The learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven, and those who have instructed many in virtue, as bright as stars, for all eternity”, (Daniel 12:3). Surely a part of his heavenly reward will be to marvel at the wonders of the universe that fascinated him so much while he was with us.

Now that he has gone from us, many people will miss him. I think particularly of his brothers in the Jesuit Community; of Monsignor Granville, the Chaplain at St Vincent's Guesthouse, for whom he was a friend and a brother; of Sister Susan Duggan and the other sisters, nurses and members of the Guesthouse staff who were so kind and dedicated to him. In the name of all the priests, I want to thank you for all you have done.

It remains now for us to remember; and to pray that the peace and glory of the Resurrection will be his and that we hope someday follow him to that reward. Let that be our intention as we continue the celebration of the Eucharist.

Born: 02 October 1866, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1888, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 02 August 1903, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1906, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 04 March 1927, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

Part of St Francis Xavier's Residence, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin.

by 1892 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1905 at St David’s, Mold, Wales (FRA) making Tertianship

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
After his Novitiate he studied Philosophy in Jersey, and then went for Regency to Clongowes for many years. After that he studied Theology at Milltown, was Ordained there and went on the FRA Tertianship at Mold, Wales.
After Tertianship he spent two years at Clongowes before joining the Mission Staff for a year.
The following four years he spent at Milltown as Minister.
He then was sent to Gardiner St as Minister and held that office for eight years, before his unexpected death at St Vincent’s, Dublin after an operation 04 March 1927.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 2nd Year No 3 1927
Obituary :
Father James Bury
Early in March the province got a painful surprise by the news that Fr Bury was dead. He had been operated on for appendicitis, complications set in, and a second operation became necessary. The heart gave way, and he died on the 4th March. Fr. Bury was carried off in the full vigor of mature manhood. At the time of his death he was Minister of Gardiner Street, Prefect of the Church, had charge of two Sodalities, and of the “Penny Dinners”. He took a full share in the work of the Church, and was head of the missionary staff. He certainly served a full apprenticeship in the Society.
After Philosophy at Jersey, he went to Clongowes, where he spent one year Gallery Prefect, four at 3rd line, and then got charge of the “Big Study”. Theology at Milltown followed and Tertianship at Mold. The next year saw him at Clongowes, where for two years he ruled the Higher Line. In 1907-8 he was Missioner, and for the four following years Minister at Milltown. He then returned to Mission work, and was connected with the Staff until his death.. From 1913 he was stationed in Gardiner Street, and was Minister of the House for eight years.
How much he was appreciated by those with whom he came in contact is, perhaps, best evidenced by the simple address of the Gardiner Street Staff : “Very Rev. Fr, Superior, on behalf of the House Staff, Who sadly miss our lamented Father Minister (RIP), We ask your Reverence to accept this little offering, £2 8s. 6d., for a Novena of Masses to be offered for the Repose of the Soul of dear Father Bury. We believe that this spiritual remembrance would be preferable to any perishable wreath”.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father James Bury SJ 1866-1927
At the comparatively early age of 57 and in the full vigour of his powers, Fr James Bury died in Dublin on March 4th 1927 as a result of an operation.

He was long associated with Gardiner Street, where he was Minister for wight years previous to his death. A great churchman, popular with all, both priests and laity, he had a special gift for dealing with children. He was often called upon to preside at functions for children, and had the knack of producing order out of chaos.

He was born in Dublin in 1866, and he was educated at Belvedere College. He spent some time in Paris and also engaged in business in Dublin before he entered the Society in 1888.

During his time in Gardiner Street and at the time of his death, he was in charge of the Night Workers Sodality, but whom he was deservedly loved.

◆ The Clongownian, 1927

Obituary

Father James Bury SJ

The name of Father Bury will recall many memories to those who were here between the years 1894 and 1907. He came to Clongowes on the completion of his philosophical studies in Jersey, and filled the post of Gallery Prefect for one year. From 1895 to 1899 he guided the destinies of the Third Line, and those who had the happiness of being under him will recall his geniality and ready understanding of, and sympathy with, all that interests and worries boys at that early age. For the following two years he was Prefect of the Big Study; a strict disciplinarian, but withal popular with the boys, who admired him for his zeal for their success at examinations and his helpful interest in the struggling members of the “pass” classes, and the way he joined in their cheers when a surprise Play-day cut short the morning study. Returning from Theology in 1905, he became Higher Line Prefect, relinquishing the post in 1907 to take up the work of giving missions throughout the country, which occupied him more or less continually, until 1921, when he joined the staff of St Francis Xavier's Church in Dublin, becoming Minister the following year, and directing the work of the Missioners until his death.

Father Bury was a specialist in the very difficult work of giving children's missions, and the manner in which he gripped his youthful audiences and wrought them to a pitch of enthusiasm showed a rare power of sympathy and understanding with little folk, combined with great oratorical gifts; Indeed he will be missed by none more than the children of the poor, who idolised him, and on his walks they literally mobbed him for the privilege of holding his hand. He practically never left the Presbytery door but a poor flower-seller waylaid him and presented him with the choicest blooms in her basket.

He was a big-hearted man, very lovable, and the sobs of the poor who crowded the Church at his obsequies and followed his remains to the grave told more eloquently than speech or pen could of his sterling worth as a priest and a Jesuit. RIP

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1927

Obituary

Father James Bury SJ

The death of Father James Bury SJ, on March 4th came as a great shock to all. He had gone to hospital for a very necessary but simple operation, from which no one anticipated the slightest danger. An entirely unexpected complication set in, and, as a result, Father Bury had breathed his last before it was generally known that he was ill. Great was the grief of the Gardiner Street congregation and particularly of the poor when they learned of his unexpected death.

At the time of his death he was Minister of the residence in Gardiner Street, Dublin, and Superior of the Missions given by the Irish Jesuits. Previous to that he had been Minister in Milltown Park, and Higher Line Prefect in Clongowes. In all these offices he was genial to all, ever ready to oblige, devoted to his work, and kind to the poor. A sound, pleasing preacher, whose forte was plain, convincing instruction, he will be greatly missed. In the difficult role of preacher to children he was at his best. In this last work, which was particularly dear to him, he had few equals and perhaps no superior.

Born: 13 November 1790, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1808, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1814, Palermo, Sicily
Died: 22 August 1820, Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1814 Studied Humanities at Stonyhurst and Theology at Palermo, graduating DD and where he was Ordained.
He went with a band of choice youths who were destined to replant the standard of St Ignatius in Ireland, to Palermo, where he made his studies, graduated DD, and returning to Ireland, had a prominent part in the foundation of Clongowes (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
Dr Olvier gives an extract from a letter to himself from Father Esmonde with edifying details of the death of this learned and holy father. He says that he was in his twenty-ninth year “beloved by God and men”, and that he was a rare association of piety, learning and simplicity. He had said his last Mass at Clongowes on the Feast of the Assumption and went to Dublin the same day for a change of air. “I shall never forget his last night, which I spent at his bedside, it was a practical lesson in how to die. Having asked for and received the last Sacraments with tranquil, unaffected piety, answering to all the prayers, he fell into a slumber. At length awakening he said ‘Farewell, I am dying’, and then giving me some commissions, he added ‘I shall see Clongowes no more. Salute the community in my name. Assure them of my sincerest affection’. He then spoke very calmly of his impending death”
According to Father Bracken, a competent judge, he was by far the most gifted and learned of the Irish Jesuits of his time, and was a Professor of Theology at age 25. He was a most hardworking student and Professor, and of childlike simplicity.
He was carried off by a premature death from consumption.
He had the good and wholesome habit of renewing his Vows every day. (cf Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS for a long sketch)

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
After studying Humanities at Carlow and Stonyhurst, he proceeded with a band of choice youths (who were destined to replant the standard of St Ignatius in Ireland) to Palermo, where he went through a course of Philosophy and Divinity. In 1814, this highly gifted young man returned to his native country with a DD, to take a prominent part in the organisation of Clongowes. Here, his classical attainments, his varied learning, but above all, the example of his religious virtues, insured universal esteem and admiration. But a pulmonary complaint was undermining his constitution, and to the grief of every genius and friend, the lamp of life was extinguished on the 22nd August 1821. Two days after a train of sorrowing friends and admirers followed his remains to Mainham Church, adjoining the demesne of Clongowes”
Note from Br John O’Brien Entry :
It may not be out of place to mention that Edmund Hogan stated that the Italian Fathers told James Butler, of Clongowes fame, in 1805, that an Irish Jesuit Synnott was the last to leave off the Jesuit habit worn at the time of the Suppression in 1773 - “Go and tell His Holiness that it was an Irishman was the last member to put aside the habit”. So, Brother O’Brien was the last Brother to put aside the tall-hat in 1892 in obedience to the order of the Provincial Timothy Kenny.

◆ Fr Joseph McDonnell SJ Past and Present Notes :
16th February 1811 At the advance ages of 73, Father Betagh, PP of the St Michael Rosemary Lane Parish Dublin, Vicar General of the Dublin Archdiocese died. His death was looked upon as almost a national calamity. Shops and businesses were closed on the day of his funeral. His name and qualities were on the lips of everyone. He was an ex-Jesuit, the link between the Old and New Society in Ireland.

Among his many works was the foundation of two schools for boys : one a Classical school in Sall’s Court, the other a Night School in Skinner’s Row. One pupil received particular care - Peter Kenney - as he believed there might be great things to come from him in the future. “I have not long to be with you, but never fear, I’m rearing up a cock that will crow louder and sweeter for yopu than I ever did” he told his parishioners. Peter Kenney was to be “founder” of the restored Society in Ireland.

There were seventeen Jesuits in Ireland at the Suppression : John Ward, Clement Kelly, Edward Keating, John St Leger, Nicholas Barron, John Austin, Peter Berrill, James Moroney, Michael Cawood, Michael Fitzgerald, John Fullam, Paul Power, John Barron, Joseph O’Halloran, James Mulcaile, Richard O’Callaghan and Thomas Betagh. These men believed in the future restoration, and they husbanded their resources and succeeded in handing down to their successors a considerable sum of money, which had been saved by them.

A letter from the Acting General Father Thaddeus Brezozowski, dated St Petersburg 14/06/1806 was addressed to the only two survivors, Betagh and O’Callaghan. He thanked them for their work and their union with those in Russia, and suggested that the restoration was close at hand.

A letter from Nicholas Sewell, dated Stonyhurst 07/07/1809 to Betagh gives details of Irishmen being sent to Sicily for studies : Bartholomew Esmonde, Paul Ferley, Charles Aylmer, Robert St Leger, Edmund Cogan and James Butler. Peter Kenney and Matthew Gahan had preceded them. These were the foundation stones of the Restored Society.

Returning to Ireland, Kenney, Gahan and John Ryan took residence at No3 George’s Hill. Two years later, with the monies saved for them, Kenney bought Clongowes as a College for boys and a House of Studies for Jesuits. From a diary fragment of Aylmer, we learn that Kenney was Superior of the Irish Mission and Prefect of Studies, Aylmer was Minister, Claude Jautard, a survivor of the old Society in France was Spiritual Father, Butler was Professor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology, Ferley was professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Esmonde was Superior of Scholastics and they were joined by St Leger and William Dinan. Gahan was described as a Missioner at Francis St Dublin and Confessor to the Poor Clares and irish Sisters of Charity at Harold’s Cross and Summerhill. Ryan was a Missioner in St Paul’s, Arran Quay, Dublin. Among the Scholastics, Brothers and Masters were : Brothers Fraser, Levins, Connor, Bracken, Sherlock, Moran, Mullen and McGlade.

Trouble was not long coming. Protestants were upset that the Jesuits were in Ireland and sent a petition was sent to Parliament, suggesting that the Vow of Obedience to the Pope meant they could not have an Oath of Allegiance to the King. In addition, the expulsion of Jesuits from all of Europe had been a good thing. Kenney’s influence and diplomatic skills resulted in gaining support from Protestants in the locality of Clongowes, and a counter petition was presented by the Duke of Leinster on behalf of the Jesuits. This moment passed, but anto Jesuit feelings were mounting, such as in the Orange faction, and they managed to get an enquiry into the Jesuits and Peter Kenney and they appeared before the Irish Chief Secretary and Provy Council. Peter Kenney’s persuasive and oratorical skills won the day and the enquiry group said they were satisfied and impressed.

Over the years the Mission grew into a Province with Joseph Lentaigne as first Provincial in 1860. In 1885 the first outward undertaking was the setting up of an Irish Mission to Australia by Lentaigne and William Kelly, and this Mission grew exponentially from very humble beginnings.

Later the performance of the Jesuits in managing UCD with little or no money, and then outperforming what were known as the “Queen’s Colleges” forced the issue of injustice against Catholics in Ireland in the matter of University education. It is William Delaney who headed up the effort and create the National University of Ireland under endowment from the Government.from the Government.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father James Butler 1792-1820
On August 22nd 1820 in Clongowes died Fr James Butler, who according to Fr Bracken, was the most gifted and learned Jesuit of his time.

He was born in Dublin in 1792 and entered the noviceship at Hodder in 1808. His philosophical and theological studies were carried out at Palermo with such success that he was Professor of Theology at the early age of 25.

Returning to Ireland in 1814, he took a prominent part in the organisation of Clongowes. But, he was suffering from a pulmonary complaint which carried him off at the age of 29. Fr Bartholomew Esmonde has left us an account of his death :

“I shall never forget his last night, which I spent at his bedside. Awaking from sleep he took my hand, saying ‘Farewell, I am dying. I shall see Clongowes no more. Salute the community in my name, ensure them of my sincerest affection’. Of his impending death he then spoke very calmly, asking me to repeat from time to time a favourite Italian hymn ‘O bella mis Speranza’. ‘Tell me Fr Butler’ said I, ‘you are younger than I am, and if restored to health might do much good. If the choice of life and death were left to you, which would you choose’. He paused for a moment, and then turning to me with a smile said ‘If the choice were left to me, I would make none, but leave it to God, for he knows best’. In a few moments his strength was gone, and lisping the names of Jesus and Mary, he died”.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BUTLER, JAMES, after studying Humanities at Carlow and Stonyhurst,he proceeded with a band of choice youths (who were destined to replant the standard of St. Ignatius in Ireland) to Palermo, where he went through a course of Philosophy and Divinity. In 1814, this highly gifted young man returned to his native country, with the diploma of Doctor of Divinity, to take a prominent part in the organisation of Clongowes College. Here his classical attainments, his varied learning, but, above all, the example of his religious virtues, insured universal esteem and admiration. But a pulmonary complaint was undermining his constitution : and to the grief of every friend of genius and religion, the lamp of life was extinguished on the 22nd of August, 1821. Two days later, a train of sorrowing friends and admirers followed his remains to the grave in Mainham Church, adjoining the demesne of Clongowes College. The following extract ot a letter which I received from his Colleague, F. Bartholomew Esmonde, will interest and edify the reader:
“The lamented F. Butler died, I may say, in my arms, in his twenty-ninth year, dilectus Deo et hominibus. What a rare association of learning, piety, and simplicity! the Octave of the Assumption of B. Virgin Mary was his last day upon earth. He had said Mass at Clongowes for the last time on the feast of the Assumption, and came up to Dublin the same day for change of air. In a day or two it was evident that his dissolution was near at hand; and as his strength declined, his piety seemed to increase. I shall never forget his last night, which I spent at his bed-side : it was a practical lesson how to die. Having demanded and received the last sacraments with tranquil unaffected piety, answering to all the Prayers, he fell into a slumber. At length awakening he gave me his hand, saying, ‘Farewell, I am dying’, and then giving me some commissions, he added ‘I shall see Clongowes no more. Salute the community in my name : assure them of my sincerest affection’. Of his impending death he then spoke very calmly, asking me from time time to repeat a favorite Italian hymn by Bd. Ligouri in honour of the Virgin Mary - :
O bella mia Speranza, &c.
This seemed to give him exquisite pleasure. To my inquiry if he was quite happy, if any thing gave him pain, he answered, ‘thanks to God and to the Madonna, I am perfectly happy and resigned’. ‘But tell me’, I resumed, ‘Dr. Father Butler, you are younger than I am, and if restored to health, might do much good. Tell me then if the choice of life and death were left to you, which would you choose?’ He paused a moment, as if I had proposed a difficult question : then turning to me with a smile he said, ‘If the choice were left to me I would make none; but would leave it to God : for he knows what is best’. In a few moments his strength was gone, and lisping the names of Jesus and Mary he expired”.
Who is there that does not envy such a death ?

Born: 28 February 1886, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 06 September 1902, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 16 May 1918, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1922, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 22 February 1967, Mater Hospital, Dublin

Part of the Belvedere College SJ, Dublin community at the time of death

Educated at Belvedere College SJ

by 1907 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 42nd Year No 2 1967

Obituary :

Fr Charles Byrne SJ (1886-1967)

Fr. Charles Byrne was born in Dublin on 28th February 1886. He received his primary education at Synge Street and his secondary education in Belvedere, where he went in 1897. James Joyce was one of his companions but Fr. Charles did not find him a congenial soul. He entered the noviceship at Tullabeg in 1902 and remained there as a junior to study for his B.A. “Work was real, work was earnest”, in those days and he felt grateful to have survived the ordeal unscathed and with a B.A. to boot.
The three years of philosophy were spent at Stonyhurst and on his return to Ireland he was sent for a year to the Crescent where he taught the First Arts class and then for four years, as a teacher, to Clongowes where he had His Grace, Archbishop McQuaid as a pupil. In 1915 he began his theology in Milltown Park and was ordained in May 1918, the early date being due to the conscription scare of that year. At the end of theology he was sent to the Crescent for a year before tertianship and returned there in 1921. For ten years he was operarius, teacher and Minister at the Crescent. Then in 1931 he was transferred to Belvedere where he taught for 29 years without a break. When he retired from teaching he was appointed Superior of Loyola House and then last summer (1966) he returned to Belvedere where he died on 23rd February after the briefest of illnesses.
Of his 65 years in the Society, Fr. Byrne spent 46 in the colleges, doing that work which the General Congregation has again asserted to be one of our most important ministries. He was the kind of totally dedicated teacher that every college wants - for all his activities were centred around the work of the house whether it was teaching or theatricals or games. He had far more of the graces than the average Jesuit and he made use of them in a way that impressed the boys. Thus, he had a fine voice which was heard to advantage at a High Mass; he was a most graceful skater on ice, an elusive half at soccer and so good a hockey player that he was capped for Munster, which must be a Jesuit record.
As a teacher of Latin he used many industriae, mnemonics, rhymes, anecdotes and competitions, so that he rarely had need to order punishment. Then the lazy boy was shamed into working by noticing how hard his master worked for him and he could not help noticing it. Every mark for a theme was duly noted down and every mark in an examination was duly entered so that there was available a complete record of the work of each pupil during his progress through the school. For most of his time at Belvedere Fr. Byrne taught the first divisions in the top years. There was a very close bond between him and his class, so close indeed that when he was replaced by a younger Jesuit they resented losing him and the Prefect of Studies had his work cut out trying to smooth things over.
When Minister at the Crescent Fr. Byrne entered wholeheartedly into the activities of the Cecilian Society and tales of those days are still current in Limerick where he was remembered with affection, as his Christmas post from Limerick testified. On his transfer to Belvedere he put his skill at the disposal of Fr. M. Glynn who had just launched out on his long programme of Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. During opera week Fr. Byrne was a familiar sight in the green room in a khaki dust coat and with neat boxes of grease paint laid out like a surgeon's instruments.
On Fr. Glynn's breakdown Fr. Byrne at a moment's notice stepped into his shoes and with admirable skill and still more admirable patience produced year after year the college opera from 1939 to 1960. He appreciated good singing, good speaking and graceful movement. Year after year to make some forty boys good singers, good speakers and graceful movers called for heroic devotion. Fortunately, like Fr. Glynn, he possessed the secret of attaching the cast to himself so that all were anxious to do their best.
As has been said already any school was glad to have him and the same may be said about any community. The reason was obvious; he was unassuming, considerate and prompt to offer assistance. He was the Prefect of Studies answer to prayer for he considered the work assigned to him on the status had first claims on his time and energy. Only when he had conscientiously done his work did he consider himself free to do work of his own choice.
From our mode of life most of us are inclined to develop marked bachelor characteristics, carelessness of dress, untidy habits and general disregard for what we despise as “the frills”. Others of us react strongly against such ways and Fr. Charles was one of these. He is said to have asked a friend whose dishevelled breviary he viewed with disapproval : “Do you wash your hands after using that book?”
Without being foppish he was always carefully dressed. He took great care of his clothes and made them last a long time. A visit to his room was quite an experience; it was so unlike the typical lair of a Jesuit. Nothing was out of place. Everything was brushed and polished and the humblest furniture decorated.
When he returned to Belvedere last September he endeavoured to follow the order of time as far as possible. And he remained like this to the end. Indeed he was at recreation the evening before he died. Then on the day of his death he celebrated Mass and in the afternoon before dinner walked up and down the corridor saying his beads. Shortly afterwards he was found in his room suffering obviously from a stroke. He was anointed by Fr. B. Murray. A doctor was summoned (Dr. E. Guiney, one of his former pupils) and he advised transfer to hospital. He was brought by ambulance to the Mater, but before he could get treatment he passed quietly away.
He was considerate to the end, dying in the manner that would inconvenience the community as little as possible. May his quiet and gentle soul rest in peace.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1967

Obituary

Father Charles J Byrne SJ (Pupil 1897-1902; Teacher 1931-1960)

Fr Charles Byrne died most unexpectedly : on the evening of 22nd February 1967. He had returned to Belvedere the previous summer having spent six years as Superior of Loyola House, Eglinton Road, Dublin. On the day of his death he said Mass, in the afternoon recited his Breviary and before dinner walked up and down the corridor saying his Rosary. Shortly afterwards he was found in his room apparently dozing in his chair but really in a semi-coma. He was conscious of what was going on around him but was unable to communicate with those present though he made efforts to do so. The Last Sacraments were administered to him and then it was decided to transfer him to hospital. He was brought to the Mater Hospital but before he could get treatment he passed quietly away. This gentle and unobtrusive going was in complete keeping with his whole life, considerate for others at all times and dying in the manner that would cause as little inconvenience as possible.

After five years as a pupil in Belvedere Fr Byrne entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Tullabeg in 1902 and after his profession remained there as a junior to study for his BA degree. The three years of philosophy were spent at Stonyhurst College, England, and his teaching as a scholastic extended over six years, one at the Crescent and five at Clongowes where he taught science. In 1915 he began his theology at Milltown Park and was ordained there in May 1918. After tertianship he returned to the Crescent College, Limerick, where he combined the duties of Minister and teacher and was also in charge of the public church. During this period he entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the Cecilian Society and even to this day he is remembered with affection in Limerick.

In 1931 he was transferred to Belvedere where he resumed a long unbroken association with his Alma Mater for almost thirty years. He taught mostly Latin to the Senior Honours classes in which he had remarkable success. He had a close bond with all his pupils and never had to resort to sanctions as an incentive to work. He had a fund of mnemonics, rhymes, anecdotes which made life for the boy that little more interesting and somewhat easier when it came to imbibing knowledge. He was a very dedicated and industrious teacher, noting down most meticulously every mark for a theme and every mark for an examination, so that there was available a complete record of the work of each pupil during his progress through the college.

Fr Byrne had a lively interest in sport and maintained this interest right to the end. He supported all the college matches and was keenly interested in the welfare of the old boys rugby and cricket clubs. He was no mean athlete himself giving a good account on the soccer field, golf course and tennis court. He had the unusual distinction of being capped for Munster in hockey.

The work for which he is best remembered was the annual staging of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. For twenty-two years he produced almost single-handed a very polished and finished work. He attended to every aspect of the opera - production, music, dialogue, stage grouping and make-up. No detail escaped his eye whether it was a note of music, a small point of pronunciation, gesture, deportment - all was brought to a fine art making each play more impressive than the previous one. It cannot be said too often that it is to his credit that he secured his achievement from a cast which were in the most literal sense school boys. Year after year to make forty boys into good singers, good speakers and graceful movers called for heroic devotion. Fortunately he seemed to have the gift of attaching the cast to himself so much so that the boys vied with each other in attempting to put his directives into practice.

In the 1948 “Belvederian” we read: “Fr. Byrne labours for some four months and each year he must, if he is human, wonder if this straw will yield brick. Each year as the fruit of his work appears he must have a qualm. Each year we leave saying with awe - he has done it again. There are bold statisticians who tell us this present production is the best ever”. And indeed so it was with all operas - each one seemed to be better than the previous one. The community, the boys, the parents, and the old boys often reminisce on those wonderful and enjoyable nights with his memorable productions. It was his fervent wish that the college operas would be resumed in the not too far distant future. For many years he was the mentor and support of the Old Belvedere Musical and Dramatic Society, guiding it through its hazards in its early years.

In his dealings with others he exercised a gentle but very marked influence. He was unassuming, considerate and ever prompt to offer assistance. He was courteous to the extreme and even the slightest favour rendered would never go unrewarded. He had a wonderful equanimity of temperament and whether approached first thing in the morning or last thing at night he always gave the impression of being ever ready and pleased to deal with the particular situation in hand. With his many loyal helpers during opera week, and there were many, and with others with whom he came into contact during the course of every day life, he left the impression that it was a privilege to be associated with him or having to do business with him.

Ungentlemanliness was foreign to his character and the boys realised this, respected him for it and did their best at all times to behave as gentlemen in his presence. More than once he has been described as one of nature's gentlemen - a truer estimation would be a gentleman of God.

He was happy to return to Belvedere last summer. He entered into the spirit of the college activities, picking up the broken threads after a lapse of six years. He died as was his wish, almost in harness, slipping away in his own quiet and unobtrusive way.

May his kind and gentle soul rest in peace.

Born: 02 November 1659, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 21 September 1678, Paris, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1691, La Flèche, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1696
Died: 18 March 1720, Caen France - Franciae Province (FRA)

1681 at La Flèche (FRA)
1683 Professor at Coillege of Quimper (FRA) teaching Grammar for 3 years
1690 at La Flèche (FRA)
1693 at Vannes (FRA)
1696 at Rennes College
1700-1720 at Caen College

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1712 In France and recommended as a fit Rector for Poitiers College.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1680-1683 After First Vows he studied Philosophy at La Flèche
1683-1688 He then spent five years Regency at Quimper after which he returned to La Flèche for Theology, and was Ordained there 1691.
Initially after Ordination he taught Philosophy and Vannes and then Rennes, but was thought to be more interested in the classroom of a secondary school, and so, he was sent to Caen as Prefect of Studies, a post he held until 1712.
1712 The Irish Mission proposed him as Rector of the Irish College at Poitiers, but it did not happen. He remained at Caen as an operarius until his death 18 March l720

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BYRNE, FELIX. He was serving in the French Province in the Spring of 1712, and was recommended as a fit person to govern the College at Poitiers for the Irish Mission

Born: 10 October 1671, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 02 October 1691, Paris, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1704, Paris, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1706
Died: 18 December 1746, Dublin Residence, Dublin City, County Dublin - Romanae Province (ROM)

Before entering was a Master of Arts at Poitiers
1711 Teacher at Moulins College (FRA)
1714 in Ireland
Professor of Philosophy, learned man, good poet. Was also private chaplain to a family

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1713 In France and about to travel to Ireland
1714-1717 In Ireland
he had been a Professor of Philosophy and was a learned man and good poet.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Early education at the Jesuit School in Dublin and then graduated with an MA from Poitiers, before Ent 02 October 1691 Paris
1693-1700 After First Vows he was sent for an extra year of Rhetoric at the Novitiate and then the next six years Regency at Nevers (1694-1699) where he brought his first class as far as Rhetoric, and then at Vannes (1699-1700).
1700-1704 He was then sent to La Flèche for Theology being Ordained there in 1704.
1705-1706 Made Tertianship at Rouen
1706-1710 He taught Philosophy at Nevers and Moulins
1711-1713 he was sent for two years teaching Humanities at the Irish College, Poitiers
1713/1714 Winter he was sent to Ireland with Michael Murphy, and for thirty years taught Humanities in Dublin in close collaboration with Canon John Harold’s ecclesiastical Academy. In his latter years he seems to have taken little part in active ministry, as he suffered greatly from scruples. He died in Dublin 18 December 1746
In his time he was considered an accomplished Latinist, and he did publish some verse, though this has not been recorded in Jesuit bibliographies.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BYRNE, MILO. I find by F. Walt. Lavelin’s letter of the 1st of January, 1713, that this Father was preparing to quit the College at Poitiers for the Irish Mission.

Born: 10 October 1704, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 January 1724, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1738, Évora, Portugal
Final Vows: c 1740
Died: 19 January 1761, Azeitão Prison, Setúbal, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Borni

1737 in 3rd year of Theology at Évora, Portugal, typographer for 5 years
1740 teaching Grammar at College Portinanensi (could be Villanova de Portinão, north of Cape Vincent)
1743-1746 at Funchal in Madeira as Concionator and again in 1749 for many years
1752 Teaching Moral Theology at Funchal College

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1726-1729 After First Vows he studied Philosophy at Évora
1729-1934 He was sent for Regency not to a College, but as a “proof-reader” at the press attached to Évora College
1734-1738 Studied Theology at Évora, and was Ordained there c 1738
Father Thomas Hennessy was anxious to have him sent back to work in Ireland, and though the General agreed, his Portuguese Superiors determined to hold on to this Irishman because of his superb ability, and they saw him as having a capacity for government. So, he became in turn a Teacher, Preacher, Confessor, Consultor, and Professor of Moral Theology at Évora.
With the troubles for the Society in Portugal and elsewhere, he suffered along with his Portuguese fellow-Jesuits who from 1758 were rounded up imprisoned. He died in the prison of Azeitão Prison, Setúbal on 19 January, 1761

*Fr Finegan changes “Richard” to “Felix” in one of his accounts, but I am guessing that this is just an aberration as they led different lives at different times.

Born: 04 October 1868,Cork City, County Cork
Entered: 12 November 1886, Dromore, County Down
Ordained: 02 August 1903, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1906, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 01 December 1943, Dublin

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

Older brother of George Byrne - RIP 1962

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1898 at Valkenburg, Netherlands (GER) studying
by 1903 at Innsbruck, Austria (ASR-HUN) studying
by 1905 at Linz, Austria (ASR) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 19th Year No 1 1944

Obituary :

Father William Byrne SJ

Fr. William Byrne. Fr. Byrne was born in Cork in 1868, was educated at Clongowes, and entered the Society in 1886. He pursued his studies at Valkenberg, Holland, Milltown Park, Dublin, Innsbruck, and Linz, Austria. He was ordained at Milltown Park in 1903, and subsequently taught in various colleges from 1906 to 1931. Since 1931 he had been Professor of Science and Astronomy at St. Stanislaus College, Tullamore. He was a brother of Fr. George Byrne, formerly Superior of the Mission in Hong Kong and now at Mission Catholique, Dalat, Indo-China, and of the late Mr. Matthew Byrne, Listowel.
When Fr. Byrne returned to Clongowes in 1894 he began a life long career devoted to teaching. He had a genuine love for Mathematics and Physical Science, and this love he sought to communicate to his pupils. His method of presenting the matter to his pupils was vigorous, patient, attractive, and above all clear. The word “clear” seemed to have a special association with him, it was the keynote of all his demonstrations. Judged by the standard of examination results, Fr. Byrne was not an outstanding success as a teacher, though some of his more talented pupils did brilliantly. His own great knowledge and familiarity with the matter he taught made it not too easy for him to understand the difficulties of beginners. But he was a reilly great educator in the more liberal and higher sense of the word, aid his methods provided a fine mental training with broadness of outlook and accuracy of thought as chief characteristics. He never lost sight of the ultimate aim of all true Catholic Education, the religious formation of youth. His own personal example and tact won high respect.
His public speaking, in preaching and retreat giving, was marked by very evident sincerity and conviction, together with a simple tranquility and sympathy that appealed to his audience. He was a very good preacher and retreat giver.
As a conversationalist he was fascinating and at times very brilliant. He had a fund of interesting knowledge on a great variety of subjects. He had great appreciation of humour and told an amusing story with inimitable grace. He was uniformly genial and good humoured. Though a good speaker himself he was also an excellent listener. His manner and speech were full of great charm.
As Minister in Mungret for five or six years, and again in Galway for two or three years, he was most faithful, though the duties of that office did not have any great natural appeal to him. He was ever most kind to the sick whether boys or members of the Community or poor in the neighbourhood of our Colleges.
For the last fifteen years of his life he was professor of Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy in the Philosophate, first at Milltown Park for three years and then at Tullabeg for twelve years. This work was worthy of his attainments and most congenial to him and he accomplished it with great success. By constant study he kept well abreast of modern advances in Science. His experiments were prepared and carried out with utmost care and he had a true scientist's gentleness with his scientific apparatus. He was also a good linguist, speaking German and Irish fluently, and a great lover of Ireland's culture.
Fr. Byrne was truly a man of principle, and his ideals were lofty and truly Jesuit. He was steeped in knowledge of St. Ignatius, and the Early Society and the Institute. His fidelity to the Institute was inflexible. He was hardworking, conscientious, earnest, zealous, generous and most amiably kind. He was certainly a very true Jesuit whose example was a shining light. He was a man of great regularity and punctuality at all Community duties, no superfluity found place in his room. The virtue of Charity was particularly dear to him, his great physical strength, his intellectual gifts and his counsel were at the disposal of any who sought them.
His last illness was short, as he had desired. On Saturday he gave his lecture as usual, on Monday evening he was brought to hospital in Dublin and received the last Sacraments, and died peacefully on Wednesday morning. He was very patient and kindly in his illness. A valiant soldier of Christ be is much missed by all who knew him. R.I.P.

◆ The Clongownian, 1944

Obituary

Father William Byrne SJ

In Fr William Byrne Clongowes lost a, son remarkable for holiness, intelligence, and quaint charm, of character, though one who disliked nothing so much as to be remarked. He care of a distinguished family, being a brother of Mr Matt Byrne, the brilliant Cork solicitor, and of Fr George Byrne SJ. Holiness was the first characteristic remarked in him in Clongowes, where he won the admiration of his companions, who readily distinguish between the boy who is merely unaccustomed to wrongdoing and the one who resolutely avoids it on principle. On leaving school he entered the Society and pursued his studies for the most part in German houses. During the nineties he returned to Clongowes for some years as a scholastic, the last period of his connection with his old school. He is remembered at this time for his prowess on the ice. Full of useful work, the rest of his life was yet uneventful. He was Prefect of Studies and afterwards Minister at Galway. He was Minister and teacher at Mungret, and taught also at the Crescent. For some years he prepared the Juniors of the Society for entering the University, teaching them Irish, mathematics, physics, and imperturbability. His last years were spent as Professor of various scientific subjects in the Philosophate at Tullabeg.

It was probably his central independence and love of the hidden life that attracted him to the unspoiled poor of the Gaedhealtacht, and gave him his ardent nationalism. It was rather a cultural than a political nationalism, pacific though uncompromising, and naturally inclined him to a hero-worship of Dr Douglas Hyde and early Gaelic League ideals. He was never more at home than when chatting in his slow, beautiful Irish in some fisherman's cabin. His mind was full of schemes for helping the country folk. One remembers his invention of an instrument for cutting turf and a deeply suggestive but almost un noticed article in Fáinne an Lae on the irrigation of the West. But he was content with knowing that these schemes would work without attempting to push their adoption. One of his greatest cronies around Tullabeg was an elderly lady, an Irish speaker, who lived by hawking debris around in an almost extinct perambulator.

His last illness was over in three days. We should have known that the end was at hand for on his last journey he expressed no curiosity whatever about the machinery and equipment of the motor ambulance that carried him to Dublin. Even then, however, he chafed gently at his illness, for it interrupted his study of a work he had recently acquired on Crystallography. Now his study of crystals is resumed in his contemplation of the jasper and sardonyx of the Apocalyptic City. But one sees him still as he was on his daily walks with his old friend, Fr John Casey, his rosy face lit with its habitual welcoming smile, talking, delightedly and delightfully, stickless, yet looking oddly incomplete without a stick, wearing a hat so small that it seemed to have drifted down autumnally from a restless bough and, all unobserved by him, to have settled furtively on his head. His life at bottom was a quest for beauty or, to be more precise, a quest for the Grail. For there was more knightliness in his character than was superficially apparent.

AL

-oOo-

The following appreciation is from one who lived and worked with Fr William Byrne for many years, Fr John Casey SJ :

We are grateful to Fr. John Casey, S.J., for the following appreciation of Fr. Byrne as a teacher :

“Fr Byrne returned to Clongowes in 1894, and a life-time devoted to teaching then began. He came to his work fresh, eager, young, enthusiastic. He had a genuine love of Mathematics and Physical Science. I once heard him, alluding to the Integral Calculus, call those, strange integ ration signs his “dear, dear friends”. This he said half-jokingly, of course, but very much half in earnest too. This love he longed to communicate to his pupils. His method of presenting the matter to his classes was vigorous, patient, attractive and strikingly clear. His past pupils will remember the oft repeated question : “Is it clear?” and the prolonged emphatic intonation of that word “clear”. It was the keynote of his demonstrations.

In the broad, high, and liberal sense of the word, he was a really great educator. Many of his pupils now look back with pleasure and gratitude to the fine mental training, the accuracy of thought, the broad outlook, given them by his pedagogic methods.

In his years of teaching, he never lost sight of the ulterior aim of all Catholic and Jesuit education, the religious training and formation of youth. His splendid example won respect; and the tactful word in season from one so revered had lasting good results.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1944

Obituary

Father William Byrne SJ

Mungret boys of the years 1910 to 1916 will surely be sorry to hear of the death of their Minister, He seemed to be the fixed star in the comnunity of that period and, though men might come and go, he went on for ever. They will not, we know, forget to pray for the soul of Father Byrne. His death took everyone by surprise, for, though he was not a young man, he did seem to go on for ever. He was teaching the Jesuit students of philosophy for the last twenty years of his life, ever since he left Mungret for the last time in 1922. Mungret he loved and loved in his own way, so much so that he regretted any change in it. He had liked it as it was and he was conservative. Father Byrne was a man of brilliant gifts, an able scientist, whose practical gift was wedded to intellectual grasp. It was a joy to hear him expose scientific theory, but who will forget his naive pride in a nice instrument. He cherished it and woe betide the crude hand that was laid on it. He loved his violin too and charmed dull care away with it every single day. His pupils here will recognise that trait. Simple in all things he was simple with God. No one less like the fictional Jesuit ever perhaps wore the Jesuit gown. Mungret owes him a debt for the years of labour, kindly companionship and good example. She will repay it where remembrance is best. To his brother Father George and to his relatives we offer our sympathy. RIP

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father William Byrne (1868-1943)

A native of Cork, entered the Society in 1886. He studied at Valkenburg, Milltown Park and Innsbruck and was ordained in 1903. Father Byrne taught at the Crescent from 1906 to 1908 and again from 1926 to 1929. He was a brilliant mathematician and scientist and gave splendid service for many years in the Jesuit colleges. For the last fifteen years of his life he was professor of science at the Jesuit House of Philosophy, Tullabeg. Father Byrne had considerable gifts as a linguist and was a pioneer Gaelic enthusiast.

Born: 05 September 1878, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 20 September 1897, Roehampton London - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 28 July 1912, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1914
Died: 07 May 1939, Makumbi, Rhodesia - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1913 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

Born: 06 May 1885, Newry, County Down
Entered: 20 June 1916, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1924, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1934, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 10 November 1946, Ms Shuley's Home, Dublin

Part of St Mary’s community, Emo, County Laois at the time of his death.

by 1932 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 22nd Year No 1 1947

Obituary :
Fr. John Calter (1885-1916-1946)

Fr. Calter died at Miss Shuley's Home, Mount St. Crescent, Dublin, on Sunday, 10th November, at 8 a.m. Some four weeks previously he had been motored up from St. Mary's, Emo, suífering from serious asthma trouble. He appeared to be improving despite recurrent attacks, when he died very peacefully and somewhat unexpectedly. The funeral took place to Glasnevin after Office and Solemn Requiem Mass, at which Fr. Mahony, his Rector, was celebrant, on 12th November. R.I.P.
Fr. Calter was born at Newry on 6th May, 1885, and educated at the school of the Christian Brothers in the same place. Before his entrance into the Society on 20th June, 1916, he was for some fourteen years working as an accountant, first at The Newry Mineral Water Co., and later on the staff of Messrs. Knox, Cropper and Co., Chartered Accountants, Spencer House, London, E.C. After his two years' noviceship at Tullabeg he studied philosophy and theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained priest on 31st July, 1924. From 1926 to 1931 he was master and prefect at Mungret College and in the following year did his tertianship at St. Beuno's, North Wales. He was on the teaching staff at Clongowes during the years 1933-1938, when he was transferred to Belvedere College, where he remained, as procurator, till 1944, when failing health rendered a change advisable. He was at Milltown Park for a year, and then last July was given a rest at St. Mary's, Emo.
A former fellow-novice of Fr. Calter sends us the following appreciation :
“Father John Calter was what our telescopic vocabulary calls ‘a late vocation’. I well remember the evening - it was a lovely June day's close - when he first arrived in Tullabeg. Outwardly, he was certainly the average man's idea of the religious novice, but it did not take any of us long to discover that our new Brother (the very name would have jarred upon him) was going to be ‘up against it’. He was neat, fastidious, sensitive, frail and already in his thirties, and he had set young in his ways. We were for the most part breezy, care free, jovial and hefty young men. I shall always remember his noviceship as something akin to heroism. One visualises J.A.C. in a once smart and fashionable suit of light grey cloth, now the colour of Joseph's coat and the consistency of plate-mail from many layers of paint. It was his somewhat startling manual works outfit. In it he toiled leaf-collecting on the avenue and weed hacking on the long vanished Spiritual Meadow or performed the Weekly Offices and cleaned the fowl-run with nose physical and moral slightly averted, but hands and heart steady enough. One recalls, too, a memorable July day, his first in the noviceship and one which he loved to recall to the very end, when he carried - he alleged - an endless chain of buckets filled with scalding water from Coffee-scullery to the Old Dormitory, relaxing only for one minute to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and draw breath for the climb, but to be implored by the master of the company to rouse himself, praise God and pass the ammunition. Of course it was not all toil. He spent happy hours in the Sacristy, where his great taste in decoration and an enduring capacity for putting on a good show staged floral festivals that would have delighted the kind lady who sent the December roses and early lilies he enjoyed so much.
Perhaps it is true that Superiors tested this unusual late-starter more than most. He would have been the first to admit the justification for it. But he came through, not so much with flying colours as with colours nailed to the mast, surviving gallantly a last trial, the postponement of his vows until a ruling could be obtained that the ‘New’ Code of Canon Law did not abrogate the Jesuit privileges of making swiftly a perpetual self-dedication.
Noviceship over, he did not go to the University, but embarked at once, on his priestly studies, carrying them through without the usual break in Colleges. It was again a formidable task, for he had no special scholarly taste, and though his mind was orderly and his judgement good, he was well aware, as he told me during our student days, that he could aspire to nothing more than a good standard of priestly efficiency. It requires little effort to imagine the strain nine years of unbroken student routine meant to a man who was over forty when he was ordained.
On the conclusion of his studies, he was sent before and after his tertianship to the Colleges, first to Mungret and then to Clongowes, finally to Belvedere, each time as a bursar, a post which his pre-Jesuit activities as an accountant in his native town of Newry and in London made rather obvious. In addition he taught Religious Knowledge clearly and painstakingly, and business methods with uniform and rather marked success. At Mungret, now many stages behind him, I overtook him again and found him good to live with. He was loyal to a friend, up to and perhaps beyond partisanship. I remember an occasion on which a cherished scheme seemed about to fail, and J.A.C. came to the rescue, holding, on the last night of term, an impromptu concert at which he accompanied every item on the piano and provided the hit of the night by an undignified contest in mere speed with the boy who manufactured the violin music for the Irish dancing. At this time he had a strong hold on boys, not as much perhaps through their affection, for his character made little natural appeal to them, but rather by his determination to make them do their best for their own sake. Some years ago one of his pupils described to me ruefully, but gratefully, the appalling ordeal of being coached for an ‘interview’ for a position by this master of business-methods. It included a close examination of seventeen-year-old's ill-kept nails. But he got him the job.
At Clongowes he had less to do with boys, and in Belvedere scarcely anything. It was perhaps a pity, for the conventional clerk, which was certainly part of his make-up, became more apparent. But it was a scarcely avoidable pity, for with advancing years his health failed notably. He was forced to abandon the care of the little study which he had ruled with a rod of iron (but a minimum of strap) and in which office, as I can testify, no Prefect of Studies could have had a more faithful or reliable coadjutor. Year after year he would have one, two or three bouts of bad flu, and those who for the first time saw him down with one could easily believe his half-joking and often reiterated statement that he was dying. But he kept on. Gone in the end was much of his gaiety. He had a keen sense of humour and could give the most redoubted wit a Roland for an Oliver, but he used it chiefly in defence. In the end, too, he tended to be at times and in ways more difficult to work with, a little exacting and not always consistent. He himself was naturally so orderly and accurate in figures and papers and details that he perhaps exaggerated their importance or overlooked the difficulty they present to many not trained as he was. He had a great admiration for the Brothers' vocation, which he often expressed to me, and I think the late Br. James O'Grady had more of his affection and respect than any other friend. But he easily over looked the difficulties which lack of experience in a Brother or his lay staff.could create, and like many an admirer, tended to set quite impossible standards. With all this he did loyal service, and his twenty years of hard toil and uphill fight against ill health almost continuous and finally crushing, deserve recognition.
His more intimate life as a Jesuit was not so easy to fathom. Exact, he was, devout, conventional, a zealous retreat-giver, a steady upholder of law and rule, whether it pinched or not, and there was behind all a strength of will approaching passion and a simple devotion to Our Lord and His Mother which made him, at a word from Fr. Willie Doyle, leave his worldly prospects to go to the Irish bog and take up an uncongenial life and pursue it with dogged persistence in ever deepening pain and weariness till God crowned his efforts with a swift and peaceful death. I saw little of him in his last years, for I was much away, but am glad to remember that our last contacts were two trifling points of business, in one of which he served me and in the other of which I served a friend at his request. The request reached me in a letter, written a matter of days before his death. In it he characteristically said nothing of his illness, but made a wry half jest at his retirement to country life. That was the J.A.C. with whom those who really knew him were proud to share their vocation. May he rest in peace.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1947

Obituary

Father John Calter SJ

Fr Calter died in Dublin on November 10th. Although he was six years at Belvedere, 1938-44, the boys who had him in class could scarcely have appreciated the many lovable qualities which lay hidden beneath his reserved exterior. Owing to his delicate health he was unable to undertake much work in the classroom, and even the few boys who had him for Religious Knowledge or Economics probably only regarded him as a good and painstaking but rather exacting teacher. Earnestress of purpose was indeed one of the salient features of his character, but those who knew Fr Calter well found other qualities besides - a great loyalty to a friend, a quiet gaiety and keen sense of humour, which not even his continual ill health could crush. Few would think that one who had so little contact with the boys would show any interest in their games, yet the Fr Calter Cup, which he presented to the College for swimming, bears witness to the very real interest he took in this side of the boys lives. We are glad to think that this cup will help to keep his memory alive in Belvedere for many years. RIP

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1947

Obituary

Father John Calter SJ

Father John Calter died on November 10th, 1946, having patiently endured for many years bronchial trouble. He was born in 1885 at Newry and entered the Society of Jesus in 1916, having spent fourteen years in business as an accountant. He pursued his philosophical and theological studies at Miltown Park, Dublin, where he was ordained in 1924. He was master and prefect from 1926-31 at Mungret. He was strict and very precise in class but withal had a great and kindly interest in the students who were under his care. Many times, the Editor of the Mungret Annual, was corrected and correctly informed of the news of the Past by Father John.

He was attached to the teaching staff of Clongowes 1933-38 and at Belvedere 1938-44. He was then appointed Procurator at Milltown Park where he stayed until 1946. He then moved to St. Mary's, Emo Park, where he lived only for a few months. To his sister and relatives we send our deepest sympathy.

Born: 24 January 1854, Sackville Street, Dublin
Entered: 16 September 1873, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 25 September 1887
Final Vows: 02 February 1892, Dublin
Died: 01 April 1945, Milltown Park, Dublin

by 1876 at Roehampton, London (ANG) studying
by 1877 at Laval, France (FRA) studying
by 1886 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) studying

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Baptised 02 February 1854; Conformed 30 May 1865; First Vows 19 September 1875

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 20th Year No 2 1945

Obituary

Fr. Richard Campbell (1754-1873-1945)

On Easter Sunday, 1st April, 1945, at Milltown Park, where he had spent the last few years of his life, Fr. Campbell died very peace. fully in his 92nd year. He had been anointed again on the day of his death, after he had contracted congestion of the lungs.
Born in Dublin, Sackville Street (as it was then called) on 24th January, 1946, son of Mr. John Campbell, who was twice Lord Mayor of the city, he was educated at Belvedere and Downside. He entered the Society at Milltown Park on 16th September, 1873, and had Fr. Aloysius Sturzo as Master of Novices. He spent one year of Humanities at Roehampton, London, and studied philosophy at Laval in France and then taught at Clongowes from 1879 till 1885. He did his theological studies at St. Beuno's, North Wales, and was ordained priest by Bishop Edmund Knight on 25th September, 1887. On his return to Ireland he taught at Belvedere College til 1890, when he made his third year's probation in Tullabeg, being at the same time Socius to Fr. William Sutton, Master of Novices.
During the following two years he was Minister at Milltown Park, and from 1893 to 1897 was on the teaching staff of the Junior House, Belvedere College. In the latter year he went to Tullabeg as Minister and Socius, posts which he held till the summer of 1906. After spending a year at Crescent College, Limerick, as Minister, he again taught at Belvedere (1907-1918) and at Mungret, where he was Spiritual Father as well. After a two years period at Rathfarnham Castle as Minister, under Fr. John Sullivan as Rector, he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street, in 1926, and remained there till 1943.
Two of Fr. Campbell's brothers were Benedictine priests, both of whom predeceased him. One of these, Dom Ildephonsus Campbell. O.S.B., was lost on the 'Leinster' in 1918 on his way back to Coventry from Mungret College, where he had been making his retreat.
An old Belvederian, who knew Fr. Campbell well, the Most Rev. Francis Wall, Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, in a letter of sympathy on his death, written the Superior of Gardiner Street on 2nd April, sums up very appositely, we think, the story of the seventy three years he spent in the Society:
“He was a grand soul, always at work for his Master, but moving so unobtrusively at it, in our midst”.
Outwardly those year's were not spectacular. They marked the even succession of ordinary tasks faithfully and even meticulously performed, as is the case in so many Jesuit lives. Fr. Campbell was a religious of remarkable devotion to duty, of a regularity out of the common, faithful and punctilious to a fault, sincere in his friendships, which were deep and lasting. Behind a brusqueness of speech and manner, which to casual acquaintances seemed gruffness, was an eager and almost hypersensitive soul, around which his iron will, bent on self conquest, had erected a rampart of fictitious asperity. All through his life, this sensitiveness, securely screened from casual observation by his manner, was his greatest cross. Far from rendering him self centred or selfish, this characteristic of his bred in him an almost intuitive sympathy with others, especially those who suffered from loneliness and misunderstanding”.
Fr. Campbell had a very special talent for dealing with young schoolboys. He could inspire them with a lofty idealism in all that pertained to truth, duty and loyalty, and employed many ingenious ways of stirring them to class-rivalry. Without any conscious effort he won their abiding affection, while instilling in their young hearts a solidly Catholic outlook which rendered them proof against the storms of later life. On several occasions his pupils of the Junior House, Belvedere College, have left on record the feelings of regard and affection which they had for him. For example - in January, 1889 - in an ‘Address’ of thanks, which bears among other signatures that of E. Byrne, later Most Rev. Edward Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin, or in that quaint little sheet, decorated with shamrocks “Presented to Fr. Campbell on your retiring from teaching this 6th February, 1897, as a small token of gratitude for your entiring efforts to get us on in our studies”. From a few of his pupils of '96.' This was on the occasion of his going to Tullabeg as Socius. Another, undated. 'Address' to him from his boys in Belvedere runs as follows: “Fr. Campbell, the very kind attention shown by you to us during the past two years was so considerate that the boys cannot refrain from offering you this small token of affectionate gratitude. Every boy joins in thanking you for your kindness and can only wish you a very happy vacation and a long one”.
The same zeal and devotion which characterised his dealings in the class-room were maintained in all spheres of Fr. Campbell's labours, most especially during the long period in the priestly ministry which he spent at Gardiner Street. Despite his growing infirmities he was ever at his post of duty, whether in the pulpit or confessional, at the sick bed or in the parlour, at his own prie-dieu in his room or the little table in the Domestic Chapel giving the Community his Exhortation as Spiritual Father.
The Long Vacation the boys spoke of has come for him at last, and his mortal remains lie in the exact spot he had hoped would be free for him, just inside the railing of the Society Burial Plot, only a few feet from the grave in which his father and mother lie. R.I.P.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Richard Campbell SJ 1854-1945
Fr Richard Campbell was one of those men, who by force of character make an indelible impression on his generation. He was the most quoted man of the Province on account of his pithy remarks, whilst at the same time, most revered for his austerity of life and fidelity to duty.

Born in Sackville Street Dublin, as it was then, on January 24th 1854, he received his early education at Belvedere and Downside, entering the Society in 1873.

It was as Socius to the Master of Novices that he left his imprint on generations of future Jesuits. One of these novices at least, testified to the austerity of his own life afterwards, and that was Fr Willie Doyle.

As Minister of one of our houses Fr Campbell coined the immortal expression “The first year I tried to please everybody and failed, the sencod year I tried to please nobody and succeeded”.

His manner outwardly seemed brusque, but this was really a defence mechanism to cover a sensitive nature, which made him keenly sympathetic with those souls who were lonely and misunderstood.

He live to the age of 92 and died at Milltown Park on April 1st 1945.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1945

Obituary

Father Richard Campbell SJ
Belvedere, 1864-67 - died on Easter Sunday, April ist, in his 91st year,

After leaving Belvedere, he went to Downside with two younger brothers, both of whom became Benedictines.. The elder, Fr Ildephonsus Campbell OSB, was drowned when the Mail Boat, Leinster was torpedoed off the Kish Lightship in 1918. The younger, Fr Martin Campbell OSB, who died in 1938, had been for many years Parish Priest of Beccles, Suffolk.

Fr. Richard was for many years connected with Belvedere. Shortly after his ordination in 1887, he began a connection with his old College, which was to last with some intervals for nearly thirty years. Through all those years he won not only the respect but also the genuine affection of the boys he taught. Those who knew him but slightly sometimes wondered at this, for to casual acquain tances Fr Campbell's manner seemed gruff and brusque. Those, however, who knew him best - most of all, the boys for whom he worked - soon realised that this external manner was but a cloak for an extremely sensitive and affectionate heart. Shy by nature, he found it hard to make advances, but once contact had been established there was no limit to his response. How fully his boys understood him - and he them - is wittiessed by the little addresses which they presented to him, not once only, but many times during his years in Belvedere :

“We the Junior pupils of Belvedere College on resuming our Studies beg most earnestly to testify our respectful and at the same time grateful appreciation of your qualities ... as the guide and master in whom we trust as conscientiously endeavouring to shape our futures both spiritual and temporal. We return dear father (sic) after Christmastide to College with the firm resolution of pursuing our Studies with renewed vigour, and, as far as it is possible for us, to your satisfaction”.

The date is January, 1889, and among the signatories is E. Byrne, who was thirty years later to become Archbishop of Dublin, J A Coyle, Lucien Bull and many other names which are familiar to us.

Seven years later, the boys protest at his being removed from Belvedere to be Assistant Master of Novices in Tullabeg, is quaintly worded :

“ Presented to the Rev Father Campbell as a small token of gratitude for your untiring efforts to get us on in our studies, and as a protest for your retiring from teaching on this 6th February 1897.
From a few of his pupils of 96: Érin go Brágh”. Among the names appended are A McDonald, W Fallon, H Redmond, W Doheny, E O'Farreli and P O'Farrell

There are many other testimonials, and, per haps we may cite the words of just one more. It was presented by the Boys of II Grammar and bears no date, but the concluding words are -

“Every boy joins in thanking you for your kindness, and can only wish you a very happy vacation and a Long one:.

The long vacation has come for Fr Campbell, and looking back on the years of faithful work we may surely say that it is an eternally happy one. May he rest in Peace

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father Richard Campbell (1854-1945)

Born in Dublin, educated at Belvedere and Downside, and admitted to the Society in 1873, was at the Crescent as a scholastic in 1878-1879 and again as minister of the house, 1906-1907. He was many years on the teaching staff of Belvedere College and in Gardiner St Church.

Born: 01 February 1629, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1648, Kilkenny
Ordained: 27 March 1655, Lille, France
Died: 29 April 1697, Bridge Street, Dublin

Studied 2 years Philosophy before entering
1655 On the Mission
1666 Living near Drogheda teaching, catechising and administering sacraments
1698 “Fr Carberry and Michael Fitzgerald lived at Bridge St Dublin”. In 1678 he lived in Baldoyle (Hogan reporting Fr Nicholas Netterville in a report”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Three Entries Ignatius and Edward
Son of James - who, before he Ent, took him to see the celebrated Dr Arthur, or Limerick (cf Arthur’s “Diary” in “Kilkenny Archaeological Journal”, and Foley’s Collectanea
Had studied Humanities and two years Philosophy before Ent. Knew Latin, Spanish, Irish and English. (HIB Catalogue 1650 - ARSI)
1666 Living near New Ross engaged in Teaching, Catechising and administering the Sacraments. A Missioner for ten years (HIB Catalogue 1666 - ARSI)
1697 Reported to the Government as living at Bridge St, Dublin
Edward Carberie
Ent c 1648; RIP post 1660
His name appears written in Tursellini’s “Epitome Historiarum” printed in 1660
Note from Entry on Michael FitzGerald (Ent 1679) :
Ignatius Carbery, Priest, and Michael GitzGerald, Priest, lived in Bridge Street in 1697 (Report by a spy). Both were Jesuits probably.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he completed his studies at Lille and was Ordained there 27 March 1655
1655 Sent to Ireland and Dublin, and in spite of the “commonwealth” was still living in Dublin in 1658
The large part of his missionary work was outside Dublin and lived at Drogheda 1664-1666
For many years after this he lived at Baldoyle as a Catechist, Schoolmaster and Assistant Priest. After the Williamite occupation of the country he returned to Dublin where he worked until his death 29 April 1697. he is buried in St Catherine’s churchyard.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CARBERRY, IGNATIUS, was, a Novice at Kilkenny in 1648

Born: 1591, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 1604, Madrid, Spain - Toletanae Province (TOLE)
Ordained: 1614
Died: 06 October 1615, Murcia, Spain - Toletanae Province (TOLE)

◆Fr Francis Finegan SJ
Had studied at Douai before Ent 1604 TOLE
After First Vows he continued his studies at Murcia, where he was Ordained 1614

Old/16 has : “P Richard Carrig; Appears in CATSJ A-H

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

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

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

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

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

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

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

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

Born: 18 February 1907, Cappaugh Cottage, Union Hall, County Cork
Entered: 01 September 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1939, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1942, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 26 April 1985, Mater Hospital, Dublin

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

Early education at Mungret College SJ

Tertianship at Rathfarnham

◆ Irish Province News 60th Year No 3 1985 & ◆ The Clongownian, 1985

Obituary

Fr James Casey (1907-1924-1985)

Born on 18th February 1907. 1922-24 schoolboy at Mungret. Ist September 1924: entered SJ. 1924-26 Tullabeg, noviciate, 1926-30 Rathfarnham, juniorate. 1930-33 Tullabeg, philosophy. 1933-36 Belvedere, regency. 1936-40 Milltown, theology. 1940-41 Rathfarnham, tertianship. 1941-44 Mungret, prefect of studies. 1944-85 Clongowes, teaching. Died on 26th April 1985.

Our Clongowes community suffered one more grievous loss within the last year when Fr James Casey died suddenly in Dublin's Mater hospital, to which he had been brought on the previous even ing. He had been unwell for several months last summer, but made what we thought was a complete recovery. That illness did not seem to recur till shortly before the end, when it showed to some extent in depression. His sudden and of course utterly unexpected death was indeed a painful shock to us all, the more keenly felt as he was very much a
community man.
For the past forty-one years that Fr James spent in Clongowes, he was truly remarkable for his fidelity to his work of teaching. Every morning one could see him five minutes before the bell for class (he was punctuality itself) carrying down his heavy load of themes, all meticulously - one might be inclined to say too meticulously - marked for his pupils to correct. His class work was equally well prepared.
The truth is that James was a model religious, fulfilling all his religious duties with a regularity and modesty - in the old sense of the word - that was really astonishing. His faithfulness in all this was a compelling example to the whole community, and so a great help to each and all of us to maintain a high spiritual quality in our lives. As one might expect from a man of these virtues, he was a lover of community life and seldom left it. He took part in all community activities of work and play. He had a quiet sense of humour, and a liking for humorous yarns, not a few of which were his own.
If one of our younger and less experienced men should object: “What did Jim achieve? After all, your description fits a rather stiff, unenterprising schoolmaster”, I should reply that while scrupulously teaching his subject, he also deeply impressed the boys as a holy and lovable priest: he never lost his temper nor his sense of humour. In a word, he had all the qualities of a Jesuit teacher who is a master of his subject, sticks to the lesson, likes and is liked by his boys, yet never forgets that in their regard he is an apostle of Christ. He always remembered that those boys of his would be in professions such as medicine, law, engineering and so on throughout Ireland and England, influential Catholics mostly, who in their turn would exemplify the solid virtues they absorbed while at school from men like Jim. This was Jim's achievement, and tell me of better in the Society today! great pride in their success both in class
By Fr Jim Casey's death Clongowes has lost one who loved it and its environs and its boys, and who took and in the playing-field. (Incidentally, he always attended the Cup-matches with intense interest.) In the end, though, we, his fellow-Jesuits here, are the real losers. Vivat in Christo.

Born: 23 June 1707, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 28 January 1726, Seville, Spain - Baeticae Province (BAE)
Ordained: 1737, Granada, Spain
Final Vows: 17 March 1742
Died: 04 June 1772, Dublin Residence, Dublin City, County Dublin

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Rector at Salamanca
1738 Sent to Ireland from Seville
1786 He is found in a list of Dublin Priests by Battersby.
He was stationed in Dublin for the rest of his life.
(Curiously all his dates are the same as those of Simon Shee in the HIB Catalogues of 1752 and 1755).
His name is found in many old Spanish books.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of a Protestant father who converted later
After First Vows he made all his studies at Granada and was Ordained by 1737
1738 Sent to Ireland and to the Dublin Residence, serving as a Curate at St Mary’s Lane Chapel.
1755 Superior of Dublin Residence and remained there till his death 04 June 1772
From time to time he ministered to the Graham family Ballycooge House, near Arklow. He died in Dublin 04 June 1772, and was buried in the Old Abbey cemetery, Arklow, in the tomb of the Graham family.

◆ Clongowes Wood College SJ HIB Archive Collection - SC/CLON/142
Michael Cawood 1707-1787
Michael Cawood, son of a Protestant father who was later received into the Church, was born in Dublin 23 June 1707 and received into the Society at Seville, 28 January 1726. He made all his ecclesiastical studies at Granada and was ordained priest by 1737. Recalled to Dublin in 1738 he was assigned to the Dublin Residence and served as curate at Mary's Lane, He was superior of the Residence for some time after 1760. From time to time he exercised his ministry at Ballycooge House, Arklow, seat of the Graham family. He died at Dublin 4 June 1772 and was buried at the Old Abbey cemetery, Arklow in the tomb of the Graham family.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CAWOOD, MICHAEL, of Leinster, was born in 1708; joined the Order at Seville on the 28th of January, 1726, and came to the Irish Mission twelve years later. He took his solemn Vows on St. Patrick s Day Day, 1742. For several years he assisted a Parish Priest in Dublin; but further information I have been unable to procure.

◆ Fr Joseph McDonnell SJ Past and Present Notes :
16th February 1811 At the advance ages of 73, Father Betagh, PP of the St Michael Rosemary Lane Parish Dublin, Vicar General of the Dublin Archdiocese died. His death was looked upon as almost a national calamity. Shops and businesses were closed on the day of his funeral. His name and qualities were on the lips of everyone. He was an ex-Jesuit, the link between the Old and New Society in Ireland.

Among his many works was the foundation of two schools for boys : one a Classical school in Sall’s Court, the other a Night School in Skinner’s Row. One pupil received particular care - Peter Kenney - as he believed there might be great things to come from him in the future. “I have not long to be with you, but never fear, I’m rearing up a cock that will crow louder and sweeter for yopu than I ever did” he told his parishioners. Peter Kenney was to be “founder” of the restored Society in Ireland.

There were seventeen Jesuits in Ireland at the Suppression : John Ward, Clement Kelly, Edward Keating, John St Leger, Nicholas Barron, John Austin, Peter Berrill, James Moroney, Michael Cawood, Michael Fitzgerald, John Fullam, Paul Power, John Barron, Joseph O’Halloran, James Mulcaile, Richard O’Callaghan and Thomas Betagh. These men believed in the future restoration, and they husbanded their resources and succeeded in handing down to their successors a considerable sum of money, which had been saved by them.

A letter from the Acting General Father Thaddeus Brezozowski, dated St Petersburg 14/06/1806 was addressed to the only two survivors, Betagh and O’Callaghan. He thanked them for their work and their union with those in Russia, and suggested that the restoration was close at hand.

A letter from Nicholas Sewell, dated Stonyhurst 07/07/1809 to Betagh gives details of Irishmen being sent to Sicily for studies : Bartholomew Esmonde, Paul Ferley, Charles Aylmer, Robert St Leger, Edmund Cogan and James Butler. Peter Kenney and Matthew Gahan had preceded them. These were the foundation stones of the Restored Society.

Returning to Ireland, Kenney, Gahan and John Ryan took residence at No3 George’s Hill. Two years later, with the monies saved for them, Kenney bought Clongowes as a College for boys and a House of Studies for Jesuits. From a diary fragment of Aylmer, we learn that Kenney was Superior of the Irish Mission and Prefect of Studies, Aylmer was Minister, Claude Jautard, a survivor of the old Society in France was Spiritual Father, Butler was Professor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology, Ferley was professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Esmonde was Superior of Scholastics and they were joined by St Leger and William Dinan. Gahan was described as a Missioner at Francis St Dublin and Confessor to the Poor Clares and irish Sisters of Charity at Harold’s Cross and Summerhill. Ryan was a Missioner in St Paul’s, Arran Quay, Dublin. Among the Scholastics, Brothers and Masters were : Brothers Fraser, Levins, Connor, Bracken, Sherlock, Moran, Mullen and McGlade.

Trouble was not long coming. Protestants were upset that the Jesuits were in Ireland and sent a petition was sent to Parliament, suggesting that the Vow of Obedience to the Pope meant they could not have an Oath of Allegiance to the King. In addition, the expulsion of Jesuits from all of Europe had been a good thing. Kenney’s influence and diplomatic skills resulted in gaining support from Protestants in the locality of Clongowes, and a counter petition was presented by the Duke of Leinster on behalf of the Jesuits. This moment passed, but anto Jesuit feelings were mounting, such as in the Orange faction, and they managed to get an enquiry into the Jesuits and Peter Kenney and they appeared before the Irish Chief Secretary and Provy Council. Peter Kenney’s persuasive and oratorical skills won the day and the enquiry group said they were satisfied and impressed.

Over the years the Mission grew into a Province with Joseph Lentaigne as first Provincial in 1860. In 1885 the first outward undertaking was the setting up of an Irish Mission to Australia by Lentaigne and William Kelly, and this Mission grew exponentially from very humble beginnings.

Later the performance of the Jesuits in managing UCD with little or no money, and then outperforming what were known as the “Queen’s Colleges” forced the issue of injustice against Catholics in Ireland in the matter of University education. It is William Delaney who headed up the effort and create the National University of Ireland under endowment from the Government.from the Government.

Born: 04 August 1644, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 23 October 1666, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1674, Rome, Italy
Final Vows: 15 August 1680
Died: 05 October 1709, Dublin City, County Dublin

Alias Kitson

Studied for 5 years at Tournai (BELG) the 3 years in Rome (ROM)
1670 arrested and examined re Peter Talbot
1672 Teacher at Monte Santo and Illyric College, Loreto (ROM) - was Spiritual Coadjutor Penitentiary at Loreto for 3 years
1673 or 1678 Teaching Grammar at Loreto and studying Theology
1679-1682 Procurator of the Irish College at Poitiers (which was opened in 1675)
1683-1691 Dublin Residence and at Carlow College
1695 had spent three years in London
“1697 Fr Chamberlain and other Fathers still in prison 02 May 1697” (Archives Irish College Rome)
1702 Imprisoned and to be deported to Cadiz with Anthony Martin (convicted of being a Jesuit)
“Fr Chamberlain and other old Fathers in Dublin very poor having for 4 years lost what was common and private” (Archives Irish College Rome). Was living at Dominican Convent, Cooke St Dublin

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1683 In Ireland at the Dublin College
1695 In Spain
1697 Living near the Dominican Convent, Cooke St, Dublin (Report of a spy, in St Patrick’s Library MSS Vol iii p 118)
He was a Penitentiary in Loreto for three years; Procurator of Poitiers; In London for three years

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Studied Rhetoric at Tournai and Philosophy at Irish College Rome before Ent 23 October 1666 Rome
After First Vows he was sent for Regency at Monte Santo and Loreto, completing his studies at the Roman College and being Ordained there 1674
After Tertianship he was an English speaking Confessor for pilgrims at Loreto until 1678
1678-1681 Sent to Irish College Poitiers as Procurator
1681 Sent to Ireland and to Dublin where he remained until his death 07 October 1709. He taught secondary school for many years and was Procurator of the Dublin Residence when the city fell to the Williamites. He was then imprisoned along with other Jesuits and members of his own family. He was twice sentenced to deportation but managed to remain.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CHAMBERLAIN, MICHAEL. I meet with two Fathers of this name.
The Junior I find engaged at the commencement of James the Second’s reign, with F. James Kelly and F. Hugh Thaly, in teaching a school in Dublin. They had twenty Pensioners, and a respectable Chapel recently erected in that city. He was living in Ireland, but in secret, during the persecution in the Autumn of 1698. Sacellum salis insigne

Born: 01 August 1590, County Meath
Entered: 13 May 1610, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1618, Douai, France
Final Vows: 1619
Died: 27 December 1662, Cork City, County Cork

Studied Humanities in Ireland and Philosophy at Douai
1611 Sent to Flanders for health
1615-1619 at Douai studying Philosophy (not in FLAND CAT 1619)
1619 Came to Irish Mission in weak health but with 3 Final Vows
1621 On the Mission, health delicate, good judgement and prudence
1622 In Meath or Dublin
1626 In Ireland & 1637; 1649 in Cork
1649 Fr Verdier mentions him as chaplain to a noble family. A man of great integrity, possible Master of Novices
1650 A preacher and confessor for many years

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Studied Humanities and two years Philosophy before Ent, and three years Theology in the Society. He knew Irish, English and Latin.
1617 Was in Belgium
1619 or 1620 Came to Ireland, and taught Humanities for three years, and was a Confessor and Catechist (HIB Catalogue 1650 - ARSI) and was a good religious and excellent Preacher (Foley’s "Collectanea")
Mercure Verdier’s Reoprt to Fr General on the Irish Mission 24 June 1649, mentions him as being then chaplain in a nobleman’s family, and a man of great integrity, and about whom there was a question of his being made Master of Novices. (Oliver, "Stonyhurst MSS")

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ
Son of Stephen and Margaret née Deise
Studied at Douai before Ent Rome 1610
During his Novitiate for health reasons he was sent to complete this at Tournai.
After First Vows he studied at Douai and Ordained there in 1618
During Mercure Verdier’s Visitation of 1648-1649 he said that Chamberlain was living, not in a Jesuit community, but in the house of a nobleman. He also mentioned him as a potential Master of Novices.
1620 Returned to Ireland and ministered in Leinster. During the early “commonwealth” years he worked in Tipperary and later in Cork where he died 27 December 1662

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Michael Chamberlain SJ 1590-1662
Fr Michael Chamberlain entered the Society in 1610.

In 1640, together with Fr O’Hartegan and Fr Thomas Maguire he was appointed Chaplain “ad castra regia” this was to the Confederate Army in Ireland.

He was still alive in 1649, a sexagenarian and acting as chaplain to a nobleman’s family.

He hasd the reputation for prudence and sanctity, and there was a question of appointing him Master of Novices, a post later filled by Fr John Young.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CHAMBERLAIN, MICHAEL. I meet with two Fathers of this name.
The Senior is mentioned in a letter of the 22nd of November, 1640, as having been sent “ad regia castra” about two month’s before. Again, in F. Verdier’s Report, dated 24th of June, 1649, as being then Chaplain in a nobleman s family that he was a Sexagenarian a man of great integrity and that there was question of appointing him Master of Novices.

Born: 11 April 1916, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 12 November 1938, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1951, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 08 March 1995, John Chula House, Lusaka, Zambia - Zambiae Province

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 03 December 1969

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
After leaving school at Clongowes Wood College in 1933, Arthur worked for about five years in the Hibernian Bank. Later he enjoyed recalling his days as an oarsman in a crew of eight, racing on the river Liffey in Dublin.

Arthur took as his model and ideal his Master of Juniors, Fr Charles O'Conor Don, whose motto, ‘faithful always and everywhere’, Arthur took as his own. He was noticeable for his observance of rules, regularity at prayer, simple faith, thoroughness in his work – even polishing the floor of his room. He was outstanding for his charity especially towards those in trouble or unwell. These traits remained with him all his life. One who lived with Arthur said that he had a characteristic blend of the ridiculous with a stern sense of duty.

When he finished tertianship, Arthur became socius to the Master of Novices for about two years and then became Minister at Clongowes Wood College for two years. The job of Minister seemed to have followed him in all the houses he was posted to.

1958 saw him in Zambia, in Chivuna where he studied ciTonga and acted as Minister. He was transferred to Chikuni, again as Minister, but after two years became Rector there, In the role of rector, as in the rest of his life, Arthur never once showed the slightest trace of malice, vindictiveness or favouritism. During his six years as rector, he was blessed with such outstanding heads of Canisius as Dick Cremins and Michael J Kelly. Arthur's vision for Canisius as a leading secondary school was influenced by his experience of Clongowes Wood College in Ireland. First, he wanted a proper house for the community. Though the actual building was the responsibility of Fr McCarron and Br Pat McElduff, the siting and design of the spacious community house are largely Arthur’s. Then came the expansion of Canisius with better quality classrooms and dormitories, a fitting dining room and kitchen. Arthur was deeply involved too in the design of the college chapel.

From 1967 to 1973 he was at Namwala Government Secondary School as teacher and later as Deputy Head. Arthur revelled in giving himself to the demands made on him: teaching, conscientious correction of assignments, availability to students, and counsellor to his fellow teachers. Becoming Deputy gave him the extra load of maintaining discipline and setting high standards of behaviour and work among the students. This seems to have been one of the happiest times of Arthur's life in Zambia and every indication was that he had excellent relations with the staff and pupils, due no doubt to his inherent kindness and generosity. He actually wore himself out and was then transferred to the smaller Mukasa minor seminary in Choma in 1974.

However, in 1974, he went on long leave to Ireland where he was exposed to new styles of living the religious life and nuanced modifications of traditional ways of expressing Catholic doctrine. Arthur became confused and deeply upset, as his simple faith had always delighted in accepting the traditional textbook expression of the Catholic faith which he had learnt in theology. So he held on grimly to his convictions for the rest of his life, as he continued to think and preach in scholastic categories. He found Mukasa too small for him after the vastness of Namwala and was moved after two years. His eight years (1976–1984) at Charles Lwanga T.T.C. gave him fresh scope for his zeal and energies. He enjoyed being in a large community house which he kept spotlessly clean during his years as Minister. His lecturers were meticulously prepared and all assignments corrected. He was tireless in supervising teaching practice. He worked hard to build up the morale of a small group of Catholic pupils at Rusangu Secondary School.

In the end he wore himself out again and was transferred to St Ignatius in Lusaka as assistant in the parish (1984-1990). He was especially devoted to hearing confessions and generous in answering calls on his time. When Fr Max Prokoph began to fail, Arthur was as assiduous as ever in helping him. Ascetical in his own life, stern towards those for whom he felt responsibility, Arthur was surprisingly indulgent towards the various strays and ‘inadequates’ who quickly detected in him and easy touch and flocked around St Ignatius.

He was moved to the infirmary at John Chula House as his mind began to fail even though his body was strong and healthy. It was painful to see him slowly losing touch with the outside world as Alzheimer’s took its inevitable toll. At the end, Arthur died quite suddenly. It was discovered that he had widespread cancer of which he never complained. He was never one to vacillate or waffle and when the time came he took his leave of life as he had lived it, with dispatch and no nonsense.

Note from Bernard (Barney) Collins Entry
Barney moved to Namwala parish from 1968 to 1973 with Fr Clarke as his companion in the community to be joined later by Fr Eddie O’Connor (and his horse). From 1973 to 1977 he was parish priest at Chilalantambo and returned to Chikuni in 1977 to be assistant in the parish to Fr Jim Carroll.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 82 : September 1995

Obituary

Fr Arthur Clarke (1916-1995)

Arthur Clarke was born on April 11th 1916 in Dublin and went to school in Clongowes, After he left school he entered the Bank of Ireland, but was not fully satisfied. A close friend told me that both he and Arthur considered going to Kenya under a British Government scheme to grow coffee. On a solitary walking holiday in the South of Ireland Arthur stayed in a Trappist monastery and decided that this was what he wanted. A short stay with the monks led to their advising Arthur that “he was too introspective” for their way of life and directed him to the Society of Jesus. There he stayed until he died in the retirement home in Lusaka Zambia on 8th March 1995.

He entered the novitiate in Emo on November 5th 1938 and followed the usual course of formation, doing his regency in the Crescent College Limerick. After Tertianship he was Socius to the Novice Master and then Minister in Clongowes, where he learnt of his appointment to Northern Rhodesia in the normal way, by someone telling him casually on the way into the refectory.

Five of us travelled out by Union Castle to Cape Town. At the Rhodesian border in Bulawayo, Arthur, always a man of integrity, insisted on paying duty on all his new clothes, despite the efforts of the Customs to assure him that as all our goods and chattels were going to Chikuni Mission there was nothing to pay.

This illustrates Arthur's characteristic blend of a keen sense of the ridiculous with a stern sense of duty. When these two clashed, Arthur would resolutely do what he considered was his duty, while muttering the while that it was all a lot of nonsense, but we had to do it. This he applied to his stints as Minister in our communities. He made no secret of his dislike of the job, but laboured might and main to keep the house spotless, and turn out magnificent meals on big occasions, even though he was not at ease in celebrations. From time to time Arthur would recount hilarious incidents of his formation years, normally involving the deflation of some pomposity or affectation. The following morning there would be an attack of conscience resulting in a stern admonition to us scholastics to show more respect in speaking of the very people Arthur had been taking off the previous evening.

Arthur had a difficult time adapting to life in Africa at first, though not through lack of trying. He was of that generation which had done no studies outside Ireland and this must have been his first experience of another culture. He took a long time to shake free of the conventions of the Irish Province, many of which were ill suited to life in the bush.

Arthur became Rector of Chikuni where he ruled with an utterly unbiased if somewhat stern hand. Sean McCarron, in Zambia to build the Teacher Training College, would point out that even he had been taken to task by Arthur for some misdemeanour, leaving us mystified as to why he should consider himself immune to Arthur's sense of what was appropriate behaviour. In the role of Rector, as in the rest of his life, Arthur never once showed the slightest trace of malice, vindictiveness or favouritism.

After his stint as Rector, Arthur went to teach in Namwala Government Secondary School. The Zambian Principal, no doubt in recognition of Arthur's commitment to order and discipline, appointed him Vice-Principal and then allowed him to get on with running the entire school, while he pursued a more leisurely way of life. This seems to have been one of the happiest times of Arthur's life in Zambia and every indication was that he had excellent relations with the staff and pupils, due no doubt to his inherent kindness and generosity.

While stationed at St. Ignatius parish in Lusaka Arthur showed his compassionate side in his care for Fr. Max Prokoph who was deteriorating in health and required constant care around the house, which Arthur showed him to a remarkable degree of patience. Fr. Dominic Nchete, a Zambian priest, said that if for nothing else, this would assure Arthur's going straight to heaven. Ascetical in his own life, stern towards those for whom he felt responsibility, Arthur was surprisingly indulgent to the various strays and inadequates who quickly detected in him an easy touch and flocked around St. Ignatius.

For someone who led such an organised and full life, it was painful to see him slowly losing touch with the outside world as Alzheimer's took its inevitable toll. Increasingly it was clear that he did not recognise those who had lived with him over the years. At the very end Arthur died quite suddenly. He was never one to vacillate or waffle, and when the time came he took his leave of this life as he had lived it, with despatch and no nonsense.

Frank Keenan

◆ The Clongownian, 1995

Obituary
Father Arthur Clarke SJ

After leaving school in 1933, Arthur worked for about five years in an Irish bank. Later he enjoyed recalling his days as an oarsman in a crew of eight, racing on the River Liffey in Dublin.

After his noviceship at Emo Park, he spent four years at Rathfarnham Castle and took a degree in English and other languages. Arthur's model and ideal was his Master of Juniors, Fr Charles O'Conor Don, whose motto, “faithful always and everywhere”, Arthur took as his own.

He enjoyed three quiet years (1944-47) studying Philosophy at Tullabeg, in the heart of rural Ireland. His prowess as an oarsman made him in demand for working the heavy boats on the nearby canal, which was popular on the weekly villa day. His physical strength qualified him for rowing as far as Shannon harbour, 30 kilometres away and back, a feat reserved for the strong.

He was noticeable for his observance of rule, regularity at prayer, simple faith, thoroughness in his work - even in polishing the floor of his room. He was outstanding for his charity, especially towards those in trouble or unwell. These traits remained with him all his life.

After a year's teaching as a regent at Crescent College, Limerick (1947-48), Arthur studied theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1951.

After Tertiariship at Rathfarnham Castle (1952-53), he became Socius to the Master of Novices, Fr Donal O'Sullivan, again at Emo Park. Fr O'Sullivan spoke most highly of his abilities. He then spent two years as Minister at Clongowes (1955-57), before coming to Zambia in 1957

Arthur lived for a year or more at Civuna where he studied Chitonga and worked as Minister. In 1959 he was transferred to Chikuni as Minister, where he soon felt the need to build up Canisius Secondary School, now that Charles Lwanga Teacher Training College had given an example of a higher standard of building. He was appointed Rector of Chikuni in July 1960. During his six years as Rector, he was blessed with such outstanding Heads of Canisius as Dick Cremins and Michael J Kelly.

Arthur's vision for Canisius as a leading secondary school was influenced by his experience of Clongowes. First, he wanted a proper house for the community. Though the actual building was the responsibility of Fr McCarron and Br Pat McElduff, the siting and design of the spacious community house are largely Arthur's. Then came the expansion of Canisius, with better quality classrooms and dormitories, a fitting diningroom and kitchen etc. Arthur was deeply involved too in the design of the College Chapel.

1967 saw him back in Civuna for a year or two, until he was appointed to teaching in the newly opened rapidly expanding Namwala Secondary School, where he lived in one of the staff houses. Arthur revelled in giving himself to the demands made on him - class teaching, conscientious correction of assignments, availability to students, coun sellor to his fellow teachers. When he was appointed Deputy Head of Namwala, he took on the extra load of maintaining discipline in this co-educational school and of set ting high standards of behaviour and work among the students. This involved working late into the night, so that frequently he was unable to get more than four or five hours sleep. It became too much for him, so that he became utterly worn out, and so was transferred to the smaller Mukasa in 1974.

The isolation of Namwala and his commitment to his work there largely protected Arthur from the aggiornamento of Vatican II which was then filtering into Zambia. However, in 1974, he went on long leave to Ireland where he was exposed to new styles of living religious life, and nuanced modifications of traditional ways of expressing Catholic doctrine. Arthur became confused and deeply upset, as his simple faith had ever delighted in accepting the traditional textbook expression of the Catholic Faith which he had learnt in theology. So he held on grimly to his convictions for the rest of his life, as he continued to think and preach in scholastic categories.

On his return to Zambia, he spent about two years at Mukasa as Minister and teacher. He found the place too small for him, after the vastness of Namwala.

His eight years as lecturer (1976-84) at Charles Lwanga TTC gave him fresh scope for his zeal and energies. He enjoyed being in a large community house, which he kept spotlessly clean during his years as Minister. His lectures were meticulously prepared and all assignments corrected. He was tireless in supervising teaching practice. He also worked hard to build up the morale of the small group of Catholic students at Rusangu Secondary School.

In the end, he again wore himself out, and so was transferred to St Ignatius as assistant in the parish (1984-90). He was especially devoted to hearing confessions and generous in answering calls on his time. When Fr Max Prokoph began to fail, Arthur was as assiduous as ever in helping him. .

Though Arthur's body was strong and healthy, his mind began to fail. So in 1990, he was posted to Cherryfield Lodge in Dublin, where he could receive extensive health care. He was deeply unhappy there, and begged to be allowed to return to Zambia, nominally as guest master at Chikuni. Soon he found himself in the newly opened John Chula House. Even there he found scope for his charity in helping Eddy O'Connor.

Given his strong constitution, Arthur found his enforced inactivity hard. Early in 1995, his increasing physical pain, of which he never complained, led to the discovery of widespread cancer. The Lord was calling his faithful servant to himself, through a final sharing of His Cross and he died on 8 March 1995. May he rest in peace.

John Counihan SJ

Born: 04 July 1802, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1823, Montrouge, Paris, France - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 24 September 1836, Stonyhurst College, England
Final Vows: 02 February 1844
Died: 11 January 1862, St Ignatius College, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Older brother of Malachy Ent 18/09/1825; Cousin of Thomas RIP 1870 (ANG)

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

1825-1829 Master at Hodder School until 08 December 1829
1837-1839 Missioner at Norwich, Preston and Pontefract
1840 Tertianship
1845-1860 Master of Novices at Hodder 28 August 1845-September 1860 Succeeded by Alfred Weld
1860 A Preacher at Immaculate Conception London and died at St Ignatius College, London in the presence of the Provincial Father Seed, and the community. His death was edifying, and his last act at the moment of death was to beg a Father standing by to assist him in raising his arm to make the sign of the Cross, being unable to move it himself (Province Register)

Note on Novitiate at Hodder :
By his exertions, the Novitiate was moved from Hodder Place, Stonyhurst to Beaumont Lodge, a noble mansion in the Parish of Old Windsor, purchased in August 1854, and given to the Province by Father Joseph Maxwell. The house was taken possession of by Fathers Clarke and Maxwell, and the compiler of the Collectanea on 04 September 1854.
The Novitiate at Hodder had begun in 1803 at the time of the Restoration of the Society, was closed for a time in 1821 and reopened again in September 1827, moving in 1854 to Beaumont. It moved again in 1861 from Old Windsor to Roehampton, with Fr Weld as Novice Master, and Beaumont becoming St Stanislaus College.

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Note from Edmund Donovan Entry :
Father Donovan entered the Society of Jesus on 07 September 1858 and made his Noviceship at Roehampton, under that distinguished Spiritual Director Father Tracey Clarke SJ.

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

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

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

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

Born: 13 September 1922, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 06 September 1941, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1955, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 03 February 1958, Loyola, Eglinton Road, Dublin
Died: 21 September 2009, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1974 at Oxford, England (ANG) working
by 1986 at Reading, England (BRI) working
by 1989 at North Hinksey, Oxfordshire (BRI) working

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 142 : Winter 2009

Obituary

Fr John Clear (1922-2009)

13th September 1922: Born in Dublin
Early education Stanhope St. Convent and CBS Richmond St.
6th September 1941: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1943: First Vows at Emo
1943 - 1946: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1946 - 1949: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1949 - 1951: Crescent College - Teacher
1951 - 1952: Clongowes - Prefect
1952 - 1956: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
28th July 1955: Ordained at Milltown Park
1956 - 1957: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1957 - 1958: Loyola House - Minister
3rd February 1958: Final Vows at Loyola House
1958 - 1961: Gardiner Street - Church work; Sodality
1961 - 1968: Emo - Mission staff
1968 - 1969: Rathfarnham - Mission staff
1969 - 1971: Tullabeg - Mission staff
1971 - 1973: Rathfarnham - Mission and Retreat staff
1973 - 1978: Holyrood Church, Oxford, England - Parish work
1978 - 1985: Rathfarnham -
1978 - 1981: Mission and Retreat staff
1981 - 1983: Mission and Retreat staff; Asst. Director Pioneers
1983 - 1985: Asst. Director Retreat House; Asst. Director Pion.
1985 - 1986: Reading - Parish Ministry; Asst. Editor Messenger
1986 - 1990: Oxford -
1986 - 1988: Parish Ministry
1988 - 1990: Parish Priest
1990 - 1991: St. Ignatius, Galway - Parish Curate; Spiritual Director, Our Lady's Boys' Club
1991 - 1998: Dooradoyle -
1991 - 1996: Subminister; Asst. Treasurer; Asst. for John Paul II Oratory; Asst. in Sacred Heart Church
1996 - 1997: Minister; Care of John Paul II Oratory; Assistant in Sacred Heart Church; Health Prefect; Librarian
1997 - 1998: Treasurer; Care of John Paul II Oratory; Assistant in Sacred Heart Church; Health Prefect; Librarian; Asst. Minister
1998 - 2002: John Austin House - Pastoral work; Vice Superior; Assistant Hospital Chaplain
2002 - 2009: Gardiner Street - Assisted in the Church
4th August 2009: Fr. Clear was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge Nursing Home on from the Mater Hospital following a short illness. His condition deteriorated very quickly.
21st September 2009: Died peacefully in Cherryfield Lodge

Brian Lennon writes:
John died early on Monday 21st September 2009 at the age of 87. His health had gradually declined over the past few years. He was beginning to lose his memory, Over the summer he had a few bouts of confusion and pain. He spent some time in hospital in the Mater and Vincent's in Dublin. Eventually inoperable cancer was diagnosed and he arrived in Cherryfield on 4 August, where, like so many, he got great care.

He was born in Dublin on 13th September 1922 and educated by the Christian Brothers at O'Connell's School, North Richmond Street, Dublin. He went to Emo in 1941, so was a Jesuit for 68 years. He went through the normal course of studies and then spent 21 years working in parishes and 19 on the Mission staff. Hearing confessions was very important to him, especially in the years he spent in Gardiner St. since 2002 right up to the year of his death. It was a natural apostolate for him because he had great kindness. He told me once that in his parish work he always involved lay people, and - extraordinarily - he never had a row with any of them.

At different times he was based in Emo, Rathfarnham, Tullabeg, Oxford, Reading, Galway, Limerick, Loyola and John Austin House, as well as Gardiner St, from 1958 to 1961 and then again since 2002.

He wrote a lot: pamphlets on “Mary My Mother”, “Elizabeth of Hungary: Princess, Mother and Saint”, the “Japanese martyrs”, and “Lily of the Mohawks - Kateri Tekawitha”, the first North American saint. He also wrote many articles for the Pioneer and other journals.

My memory of him is of someone with a great sense of humour. I sometimes teased him about not attending events like Province Days and also polluting his room and the whole corridor with his infernal pipe smoke, to all of which he would respond with a deeply satisfied belly laugh. He had no airs or graces and he had a natural way of relating to people. He had a very simple view of life with a great devotion to Our Lady. He was deeply grateful for even the smallest things one did for him.

When his remains were brought to Gardiner Street there were several Sisters of Charity present. Two of them knew at least seven other sisters who traced their vocation to meeting John. One of them said: 'He showed me my way to God', a pretty good obituary for anyone. There must have been a lot of others in those 21 years in parishes and 19 years on the Missions who would say the same thing, but these are the stories that we other Jesuits may be the last to hear about.

He took an interest in what was happening around him. He was a great reader. One of the topics that fascinated him in recent years was research on DNA pools, showing where we have all come from, and that all of us all over the world are much more closely related to each other than many might like. He would always check out new publications by Jesuits.

He had a great friendship with some families, and loved to go back to Oxford to visit them. One of them told the story of John giving out to a young three year old, Daniel, by telling him that he was “too bold”, to which the young man responded that he was not “two bold”, but “three bold”.

He was a great swimmer in his young days. His brothers say that they coped with his leaving home for Emo with a certain amount of delight because they had more room in the house, and they suggested also that John, the eldest, was a bit correct and rule bound at that stage. They danced on his bed when he left, something they would not have had the nerve to do while he was still there. By the time he had grown old gracefully he had certainly lost any stiffness.

He died on the feast of St Matthew. The tax collectors were bad apples: not only did they rob people with little money, they also collaborated with the foreign occupiers who polluted the holy places. The fact that Jesus had fellowship with them by eating and drinking with them was deeply scandalous to the Jews, and understandably so. The meal in Matthew's house may have taken place after Matthew's conversion, but others there were surely not converted. But that did not stop Jesus eating with them. Calling Matthew to follow him was worse.

It's a feast that is appropriate for John's own day of entry into eternal life. He too reached out to people in trouble, and the cause of the trouble was never a block for him. He has now gone to join Matthew and the other tax collectors, and many of those with whom he walked during his ministry. He will also join the Pharisees, whom he knew are in each one of us. May he rest in peace.

Born: 1580, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 16 February 1605, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: c 1609, Rome, Italy
Died: 19 July 1649, Waterford Residence, Waterford City, County Waterford

Alias Clare

Had studied Philosophy and Theology at Irish College Douai before entry
Was the oldest of the Professed Fathers in 1648
Was stationed for a while at the Dublin Residence (his name appears on a book at Carlow College of that residence)
1617 was in Ireland - mentioned in the 1621 and 1622 Catalogue : talented with good judgement, prudence and experience. A pleasing character who might be formed to be a Superior
1649 Superior in Waterford

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was a Preacher; The oldest of the Professed Fathers in 1648; Superior at Waterford in 1649; A man of talent

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Studied Rhetoric at Irish College Lisbon before, then Philosophy at Douai before Ent 1605 Rome
After First Vows completed his studies probably in Rome, and was ordained by the time he returned to Portugal 1609
1609 Returns to Portugal
1611-1616 Sent by the General to Irish College Lisbon as Prefect of Studies to replace Robert Bathe. In his letter to the Portuguese Provincial he said “I have seen such reports of Fr Cleere’s prudence, mature judgement and learning, that I trust the Irish College will not suffer by the change of Fr Bathe”
1613 Sent to Ireland and to Waterford Residence and worked there, Cork and the rest of Munster
1642-1649 Appointed Superior at Waterford Residence (1642-1647) and was Acting Superior of the Mission awaiting the new Mission Superior (1647-1648). In 1649 he was again appointed Superior of the Waterford Residence and died in Office19 July 1649

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Edmund Cleere (Clare) 1580-1649
Fr Edmund Cleere was a Waterford man.

Fr Holywood, writing on June 30th 1604 says : “I left behind me in Paris studying theology Mr Edmund Cleere”

As a priest Fr Cleere worked in Waterford and was Superior of our House there for many years. In 1648, Bishop Comerford of Waterford presented a memorial to the Nuncio beggin a revocation of the censures. Among the signatories was Edmund Cleere together with John Gough, William McGrath and Andrew Sall, all of the Society.

When the Visitor Fr Verdier visited Waterford, he found Fr Cleere almost superannuated. He died shortly afterwards in Waterford on July 19th 1649.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CLARE, EDWARD, of Waterford. The first time that he comes across me is in a letter of F. Holywood, dated the 30th of June, 1604, in which he says, “I left behind at Paris studying Theology, Mr. Edward Clare”. For many years he was Superior of his Brethren at Waterford; and when F. Verdier visited him, he found him almost superannuated. I learn from F. William Malone’s letter, dated Galway, the 2nd of August, 1649, that F. Clare, the most ancient of the Professed in the Mission, died at Waterford on the preceding 19th of July, “dierum et meritorum plenus”.
N.B. Anthony Wood and his copyists, Harris and Dodd, evidently confound this Father with his contemporary, F. John Clare. Had they turned to the conclusion of F. John Clare’s admirable work, The Converted Jew, they would find that he expressly calls himself an English Pryest.

Born: 30 April 1668, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 11 April 1696, Lyons, France - Lugdunensis Province (LUGD)
Ordained: 1703/04, Avignon, France
Final Vows: 15 August 1713
Died: 06 August 1757, County Kildare

Alias Wilis

Studied 3 years Philosophy and 4 years Theology in Society
Taught Grammar for 4 years
“Pious and gentle, though bred to arms. Loves obedience and poverty and favourite of everyone. Hard worker”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
A former Captain in Sir Maurice Eustance’s Foot (cf D’Alton’s King James Amy List - Is very pious, and though a Captain, (Dux), and in warfare from his youth, is very gentle. He works hard, and does not much fear dangers. )
1708 Came to Ireland (HIB Catalogues)
In 1752 he is said to have been thirty years in Kildare, in the house of some gentleman (nobilis) to the great edification of all the household and neighbours ( cf Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He had a military career before Ent 12 April 1696 at Lyons
After First Vows he studied at Lyons and Avignon and was Ordained at Avignon 1704
When he had finished studies and formation he engaged in Missionary work in France.
1708/09 Sent to Ireland and was to the Dublin Residence. He worked mostly in Kill, Co Kildare where he lived at the house of a nobleman, teaching, Catechising and Preaching in the local area.
He was a consultor of the Mission and was himself often proposed for the post of Mission Superior or as Rector of Irish College Poitiers, but always pleaded poor health in excuse for declining the office. He lived, however, to an advanced age
He died 6 August, 1757 in Kildare (though the sources also mention Dublin as the place of his death)

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father James Church (Clinch) 1664-1757
Fr James Church or Clinch was born according to some in Limerick, to others in Meath, in 1664. He became a Jesuit in 1695, returning to Ireland in 1703. He was solemly professed in 1713.

The last thirty years of his life he spent as a Domestic Chaplain to a family in County Kildare. He died on August 6th 1757, aged 93 years, of which 61 were spent in the Society.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CLINCH, JAMES. This Patriarch of his Brethren was born in Leinster, and embraced the rule of St. Ignatius at Lyons, on the 12th of April, 1696. He came to the Irish Mission in 1708, and made his solemn Vows, on the 15th of August, 1713. The last thirty years of his life he spent as domestic Chaplain to a family in Co. Kildare. His death took place on the 6th of August, 1757, aet. 92. Soc. 61.

Born: 21 August 1707, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 15 March 1726, Novellara, Italy - Venetae Province (VEM)
Ordained: 1741, Rome, Italy
Final Vows: 15 August 1743
Died: 15 December 1772, Dublin Residence, Dublin City, County Dublin

Left Irish College Rome for Novellara with Captain Harvey of the Irish Guard at Ravenna - then Entered Venetian Province 15 March 1726

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1931 Taught Logic at Parma (in pen)
1741 Sent to Ireland
1752-1755 Assisting a PP in Dublin
1772 Director or Confessor of the Poor Clares in Dublin

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Educated at the Jesuit school in Dublin and Dr John Harold’s Academy before Ent 15 March 1726 Novarella
After First Vows he spent a short Regency at Carpi and then studied Philosophy at Piacenza. He was then sent back to Regency, also at Piacenza. He studied Theology at the Roman College and was Ordained in 1741.
1743/44 Tertianship (VEM)
1744 Sent to Ireland and to the Dublin Residence. He worked in the chapel of Dirty Lane (ancestor of St. Catherine's Parish Church, Meath Street) and was also Spiritual Director to the Poor Clares.
He died in Dublin Residence 15 December 1772

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
COLGAN, PATRICK, was born in Dublin, on the 16th of March, 1706, and joined the Society in the Venetian Province, on the 11th of January, 1725. He came on the Irish Mission in 1741, and was Professed on the 2nd of February, 1752, at Dublin, where he was assisting a Parish Priest. I meet with him three years later, after which he escapes my observation.

Born: 04 July 1920, Clonskeagh, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1939, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1956, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 02 February 1996, Mater Hospital, Dublin

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

Youngest brother of John (RIP 1997) and Ted RIP (2003)

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 86 : July 1996
Obituary
Fr Desmond (Des) Collins (1920-1996)

4th July 1920: Born in Dublin
7th Sept. 1939: Entered the Society at Emo
8th Sept. 1941: First Vows
1941 - 1944: Rathfarnham Castle, BA at UCD
1944 - 1947: Tullabeg, Philosophy Limerick,
1947 - 1949: Crescent College, Regency
1949 - 1950: Belvedere College, Regency
1950 - 1954; Milltown Park, Theology
31st July 1953: Ordination at Milltown Park
1954 - 1955: Rathfarnham Castle, Tertianship
1955 - 1959; Clongowes Wood College, Teacher and Study Prefect
2nd Feb. 1956: Final Vows
1959 - 1973: Belvedere College, Teacher
1973 - 1976: Rathfarnham Castle, Minister
1976 - 1996; St. Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street
1976 - 1980: Assistant Prefect of the Church
1980 - 1981: Minister, Church Ministry
1981 - 1990: Chaplain to St Monica's, Director Jesuit Seminary Association (TSA), Church Ministry
1990 - 1994: Assistant Chaplain to St. Vincent's Private Hospital, Director JSA, Church Ministry
1994 - 96: Director JSA, Church Ministry, Assistant to Cherryfield Lodge.
Fr. Collins continued his Chaplaincy work at St. Vincent's Private Hospital until very recently, although in failing health. At the end of January, he got a severe pain and was operated on the same day for a ruptured aneurism. He suffered a heart attack during the operation, followed by renal failure. He never came off the life-support.
2nd Feb. 1996: Died at the Mater Hospital.

“I believe in the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting”.

This belief in the communion of saints is the reason for us all being here today for the funeral Mass of Fr. Des Collins who died last Friday. We are here either because we are his relatives or his companions as Jesuits or parishoners and friends who experienced his love and affection. The communion of saints is a bond which is not broken even by death.

In this funeral Mass we come together to ask God to have mercy on Des and to forgive him any sins which he may have committed in this life and to beg God to admit Des into the company of His saints in heaven.

Our Mass is also our Eucharist. We come together to thank the Lord for all the gifts he has given to this companion of Jesus and for all the good done by the Lord through Des during his life on this earth.

Des gave himself to the Society of Jesus when he was 19. After 14 years in formation, he was ordained a priest of the Society in 1953 and lived the priestly life to the full for 43 years - until he died last Friday, on the feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple. Des could say as Simeon said so long ago: “At last, all powerful Master, you give leave to your servant to go in peace, according to your promise”.

I have lived as a priest in Hong Kong for the past 46 years and so many of you had more contact with Des over the years here in Ireland. For the first 18 years of his priestly life he was teaching, first in Clongowes and then for about 14 years in Belvedere. For this period of his life I had little contact with him, as we did not come home so often from the missions. What I remember about him at that time was that he was a dedicated tennis coach in Belvedere, as well as being a dedicated teacher. But for the rest of his priestly life he was involved in more direct pastoral work and for over twenty years lived in this community of St. Francis Xavier's Gardiner Street, assisting in the Church but involved in many other pastoral activities as well.

To find out what people thought of Des, I asked several persons here with whom he lived or who knew him well. Many said he was a quiet, unassuming person. A person of great faith, he had a great love of persons. He had a good whimsical sense of humour. He was a very dedicated person both to his work and to his friends, many of whom were poor or sick. One colleague said to me at breakfast this morning “I wonder what will he say to Martin Luther when he sees him in heaven”, I myself thought afterwards, “And what will Paul the 6th say to him when Des meets him in heaven?” I met Des on the stairs one night at about 12.30, just after he had let a man out of the house. When I asked Des how come, he told me that this person had AIDS and that he was trying to find a place for him to live. Des had his limitations, as all of us have. But he was a kind, dedicated person who stood up for two fundamental values which he considered paramount: in the wider society he was pro-life and in his life in the Society he was pro-Pope. He concentrated so much on these two issues that I myself for a long time thought he over-emphasised them: the dignity of the human person, big or small and loyalty to the Pope as the mark of a Jesuit. But now he knows the truth and I wonder if he will feel vindicated. These two human and Christian values have many ramifications which we are now only beginning to realize.

Christ was a man for others and Des was a follower of his in this respect. When I was asked to say something about Des, a saying from Vatican II came to mind: “God has willed to make persons holy and save them, not as individuals but as members of a people” or of a family. I said that Des was involved in many other pastoral activities besides St. Francis Xavier's Church. For over twenty years he lived here and served in different capacities and was well loved by people in the parish. He was interested in the history of Gardiner Street Church and on the occasion of its 150th anniversary wrote a pamphlet on its history. What, then, were these other pastoral activities? I will mention only two here because I feel those were ones in which he had a special involvement. The first was being assistant chaplain to St. Vincent's Private Hospital. He was chaplain there for only five years but was sad and a bit indignant when his religious Superiors withdrew him for reasons of health. “I consulted several doctors”, he said to me, “and they told me my heart was alright”. But events showed that his superiors were right. The people in St. Vincents, whether patients or staff, had a deep affection for him.

The second pastoral activity was his summer holiday in California. Every year for more than twenty years he took a month or six weeks holiday in Susanville, north California, taking the place of the Irish pastor there who took his holidays in Ireland. Des would protest when we asked him: When are you going on holidays this year? I'm not going on holidays, he would say, I'm going to work in a parish. The parishioners there loved him and I found many letters to him in his room. Des could never take a holiday just for the sake of a holiday. When in Susanville he liked to golf on his free day. But this was an occasion for a group of Irish pastors in the diocese of Sacramento to meet him on the golf course, some travelling quite a distance. I believe he was to many of them an “anam chara” to whom they could bring their troubles, even on the golf course. They will miss him. So too his relatives, many of whom are here today.

One last remark. Since coming back, I have been living in Des's room and only here have I realized how much he himself has suffered from ill-health. I think it was a secret he kept to himself for he never complained until the pain was acute and he had to go to hospital. I chose the reading from St. Matthew's gospel today because I thought it appropriate to Des. Des had a love for persons, especially the sick and the marginalized. It was an Ignatian type of love, shown more by deeds than by words, for Des was not a demonstrative type of person. I can hear Christ saying to him: “Come you blessed of my Father and enter the kingdom, prepared for you since the coming of the world. As often as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me!” May we too hear these words from Christ's lips when we too come to the end of our journey in this life!

Ted Collins SJ, Tuesday, 6th Feb 1996 Feast of SS Paul Miki and Companions.

◆ The Clongownian, 1996
Obituary

Father Desmond Collins SJ

Those who were in Clongowes in the late 1950's may remember Fr Des Collins, who was teacher and study prefect here from 1955-59. A Dubliner, he spent the bulk of his working life as a Jesuit in the centre of the city - seventeen years in Belvedere College and the last twenty years of his life in Gardiner St. He died on the 40th anniversary of his Final Vows, 2 February 1996, aged 75. May he rest in peace.

Born: 14 December 1875, Killomoran, Gort, County Galway
Entered: 07 September 1893, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 26 July 1910, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1913, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 07 March 1951, St Ignatius, Lower Leeson St, Dublin

by 1896 at Roehampton London (ANG) studying
by 1898 at Enghien Belgium (CAMP) studying
by 1900 in Vals France (LUGD) studying
by 1912 at Linz Austria (ASR) making Tertianship

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online
Connolly, Patrick J.
by C. J. Woods

Connolly, Patrick J. (1875–1951), Jesuit priest and journal editor, was born 23 November 1875 at Killomoran, near Gort, Co. Galway, a son of Patrick Connolly, an illiterate farmer, and his wife, Mary (née Connors). He was educated at Mungret College, Limerick. After entering the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Tullabeg in 1893, he studied in England, at Roehampton, and France, at Vals. He then taught at Mungret, Belvedere and Clongowes, and was ordained priest in 1910.

From July 1914 until September 1950 he was editor of the new Irish Jesuit quarterly, Studies, which he made the most important catholic periodical read by Irish intellectuals. It contained articles on social issues, philosophy, history, economics (all pertaining directly or indirectly to Ireland), and on the state of continental Europe. An example from 1933 is a perceptive assessment of Hitler by D. A. Binchy (qv). Connolly's only original contribution was a two-part article, ‘Karl Lueger’, on the militantly catholic mayor of Vienna (Studies, iii, 1914, 280–91, iv, 1915, 226–49). Having spent a year in Austria after ordination, he greatly admired Lueger, a man of humble origins supported by the petty bourgeoisie and industrial workers, as a daring social reformer and as an opponent of ‘the Liberals and the Jews’. From 1924 until 1949 Connolly was spiritual director of St Joseph's Young Priests Society. On 7 December 1939 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the NUI. Attached, for almost all his career, to the Jesuit house at 35 Lower Leeson St., Dublin, he died 7 March 1951 in Dublin.

GRO; Ir. Times, 8 Dec. 1939, 8 Mar. 1951; Irish Independent, 8 Mar. 1951; Irish Provincial News, vii, no. 3 (July 1951), 76–9; Michael Tierney, ‘Looking back’, Studies, xxxix (1950), 369–72; Michael Tierney, ‘Studies, 1912–1962’, Studies, li (1962), 1–8 (with portrait); J. A. Gaughan, Olivia Mary Taaffe, 1832–1918, foundress of St Joseph's Young Priests Society (1995) (with portrait)

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 26th Year No 3 1951

Obituary :

Father PJ Connolly

Father Patrick Connolly died on Wednesday morning, March 7th, just four weeks after an operation which had seemed to promise complete recovery. His sudden death came as a shock to many of his friends who had been expecting to see him back again in his familiar haunts. To the members of his own community it was the breaking of a very much cherished link with the past. For Father Connolly had come to Leeson Street in the summer of 1914, and had been Editor of Studies for the long and unbroken period of thirty-six years. Though his name no longer appeared as Editor in the status of 1950, he was asked to see the September issue through the press since he had in fact planned it. That was the last issue which came out under his supervişion. In December the new Editor very suitably produced an issue which opened with a most generous and sympathetic notice of Father Connolly's achievement from Dr. Michael Tierney, now President of University College, Dublin and for many years his most faithful and valued contributor. The issue for March had not yet appeared when the final call came. Fittingly enough, life ended within a few months of the end of an unusually long and fruitful editorship.
Father Connolly was a Galwayman, a native of Gort. On the day that he died Sir Joseph Glynn, another native of Gort, died after a long illness in Dublin. The two men, priest and layman, had been associated for many years in the work of Saint Joseph's Young Priests' Society, and their common interest in their native county may well have held them together in this good work for the education of young boys who wished to study for the priesthood. But Father Connolly had another motive for his life-long interest in this work. He himself had been educated in Mungret College, in the great days of Father Vincent Byrne's rectorship, and he never lost an opportunity of helping his Alma Mater when there was question of finding a suitable school for the education of some young aspirant to the priesthood. In later years it was a standing joke in the community to reproach him with having been the Rector's favourite boy during his years at school. He left Mungret in the summer of 1893, and entered the novitiate at Tullabeg in the following September. As a Junior he was sent for two years to the English Juniorate at Manresa, Roehampton, even then it was thought probable that his work would lie in literary activity. From Manresa he went to Vals as a philosopher, then to Mungret, Belvedere and Clongowes for the years of his regency. He was in Milltown Park from 1907 to 1911, being ordained in the summer of 1910. After a year in a Tertian in Austria, he came back to Clongowes as Master of English as 1912.
The Fathers of the Leeson Street community had begun to publish Studies in the Spring of 1912, with Father Corcoran as Editor. It was a false start - so false that it came near to being fatal. At the visitation of 1914 the abandonment of the whole enterprise was seriously considered, and one of the debts which the Irish Province owes to Father T. V. Nolan is that he decided to continue publication, bringing Father Connolly from Clongowes to Dublin for that purpose. Hitherto the Leeson Street community had been responsible for the finances of the new Quarterly. Henceforward the Province made itself responsible for any possible loss. But the appointment of the new Editor soon turned loss into gain.
The first ten or twelve years were the most successful of Father Connolly's long tenure of office as Editor of Studies. They were the years when the first World War was opening new horizons in social and international questions abroad. At home Sinn Fein was sweeping the country, and the Anglo-Irish literary movement of the first two decades of the century was giving place to a more actively political and national campaign. It was an opportunity for any Editor with vision, and Father Connolly's fellow-workers were never slow to remind him that vision was his special gift. Beyond all doubt the quarterly issues of Studies from 1914 to the early 'thirties were a fine achievement, of which lay Editor might be proud. Hardly a name that was known in .the country as writer or thinker is missing from the title-pages of those years. The Civil War took the heart out of the national movement from 1922 onwards, but there was still enough mental energy in the country to make men eager to plan, and put their thoughts on paper. Eoin MacNeill and his pupils had set men studying the history of Ireland from a new angle, and Father Connolly was always willing to print any article that could fairly be described as a serious contribution to the study of Irish history.
As the years went on, the split between the two sections of what had once been the Sinn Fein party tended to harden on party lines, and an Editor was less free in his choice of contributors. During the 'thirties the European scene was intensely dramatic in its swift movements, with the clash of strong personalities and the ever-growing challenge to Catholic principles. Some of the best articles printed in these years dealt rather with European than Irish politics, though there was always a steady stream of articles on Irish social and economic problems as well as on various aspects of Irish history. Then came the second World War, with the declaration of Irish neutrality. No Irish Editor found those years easy to negotiate, and Father Connolly's own mental and physical energies were beginning to fail. The astonishing thing is that he continued for so long to produce, four times a year, new issues of Studies which - though some of them lacked the old brilliance and effervescence - had still a wide range of interest for many readers. The end of the War brought the problems of the post-war world in which we are still struggling to live. It did nothing to lessen the economic difficulties which face all editors and publishers today. Father Connolly struggled manfully against failing health and ever increasing external handicaps. His successor inherits a fine tradition, and may be sure that he inherits also the good-will of many readers and contributors to what has become a national institution.
Father Connolly had been a member of the Leeson Street community for almost forty years at the time of his death, and his well-marked habits and mannerisms had come to be accepted as part of the permanent background of the community's life. In the city his friends were numerous, and they were most loyal to him as he was always loyal to them. It was at the suggestion of a group of these friends that the National University of Ireland conferred the degree of Doctor of Literature Honoris causa on Father Connolly in recognition of his services to Irish letters in the past thirty years. The ceremony took place on December 7th, 1939. In the December issue of Studies Dr. Tierney gave a rapid sketch of the various journalistic ventures that have been associated, at one time or another, with the long history of University College, Dublin. He ended as follows : “Though there has recently been a welcome revival in the kind of serious journalism of which Father Connolly is such a master, the last thirty years has been a hard period for quarterlies. Our present world is far less favourable to their survival than the very different one into which Studies was born. ... The continued existence of Studies at the level at once of scholarly inquiry and of appeal to an educated intelligence to which Father Connolly brought it under unceasing difficulties is a necessity both for the College and the nation it serves. He will, I am sure, ask for no better acknowledgement of the value of his work than the determination to continue it in the spirit he inherited from predecessors stretching back to Newman, and has handed on invigorated and enriched by his own long years of unselfish devotion”.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Patrick Connolly SJ 1875-1951
Fr Patrick Connolly was born in Gort, County Galway on December 14th 1875. He received his early education at Mungret College and after he entered the Society.

As a scholastic and as a priest he taught English at Clongowes, where he showed his fine literary taste, and high standard of writing. “Studies, the contemporary Review of the National University had been founded in 1912, and for some years run an editorial board with no great success. Indeed, things had come to such an impasse, that there was question of ceasing publication. To the credit of the Provincial FR TV Nolan was the decision to carry on, and to his greater credit and discernment was his appointment of Fr Connolly as Editor in chief. Almost immediately it began its course as a high class review, which was to have a great place, not only in the cultural life of Ireland, but also to be accepted by the leading Universities of the world.

Fr Connolly was a born Editor. He made the maintenance and advance of Studies is life-work. Questions of Irish interest, political, historical, economic predominated, but it remained a Catholic review and had articles of Church interest. This good wrk that Fr Connolly kept going through the gravest of crises – two world ward, the struggle for independence at home, the economic war and various smaller domestic storms. He did all of this for well nigh 40 years.

But Studies did not absorb all his energies. For many years he had a deep and practical interest in St Joseph’s Young Priests Society. He was the Spiritual Father and examined candidates and was accustomed to visit students in their various colleges. Personally he was a bit odd, but a great favourite, especially in Leeson Street, where he was somewhat of an institution. When he explained that the old “characters” of the Province had disappeared, his hearers would smile and remark to one another, that while he lived, the race of “characters”would not be extinct. He had a genuine affective love for the Society. As an appreciation of his distinguished services he received an honorary degree of Litt from the National University.

He died on March 7th 1951, after an operation which seemed to promise complete recovery.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1951

Obituary

Father PJ Connolly SJ

On March 7th we learned with regret of the death, in a Dublin Nursing Home, of Rev P J Connolly SJ. Born in Gort, Co. Galway, he was educated in Mungret, leaving here for the Noviciate of the Society of Jesus in the autumn of 1893. After he had completed his noviceship, he was sent to Manresa House, Roehampton, to pursue his studies in humanities, and upon leaving there, he continued his studies on the Continent, more particularly in France and Austria.

Upon his return to Ireland, he taught for some years at Clongowes, and in Mungret, leaving to begin his Theology at Milltown Park, Dublin in 1907. He was ordained at Milltown in 1910.
Two years after the foundation by the Jesuit Fathers of the quarterly review, “Studies”, Father Connolly was entrusted with its editorship in 1914. From the very first he brought new life to the pages of “Studies”, changing its rather severe academic tone to make it at once scholarly and topical. Almost every well-known writer and thinker in the Ireland of 1914 to 1950 contributed to it at one time or another, as well as a surprising number of writers famous all over the world. One cannot but admire the powers of persuasion he displayed suc cessfully for so long, as well as the tact and skill required from him in his exact ing task.

Like many great editors, he wrote little himself, but no one could excel the exactness with which he judged just what treatment a subject required, or the skill with he guided the first faltering steps in authorship of younger writers and castigated their literary efforts with a zeal no less kindly for its apparent sterness.

On 7th December 1939, the National University conferred on Father Connolly to the degree of Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa.

After thirty-six years of devoted, un remitting, and immeasurably skilful labour, Father Connolly relinquished the editorship of “Studies” in August 1950, and his death only a few months later was a loss, not only to “Studies”, but to the service of Irish literature, not easily repaired. RIP

Born: 14 March 1880, Grange, Caherconlish, County Limerick
Entered: 14 August 1896, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 27 July 1913, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1916, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 27 June 1922, Dublin

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

by 1901 in Vals France (LUGD) studying
by 1902 at Kasteel Gemert, Netherlands (TOLO) studying
Came to Australia for Regency 1903
by 1913 at Innsbruck Austria (ASR-HUN) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
After his Novitiate he stayed at Tullabeg to study Rhetoric. Later he went to Vals for Philosophy.
1903 He was sent to Australia for a Regency teaching in Sydney.
After his Regency he did Theology at Milltown and Innsbruck and was Ordained 1913.
He then made Tertianship at Tullabeg.
1916 He was a Teacher at Mungret, and was appointed Rector there in 1917.
1721 He was sent to Clongowes as a Missioner.
His health failing he died in Dublin 27 June 1922

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
1896-1900 He entered at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg and after First Vows he continued for two years Juniorate.
1900-1903 He was sent to Vals and Kasteel Gemert for Philosophy
1903-1904 He was sent to Australia and St Aloysius College Sydney for Regency
1905-1910 He continued his regency at St Ignatius College Riverview, where he was First Prefect, was involved with senior rowing and senior debating master.
1910 He returned to Ireland and Milltown Park Dublin for Theology and also at Innsbruck, Austria, followed by Tertianship at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg
1917-1920 He was sent as Rector to Mungret College Limerick
1920-1921 He was sent to Coláiste Iognáid Galway
1921-1922 He was sent to Clongowes Wood College

Born: 25 December 1605, Yorkshire or Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1627, Watten, Belgium - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1632, Belgium
Final Vows: 05 August 1641, College of St Omer, France
Died: 11 April 1649, English College, Rome, Italy - Angliae Province (ANG)

Alias Corbington

Youngest brother of Robert RIP - 1637; Ralph RIP - 1644
Son of Gerard RIP - 1627

There are 4 “Corby” entries
Ambrose Ent 1627
Gerard Ent 1627 (Father of Robert, Ralph and Ambrose)
Robert Ent 1628
Ralf DOB 1598; Ent 1624; RIP 1644 at Tyburn (martyr)
Another Son/Brother Richard, died at St Omer College
Two daughters/sisters, Mary and Catherine, became Benedictine nuns, as did Isabella in 1533 (she died 25/12/1652 a centenarian)
Gerard married to Isabella Richardson, and they moved to Dublin, where his sons were born, and eventually Belgium. He became a Jesuit Brother when he and his wife decided to separate and consecrate themselves to God. All three sons were born in Dublin

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Father Gerard and brothers Robert and Ralph became Jesuits. His mother Isabella and sisters Mary and Catherine became Benedictine nuns.
Sent by his father to St Omer for Humanities
1622 Went to English College Rome for studies 11 October 1622. He won the praises of all there and received Minor Orders.
He was then sent to Belgium, where his father was now living in exile, for health reasons, and Ent 07 September 1627
1645 Minister at Ghent
1649 Was Minister at English College Rome when he died
He wrote and interesting biography about his father Gerard, who in his old age became a Brother of the Society
He taught the “belles lettres” for some years at St Omer, was highly accomplished in Greek and Latin literature, and was distinguished for great modesty, humility, patience and charity towards others, and piety towards God.
Nothing to do with HIB or Irish Mission
(cf “Records SJ” Vol iii p 97 and another volume p 299; de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”)

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CORBIE, AMBROSE, born near Durham, on Thursday, 7th December,1604, O.S. as I find in a memorandum. In the Diary of the minister of the English College at Rome, he is recorded to have defended Logic 20th August, 1623 “con honore”. Four years later he embraced “the pious Institute” of the Society, at Watten : was ordained Priest at St. Omer, 20th September, 1633, and raised to the rank of a Professed Father 5th August, 1641; was Confessarius to the English College at Rome, 11th April, 1649. From the classic pen of this young Jesuit, we have “Certamen Triplex, or the Life and Martyrdom of his Brethren Ralph Corbie, of F. T. Holland, and of F. Hen. Morse”, all of S. J., 12mo. Antwerp, 1645, pp. 144, with portraits. This Latin book is in great requisition among collectors.

Born: 25 March 1598, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 1625 - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: pre 1625, Valladolid, Spain
Final Vows: 01 May 1640, Durham, England
Died: 17 September 1644, Tyburn, London, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Martyr

Middle brother of Robert RIP - 1637; Ambrose RIP - 1649
Son of Gerard RIP - 1627

There are 4 “Corby” entries
Ambrose Ent 1627
Gerard Ent 1627 (Father of Robert, Ralph and Ambrose)
Robert Ent 1628
Another Son/Brother Richard, died at St Omer College
Two daughters/sisters, Mary and Catherine, became Benedictine nuns, as did Isabella in 1533 (she died 25 December 1652 a centenarian)
Gerard married to Isabella Richardson, and they moved to Dublin, where his sons were born, and eventually to Belgium. He became a Jesuit Brother when he and his wife decided to separate and consecrate themselves to God. All three sons were born in Dublin
1628 at Liège studying Theology - in CAT 1628-1636

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Father Gerard and brothers Robert and Ralph became Jesuits. His mother Isabella and sisters Mary and Catherine became Benedictine nuns.
Sent by his father to St Omer for Humanities aged 15
Went to English College Rome then Seville and Valladolid where he was Ordained. He then Ent 1627.
1631 Sent to English Mission. He worked in Durham mostly.
1644 Seized by the Parliamentarian rebels at Hampsterley, while vesting for Mass 18 July 1644, and then committed to Newgate Prison at London 22 July 1644 in the company of his friend John Duckett. They were tried and condemned at the Old Bailey 14 September 1644 (Feast of Exaltation), and sent to the gallows at Tyburn 17 September 1644
His Brother Ambrose wrote and interesting biography about his father Gerard.
He taught the “belles lettres” for some years at St Omer, was highly accomplished in Greek and Latin literature, and was distinguished for great modesty, humility, patience and charity towards others, and piety towards God.
Nothing to do with HIB or Irish Mission
(cf “Records SJ” Vol iii pp 68 seq)

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CORBIE, RALPH. This blessed martyr was actually born in Ireland, whither his father was suddenly compelled to fly to escape prosecution at home. Ralph in 1626, united himself to the Society : five years later began his missionary career at Durham and its neighbourhood, and laboured with all the spirit and zeal of the Apostles, until he fell into the snares of his enemies at Horpserley, 8th July, 1644. Put on board a Sunderland vessel for London, he was thrown into Newgate, 22d July, whence he was dragged to Tyburn, 7th September following, O. S., to receive that abundant reward in Heaven, which Christ has insured to those who suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness.

Born: 1596, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: September 1626, Watten, Belgium - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: by 1629
Died: 17 April 1637, St Ignatius, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Alias Corbington

Eldest brother of Ralph RIP - 1644; Ambrose RIP -1649
Son of Gerard RIP -1627

There are 4 “Corby” entries
Ambrose Ent 1627
Gerard Ent 1627 (Father of Robert, Ralph and Ambrose)
Robert Ent 1628
Ralf DOB 1598; Ent 1624; RIP 1644 at Tyburn (martyr)
Another Son/Brother Richard, died at St Omer College
Two daughters/sisters, Mary and Catherine, became Benedictine nuns, as did Isabella in 1533 (she died 25 December 1652 a centenarian)
Gerard married to Isabella Richardson, and they moved to Dublin, where his sons were born, and eventually Belgium. He became a Jesuit Brother when he and his wife decided to separate and consecrate themselves to God. All three sons were born in Dublin

Procurator and penitentiary at Loreto and Rome (Necrology ANG ARSI)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Procurator and penitentiary at Loreto and Rome (Necrology ANG ARSI) :
Father Gerard and brothers Ambrose and Ralph became Jesuits. His mother Isabella and sisters Mary and Catherine became Benedictine nuns.
Sent by his father to St Omer for Humanities
He was for some time Procurator and also Penitentiary at Rome and Loreto. A good linguist, he heard confessions in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French and other languages.
On one of the pillars in the nave of the church of Loreto is an inscription i Scottish-English, giving an account “The Wondrous Flittinge of the Halie House, by Father Robert Corbington”. At the foot is “Translated by Robert Corbington, Preust of the Socyete of Jesus, by order of Cardinal Morone. His Brother Ambrose wrote and interesting biography about his father Gerard. Nothing to do with HIB or Irish Mission [Pillars is in Old Welsh]

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CORBIE, ROBERT, brother to FF. Ambrose and Ralph before-mentioned, died in the English mission on Good Friday, 17th April, 1637. He was considered as a respectable linguist, and heard confessions in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French and other languages.

Born: 11 April 1658, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 13 November 1673 - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)
Final Vows: 02 February 1691
Died: 15 November 1721, Bordeaux, France - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)

1675 First Vows 17 November 1675
1687-91 Missioner in Siam

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
First Vows 17 November 1675 AQUIT

Born: 1596, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 November 1619, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1625, Pont-à-Mousson, France
Died: 10 June 1627, Dublin

1622-1625 Theology at Pont-á-Mousson - came from Rome
1625 4th year Theology in CAMP
1626 In Ireland (Coyleaus) - sent from Pont-á-Mousson having finished Theology

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1626 A priest in Ireland

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had begun his Priestly studies at Douai before Ent 14 November 1619 Rome
1621-1625 After First Vows and due to health issues he was sent to Pont-à-Mousson for Theology
1625 It was thought that his health issues should prevent him from Ordination, but that was changed and he became a priest in 1625. He was then sent to Ireland and was probably sent to Dublin, where he died 10 June 1627

Born: 23 April 1896, Rathmines, Dublin
Entered: 30 August 1913, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1927, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1933, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 20 January 1978, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin

Older brother of Desmond - RIP 1962; Studied Arts at UCD

by 1932 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

Born: 20 June 1896, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 31 August 1914, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly - Hiberniae Province (HIB) for Sicilian Province (SIC)
Ordained: 31 July 1928, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1932, Chiesa del Gesù, Rome Italy
Died: 22 May 1958, Milltown Park

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

Studied for MA in Economics at UCD

by 1927 at Innsbruck Austria (ASR-HUN) studying
by 1932 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying
1930-1931 at Haus Sentmaring, Münster, Germany
by 1933 at Vanves, Paris, France (FRA) studying

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Coyne, Edward Joseph
by Anne Dolan

Coyne, Edward Joseph (1896–1958), Jesuit priest, was born 20 June 1896 in Dublin, eldest of five children of William P. Coyne (qv), head of the statistical section of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and Agnes Mary Coyne (née Martin). Educated at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, from 1908, he joined the Society of Jesus at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore (1914). After an academically distinguished student career at UCD, he taught for three years at Belvedere College, Dublin, during which time he published a series of articles in the Irish Monthly under the name ‘N. Umis’. He studied theology (1926–8) at the Franz Ferdinand university, Innsbruck, returning to Ireland for his ordination (1928) and to begin an MA in economics at UCD. On completing his religious training at Münster, Westphalia, he divided his time between the Gregorian University in Rome, the Action Populaire, and the Sorbonne, Paris. A term at the International Labour Office, Geneva, marked the first practical application of his special studies in sociology and economics. In 1933 he was appointed professor of ethics at St Stanislaus College, a position he held until becoming (1938) professor of moral theology and lecturer in sociology at Milltown Park, Dublin. Although he remained at Milltown Park for the rest of his life, he played a prominent part in the development of Irish social and economic thought. The driving force behind the 1936 social order summer school at Clongowes and the foundation of the Catholic Workers' College (1948), he was selected by Michael Tierney (qv) to organise UCD's extramural courses in 1949.

Editor of Studies and a regular contributor to Irish Monthly, he also placed his knowledge at the disposal of several individuals, institutions, and organisations. As a member of the Jesuit committee assembled in 1936 to contribute to the drafting of the new constitution, he corresponded regularly with Eamon de Valera (qv) and had a significant influence on the document submitted. In 1939 he was appointed by the government to the commission on vocational organisation and was the main author of its report (1943), which was highly critical of the anonymity and inefficiency of the Irish civil service. Despite later government appointments to the Irish Sea Fisheries Association (1948) and the commissions on population (1949) and emigration (1954), he was always prepared to question government decisions, querying the report of the banking commission (1938), the wisdom of plans by the minister for social welfare, William Norton (qv) to unify social insurance schemes (1949), and the morality of the ‘mother and child’ scheme (1951). Serving on several public boards and industrial committees, including the Joint Industrial Council for the Rosary Bead Industry (1939), the Central Savings Committee (1942), the Law Clerk's Joint Labour Committee (1947), the Creameries Joint Labour Committee (1947), and the National Joint Industrial Council for the Hotel and Catering Trades (1957), he worked closely with both employers and workers. He also took an active role in the cooperative movement, becoming president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (1943). A staunch supporter of John M. Hayes (qv) and Muintir na Tire, he was a frequent speaker at the organisation's ‘rural weeks'. He died 22 May 1958 at St. Vincent's nursing home, Dublin, after a lengthy illness, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. Among the many mourners was his brother Thomas J. Coyne (qv), secretary of the Department of Justice (1949–61). His papers are held at the Irish Jesuit Archives.

Ir. Times, Ir. Independent, Ir. Press, 23 May 1958; Clongownian, June 1959, 6–11; J. H. Whyte, Church and state in modern Ireland 1923–1979 (1984), 88, 180, 259; J. Anthony Gaughan, Alfred O'Rahilly I: academic (1986), 95–6, 186–90; Seán Faughnan, ‘The Jesuits and the drafting of the Irish constitution of 1937’, IHS, xxvi (1988–9), 79–102; J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: politics and society (1989), 274–5; Louis McRedmond, To the greater glory: a history of the Irish Jesuits (1991), 277, 285–7; Dermot Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican (1995), 324–5; Dermot Keogh & Andrew J. Mc Carthy, The making of the Irish constitution (2007), 58, 95, 98–100

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948

Frs. Counihan and Edward Coyne are acting as members of a Commission set up by the Government Department of Social Welfare, at the end of March, to examine Emigration and other Population Problems. The former is still working on the Commission on Youth Unemployment, while Fr. Coyne, who served on the Commission on Vocational Organisation appointed in 1939, and whose Report was published five years later, is at present Deputy Chairman of the Central Savings Committee, Chairman of the Joint Industrial Council for Beads Industry, Chairman of the Joint Labour Committee for Solicitors, Member of the Joint Labour Committee for the Creamery Industry, Member of the Council of the Statistical Society.

Irish Province News 33rd Year No 4 1958

Obituary :

Fr Edward J Coyne (1896-1958)

I want to set down in some detail the record of Fr. Ned Coyne's life because I think that the Province would be the poorer were the memory of him to grow dim. I shall attempt no contrived portrait; in an artless narrative I run, less risk of distortion. Indeed in a bid to avoid being painted in, false colours, Fr. Ned played with the idea of writing his own obituary notice; in the week following his operation he succeeded in dictating several fragments, but realising later on that they were written in the exultant mood that followed his acceptance of his death-sentence, he insisted that I should destroy them.
Edward Joseph Coyne was born in Dublin on 20th June, 1896. He was the eldest son, of W. P. Coyne, Professor of Political Economy in the old University College and founder-member of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. To mention these positions indicates at once the influence of father on son. As that influence ran deep, I must say something more of his father whose name lives on in U.C.D. in the Coyne Memorial Prize. Though struck down by cancer at a comparatively early age, W.P. had already made his mark both as an economist and an administrator, Gifted with a clear head and tireless industry, he was not content to remain master of his own science but read widely outside his professional field of economic and social studies. One aspect of his interests.is best illustrated by recalling a favourite saying of his : “the old philosophy will come back to us through Dante”; another aspect by the mention of his special competence in the art and literature of the Renaissance. When I add that W.P. frail of physique, possessed unusual powers of head and heart, of incisive exposition and innate sympathy, it will be indeed clear that Ned was very much his father's son. Were he now looking over my shoulder as I write, he would be quick to remind me of what he owed also to his gentle, sensitive mother of whose bravery as a young widow bringing up five children. he was so proud.
After a short period at Our Lady's Bower, Athlone, Ned was kept at home to be educated privately from the age of seven to twelve on account of his frail health, Next came the decisive influence of six and a half years in Clongowes which he entered in 1908. He was second to none in his generous appreciation of all that Clongowes had given him. He belonged to the fortunate generation that knew Clongowes in her hey-day in the years before the centenary : Fr. Jimmy Daly and Fr. "Tim” Fegan were at the height of their powers and were supported by a team of brilliant masters. If I single out one, the then Mr. Boyd Barrett, I do so for two reasons: from him Ned derived lasting inspiration in class-room and in the Clongowes Social Study Club; to him Ned gave a life-time's gratitude expressed by constant letters all through the “misty” years. And when he came to die, a letter from his old master cheered him greatly on a hard spell of the road. Anyone who turns up the Clongownians of his time will see the role he played in every part of school life. Fond as he was of books, his school career is not merely a long list of exhibitions and gold medals; he played out-half and won his “cap” of which he was proud, he kept wicket, he was second-captain of his line, he was the first secretary of the Clongowes Social Study Club which Mr. Boyd Barrett founded. In these pages I can but skim the surface of his life, but however brief the treatment I must find room for some quotations from his Union Prize Essay on “The Necessity of Social Education for Irishmen”, published in the 1914 Clongownian :
“It is sheer folly and shameful conceit for anyone to think he can remedy Ireland's social disorders without social education. There are very few really active workers in Ireland today; but these few are of more value than three times their number of 'social adventurers. For they are trained in the school of experience to have a definite knowledge of what they know and what they do not know. There is no room for social amateurs; if we want to succeed, we must be specialists and experts....
What we plead for is that all the great Catholic colleges of Ireland should start at once some system of social education, If they did so, we should have fifty or sixty young sons of Ireland coming forth each year, full of energy and fire, ready to take their proper places in the great social movements of today. The young men are the hope of France,' said Pius X, and the young men are the hope of Ireland too. The suggestion made recently by a learned Jesuit of having University diplomas for social work is certainly a very good one. But I would wish to begin earlier. It is not every schoolboy who goes to the Universities; many enter business or do some other work. I would have these trained for social work; trained well, too, in those vital questions which are now so much discussed.
That august and venerable College to which I have the honour to belong has taken up the task of social education for her children. It is to be hoped that many will follow her example.

On 31st August, 1914, he began his noviceship in Tullabeg under Fr. Martin. Maher; eleven others entered with him that day and all stayed the course. After the noviceship they remained in Tullabeg for a year's Juniorate which Fr. Ned always regarded as one of the most rewarding years of his life : Fr. Charlie Mulcahy, Fr. W. Byrne and Mr. H. Johnston gave them of their best.
In U.C.D. Fr. Ned read history and economics for his degree, taking first place in both subjects. He was the inspiration of a lively English Society that included Fr. Paddy O'Connor, Violet Connolly, Kate O'Brien, and Gerard Murphy among its members, and was auditor of the Classical Society in succession to Leo McAuley (now Ambassador to the Holy See) who in turn had succeeded the present President of U.C.D.
Moving across to Milltown Park for philosophy Fr. Coyne managed to combine with it fruitful work on a first-class M.A. thesis on Ireland's Internal Transport System. Next came three successful years in Belvedere : his pupils and a series of articles under the thinly-veiled name of N. Umis in the Irish Monthly provide the best evidence for his zest for teaching. He made his theology in Innsbruck, returning home for ordination in 1928. On completing his theology in Innsbruck, he made his tertianship in Munster in Westphalia under Fr. Walter Sierp, He divided his biennium between Rome and Paris, studying in the Gregorianum under Fr. Vermeersch and later in the Sorbonne and at the Action Populaire. He also spent three months at this period in Geneva at the International Labour Office,
On returning to Ireland he was posted to Tullabeg to teach ethics and cosmology. Those who sat at his feet found in him a professor of outstanding clarity, who had, besides, a rare gift of stimulating interest. In November, 1936, he was transferred to Milltown Park. It was not long before his influence began to be felt in various spheres. In due course he was appointed to the Moral Chair and by that time he was more than fully occupied. He did signal service as a member of the Commission on Vocational Organisation, appointed by the Government in 1939 to report on the practability of developing functional or vocational organisation, in Ireland. Ten years later he was named a member of the Commission on Population,
In 1940 he was elected Vice-President and in 1943 President of the I.A.O.S. From his first association with the society be took an intense interest in the co-operative movement; he knew the movement from every angle, legal, economic and above all, idealistic. He astonished the members of the many societies he visited over the years by his complete grasp of the technical problems involved. Some years ago he delivered an address in London at the annual general meeting of the Agricultural Central Co-operative Association of England which created an extraordinarily favourable impression and resulted in invitations to address a number of English co-ops. Even before his active association with the I.A.O.S. he had already been early in the field supporting Fr. John Hayes in the founding and developing of Muintir na Tire at whose Rural Weeks he was a frequent speaker,
Besides his interest in rural affairs, Fr. Coyne was also closely in touch with industrial problems; he was chairman of the Law Clerks Joint Labour Committee, of the National Joint Industrial Council for the Hotel and Catering Trades, and of the Joint Industrial Council for the Rosary Bead Industry
In 1949, Dr. Michael Tierney, President of University College, Dublin, invited him to organise an extra-mural department. Thanks to the generous co-operation of the members of the staff of U.C.D. and of many graduates, and to the enthusiastic support of leaders and members of the trade unions, this department has proved very successful. Before undertaking the organisation of the extra-mural courses, he had already laid the foundations of the work now so well developed by Fr. Kent and his confrères in the Catholic Workers' College.
So much for the external story. Though he lectured widely with rare clarity and power and wrote convincingly from time to time in the periodical press, Fr. Coyne may well be best remembered for his outstanding gifts of personal sympathy and insight which enabled him to guide and encourage men and women from surprisingly varied walks of life. Few men can have meant so much to so many. All through his illness one constantly stumbled upon some new kindness he had done unknown to anyone but the recipient; and after his death the striking sincerity of the tributes paid to him on all sides was convincing evidence of his superb gift for friendship. One and all found in him understanding and help given without stint with a charm and a graciousness that reflected the charity of his Master, Christ.
Those who made his eight-day retreat or who were formed by him in the class-room will recall his insistent harping on the need of integrity of mind. It is only right that I should say how acutely conscious he was of his own extreme sensitivity that made him petulant by times, and of his shyness which made him. often hold himself aloof. Best proof of all of his clear-sightedness was the occasion when he was playfully boasting to Fr. Nerney of his docility. Taking his queue from Buffon's “Cet animal est très mechant”, Fr. Nerney, with Fr. Ned's help, composed this epitaph, feeling his way delicately, as if trying out chords on a piano : “Le biffle est un animal très docile : il se laisse conduire partout ou il veut aller”. Fr. Coyne, with a self-knowledge and a humility that deserves to be put on record, often quoted that verdict, smiling wryly and beating his breast. As I watched him in his last sickness that phrase often rang through my head. On first hearing that his condition was hopeless, he was lyrically happy in the knowledge that he was going home to God. But as the weeks dragged on he began to see that the way he was being led home was one which humanly speaking he was loath to choose. In that familiaritas cum Deo which he commended so earnestly in his retreats, he won the immense courage which buoyed him up in the long weeks of humiliating discomfort so galling to his sensitive nature; however much, humanly speaking, he shrank from it, by God's grace he gladly accepted and endured, proving himself indeed completely docile to God's Will. May his great soul rest in peace.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Edward Coyne 1896-1958
In the death of Fr Ned Coyne, the Province lost one of its most brilliant, active and charming personalities that it has been blessed with for many a long year.

Born in Dublin in 1896, he was educated at Clongowes, and after a brilliant course of studies, entered the Noviceship in Tullabeg in 1914.

His career in the formative years as a Jesuit fulfilled the promise of his schooldays, culminating after his Tertianship in his specialising in Social Science at Rome and Paris.

After some years as Professor of Philosophy in Tullabeg, he moved to Dublin, filling the chair of Moral Theology at Milltown Park.

In 1950 he was elected President of the IACS, and took an intense interest in the Co-operative Movement, acquiring a complete grasp of the technical problems involved. He was a wholehearted backer of Canon Hayes and the Muintir na Tire movement, was closely associated with various labour organisations, and ran the Department for Extramural Studies at University College Dublin. He also laid the foundations for our own Catholic Workers College. All this while Professor of Moral Theology at Milltown.

A full life, a rich life – a spiritual life – for in spite of the multifarious occupations Fr Ned always managed to keep close to God and to maintain that “integrity of mind” he so often harped on in his retreats.

He had a rare gift for friendship, and rarely to such a man life would be sweet. Yet when sentence of death was announced he took it gladly. His heroism in his last illness is sufficient testimony to the spirituality of his intensely active life and to his own integrity of mind.

He died on May 22nd 1958 aged 62 years.

◆ The Clongownian, 1959

Obituary

Father Edward J Coyne SJ

Edward Joseph Coyne was born in Dublin 20th June, 1896. He was the eldest son of W P Coyne, Professor of Political Economy in the old University College and founder member of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. To mention these positions indicates at once the influence of father on son. As that influence ran deep, I must say something more of his father whose name lives on in UCD in the Coyne Memorial Prize. Though struck down by cancer at a comparatively early age, W P had already made his mark both as an economist and an administrator. Gifted with a clear head and tireless industry, he was not content to remain master of his own science but read widely outside his professional field of economic and social studies. One aspect of his interests is best illustrated by a recalling favourite saying of his: “the old philosophy will come back to us through Dante”; another aspect by the mention of his special competence in the art and literature of the Renaissance. When I add that W P frail of physique, possessed unusual powers of head and heart, of incisive exposition and innate sympathy, it will be indeed clear that Ned was very much his father's son. Were he now looking over my shoulder as I write, he would be quick to remind me of what he owed also to his gentle, sensitive mother of whose bravery as a young widow bringing up le children he was so proud.

After a short period at Our Lady's Bower, Athlone, Ned was kept at home to be educated privately from the age of seven to twelve on account of his frail health. Next the the decisive influence of six and a half years in Clongowes which he entered in 1908. He was second to none in his generous appreciation of all that Clongowes had given him. He belonged to the fortunate generation that knew Clongowes in her hey-day in the years before the centenary: Father Jimmy Daly and Father “Tim” Fegan were at the height of their powers and were supported by a team of brilliant masters. If I single out one, the then Mr Boyd Barrett, I do so for two reasons: from him Ned derived lasting inspiration in classroom and in the Clongowes Social Study Club; to him Ned gave a life time's gratitude expressed by constant letters all through the “misty” years. And when he came to die, a letter from his old master cheered him greatly on a hard spell of the road.

Anyone who turns up the “Clongownians” of his time will see the role he played in every part of school life. Fond as he was of books, his school career is not merely a long list of exhibitions and gold medals; he played out half and won his “cap” of which he was proud, he kept wicket, he was second-captain of his Line, he was the first secretary of the Clongowes Social Study Club which Mr. Boyd Barrett founded. In these pages I can but skim the surface of his life, but however brief the treatment I must find room for some quotations from his Union Prize Essay on “The Necessity of Social Education for Irishmen”, published in the 1914 “Clongownian”:

It is sheer folly and shameful conceit for anyone to think he can remedy Ireland's social disorders without social education. There are very few really active workers in Ireland today; but these few are of more value than three times their number of “social adventurers”. For they are trained in the school of experience to have a definite knowledge of what they know and what they do not know. There is no room for social amateurs; if we want to succeed, we must be specialists and experts.....

What we plead for is that all the great Catholic colleges of Ireland should start at once some system of social education. If they did so, we should have fifty or sixty young sons of Ireland coming forth each year, full of energy and fire, ready to take their proper places in the great social movements of today. The young men are the hope of France, said Pius X, and the young men are the hope of Ireland too. The suggestion made recently by a learned Jesuit of having University diplomas for social work is certainly a very good one. But I would wish to begin earlier. It is not every schoolboy who goes to the Universities; many enter business or do some other work. I would have these trained for social work; trained well, too, in those vital questions which are now so much discussed....

The august and venerable College to which I have the honour to belong has taken up the task of social education for her children. It is to be hoped that many
will follow her example....”

When you link up those lines written in 1914 with the work he did in the last decade of his life, you see immediately how his life was all of a piece, how indeed the boy was “father of the man”.

On 31st August, 1914, he began his noviceship in Tullabeg under Father Martin Maher; eleven others entered with him that day and all stayed the course. After the noviceship they remained in Tullabeg for a year's Juniorate which Father Ned always regarded as one of the most rewarding years of his life: Father Charlie Mulcahy, Father W Byrne and Mr H Johnston gave them of their best.

In UCD Father Ned read history and economics for his degree, taking first place in both subjects. He was the inspiration of a lively English Society that included Father Paddy O'Connor, Violet Connolly, Kate O'Brien and Gerard Murphy among its members, and was auditor of the Classical Society in succession to Leo McAuley (now Ambassador to the Holy See) who in turn had succeeded the present President of UCD.

Moving across to Milltown Park for philosophy Father Coyne managed to combine with it fruitful work on a first-class MA thesis on “Ireland's Internal Transport System”. Next came three successful years in Belvedere: his pupils and a series of articles under the thinly-veiled name of “N Umis” in the “Irish Monthly” provide the best evidence for his zest for teaching. He made his theology in Innsbruck, returning home for ordination in 1928. On completing his theology in Innsbruck, he made his tertianship in Münster in Westphalia under Father Walter Sierp. He divided his biennium between Rome and Paris, studying in the Gregorium under Father Vermeersch and later in the Sorbonne and at the Action Populaire. He also spent three months at this period in Geneva at the International Labour Office.

On returning to Ireland he was posted to Tullabeg to teach ethics and cosmology. Those who sat at his feet found in him a professor of outstanding clarity, who had, besides, a rare gift of stimulating interest. In November, 1936, he was transferred to: Milltown Park. It was not long before his influence began to be felt in various spheres. In due course he was appointed to the Moral Chair and by that time he was more than fully occupied. He did signal service as a member of the “Commission on Vocational Organisation”, appointed by the Government in 1939 to report on the practability of developing functional or vocational organisation in Ireland. Ten years later he was named a member of the “Commission on Population”.

Father Coyne was also closely in touch with industrial problems; he was chairman of the “Law Clerks Joint Labour Committee”, of the “National Joint Industrial Council for the Hotel and Catering Trades”, and of the “Joint Industrial Council for the Rosary Bead Industry”. After his death messages of sympathy were received from many trade unions, amongst others: The National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association, Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, Workers' Union of Ireland, Congress of Irish Unions, The Irish Union of Distributive Workers and Clerks, Post Office Workers' Union, National Executive of the Irish Post Office Engineering Union, The Provisional United Trade Union Organisation, Marine Port and General Workers' Union, and the Irish Bookbinders' Union.

So much for the external story. Though he lectured widely with rare clarity and power and wrote convincingly from time to time in the periodical press, Father Coyne may well be best remembered for his outstanding gifts of personal sympathy and insight which enabled him to guide and encourage men and women from surprisingly varied walks of life. Few men can have meant so much to so many. All through his illness one constantly stumbled upon some new kindness he had done unknown to anyone but the recipient; and after his death the striking sincertity of the tributes paid to him on all sides was convincing evidence of his superb gift for friendship. One and all found in him understanding and help given without stint with a charm and a graciousness that reflected the charity of his Master, Christ.

RBS

-oOo-

Ned was one who liked to count his blessings. Among these, his grateful nature valued especially the happy home of his childhood and the last pre-war years at Clongowes. He loved Clongowes. He often spoke of the security and confidence and hopes these years had held. It is true that the latter half of his school life saw the most bitter economic struggle Ireland has known since the Land League and the re-birth in controversy and schism of the policy of physical force as a political weapon. He was not unaware of these things, but their implications were not clear enough to daunt a fighting spirit and, as we shall see, they rather stimulated than oppressed him. He was never an angry young man and like most of his tragic generation of young men, he foresaw in his schooldays little of wbat has since happened.

He was at Clongowes from 1908 to 1914 - the full six years and each year with its victories and its successes seemed to be prelude to the fitting end, the happy sunshine of the Centenary Celebration. On his death bed, Ned could recall details of those June days of carnival and triumph. Less than two months later the first of all world wars had begun, but that lay in an unguessed-at future.

Ned also liked to believe that he belonged to a remarkable generation of Clongowes boys. He had as classmates and rivals for the Imperatorship of Rhetoric (successful rivals, be it said) such men as John Gilligan and Louis Carroll, both destined to bear back bright to the Coiner the mark of the mint, and many others not less gifted were his class mates: Father Hugo Kerr and Father Arthur Little, as well as Mr Justice Sheil and Mr Alban O'Kelly.

Of course it was not only among his classmates that he had friends and companions. To one of these, destined to the most dis tinguished future of all that group, he spoke on his death-bed of his pride and privilege in having rubbed shoulders on gallery, class room and playing-field all unawares with so many fine men in the making. Yet it is not too much to say that of all that galaxy, his star shone even then with a unique lustre.

He had, literally, all the qualities of the ideal schoolboy. His physique was graceful, if slight, his looks bright and cheerful. If he was certainly no Hercules, he had quite remarkable gifts as an athlete. He won the Backs cap for Rugby, playing on a side that included future internationals. He kept wicket and goal for Cricket and Soccer elevens. His skill matched his courage and his dash, but all the time one was conscious that he played games, so to speak, with his left hand. An intimate school friend, who sat beside him in the refectory, could not recall his ever talking about games and was not surprised when after Ned's death he mentioned his outstanding prowess to a niece, to be met with the reply: “But was Father Ned good at games?” It was no pose on his part to get a companion to stand by the Soccer goal-posts when he was “keeping” in a big match and when play drifted up-field to read for their discussion bits of the poets. He was then in love with Thompson, Browning and Belloc.

He comes back to the eye of memory with a book always under his arm, but it would be a mistake to think of him as a book-worm, still less as an academic pot-hunter. He collected each year his exhibitions, often duplicate ones, his medals in English and History and all the highest Clongowes honours except the Palles Medal. Religious Knowledge twice, the first time from Poetry year, the Prize Essay, the Debate. He was an honours mathematician and first-rank Grecian. At the University, in First Arts, he was to take six subjects and be first in four and second in two, and in Clongowes his range was much wider than the class-room demanded. Literature, history, religion, even the unlikely by-paths of aesthetics or the infant science of psychology were as likely to be topics of his talk as school gossip or current events. But he was never anything of a prig. Already he had at his command a prompt and sharp sword of repartee. And it must be admitted that he had a temper. He did not lose it often; it only came when provoked or even justified, but it was frightening, quite devastating and sometimes ferocious. This quality, I think, disappeared completely and at once in the Jesuit, and the older man was ashamed even of the occasional sharpness of his tongue. That was to be expected, for even as a boy, thc formation of his character was Ned's conscious aim and his integrity (a word he loved) was already remarkable. He was not only twice Line Captain but a Sodality Prefect, and from his Third Line days he and all his friends took it for granted that he would be a Jesuit.

The boy is father to the priest and perhaps it is in view of the work of his mature years that two elements of his schooldays seem especially memorable. Among the boys his was certainly the inspiration in a quite new development, the birth, as we might call it, of a social conscience, In holidays he gave a good deal of his time to practical work, especially in the first of all Boys Clubs in Dublin, that run by another Old Clongownian, Dr. Lombard Murphy, At school he was secretary and leader of the newly-founded Social Study Club. During the Centenary Celebration the club showed its paces and its secretary read a paper at a special meeting. The subject was of his own choosing: The Patriotism of Social Work. He was in future years to address many distinguished gather ings, but, as one of his friends liked to remind him, none more so than this one. The cardinal, seven bishops, the national leaders in politics, law and medicine came, perhaps to hear his father's son, but certainly to hear as balanced, as lucid and as noble an appeal as any schoolboy could be expected to make. It was characteristically his own thought and had not even been read by any of his friends in the Community.

If one incident in his Clongowes career lives in the memory of those who were with him it must surely be a night when the Higher Line Debate met under the flaring gas-jets of the Higher Line Gallery. The motion asked for support for the Irish Volunteers and the boys were to hear both Tom and Laurence Kettle make worthy speeches; but surely the night's honours fell to a boy. In lucid, simple speech, such as he was to use on hundreds of platforms to audiences learned and unlearned, he developed his theme. But then, throwing down his few notes, he said slowly: “I have appealed to your heads; I would rather trust your hearts”. In a couple of minutes he had voiced for us all just those aspirations to which the country was awakening, a passionate love of Ireland and a passionate love of liberty.

Yes, the social worker, the speaker - he perhaps came to eschew oratory but never lost his power to move - were already there, and there too was the third quality in the man we have lost. It is impossible to express his gift for friendship, his cult of it, and perhaps still less all he has meant to so many friends. But those who knew him best in Clongowes do not think of the athlete, the wit, the orator, the scholar or even the leader, but of their friend-for ever.

Two men were probably responsible for directing the varied and outstanding talents of young Edward Coyne into the field of social and economic studies. He was a son of William P Coyne, Professor of Political Economy in the old University College, Dublin. When his father died, the young schoolboy came under the influence of Father Thomas Finlay SJ, himself an experienced economist and later Professor of National Economics at University College, Dublin, Two such men could not fail to inspire the talented boy towards that branch of knowledge in which each had attained such eminence. His interest in Ireland's social and economic problems were further stimulated by individual masters and school companions. Both he and they took a lively interest in the Dublin labour troubles of 1912-13. In his final year at Clongowes, 1913-14, he was among the founder-members of the Clongowes Social Study Club, a society which gave the boys of those years the opportunity to learn and discuss some of the grave social problems of the day. The Dublin members of the club sacrificed a goodly portion of their Christmas and Easter holidays to visit boys' clubs, night shelters, hospitals and the homes of the poor and destitute. This study and experience gave the young Edward Coyne much food for thought. In “The Clongownian” of 1914 we find him setting down his thoughts in an essay on “The Necessity of Social Education” which won for him the Clongowes Union Silver Medal. This essay reveals a mature understanding of the gravity of the social problems of those days. His own studies and experiences had already convinced him that education had an important and necessary role to play in solving such problems. Moreover, he asserted then that the social teaching of the Church was, as Pope Pius XII was later to say, “the only teaching capable of remedying the widespread evils existing in social life”. A lifetime of study and experience only served to convince him of the correctness and wisdom of his schoolboy convictions.

He entered the Noviceship of the Society of Jesus, as has been said, in September, 1914. Of the nineteen years that followed, six were devoted to special studies in sociology and economics at first in Ireland and later in Rome, Paris and Geneva. He returned to Ireland in 1933 and from then until his untimely death in 1958 he placed his knowledge of the social sciences at the disposal of countless individuals, clerical and lay, government commissions, public boards, trade unions, industrial committees and Co-Operative societies. No person or group was unimportant in his eyes and he availed of every opportunity-private con sultations, public lectures and discussions and lucid articles in “Irish Monthly” and “Studies” - to relate the social teaching of the Church to the problems of the times. His was a busy life, a life spent in the service of his fellowmen, a life modelled on that of his divine Master, Who came into our world not to be served but to serve.

His studies led him to realise the impor tance of agriculture in Irish economic and social life. From the start, he supported the late Canon Hayes in developing Muintir na Tire. And, following in the footsteps of his boyhood guide and friend, the late Father Thomas Finlay SJ, he took a keen interest in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, of which he was president from 1943 until his death. He came to know this co-operative movement from every angle-legal, economic and above all, idealistic. In so far as the many calls on his time would allow, he visited and spoke to the members of co-operative societies in many parts of Ireland. At the same time he was not unmindful of the needs and problems of Irish industry. He served for many years on Joint Industrial Councils and other bodies connected with industrial life. Businessmen and trade union officials frequently consulted him about their many problems and all found in him a wise counsellor and sympathetic friend.

But despite his varied interests and activities, he did not lose sight of the subject of education as a basis for social reform and economic progress, a subject which had held his attention since his days at Clongowes. In the mid-thirties, we find him taking a prominent part in the Clongowes Social Summer School. A little later he is collaborat ing with Dublin Legionaries of Mary in organising social study groups in the City of Dublin. Towards the end of the second world war, we find him in the company of the late Father Joseph Canavan SJ and Father Thomas Counihan SJ, planning for a more permanent educational institution for social studies. This led to his founding the Catholic Workers' College in 1948. Today, as it enters on its second decade, the college, which he founded, is staffed by seven Jesuit priests and two Jesuit Brothers who are assisted by the voluntary labours of twenty-four lay lecturers; there are over one thousand students on its rolls; and it is housed in specially designed, modern buildings. It will remain for future as a lasting monument to his wisdom and courage. Nor is this the only legacy he bequeathed to his fellow countrymen in the field of social education. In 1949, at the request of Dr Michael Tierney, President of University College, Dublin, he organised the University College Extra-Mural Courses in Social and Economic Studies and in the Liberal Arts. These courses later spread to the towns of Leinster. He personally super vised this work and found time to visit the provincial centres and encourage both teachers and students alike. He was Director of this important work until he died.

As one who was privileged to work with him in the later years of his life, the writer of these lines can testify that all this varied activity was possible only because he was prepared to work from early morning until late at night all the year round. He was a worker, but he was much more. He was, first and last, a religious man, a man of prayer who brought to all his activities a deep spirit of Christian idealism. He saw his daily work, not merely as a service to his countrymen, but as his way of serving God. His lively faith and deep insight into the true meaning of life, personal and social, inspired all his activities and enabled him to “keep going” when many a more robust man would have cried “enough”. Considerate for others, he did not spare himself where work was concerned. In his case, as in the case of his divine Master, it is a question of where one man has sown, others have reaped, Those who carry on the work he started, are ever mindful of the debt they owe him. Father Edward Coyne has passed to his eternal reward but his memory and ideals live on in the minds and hearts of countless men and women. May his great soul rest in peace.

EK

Born: 24 August 1922, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 05 October 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1955, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1961, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 21 February 2012, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin - Zambia-Malawi Province (ZA

Part of the St Ignatius community, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin at the time of death.

Transcribed : HIB to ZAM 03/12/1969

◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Note from Arthur J Clarke Entry
During his six years as rector, he was blessed with such outstanding heads of Canisius as Dick Cremins and Michael J Kelly. Arthur's vision for Canisius as a leading secondary school was influenced by his experience of Clongowes Wood College in Ireland. First, he wanted a proper house for the community. Though the actual building was the responsibility of Fr McCarron and Br Pat McElduff, the siting and design of the spacious community house are largely Arthur’s.

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions : https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/203-missionary-experience-of-the-late-fr-richard-cremins

Missionary Experience of the late Fr. Richard Cremins
Father Richard Cremins, SJ died on 21st February 2012 in Cherryfield Nursing Home in Milltown Park after a long illness. The funeral mass took place on Friday 24th February in Milltown Park Chapel, after which Fr. Cremins was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Fr. Cremins spent over 50 years working as a missionary in Zambia until a stroke brought him back to Ireland in 2006 where he remained until his recent death.
Fr. Richard Cremins was born in 1922 and attended Blackrock College in Dublin. He went on to study at university for 3 years before making the decision to become a Jesuit priest after being impressed by the spirit among the students of Milltown Park. Fr. Cremins taught in Belvedere College for 2 years before he was ordained in 1955. In 1957 Fr. Cremins was sent out to Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia, to work in the Chikuni Mission. He spent several months learning the local language, Tonga and was mainly involved with the primary schools in the area. He spent a year travelling around the country finding schools a job which required him to learn a second language, Bemba. In 1964, Fr. Cremins was sent to Monze to step in as principal of the secondary school for 6 months. He remained in the post for four and a half years until the appointment of Michael Kelly as principal. Fr. Cremins spoke fondly of his time as parish priest in Monze. “They were lovely people. Very nice” he said. He felt it was important to value the customs and traditions of the people in the area. He recounted an early experience he had of a woman who was having trouble with her husband and he had been asked to step in. He sat with them in their family home but realized that his presence there was enough. “They had their own way of settling these things. So I never tried to interfere and just let things take their course”. Fr. Cremins kept this stance throughout his time in Zambia. He did a lot of work in development in the area which included the setting up of Church councils in each area and also the translation of the Bible into Tonga. This occurred in 1970 after the events of Vatican II.
Fr. Cremins was most noted for his work in AIDS prevention and development in Zambia. He went to Lusaka, the capital, in 1970 and spent 12 years there working on development with particular attention given to the introduction of natural family planning. This followed the work of Doctor Sister Miriam Duggan who wanted to introduce the idea to the area. After the implementation of a programme in Lusaka, Fr. Cremins then moved to Malwai in 1990 where he spent 12 years working on a similar project resulting in the establishment of FAMLI. In 2004, he helped to set up an AIDS programme called Youth Alive which aimed at educating young people in Malawi about the risks of AIDS.
Fr. Richard Cremins enjoyed his work as a missionary and spoke positively of his experiences abroad. “I always had a principle that if you have to do something you might as well enjoy it and I always enjoyed my work whatever it was".

https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/225-fr-richard-cremins-sj-1922-2012

Fr. Richard Cremins, SJ 1922-2012
Dick was raised in Dublin during the post independence and post civil war years. He attended the Holy Ghost Fathers' Blackrock College and then proceeded to do undergraduate studies at University College Dublin (UCD). Afterwards he began legal studies spending one year at King's Inn, passing his first bar exam with first class honours. He was a formidable debater and was elected president of the LH Society (Literary and Historical Society), well known for the who's who of Irish politicians and professionals who had been members in their younger days. Dick resigned as president of the Society and discontinued his legal studies to join the Society in 1943. He followed the usual course of studies in Ireland doing regency at Belvedere and Mungret Colleges. After theology at Milltown Park he was ordained a priest in 1955.
In response to a request from Father General, the Irish Province formally assumed responsibility in 1949/1950 for missionary work in much of the Southern Province of Northern Rhodesia (later to become the independent country of Zambia). This led to the establishment of the Chikuni Mission in the Southern Province with a procure in the capital, Lusaka. Building on the great accomplishments of the Zambezi Mission and of Jesuits from the Polish-Krakow Province who had laid the foundations of Church presence in this area, the new arrivals for the Chikuni Mission quickly found themselves engaged in the work of mission development. This they did through the establishment of parishes, the consolidation and expansion of secondary and teacher training institutions, the management and growth of an extensive network of primary schools, and the advancement of women and lay leadership in the Church.
Throughout the 35 years of his period in Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, where he arrived in September 1957, Dick Cremins found himself involved in each one of these works, apart from teacher training. On completion of a period learning chiTonga, the major local language used in the Chikuni Mission territory, his first assign- ment was as Manager of Schools, in charge of supervising, improving and expanding the large network of Catholic primary schools for which the Mission was responsible. In an era when Church presence in an area tended to be closely linked to educational presence through a Church-managed primary school, this involved much hard bargaining with similarly placed representatives from other Christian Churches and colonial officials. Though he threw himself into this work with enormous verve, this was something that did not fit well with Dick's broader ecumenical vision. Neither did it give much scope for his manifest abilities, including his sharp understanding of the needs of a colonial territory that sooner rather than later would become independent.
The situation changed for him in 1959 when he was appointed as Principal of Canisius College, a Jesuit boys' secondary school which had commenced in 1949, much to the displeasure of the colonial authorities who protested at the time that the territory already had a secondary school for boys and so did not need a second one. But by 1959 the winds of change were already blowing in Northern Rhodesia and Dick saw it as his duty, not to challenge the colonial authorities, but with their (sometimes grudging) financial support to develop a school that would respond to the territory's future needs for well qualified human resources. His task in doing so was facilitated by the transfer of the teacher training component from Canisius to the newly established Charles Lwanga Teacher Training College nearby, leaving Dick free to promote a programme of expanding boarding and teaching facilities (especially science laboratories and a library) at Canisius and to increase the number of staff.
A very significant development during the four-and-a-half years of Dick's tenure as Principal of Canisius was the commencement of 6th Form (A-level). Those who completed this programme would have spent almost fifteen years in school - this in a territory where by 1963 less than 1,000 (up to 200 of them from Canisius itself) had completed even twelve years in school. Equally significant, and an early sign of what would be a major con-cern throughout the rest of Dick's life, was his determination that girls should benefit from this development and be able to attain the highest possible level of education. This resulted in Canisius becoming the only school in Northern Rhodesia that offered 6 h Form education to both girls and boys - a noteworthy advance not only towards gender equity but also in Jesuit understanding of the need to ensure that the equality between women and men became a lived reality.
A further development was the active recruitment of a large number of lay teachers for the staffing of the expanding Canisius College. But more was at work in Dick's case, for here he found it possible to give expression to his pre-Vatican II vision of increasing the role of the laity in Church affairs. The strength of Dick's convictions in this area led to his appointment in 1964 as parish priest of the town of Monze and subsequently as chaplain to the Lay Apostolate Movement in the newly established Diocese of Monze. That same year, Northern Rhodesia's colonial status ended when it became the independent country of Zambia. Dick identified wholeheartedly with the new State and as soon as it was possible for him to do so adopted Zambian citizenship, even though this necessitated renouncing his status as a citizen of Ireland, the country of his birth. For the rest of his life, Dick remained a Zambian, a man committed to improving the status of women, and a man passionately concerned to give practical expression to Vatican II's vision of the importance of the laity and the involvement of the Church in the development of peoples.
Dick worked indefatigably for six years as parish priest of Monze town and for five years as promoter of the lay apostolate throughout the diocese. An outstanding legacy to his term as parish priest was the establishment by the Holy Rosary Sisters of Monze Mission Hospital. Dick always proved himself a staunch ally of these Sisters, some of them still fresh from the Biafran war in Nigeria. Always conscious of the dignity of women and the active role that lay and religious women could play in the Church, he supported the Sisters with deep practical love and respect (which they in turn generously reciprocated). Dick pursued these apostolic commitments in Monze Diocese at such expense to himself that he had to spend the greater part of 1976 rebuilding his health. When he was strong enough to return to Zambia late that year, his enduring commitment to the development of the laity resulted in his transfer to Lusaka and appointment, on behalf of the Catholic Hierarchy, as national chaplain for the lay apostolate and secretary for development. For the next seven years he spent the greater part of his time educating and training the laity, mobilising and energising lay groups, and advocating on their behalf. His constant concern was to ensure that Vatican II's vision of the role of the laity became a reality energetically adopted and practised, not only by the ordained ministry of the Church and by members of the Society, but also by lay-persons themselves. These years also saw his trail-blazing support for the National Council of Catholic Women in Zambia, with his unflagging insistence to the women who asked him to implement some of their ideas, "No; this is for you to do, yours are the voices that should be heard." His belief in the power of women was remarkably vindicated in 1982 when, because of the outspoken opposition of the Catholic Women's League to the Zambian Government's inclusion of communist ideology in the curriculum for schools at all levels, the Government capitulated and backed off from this development.
Dick's experience and reflections during this time brought into sharper focus for him the importance of the family. A prime concern here was to enable women to control the number of children they bore while observing the teaching of the encyclical Humanae Vitae about contraception. He was motivated here not just by loyalty to Church teaching, but also by his commitment to improving the lot of women and his anguish at the suffering women endured in bearing more children than their health, their means, the well-being of their already-born children or their prospects as persons who were fully equal to men, could sustain. He was further energised by his deep-seated conviction on the supremacy of human life and hence was driven by the imperative of preventing abortion and opposing its legalisation.
Both of these concerns led Dick to become a protagonist for natural family planning as a way that respected human dignity, while enabling women take more control of their lives and avoid abortions by not having unwanted pregnancies. He became skilled on the medical and social aspects of natural family planning and was soon recognised as a national and international authority in this area. His views did not always find acceptance with others, but this did not diminish their respect for his integrity, the consistency of his approach, and his manifest commitment to bettering the condition of women. His involvement in the area of natural family planning be- came more all-consuming when in 1983 he was appointed as Director of Zambia's Family Life Movement. He was to remain in this position until his appointment to Malawi, the second country that constitutes the Zambia- Malawi Province, ten years later. During this Lusaka period Dick also served for six years as Superior of the Jesuit community of St. Ignatius. Throughout the latter years of that time, St. Ignatius' was the base for the newly established Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection, a faith and social justice think-tank which received wholehearted support from Dick's wisdom, experience, and vision.
In 1993 Dick was sent to Lilongwe in Malawi to set up a Jesuit residence there. Since a number of Jesuits were already working in the Malawian seminaries, Malawi was now recognised as part of the Zambian province, but there was no specifically Jesuit residence there. Dick first stayed with the Kiltegan Fathers for a few months as he surveyed the houses which came on the market in Lilongwe. He was responsible for the purchase and rehabilitation of the present residence of Our Lady of the Way, more usually known as 9/99, the official address. This house became the rallying point for a scattered Jesuit community whose members were working hundreds of kilometres away to the four points of the compass (Zomba, Kasungu, Kachebere and Mangochi).
However 9/99 was not merely a convenient staging point - one of the attractions was meeting Dick. At breakfast and especially after evening meal, one could be sure of a stimulating discussion arising on some point relevant to our mission that had been noticed by Dick and obviously pondered over by him. One might not always agree with Dick's point of view, but that made the discussions all the more stimulating. Dick continued the family apostolate he had animated so well in Lusaka and set up an official NGO called FAMLI, supported by overseas aid.
In Lilongwe in 2007, Dick experienced a massive stroke that ultimately led to his return to Ireland and admission to Cherryfield, the Irish Province's nursing home for infirm, disabled and recuperating Jesuits. Here Dick was to remain until his death in February 2012. But his approach to his transformed conditions was not one of self-pity. Instead, with characteristic determination and enormous courage, he succeeded in teaching himself to speak with some sort of clarity and in making himself mobile with the aid of a "walker" that had been designed according to his specifications for a person whose right hand was crippled. The strength of his resolve and his unfailing commitment to his priesthood were shown by the way he struggled every week to serve as principal celebrant at the community Mass. Despite his limited mobility, he succeeded in attending outside lectures and functions. He taught himself to use a laptop by tapping out messages with one finger of his left hand. And in an effort to build up a sense of camaraderie among his fellow-residents in Cherryfield and the wider community of Jesuits living in the Dublin area, he organised Scrabble and draughts competitions.
Dick put his hard-won computer skills to good use in these final years. From the darkness that must have enshrouded his own life, he regularly sent warm and supportive messages to colleagues who, like himself, were experiencing the cloud of unknowing. But even more, despite his limitations, he continued to press for the better- ment of women, loyal adherence to the teachings of Humanae Vitae, ever greater involvement in the official Church on the part of "outstanding lay Catholics who are to be found as leaders in every walk of life," and advocacy for a Church "where St. Peter might feel at home. "At a meeting just six weeks before his death, he expressed concern that Cherryfield might be obtaining its medical supplies from a pharmacy where the "morning-after" pill could also be purchased. His spirited contributions continued after his death - nine days after he died, The Furrow, the respected religious journal from Maynooth, published his article in support of the Irish government's decision to close its Embassy to the Vatican as he saw this as a step in the direction of making it possible for the Church to remain true to the simplicity of the Gospel.
Throughout his long and very full life, Dick Cremins emerged as a gentle person, kind and peaceful, who lived his life joyfully in the service of others and in pursuit of the highest ideals. At times, people could be upset by his sabre-sharp remarks or forthright statement of his views. But behind these there always lay his fearlessness in challenging accepted points of wisdom, his passion to see the Kingdom of God as envisaged by Jesus realised among us, his zeal for the genuine development of all peoples, his razor sharp mind and his powerful sense of humour with its love of irony, laughter and the joy of people.
Years ago, Dick was characterised as being shaped like a paschal candle - tall, thin and luminous. But his moral stature far surpassed his physical tallness. The Bible tells us that there were giants in the early days. But Dick Cremins shows us that giants are still to be found in modern days.

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 147 : Spring 2012

Obituary

Fr Richard (Dick) Cremins (1922-2012) : Zambia Malawi Province

24 August 1922: Born in Dublin.
Early education: Blackrock College, UCD and 1 year at King's Inns (legal studies)
1943: Obtained a BA Degree in Legal and Political Science in 1943 from UCD
5 October 1943: Entered Emo
October 1945: First Vows: Emo
1946 - 1949: Tullabeg, studying Philosophy
1949 - 1951: Belvedere - Regency
1951 - 1952: Mungret College, Teaching, Prefecting
1952 - 1955: Milltown Park, studying Theology
28th July 1955: Ordained
1955 - 1956: Milltown Park, 4th Year Theology
1956 - 1957: Rathfarnham, Tertianship
1957 - 1958: Zambia, learning the language
1958: Chikuni, Manager of schools
1959 - 1963: Chikuni, Canisius College, Principal
2 February 1961: Final Vows at Chikuni
3 December 1969: Transcribed to Zambia Province
1964 - 1970: Monze, Parish Priest
1971 - 1975: Monze, Chaplain, lay apostolate
1976: Monze, Nairobi, Dublin, recovering health
1976 - 1983: Lusaka, Catholic Secretariat, Chaplain, Lay Apostolate, Secretary for Development
1983 - 1992; St. Ignatius, Director Family Life Movement St. Ignatius,
1983 - 1990: Superior
1990 - 1993: Luwisha House, Director Family Life Movement
1993 - 2007: Lilongwe (opened the house in 1993) FASU consultancy (later FAMLI)
1999 - 2004: Chaplain Lilongwe International Catholic community
2000 - 2001: Assistant Diocesan Pastoral Coordinator
2007 - 2012: Dublin, Cherryfield Lodge, recovering health. Praying for the Church and the Society
21 February 2012: Died Cherryfield

Obituary : Conall Ó Cuinn
Dick grew up in Dublin and was the last surviving sibling, having been predeceased by his brothers, Pat, Gary and Paul, and by his sister, Nora. Though his education at Blackrock College left a strong mark, unlike his brother he was clear that the Holy Ghost Fathers were not for him. General Richard Mulcahy, his mother's cousin, connected him with the turbulent socio-political situation of post-independence and post civil-war Ireland. So it was not surprising that he studied Law and Politics in UCD, including a year at King's Inns. He was a bright student, a formidable debater with a razor sharp sense of humour tinged with a certain killer instinct, not always appreciated by his adversaries, and which sometimes got him into trouble. Having graduated from UCD and passed his first Bar exam, both with 1st class honours, he joined the Society at the then late age of 21, a late vocation, a man of the world. And all of this during World War II.

Zambia--Monze (1957-1975)
Dick spent 50 years living and working in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia for his first 7 years there). He embraced the new State on independence and became a Zambian citizen, a symbolic statement representing a desire to insert himself into Zambian life and culture. This involved revoking his Irish citizenship so that he required a visa each time he needed to visit Ireland. He put down roots in the Chikuni Mission which was later to become Monze Diocese. He arrived there in 1957, just nine years after the first involvement of the Irish Jesuits. From there he later launched himself nationally, and even internationally.

Learning Tonga for a year was always the first task before being thrown into the apostolate. His first job was that of Manager of Schools at a time when the primary education project of the mission was in full swing. He then became Principal of Chikuni Secondary College in the lead up to Independence (1964). Effectively he was educating what would become the leaders of the new Zambian state. And clearly Dick was seen by his superiors as a man of ability and initiative.

In 1962, as the Second Vatican Council was getting underway, James Corboy, then Rector of Milltown Park and Theology Professor, was appointed Bishop of Monze. The Council changed James, as a person and an ecclesiastic. He embraced it as a process, and ever afterwards claimed that the Council was his introduction to theology, especially the seminars given on the fringe of the Council's formal sessions. On his appointment to Zambia he had a clear vision of the importance of the laity and the involvement of the Church in the development of peoples. With that vision he gathered people of the calibre of Dick Cremins around him to promote the project of Vatican II in the new Diocese of Monze. Dick would be a right-hand man when appointed Parish Priest of Monze in 1964 and also Chaplain to the Lay Apostolate movement.

At the same time and at the invitation of Bishop Corboy, the Holy Rosary Sisters were establishing their hospital next door. Dick became great friends with the sisters, a camaraderie and friendship similar to that of siblings in a family, brothers and sisters who supported each other in deep and practical love. This is an occasion to acknowledge and give public thanks for such support and love, and to thank God for it, not just to the Holy Rosary Şişters, but also to the Sisters of Charity, the RSHM sisters (Ferrybank), and the Holy Spirit Sisters (founded also by Bishop Corboy).

Amid the hardship, labour and struggle of those first years there was much fun and laughter. Dick's humour became legendary in the land. For example, rushing out the door at 9.50 a.m. one morning he declared: “I've got to rush. There is a meeting that was due to start at 8.00 am and I don't want to be late!”

And another, told by Sr. Theresa, a Holy Rosary sister. She arrives in the country, fresh with a sociology degree and some notion of community development. Her first task is to interview the PP to avail of his vast experience and local knowledge. Dick lets her ask her questions and avidly write her notes with that neophyte enthusiasm of the recently arrived. “Sister”, interrupts Dick as she begins to ask another question, “I'd like you to know that I've only arrived here myself 3 days ago. So I'm finding my feet too:. They became friends that moment, a friendship which included Theresa sitting by Dick's bed as he lay dying, 38 years later. Such was the quality of friendship on the Mission that we celebrate and acknowledge today.

Shortly after independence when three of the Sisters were PI'd (declared persona ingrata] by the new, youthful and over-confident government, for refusing the orders of local officials regarding medical matters, Dick went to bat for them with the government officials in Lusaka. The PI order was revoked after hours of palaver. Dick came within a hair's breadth of being PI'd himself, so that Zambia nearly lost this “troublesome priest”, a term used to describe him in a government memo on the events.

Zambia -- Lusaka (1976-1993):
Vatican II had taken place; the Decree on the Laity played a central role in Bishop Corboy's strategy. As a result a huge investment was made in the education and training of lay people. Dick, given his experience in Monze, moved to Lusaka in 1976 to take up an appointment at the Catholic Secretariat (set up by Fr. Colm O'Riordan SJ) as National Chaplain to the Lay Apostolate, and Secretary for Development

He was a trailblazing supporter of the National Council of Catholic Women of Zambia, at a time when women were invisible supernumeraries both in the church and in Zambian society. Dick encouraged them to take a lead and use their power. He campaigned hard for them to have an appropriate place both in the church and in African society, and he saw his job as an enabler, giving them the courage to make the moves themselves; so when they came up with an idea and asked him to act on it, he would say No, yours is the voice that should be heard.

Later in 1983, he became Director of the Family Life Movement which tried to implement the teachings of Vatican II on family life. Dick was very much taken with Humanae Vitae when it was published in 1968, and believed its practical teaching could be put into practice if the vision behind it were understood and assimilated. Of course, this was controversial, and in a sense grist to Dick's mill. With determination and humour he developed and led the organization, Famously, he introduced himself to a somewhat sceptical if not hostile international conference with a statement, that he had practiced natural family planning all his life!

So Dick had many friends, and some enemies. An example of such friendships is the message of Clare Mukolwe, now a graduate student at Fordham University in New York:
“A gentle spirit gone before us marked with a sign of faith. I was introduced to Fr Richard Cremins by my mother Grace Mukolwe. They worked together for the National Council of the Laity. Fr Cremins was also my mother's first spiritual director and he introduced Mum to the Ignatian Spirituality retreats. He gave me my first real job straight after high school. It was fun”.

Malawi --Lilongwe (1993-2007)
As a number of Malawian men had joined the Society, Malawi opened up as a mission possibility in the early 90's. Dick was sent to open a new house in Lilongwe and to develop his Family Life apostolate in that country. He worked there for 14 years, until his stroke in 2007. Like a tree being felled, he was suddenly reduced from full health to a state of great disability, both in his walking and in his speaking. He returned to Ireland via Zambia and moved into Cherryfield Lodge, his last home.

Ireland--Cherryfield (2007-2012)
Dick's approach was not one of self-pity. In his usual manner he confronted the problem head on. Getting himself as mobile as possible, and getting himself to speak with some sort of clarity was now his main goal. And with great determination, never accepting to lie down in the face of difficulty or refusal, he achieved much of what he set out to do. The sharp mind and quick wit never deserted him, even after the stroke in March 2007 which crippled and distressed him --- as with characteristic determination he set himself to recover clarity of speech.

An example of his logic and determination had to do with his wheeled walker: All wheeled walkers have two brakes, literally one on the left hand and one on the right hand. But what if your right hand doesn't work, as was the case for Dick and thousands of other stroke victims? Two-handed breaks do not work. They are positively dangerous. If you asked a car driver to break with two break pedals, he argued, there would be carnage on the roads. Why are stroke victims expected to do with two-handed breaks? Such a break doesn't exist, he was told. Should exist, he insisted, and if you won't locate one, I will do so myself. So using the Internet he located one in Sweden. Expensive, but existent. It was bought and functioned well. But he needed to redesign the right handle to suit his withered hand which design he then sent to Sweden where they made it for him and sent back to Ireland for fitting, Where Dick had a will, there was a way: Dick's way, “No” was not an option for Dick when he saw that something was possible.

And again the humour: Matron Rachel McNeil was the subject to which one of Dick's Ditties was addressed:

    Poem to Rachel
    Dick has more problems with his vowels
        than with his bowels
    And therefore needs more alcohol
        than Movicol®

Dick died six months short of his 90th birthday. Even to the end of his days in Cherryfield he was a formidable crusader for a number of causes, often a champion against the authorities, and always on the side of life – whether it was through natural family planning, or organising a draughts championship in Cherryfield for men who'd have thought their gaming days were over. He lived life to the full and to the last. In his last week in hospital he had an article accepted for publication in the Furrow, and one in the Irish Catholic. All he needed was a WiFi modem to send it to the editors. Both articles were controversial, questioning the standard version. Both rocked the boat.

Now the questioning and the rocking and the struggling are over. For those who did not know Dick, remember how a chieftain in Tanzania described him: :I know only one human being who is shaped like the paschal candle: Fr Dick Cremins, tall, thin and luminous”. His light faded for us on 21 February, but shines now in a broader heaven.

Born: 26 March 1653, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 26 November 1673, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1685, Rome, Italy
Died: 24 March 1690, Drogheda Residence, Drogheda, Co Louth

1675 In the Novitiate at St Andrea
1678 In Roman College studying Philosophy for 2 or 3 years
1681 At Sezze College
1685 In 3rd Year Theology at Roman College

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Was educated at the Jesuit School in Tournai before Ent 26 November 1673 in Rome
After First Vows and a course of Philosophy at the Roman College he spent three years Regency at the Colleges of Sezze and Fermo.
1682-1686 Sent to the Roman College for Theology and was Ordained there in 1685
1686-1688 After a short Tertianship he was sent to Irish College Poitiers as Prefect
1688 Returned to Ireland and sent to Drogheda, but died there 24 March 1690

Born: 10 June 1887, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 February 1907, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 15 August 1920, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1924, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 06 April 1951, Dublin City, County Dublin

Part of St Mary's community, Emo, County Laois at time of his death

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ.

by 1911 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1912 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 26th Year No 3 1951

Obituary :

Fr. Cuffe was born in Dublin on June 10th, 1887. He was educated in the College of the Josephite Fathers, Ghent, Belgium, and at Clongowes. He entered the Society in 1907, and after his Juniorate, studied philosophy at Louvain and St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst. As a scholastic he taught in Clongowes, Belvedere and Mungret, besides being Third Line Prefect in Clongowes and Third Club Prefect in Mungret. He studied theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1920. After his Tertianship at Tullabeg (1922-23), he was appointed Vice-Superior in the Apostolic School, Mungret, a post which he held until 1933. He was then transferred to Clongowes where, in addition to his duties as master, he had charge of the People's Church. In 1943 he was appointed Spiritual Father at St. Mary's, Emo.
During the last few years of his life he suffered from heart trouble, which steadily became more acute. Shortly before Easter of the present year he went to stay with his family at Rathnew, Co. Wicklow, where, it was hoped, a period of complete rest and quiet would revive his fast-ebbing strength, But he was soon attacked with congestion of the lungs. His case became so serious that he was transferred to a nursing home in Leeson St., Dublin, where, fortified with the rites of the Church, he peacefully died at about 7 p.m. on Friday, April 6th.
Fr. Cuffe's personality and character, simple, straightforward, honest, devout, answered in a striking manner to the description of “the just man” in Holy Scripture. For him life had no brain-bewildering, heart-aching problems, but was a plain matter-of-fact business of ordinary duties to be faithfully performed day in day out. Be was of a courteous, cheerful disposition, a pleasant companion to live with, free from every trace of moodiness or low spirits, scrupulously exact in doing the work assigned to him, and ever ready to help in times of stress and strain. He was easily disturbed, it is true, when things went wrong, but impatience was but a passing “shadow of annoyance”, swiftly fleeting across the sunny landscape of his spirit. He was, indeed, incapable of deep and enduring resentment, and I doubt if he ever said a hard word about any of his brethren.
His religious life was cast in the same mould. Upon the deep spiritual foundation laid down by him in the noviceship, he raised the solid structure of his holy life as a Jesuit. The performance of his spiritual exercises, observance of rule, progress in virtue, he never failed to regard as duties of strict obligation, which he fulfilled with edifying exactitude. During the last few months of his life on earth, when physical debility rendered him incapable of even the lightest work, he was most assiduous in prayer, with the rosary or Dolour beads constantly in his hands. Death came to him peacefully; and I can well believe that he answered the Master's call with unruffled tranquility, as though it were part of the day's routine.
To simple-hearted, faithful servants such as Fr. “Freddy” Cuffe Our Lord Himself gives testimony : “Of such is the Kingdom of God”.

◆ The Clongownian, 1951

Obituary

Father Frederick Cuffe SJ

The news of the death of Father Fred Cuffe early in April will come as a sur prise and a shock to all Old Clongownians who knew him either as a boy in the college or as an enthusiastic and energetic professor of the French language. One who knew him intimately for a quarter of a century finds it difficult to imagine any part of his life not characterised by this enthusiasm and energy. Over that considerable period one could not, on the closest observation, discover the slighest change in the principles that guided his every action, little or great. These principles were founded on a deep appreciation of the supernatural; for Fr Cuffe was above all a man of God possessed of a self-belittling humility that was never scandalised, and consequently souls were drawn to him as iron to the magnet. People who had met him only casually frequently and affectionately asked for him. Past pupils home on holidays from their labour's as priests in the far-flung mission fields of South Africa and Australia went out of their way to visit Fr Cuffe at Clongowes. His fervent sermons from the altar of the People's Church are still recalled; likewise his tender and untiring care and solicitude for the sick of the locality.

But the strongest of constitutions could not indefinitely withstand the demands of his unbounded energy and enthusiasm for God's work. Some eight years ago saw him struck down by an illness that forced him to retire from his work in Clongowes. That was doubtless a great blow to a man of such supernatural ambitions as Fr Cuffe; but here, too, the character of the man of God was apparent. Never once was he heard to murmur a word of complaint though he inust certainly have regretted that he no longer possessed his former energy to spend in the service of the well beloved Master. A cold developed while attending the Easter ceremonies in the parish church brought on a severe attack of pneumonia, which he was not strong enough to resist, and Fr Cuffe passed to a well-deserved reward. RIP

The Irish Province of the Society of Jesus is the poorer for his loss. To his brothers and sister we tender our deepest sympathy in their bereavement.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1951

Obituary

Father Frederick Cuffe SJ

It is with deep sadness that we chronicle the death of Father Frederick Cuffe, Vice-Superior of the Apostolic School (1923-'33). Though Father Cuffe has been in poor health for a number of years, bis last illness was short. On April 5th he was taken suddenly ill and died the following day in a Dublin hospital.

Father Cuffe's connection with Mungret goes back to 1917 when he came here as a Scholastic. Having himself been educated in Belgium, he was well grounded in the French language, and consequently his two years' teaching was very fruitful in its results. After his ordination in 1923; Father Cuffe returned to Mungret as Vice-Superior of the Apostolic School, Again he showed himself as a skilled and highly efficient teacher of French, but his main work lay in a different sphere. As an upholder of the highest ideals, Father Cuffe is principally remembered by the students of this time who passed under his care. Thoughtfulness, gentle ness with firmness, piety, strength of character, a great devotion to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady were the virtues that he inspired in those whom he helped to form both by word and his own example; for Father Cuffe was above all other things a saintly priest. A grotto to the Sacred Heart in the Apostolic playground bears witness to his efforts to adorn the college. The boys who passed through his hands in Mungret can each testify to his special interest in them, for he never failed to write to each of his old alumni on the occasion of their ordination, and later, when he was at Clongowes and Emo Park, was constantly inquiring about the Past whom he had known.

Two years ago we were glad to have a visit from him. It was apparent then that he was not in good health. Yet he bore his suffering with his accustomed cheerful spirit. We offer our sincere sympathy to his brother George, who was a student here, to Colonel Cuffe, DSO, and to his sisters. RIP

Born: 08 June 1881, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 18 January 1900, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1916, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1918, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Died: 16 June 1919, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

Came to Australia for Regency 1903
by 1912 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying
by 1914 in San Luigi, Napoli-Posilipo, Italy (NAP) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
After his Noviceship and owing to very delicate health, he was sent to Australia for Regency and did excellent work at Xavier College, Kew. He also spent a little while caring for his health at Sevenhill.
He returned to Ireland and carried on his studies including Theology at Naples, coming back to Ireland after three years and being Ordained here.
After Ordination he spent some years as an Assistant Missioner at Tullabeg in the Public Church. He was loved there by the people, especially by the young men. He had charge of their Sodality and increased its membership. He started a library for them, increased athletic sports, and pushed himself to help them in every way spiritual and temporal. He was very talented with very winning ways.
The end came unexpectedly. he was found dead, having suffered a hemorrhage of the lungs. He died 16 June 1919 only 38 years of age.

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
William Cullen entered the Society on 18 January 1900. From 1903-09 he taught at Xavier College, Kew, and was a prefect to the junior boarders. At the end of this time his health declined, and he spent 1910-11 at Sevenhill recuperating. His health recovered sufficiently for him to complete his studies, and he was ordained in 1916. He worked at Tullabeg after tertianship in 1917 in the house and school, but his health quietly deteriorated.

Born: 20 November 1888, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1907, Roehampton London - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 24 August 1921
Final Vows: 02 February 1925
Died: 09 May 1969, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1924 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

Born: 30 March 1924, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1942, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1957, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1960, Wah Yan College, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Died: 15 June 1972, Fujen Catholic University, Dalat, Vietnam (Kingsmead Hall, Singapore) - Hong Kong Vice-Province (Died in air crash)

Part of Kingsmead Hall community, Singapore at time of his death. Died in air crash

Transcribed : HIB to HK 03/12/1966
by 1952 at Hong Kong - Regency

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
His early education was at Belvedere College SJ, Dublin. he had a keen interest in things that moved : cars, ships, trains and planes, but above all he was interested in helping people.

His strength was his pastoral work, and particularly teaching catechistics, which he taught at the Swiss School, the Australian Army School and the International School.
He was a founder of the Road Safety Association in Hong Kong.
He also worked in Singapore where he focused on drug addiction.

he died in 1972 when the plane he was in blew up over South Vietnam.

Note from Paddy Finneran Entry
He came to Hong Kong as a young priest with Peter Dunne and 5 Scholastics - Liam Egan, Paddy Cunningham, Matt Brosnan, Tom O’Neill and Tony Farren. He spent two years at the Battery Path Language School learning Cantonese.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 47th Year No 2 1972

The tragic news of Fr Patrick Cunningham's death, together with 80 others, in the air-smash in Vietnam, reached us in the middle of June, first surmised, then confirmed. We hope to have further information later.
We offer sympathy to Fr Cunningham's brother, Frank, on the calamity.
Fr P. Cunningham's remains, after various delays, were conveyed to Dublin - Gardiner Street - 20th July. There was an Obsequial Mass concelebrated by Fr Provincial and twelve other participants on Friday 21st. R.I.P.

Irish Province News 47th Year No 4 1972

Obituary :

Fr Patrick Cunningham SJ (1924-1972)

A brief notice of the tragic death of Fr Cunningham in the middle of June and of his obsequies in Gardiner Street on July 20th was contained in the last issue of the Province News Editor.]
When we think of Fr Paddy Cunningham (PJ or Pat as his contemporaries knew him) we think of mechanical things and movement. We think of cars and aeroplanes, of launches and ships and of a man who was ever on the move. We think of a man ready at a moment's notice to address any audience on any topic what ever and in any part of the world. He would then return home and either delight or annoy his community with endless chatter about the people Pat had met and the things Pat had done. I once saw him rather obviously choose a place at recreation beside the late Fr Tommy Ryan and I heard Fr Ryan's opening remark : “Well, I suppose you're going to tell me about all your works and pomps!” Pat could be pompous at times especially when wearing one of those unnecessary uniforms he loved so well.
Never a scholar, he was a man, nonetheless, whose interests were limitless and he carried in his head an astonishing amount of factual information about all kinds of unlikely persons, places and things. He used to chuckle over a comment made by a superior who once told him that he would make an excellent railway porter with information about timetables, ticket prices and train stops at his finger-tips. But you could not be sure of the information at Pat's finger-tips. He never could say, “I don't know” or “I'll check that for you”. To any question he always made an immediate and definite reply and he would be right a surprising eighty per cent or so of the time. The trouble was you never knew which twenty per cent was not correct so you always had to verify Pat's statements.
On 7th September 1942 twenty three novices entered Emo, five of them from Belvedere and Patrick Joseph Cunningham was one of these. It was not long till he made his presence felt especially at Socius' Conferences where we looked forward to his shared reflections, observations and suggestions which were never dull and often sensational. Once he suggested that a novice should be appointed to collect the skin from on top of the hot milk - enough could be collected each morning, Pat assured us, to make a plastic egg-cup. That was Fr Brendan Brennan's first year as Socius and he never quite knew how to manage Brother Cunningham.
In Rathfarnham Pat was more at home ... not because it gave him an opportunity for study but because Dublin was the place where Pat was born and he knew Dublin street by street. Indeed if one believed him he knew everyone who lived in every street - at least everyone who mattered. He claimed connections at managerial level with many commercial firms and not only scholastics but fathers, too, were taken in by this. More than one man entered Dublin firms on Pat's recommendation hoping to get special terms by using his name only to discover that nobody in the firm knew a Patrick Cunningham. Tullabeg meant back to the country and Pat was essentially a city man and his three years there might have been trying ones for him were it not for the building of the swimming pool in which he was deeply involved. He also claimed a multitude of relations in the neighbourhood.
Then came his appointment to Hong Kong and his influence with people really blossomed. No one would rate him an expert at the Chinese language and yet he could somehow establish contact with Chinese people in almost any dialect. But he did not confine his apostolate to Chinese people. He had a universal love for mankind and a desire to help wherever help was needed. A characteristic he revealed in Emo was a generosity with his time and a readiness to go to the assistance of anybody and this characteristic he never lost. He was a man for others. He loved people and served them. Thus, as well as the boys in our schools, the groups he worked for or with in Hong Kong included Chinese hostesses from Cathay Pacific Airways, British Airforce personnel, Rotary Clubs, Road Safety Associations, to say nothing of the seamen of varied nationalities that he dealt with in his work for the Apostleship of the Sea.
The pattern in Singapore was the same as the following paragraphs from Father Liam Egan testify :
“In a little less than two years in Singapore Pat had won an astonishing number of friends and admirers. ... Pastoral work, and in particular, catechetical work proved to be his forte. To those of us who knew him well his success with children and especially with teenagers both boys and girls and of all nationalities was incredible.
He taught catechism in two convent schools, in the Swiss school, the Australian Army School, the International School and the children loved him. Not only did he teach them but he established an extraordinary rapport with them. He organised a weekly evening session in Kingsmead Hall for the “tough” teenagers of the American School and the International School. They attended in ever increasing numbers: they brought their friends : some of them brought their parents. They became enthusiastic about their religion, possibly for the first time in years”.
And then came the fatal air-disaster of 15th June and with it the end of life for Pat at the age of 48. He loved to be alive and he loved to be on the move and for one who was liable to turn up almost anywhere at almost any time it is hard to believe that he won't turn up again. An enquiry into the cause of the crash established that it was caused by a bomb placed on the plane in Bangkok and which exploded over Vietnam. The exceptionally large crowds that turned out for requiem Masses offered for him at Singapore and Hong Kong bear testimony to the love and esteem that so many had for him. He will be remembered by many for a long time. May he rest in peace.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1962

Belvederians On The Hong Kong Mission

Just before Easter, Fr Paddy Joy SJ gave a talk in the gym on the Irish Jesuit Mission in Hong Kong.

Father Pat Cunningham SJ
Father Cunningham is in charge of this Apostleship of the Sea, and flies the papal flag on the smartest launch on the harbour. He has vitalised this work, which had just got beyond its growing pains, and he is “on the job” in a way that has won wide attention. Last yeat, after attending the Sea Apostolate convention in Rome he toured most of the important ports in Europe and Asia. to see what is being done, and he will not be happy until he has made Hong Kong as good as the best for Catholic seamen. Twelve ships visit Hong Kong every day and none of them escapes his notice. Father McAsey and he dovetail their work excellently and between them they have gained the goodwill of ships of all flags.

Transport is one of Father Cunningham's surprising interests, and it has brought him into connection with our local traffic problems. He is known to many as a member of the Port Welfare Committee, but when a “Road Safety” committee was brought into being he was roped on to it and promptly made chairman. He has given lectures and addresses and interviews on the subject, and has won the special goodwill of the Police Traffic Department because of the practical help that he is giving in keeping blood off the roads.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1965

Sons of Xavier

Father Pat Cunningham (1942). For several years Father Pat Cunningham kept the flag of the Apostleship of the Sea flying very prominently in our harbour-which ac cording to our local statisticians was visited by over 27,000 ships last year in addition to its own 20,000 local craft. Now that he is engaged on land activities he is as a ubi quitous on shore as he ever was on land. In addition to being Assistant Prefect of Studies, and Prefect of Discipline as well as teacher, he has taken a very prominent part in the promotion of “road safety”. All his life he has been interested in everything that moves on wheels, and is greatly annoyed at the number of pedestrians that get in the way of vehicles on our roads. As those statisticians to whom I already referred tell us that there is a vehicle for every 200 feet on our roads and as those are more than 31 million people use those roads, it is not surprising that we have an abundance of accidents, with 20 killed every month and nearly 1000 injured. Father Cunningham is President of a Road Safety Association and in this capacity is heard frequently on the radio and in addresses to various organisations.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1972

Obituary

Father Patrick J Cunningham SJ (’42)

Father Paddy was killed in an air disaster over Vietnam. The cause of the disaster has not yet been made public. It was a fitting death for him and I am sure he would not have had it otherwise.

When he left school he entered the Society and very soon got a reputation for getting things done - no matter what the things were. For such a man the missions offered limitless scope and as soon as he could he went out on the Chinese mission and remained on it till his death. The most obliging of men nothing was too trivial, nothing too arduous for him to undertake. The following appreciation of him appeared in the “Evening Press”.

A Hong Kong meeting. between the then bosun of the Irish Larch and Father Paddy Cunningham, the Dublin born Jesuit who died tragically in Thursday's Vietnam air disaster, is recalled by the bosun, Joe Fay, in the following article:

“Thousands of seamen from all over the world, including many from behind the “Iron Curtain” will hear with deep regret the death of Fr Patrick Joseph Cunningham, a Dublin Jesuit, who was killed in an air crash in South Vietnam.

He wasn't only a good soldier of Jesus, but he was also a good sailor for him. To many mariners he was known as just plain Paddy and others referred to him as affectionately as the “Vatican Skipper” or “The Commodore Chief of the Vatican Navy”.

How well I remember my first meeting with Paddy. It was the day after we anchored off Hong Kong. Some of the crew and I were loading cargo from the Irish Larch into Chinese junks, It was somewhere near the middle of summer in 1963. At about 10.15 am, the deck boy came along to me on the after deck and said, ‘Bosun, there's a quare looking boat coming along side with sailors in funny looking uniforms’. At this time the sweat was running out of us and I was just about to tell him to go and get stuffed when he said, “Honest to the living Bosun, there
is a funny looking boat alongside”.

I looked over the side and saw a beautiful large motor launch with what looked like Chinese crew boys dressed in navy uniforms in the Vatican colours of yellow and white.. On the small bridge stood a tall well-muscled slim man well over six feet tall. He was wearing a dark grey uniform with a Roman collar. On the stern of the Launch the Vatican flag was flying and underneath, the name Stella Maris and below that the words Reg in the Vatican. I knew that this was the man I had heard referred to in many ports I had visited as the “Vatican Skipper”.

He came up the gangway looking at me and said: “Céad Míle Fáilte”. I felt a right mug and looking for a quick answer I said: “Sorry me ould flower, I only speak Dublinese”. He put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Don't worry I'm a Jackeen Myself’. I then asked him if I'd take him up to the officers' mess and he replied: ‘Let the gold braid wait. I can see them later, but I would like to have a little talk with the five-eights’. As it was only a few minutes to go for smoko (tea break) I blew the men up and we all went into the crew's messroom.

It must have been one of the longest tea breaks on record as it lasted about an hour and a half. His love and knowledge of Dublin was fantastic. He knew the Liberties and Dublin dockland like the back of his hand, We spoke about Biddy Slicker and her barrel organs. He knew a lot about the old Dublin boxing fraternity and names like Spike McCormack and Paddy Dowdell came as easy to him as if he had lived next door.

Next morning he came aboard and said Mass. I'm sure he helped to bring our native shores closer to all the crew. I am sure when you meet your maker, Paddy, he will give yon the job of chartering a steady course for many seamen in the years to come”.

Evening Press

Born: 29 December 1924, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 02 October 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1959, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 06 January 1978, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 14 August 1999, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

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

by 1949 at Laval, France (FRA) studying
by 1985 at Regis Toronto, Canada (CAN S) Sabbatical

Born: 19 June 1794, Tramore, County Waterford
Entered: 10 October 1814, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 12 June 1824, St Patrick's College, Maynooth, County Kildare
Final vows: 02 February 1833
Died: 10 November 1885, St Francis Xavier, Upper Gardiner St, Dublin

Vice-Provincial of Irish Vice-Province of the Society of Jesus: 19 March 1850-1856
in Clongowes 1817

Ordained at St Patrick’s College Maynooth, 12 June 1824, having studied Theology at Clongowes

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica”:
His father was a very prosperous master cooper. His sister was an Ursuline of Waterford, and also an authoress.
He has written interesting memoirs of some of his contemporaries of the Irish Province, which are in the HIB Archives. He published a book on the Spiritual Exercises

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Ordained at Maynooth 12/06/1824 by Dr Murray.
1834-1842 Sent as Rector to Tullabeg
1842 Appointed Superior of Gardiner St
1850 Appointed Vice-Provincial
1856 Sent as Operarius to Gardiner St
1864 Appointed Superior of Gardiner St again
1871 He worked as Operarius at Gardiner St Church until his death there 10/11/1885
The last few years of his life saw great suffering. He bore it all with great patience and died with a reputation for great sanctity.
He had published a book on the Spiritual Exercises, and was preparing another before he died.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Curtis, John
by Patrick M. Geoghegan

Curtis, John (1794–1885), Jesuit provincial, was born 19 June 1794 at Tramore, Co. Waterford, second son among eight children of Stephen Curtis and Fanny Curtis (née Evers). Blind until the age of 3, he claimed that he was cured after a priest prayed over him, although he remained partially blind in one eye for the rest of his life. The priest told Curtis that God had restored his sight for His own glory; this was to be an important determinant in his life. Educated in Tramore, in 1810 he went to Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. He received an injury while playing football there, which was to cause him great pain throughout his life. Believing he had a religious mission, in 1814 he joined the Jesuits. The order sent him to Clongowes Wood, Co. Kildare, where he acted as prefect and later master. He had a reputation for being strict but fair. Ordained in 1824, he left Clongowes in 1829 and spent two years in Dublin, before spending a further two years in Rome. He made his solemn profession of final vows 2 February 1833 in Dublin. In May 1834 he was appointed rector of Tullabeg College in King's Co. (Offaly), and was first to assume the office of superior. From there he began a series of church retreats that proved very successful. He became rector of the Jesuit residence in Gardiner St., Dublin, in 1843, and provincial of the Jesuits in Ireland.

Curtis was an enthusiastic supporter of the apostleship of prayer in Ireland, and may even have been its central director for a period. When John Henry Newman (qv) went to Dublin in 1854 to investigate the possibility of a university, the first person he met was Curtis. Pessimistic about the scheme, Curtis informed Newman that the class of youths did not exist in Ireland who would come to the university: the middle class was too poor, and the upper class would send their children to TCD. He argued that the whole idea was hopeless and should be given up. Newman does not appear to have taken this criticism kindly, and later disputed just how good a man Curtis was. A tour of the country, however, convinced Newman that Curtis had a point and that there was no natural class in Ireland from which to draw university students in great number.

Curtis was noted for his strong moral character and his formal, if rather stiff, manner. Archbishop Paul Cullen (qv) of Dublin held him in high regard and is reported to have remarked that Curtis had a free rein to do what he liked in the diocese. In his spare time he enjoyed both cricket and football. He died 10 November 1885 and was buried at Glasnevin cemetery. Two of his sisters, Mary and Ellen, became Ursuline nuns. His niece, Fanny, also became a nun.

Edward Purbrick (ed.), Life of Father John Curtis (1891); Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: a biography (1988); Louis McRedmond, Thrown among strangers: John Henry Newman in Ireland (1990); id., To the greater glory: a history of the Irish Jesuits (1991)

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Curtis 1794-1885
John Curtis was born in Waterford in 1794, and he entered the Society only shortly restored in 1814.

From 1834-1842 he was rector at Tullabeg, and then Superior at Gardiner Street until 1851. He was nominated Vice-Provincial in 1850. After six years in office, he returned to the ranks and worked as an Operarius in Gardiner Street, till his second periodf of Superiority in 1864.

He laboured earnestly in the Church for the rest of his life, the last few years of which were years of great suffering. He died on November 10th 1885, leaving a reputation for great sanctity.

He published a book on the Spiritual Exercises and wrote interesting memoirs of his contemporaries, which have proven very useful towards the history of the Province.

Born: 1579, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 19 September 1605, Tournai, Belgium - Belgicae Province (BELG)
Ordained: 1610, Antwerp Belgium
Final Vows: 31 March 1624
Died: 02 November 1647, Dublin City, County Dublin

Studied in Ireland and Douai becoming Master of Arts. Studied 3 years Moral Theology at Antwerp
1609 Teacher of Grammar
1610 was a Priest
1611 In 3rd year Theology; Came to Ireland
1622 was in Belgium
1629 Rector in Dublin
1611 Catalogue BELG Moderate abilities, tenacious in own opinion. Does not know Irish but would be useful on Irish Mission. Agreeable manner would make a good Minister or Procurator
1621 Catalogue On Irish Mission with good health, talent and judgement. Always calm, sermons are praised. Would be a good Superior

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of Henry and Mary née Brandon
Studied Humanities for six years partly at Antwerp and partly at Douai, graduating there MA.
Admitted to Society by Father Manoereus, Provincial of Belgium (Tournay Diary p 617, No 1016)
He is named in the letter of Father Lawndry (Holiwood) to the Superior of the Irish Mission 04/11/1611, by which stage he was continuing studies. (IER April 1874, p 292)
Professor of Greek; A good Preacher; Rector in Dublin 1629
(cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Henry and Margaret née Brandon
Had studied at Antwerp and later at Douai where he graduated MA before Ent 19 September 1605 Tournai
After First Vows he was sent to Antwerp for studies and was Ordained there in 1610
1611 Sent to Ireland and the Dublin Residence, but returned to Belgium to complete his studies at Louvain 1621-1622
1622 Came to Dublin and was initially Rector at the College in Back Lane. Though this College did not last long, he remained in Dublin all of his further life up to his death, and indeed stayed in the city during the mass expulsions of 1641-1642. He died in Dublin 02/11/1647
While in Dublin he offered strenuous opposition to the mischief-making priest Paul Harris and the former Jesuit Michael Cantwell, who were determined to cause a rift between the secular and regular clergy.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CUSACK, HENRY. His services for the Irish Mission were required in February,1622

Born: 29 August 1918, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1936, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1949, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Della Strada, Dooradoyle, Limerick
Died: 06 March 2003, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Belvedere College SJ, Dublin community at the time of death.

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 123 : Special Issue February 2005

Obituary

Fr Patrick (Paddy) Cusack (1918-2003)

29th Aug. 1918: Born in Dublin
Early education in Dominican Convent, Eccles Street, and CBS, Richmond Street
7th Sept. 1936: Entered the Society at Emo
8th Sept. 1938: First Vows at Emo
1938 - 1941: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1941 - 1944: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1944 - 1946: Crescent College, Limerick - Regency
1946 - 1950: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1949: Ordained at Milltown Park
1950 - 1951: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1951 - 1953: Mungret College - Teaching
1953 - 1954: Clongowes -Teaching
1954 - 1959: Mungret - Teaching, Spiritual Director (Boys)
1959 - 1968: Emo:
1959 - 1961: Master of Novices
1961 - 1968: Rector; Master of Novices
1968 - 1974: Mungret:
1968 - 1971: Spiritual Director (Boys); Teacher
1971 - 1974: Rector; Teacher
(Mungret closed Summer '74)
1974 - 1978: Sullivan House - Director Spiritual Exercises; Member of Spirituality Centre
1978 - 1983: Dooradoyle - Chaplain; Teacher; Spiritual Director (pupils)
1983 - 1984: Tullabeg - Co-ordinator of Apostolate.
1984 - 1989: Leeson Street - Spiritual Exercises & Retreats
1989 - 2003: Belvedere:
1989 - 1990: Spiritual Exercises
1990 - 1992: College Confessor
1992 - 1993: Asst.Pastoral Care Co-ordinator
1993 - 1994: Adult Education on Prayer
1994 - 2003: Director Spiritual Exercises; Adult Prayer Education; College Confessor
6th March 2003 Died at Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

After a long illness, borne peacefully and patiently, Paddy died at Cherryfield Lodge in the presence of family members and Father Eddie FitzGerald from the Milltown community.

Kevin Laheen writes:
Paddy Cusack had just left for Rathfarnham when I arrived in Emo in 1938. The novices who were still in Emo remembered him very well and gave us, newcomers, a fair picture of him. Some said he was fervent, others described him as edifying, while Sean O'Connor, (my 'Angelus' and now a missioner in Nairobi) said he was meticulous. When I got to know him in Rathfarnham he certainly lived up to the reputation he had earned for himself in Emo. But I learned a lot more about him as the months in the Castle passed. He was a placid man whom nothing could ruffle, but in our eyes there was a downside to him. He had no athletic ability and no taste for games. He never played tennis, nor handball, but because he felt it was the will of God he turned out to play that is the wrong word) football, for he was essentially a passenger on the field. He once brought a book to the pitch to have a little read just in case nobody passed the ball to him. They never did.

When I joined him in Tullabeg he had become a great reader. He never again ventured on to the football pitch but in his many long walks, aided by his musical ear, he had become an expert in identifying the birds by listening to their songs - in Tullabeg their name was legion. Apart from our days in Milltown Park prior to ordination, I never lived with him again until we both were stationed in Mungret. There he was a good teacher but his appointment to the post of Spiritual Father to the boys gave a pointer to what would occupy him for the rest of his life. Apart from his days as the last Rector of the college, all his work for the rest of his life was associated with spiritual formation. As Master of Novices I am sure that many of his novices would enrich this picture of him by adding their own memories.

He was a great friend of the nuns all over the country. There was many a convent that had an open door and a bed for the night whenever he found himself stranded between retreats. The number of Long Retreats he directed exceeded thirty, and he had a particular weakness for the convent that had a piano. Paddy was a lover of the piano but he hesitated to play before an audience. As he pursued his nomadic life he always tucked away in his case a few sheets of piano music, with a preference for Mendelssohn. Towards the end of his life when the burden of travel became too heavy he spent longs periods at Knock Shrine assisting many people with guided prayer. He became known as the “be still and know that I am God” priest for that was how he always began his prayer sessions. His name is still remembered there with affection and appreciation.

During my own sojourn in Cherryfield, Paddy paid a few short visits. He had become more quiet, took little part in recreation, spent more time in the chapel or pacing up and down the corridor. When able, his great achievement was to take a trip into the city and have a cup of coffee in Bewleys, and later he would talk of it as a real triumph. The end came rather suddenly and I am sure he had the support of the prayers of the thousands whom he had helped during his life as a priest. May he rest in peace.

Born: 21 January 1933, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 24 May 1964, Clongowes Wood College SJ, County Kildare
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, Catholic Workers College, Dublin
Died: 01 June 2014, Blackrock Clinic, Dublin

Part of the Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin community at the time of death.

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

Father Provincial of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus : 01 September 1980-1986

by 2003 at Mwangaza Nairobi, Kenya (AOR) working

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/joe-dargan-vision-and-task/

Joe Dargan: vision and task

It is rare for us to mourn such a servant of the Irish Jesuits as Joe Dargan. His looks were unremarkable: small, bespectacled, usually smiling. He was sturdy, a wing forward on Clongowes cup teams. His friends would describe Joe’s style of rugby as robust. It showed the steely determination hidden under a mild façade.

Wherever he went, he was landed with responsibility: starting with Third Line Prefect in Clongowes (he commented ”In 1958 when I volunteered to go to Zambia, I was told that my Zambia was to be Third Line prefect in Clongowes.”). He went on to be Director of the Province Social Survey, Rector of Emo, of Manresa (twice), of Clongowes, of Gonzaga, and of Belvedere. He was Master of Novices, Instructor of Tertians, Pastoral planning Consultant to the Irish Bishops, and also to the Major Religious Superiors (CMRS), director of the Manresa Centre of Spirituality, Socius to the Provincial, and Provincial. They never made him General, though it’s said that they thought of thrusting a bishopric on him.

You’d imagine that a man with such a gift for administration might be a nerdy type, with rows of secretaries ticking boxes for him. Joe was indeed a methodical man, who consulted wisely, prayed before making decisions, and stayed on the job till it was complete. For instance, he not merely designed the tertianship house in Manresa, but visited the site every day, made friends with the workmen, and so created a beautiful, functional building.

When, as rector of Belvedere, he had to raise funds for a school building, he showed his ability to balance the short-term and the long-term issues. As he put it to groups which he addressed: “A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope for the future.” Parents were constantly reminded that education was the greatest gift they could leave to their children. With this vision before them, Joe and his collaborators worked on a 30-year plan. Part of the process entailed winning over all the constituents of the college: the Jesuit community, boys, teachers past and present, and past pupils. The target was four million pounds, and Belvedere passed it. If it has received generously, it also gives generously. Between their various projects Belvedere boys raise about a quarter of a million euro annually for charity. It is that vision of men for others, rather than lists of figures, that made these years a stimulating time for Joe Dargan rather than a begging bowl nightmare.

What people remember of Joe, however, is not so much his administrative ability as his kindness, and his readiness to give his time lavishly. He was every inch a priest, with a special gift for being with those in their last illness. It was probably this ease in his priestly role, coupled with his passion for sport, that underlay his friendship with Alex Ferguson of Manchester United.

When he was told some very few months ago that his illness was terminal, Joe was immediately filled with consolation and gratitude for the key people in his life – those he had met and loved, in his family, in the Society, in those extraordinarily rich friendships that he so enjoyed with such beloved friends, male andfemale. As the doctor actually spoke to him, those people’s names and images passed before his inner eye and he was filled with joy and gratitude. Most of us would have sunk at such a moment: not Joe, because the gratitude was to God and to those who were God’s hands and eyes and ears for him in this life.

A friend remarked that Joe was the most extraordinary of ordinary men, unthreatening, affable, and open to the Lord, who achieved great things through him.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 157 : Autumn 2014

Obituary

Fr Joe Dargan (1933-2014)

21 January 1933: Bom in Dublin.
Early education at Dominican Convent, Eccles Street, Dublin, Belvedere, Rockwell College and Clongowes Wood College
7 September 1950: Entered the Society at Emo
8 September 1952 First Vows at Emo
1952 - 1955: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1955 - 1958: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1958 - 1961: Clongowes – Third Line Prefect: Teacher
1961 - 1965: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
24 May 1964: Ordained at Clongowes Wood College
1965 - 1966: Rathfarnham – Tertianship
1966 - 1968: CIR – Director of Province Social Survey
2nd February 1968: Final Vows at CIR
1968 - 1969: Emo - Rector & Master of Novices
1969 - 1974: Manresa House – Rector and Master of Novices
1974 - 1977: Manresa - Rector; Director Centre of Spirituality
1977 - 1979: Clongowes - Rector; Asst. Provincial (visitor)
1979 - 1980: Socius to Provincial
1980 - 1986: Loyola House - Provincial
1986 - 1987: Loyola House - Sabbatical, assisted CMRS
1987 - 1993: Gonzaga - Rector & CMRS General Secretary
1993 - 2002: Belvedere - Rector; Consultant to Bishops on Pastoral Planning; Belvedere – Rector; Consultant to Bishops on Pastoral Planning (until 1997) Chair of Boards of Management of Manresa and Belvedere College.
2005 - 2014: Manresa – Vice-Rector; Tertian Director
2006 - 2012: Manresa Rector; Tertian Director
2012 - 2014: Vice-Rector and Tertian Director

Joe was not feeling well for some weeks and went into the Blackrock Clinic on March 23rd. Tests revealed extensive cancer. He accepted the results and the prognosis with grace and faith, continuing to reach out to people over the following weeks. There was a gradual decline in his condition and he died peacefully on Ascension Sunday morning. May he rest in the Peace of Christ

Since Fr Joseph Dargan, or just Joe (as I came to know him), passed away on the day we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension, he has been pointing not to himself but to the God he loved. In the manner of his dying, down to the very timing, and at his funeral, he was asking us to grapple with the question in the first reading at the funeral Mass from Deutero-Isaiah: “Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges: can you not see it?” He was inviting us to listen to the message of hope and encouraging us to live out of that hope. The words of St. Patrick's Breastplate have been reverberating in my mind these past days:

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me.

These words represent the key to understanding what Joe desired, and the reality to which he pointed in all his interactions with us, when talking of God or mammon (in the form of Manchester United) - and everything in between.

The American Poet, Mary Oliver, in Honey Locust, describes a tree, native to North America, in blossom and the bees seeking the nectar:

The bees circle the tree and dive into it.
They are crazy with gratitude,
They are working like farmers.
They are as happy as saints.

I am going to frame my words around these lines.

The bees circle the tree and dive into it
This is the disposition that Fr. Joe brought to everything he did. He engaged fully. He dived into life, in whatever circumstances: in Manresa, in the then CMRS, in Gonzaga, Clongowes and Belvedere, in Mwangaza, in Loyola. And in whatever role, from Provincial to spiritual director, from Chair of the Board to lover of family, and so on.

And how he loved bis family: while I name only his brother Michael (or Mick) and his beloved sister Mairéad, they stand for all the family, those who have gone before Joe, those here present including the 18 nieces and grandnieces - not forgetting the nephews, including Joe the younger. He also enjoyed the deepest of friendships. And I have often thought that his great gift of being able to relate with women was modelled on the way that Jesus himself related to women in the Gospels, Joe engaged with all persons in the fullest way possible.

The bees are crazy with gratitude
Joe had almost zero concern for the material things of this world. As a. novice, I remember a fellow novice speculating one day that he thought that Joe had only one pair of shoes: in fact, watching thereafter, we never saw him in other than that one sturdy, black pair. That's not to deny that he didn't enjoy being able to stream the big football game - say Man U at home to Liverpool this season! But when challenged about such a worldly use of the computer, Joe would say simply, that the computer is merely an apostolic aid!' He was truly indifferent to worldly possessions. Given that significant business people who came to know him well, even to depend on him in some measure, would say that had Joe chosen a different path, that he would undoubtedly have been a very successful businessperson, we might ask ourselves, what is the source of his indifference to worldly goods?

The answer in significant part lies in the reading from Deutero Isaiah. Like the exiled Jewish people in Babylonia, so Joe needed to hear - and did hear at the deepest level of his being - those words from God through the prophet:

“I regard you as precious, since you are honoured and I love you. Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you. No need to remember past events. Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges: can you not see it?”

These words were heard as being addressed to him - and to each of us! It intrigued Joe that the reading ends with a big question: “Can you, can we, not see it?” In the Ascension, God did something new with Jesus and it emerges that there is hope and that hope is grounded in the death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God. And, in his dying on the Feast of the Ascension, God did something new in Joseph. Can you not see it?

Out of this was born the person that Joe became: a most grateful person.

When he was told some very few months ago that his illness was terminal, Joe was immediately filled with consolation and gratitude for the key people in his life - those he had met and loved, in his family, in the Society, in those extraordinarily rich friendships that he so enjoyed with such beloved friends, male and female. As the doctor actually spoke to him, those people's names and images passed before his inner eye and he was filled with joy and gratitude.

Most of us would have sunk at such a moment: not Joe, because the gratitude was to God and to those who were God's hands and eyes and ears for him in this life.

But, to be clear, Joe was not like a plastic or alabaster statue. As a young Jesuit student in Rathfarnham and Tullabeg and Milltown, he would come from his room, football boots in his hands, pay a visit to the Blessed Sacrament on the way to the pitch, pray intensely out of gratitude to God - and then go out on the pitch and hack down anyone who dared to try and pass him, leaving his opponent sprawling on the ground, with Joe standing over him, full of concern!

And in the spirit of consolation that sustained him in recent weeks, on being visited by Mr. Gerard Foley, currently headmaster of Belvedere, Joe's mischievous sense of humour enabled him to whisper, Thank God you came in to Belvedere when you did: that other fellow left an awful mess!'

Gratitude and grace - the latter understood as relationship with God - and consolation - but never without bite, never without humour!

The bees around the honey locust are working like farmers
Out of that spirit of gratitude, I suspect that unlike most of us, Joe wasted very few moments during his 81+ years. He gave his all to every project and to every person: in his presence, one never felt that Joe had to be elsewhere - you got his undivided attention.

From sticking faithfully to a physiotherapist's instructions, to thorough engagement with the Irish Province social survey in response to Vatican II back in the 1960's, to the meticulous attention to detail in the planning document, Our Mission in Ireland drawn up during his time as Provincial - strategic planning was a prominent feature of every work that he engaged in, not least with the CMRS - down to the legacy that is the tertianship today, co-created with his Dutch colleague Fr. Jan van de Poll - in all of that, the focus was always on the mission, to bring the love of Christ to the other.

Who knows how many lives he saved - I mean that in the deepest sense - through his love-enriched, Christ-focused interaction with so many people, bom of the Spiritual Exercises, of his love of the poor - witness his work in Africa, his work on the bursary programme in Belvedere, his reception of the orphans from Africa every summer - and of his love of the Church?

In the Letter to the Ephesians, read like Deutero-Isaiah at his funeral, St Paul prays for his “hidden self to grow strong”. Richard Rohr says somewhere that “the True Self is that part of you who knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you are - but thinking doesn't make it so”. Throughout his life, Joe took the risk of going deeper, below the ego, to discern “who and whose” we are. Joe lived the self-reflective prayer of Ignatius known as the Examen. He truly devoted himself to prayer and reflection. And so his “hidden self” grew out of and into God, into Jesus Christ, enriched greatly through his love of Mary, the Mother of God, and of the Church, and of the Society of Jesus.

Everything he did was to try to get us on the same path, knowing it was the way to genuine inner peace and contentment for each of us. In the prayerful words of the late Pedro Arrupe S), former General of the Society:

Grant me, O Lord, to see everything with new eyes,
To discern and test the spirits
That help me read the signs of the times,
To relish the things that are yours
and to communicate them to others.
Give me the clarity of understanding that you gave Ignatius'.

This became Joe's own prayer.

In a wonderful little piece, Leonard Cohen asks, “what is a saint?”:

A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos....but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have amongst us such (persons), such balancing monsters of love.

Joe was just such a person, filled with the energy of love and with that balance. He knew, of course, that it is in Christ that an ever deeper hope resides.

But this is not to go back to the alabaster statue. A Jesuit friend and I went out to dinner one night, in a restaurant very close to Manresa. (I remember it well because I paid!) This mutual friend put a little idea into our heads: why not call in to visit Joe on the way home, but not tell him why we were there together, leaving him with the impression that the Provincial had given us a very important task, on behalf of the Province, which we were not free to talk about! We didn't have to travel far into Manresa: there was Joe walking the upper path, rosary beads in hand. At every opportunity, for months after, indeed for the past couple of years, Joe never missed an opportunity to try to find out what was going on. He was innately curious. He loved to know what was going on.

A Board colleague of the time reminded me of a Board meeting in Belvedere in the days when Belvedere was well run!) when, as headmaster, I conveyed some information about an issue to do with rugby (of all things!). Joe, sitting next to me, rounded on me and asked if I was informing the Board of this matter or asking their opinion. A bit perplexed, I - allegedly - floundered and said I supposed I was informing the Board. Joe's two hands stretched out, in a familiar gesture of his and said: “Fine, fine, that's fine - because if you were asking us, I wouldn't agree with you!” Saintly, but as cute as a fox, wise as the serpent, simple as the dove.

Like his fellow Jesuits, he knew himself to be a sinner yet loved by Jesus: on his sick-bed he acknowledged that he had made mistakes in his life, but that these were forgotten and forgiven.

Those bees are as happy as saints
The integrity, the consistency of the spoken word and gesture, and the manner of his dying, confirm for us that Joe meant what he said, and said what he meant.

He understood himself and each one of us to be a new creation, and that in life and in death we give witness to the Resurrection. All this in faith and in hope. He made as his own Pedro Arrupe's prayer in his own illness:

Now more than ever I find myself in the hands of God.
This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.
But now there is a difference:
The initiative is entirely with God.
It is indeed a profound spiritual experience
To know and feel myself so totally in God's hands!

In recent times, Joe was unable to celebrate Mass: a Sister friend suggested to me the other evening that this was his time to be, like Pierre Teillhard de Chardin SJ, offering his “Mass on the world”. Once, when in China, Teillhard had no bread or wine with which to celebrate Mass. He expressed his deep love for the Eucharist in his essay of that name, which begins:

Since once again, Lord .... I have neither bread nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

Joe chose the funeral Mass reading from Matthew's Gospel because the words, “This is My body - this is My blood”, were the centre-piece of his vocation. These, he said as he faced death, are the most important words to say at that hour.

In the final lines of Honey Locust, Mary Oliver writes:

So it is if the heart has devoted itself to love,
There is not a single inch of emptiness.
Gladness gleams all the way to the grave.

A fitting epitaph for Joe, as God in him and throughout his life, says to us: “Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges: can you not see it?!”

Leonard Moloney

Joe Dargan: Three Memories

Brendan Staunton

First memory:
During my first year theology in Milltown, Joe asked me to come to Manresa on Sunday mornings and introduce the novices to literature. So I'd cross the city on my Honda 50, with Saul Bellow, Ayn Rand, James Joyce and Co., in tow. The rhetoric of fiction was closer to my existential concerns than the theological questions we were being fed. In fact, the fare was all answers to issues and battles fought long before our time. So the answers were stale. The waves of Vatican Two were approaching, however, onto Irish shores, and Milltown, broadly speaking, was receptive and open to the experiential and empirical. So Joe's invitation was a Godsend, and at the end of our two-hour sessions he would hand me a ten pound note, saying “that's for petrol”! (Less than two would fill the tank!)

Second Memory:
I'm about to go on Tertianship. Joe calls. He had been at a function in The Red House, where Dermot Ryan had complained about all the Religious going abroad to be trained for formation work Particularly the USA. Joe, Head of CORI, told him he had someone at home now who had trained in London. So the idea of Loreto House was born, and I was asked to set it up and get it going with two Sisters. And the rest is history!

Third Memory:
We are in Rome for a month's Conference on the Spiritual Exercises, attended by 101 people, mostly Jesuits, but also other religious and lay collaborators from 40 countries. The approach is mostly academic: content orientated; lecture style; dense and heavy. Starting with Fr General, the lecturers were all stately, formal figures from the Greg. After three long mornings, Joe raised his hand, and asked a question. A huge burst of applause broke out! Only Joe would have got away with it, as there was no offense heard, but the feedback hit the nail on the head. The fact of his being a previous Provincial probably helped too, and the talks and afternoon sessions became more experiential and participative.

◆ The Clongownian, 2014

Obituary

Father Joe Dargan SJ

“Fr Joe Dargan SJ who died in June, had been ill for the previous three months” - writes the Headmaster, Fr Moloney. “Fr. Joe was at school in Clongowes, where he won a JCT medal and served as Captain of the College. He joined the Jesuits straight from school, returning as Third Line Prefect from 1958-61 and as Rector in the late 1970's before going on to be Provincial of the Irish Province (1980-'86). Until recently he was Tertian Master at Manresa House in Dublin. In his time he was also Master of Novices, Rector of Belvedere (1993-2002), spiritual director at the Jesuit Retreat House in Nairobi, and Director and Rector of Manresa Retreat House. He was a great person, accepting the results and prognosis of recent medical tests with grace and faith, continuing to reach out to people over the past few weeks, He died peacefully on Ascension Sunday morning”.

We print the following tribute to Fr Joe, Courtesy of Irish Jesuit News ...

Joe Dargan: vision and task

It is rare for us to mourn such a servant of the Irish Jesuits as Joe Dargan. His looks were unremarkable: small, bespectacled, and usually smiling. He was sturdy, a wing forward on Clongowes cup teams. His friends would describe Joe's style of rugby as robust. It showed the steely determination hidden under a mild façade.

Whereverhewent, he was landed with responsibility, starting with Third Line Prefect in Clongowes (he commented “In 1958 when I volunteered to go to Zambia, I was told that my Zambia was to be Third Line prefect in Clongowes”.). He went on to be Director of the Province Social Survey, Rector of Emo, of Manresa (twice), of Clongowes, of Gonzaga, and of Belvedere. He was Master of Novices, Instructor of Tertians, Pastoral Planning Consultant to the Irish Bishops, and also to the Major Religious Superiors (CMRS), director of the Manresa Centre of Spirituality, Socius to the Provincial, and Provincial. They never made him General, though it's said that they thought of thrusting a bishopric on him.

You'd imagine that a man with such a gift for administration might be a nerdy type, with rows of secretaries ticking boxes for him. Joe was indeed a methodical man, who consulted wisely, prayed before making decisions, and stayed on the job till it was complete. For instance, he not merely designed the tertianship house in Manresa, but visited the site every day, made friends with the workmen, and so created a beautiful, functional building.

When, as rector of Belvedere, he had to raise funds for a school building, he showed his ability to balance the short-term and the long-term issues. As he put it to groups, which he addressed: “A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope for the future”. Parents were constantly reminded that education was the greatest gift they could leave to their children. With this vision before them, Joe and his collaborators worked on a 30-year plan. Part of the process entailed winning over all the constituents of the college: the Jesuit community, boys, teachers past and present, and past pupils. The target was four million pounds, and Belvedere passed it. If it has received generously, it also gives generously. Between their various projects Belvedere boys raise about a quarter of a million euro annually for charity. It is that vision of men for others, rather than lists of figures, that made these years a stimulating time for Joe Dargan rather than a begging bowl nightmare.

What people remember of Joe, however, is not so much his administrative ability as his kindness, and his readiness to give his time lavishly. He was every inch a priest, with a special gift for being with those in their last illness. It was probably this ease in his priestly role, coupled with his passion for sport that underlay his friendship with Alex Ferguson of Manchester United.

When he was told some very few months ago that his illness was terminal, Joe was immediately filled with consolation and gratitude for the key people in his life - those he had met and loved, in his family, in the Society, in those extraordinarily rich friendships that he so enjoyed with such beloved friends, male and female. As the doctor actually spoke to him, those people's names and images passed before his inner eye and he was filled with joy and gratitude. Most of us would have sunk at such a moment: not Joe, because the gratitude was to God and to those who were “God's hands and eyes and ears” for him in this life. A friend remarked that Joe was the most extraordinary of ordinary men, unthreatening, affable, and open to the Lord, who achieved great things through him..

PA

Born: 22 November 1722, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 30 July 1746, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1747, Rome Italy
Final Vows: 15 August1757
Died: 25 April 1768, Roman College, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1758 Preached the Passion Sermon in the presence of the Pope

◆ Fr Francis Finegan Sj :
Had already studied at the Irish College Rome and was Ordained there before Ent 30 July 1747 Rome

After First Vows he taught Humanities for two years.
1750-1756 Lectured Philosophy successively at Sorano, Recanati and Macerata
1756-1761 Chair of Philosophy at the Roman College
1761-1765 Prefect of Studies at Roman College, and died in Office 25 April 1768

Born: 21 May 1769, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 February 1818, Paris France - Galliae Province (GALL)
Ordained: 1814 - pre Entry
Final Vows: 15 August 1828, Annecy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
Died: 03 May 1833, Annecy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France - Galliae Province (GALL)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
From an illustrious Irish family. Aged four they moved to Toulouse, seeking liberty of conscience he couldn’t find in his own country.

After Ordination in 1814, he began that brilliant career which placed him in the foremost ranks of the most distinguished modern Preachers.
1817 or 1826 He was offered a Bishopric of Montaubon, but declined it to enter the Society , which he did the same year.

As a Religious, and until his death, he appeared in the principal pulpits in France, ad after 1830 preached in Rome, Turin and Annecy (cf de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”, where he has a list of his numerous published sermons and other works)
He was regarded in France as the ablest of her Preachers,
(cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MAC-CARTHY, NICHOLAS, was born in Dublin; and in early infancy was taken to France. At the age of 46, he was ordained Priest, and made his debut as a Preacher in 1820, in the Church of the Visitation Nuns at Paris. Amongst his auditors was the late Cardinal Weld. In 1822, he was offered a Mitre, but declined it, to enter amongst the Jesuits. France regarded him as the ablest of her preachers. Few Christian orators have ever announced the word of God, with more dignity, or defended Religion with more effect, or advocated the cause of charity with greater force and eloquence. He preached the Lent of 1833, in the Cathedral of Annecy. Exhausted with fatigue in the laborious work of his ministry, he became unwell on Easter Tuesday, on his return from Chamberri. Fever rapidly increased upon him. After receiving all the rites of the Church, and joining in the prayers for a departing soul with surprising firmness, he raised his eyes towards heaven; then fixing them on his crucifix, with a countenance beaming with hope and joy, he meekly died at Annecy, on the 3rd of May, 1833, aet. 64, if “L’Ami dc la Religion” states it correctly.

Born: 04 October 1626, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 12 May 1650, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: 1656,
Final Vows: 19 April 1661
Died: 03 March 1702, Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

1665 at Pontevedra College
1690 Taught Gramnar for 34 years at Pontevedra

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied Philosophy and begun Theology before Ent 12 May 1650 Villagarcía
After First Vows he did a brief Regency at Ávila and then completed his Theology being Ordained c 1656
1656-1702 Taught Humanities at Pontevedra College for twenty six years, and the last six years of his life was an Operarius in the Church and he died there 03 March 1702
The Superior of the Irish Mission, Francis White, asked the General to have him sent back to Ireland from Spain but his plea proved unsuccessful, or at least sent to the office of the Irish Mission Procurator at Madrid. This came to nothing, and his Spanish Superiors fought hard to keep him, as they recognised his real quality as a teacher and were also chaired by his agreeable character.

Born: 28 January 1668, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1685, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: 1692, Salamanca, Spain
Final Vows: 02 February 1702
Died: 19 October 1728, Irish College, Salamanca, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Was Rector of Irish Seminary Salamanca
His portrait is at Salamanca - represented holding a pen

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
The De La Mers or De La Mares were a well known family of Westmeath.
Writer;
Stationed at Coruña before 1708
1708-1728 Second Founder and Rector of Salamanca (cf Foley’s Collectanea, where he is incorrectly called Delawer)
1709 He presented a petition to the King of Spain and narrates the following fruits of the College :
“ Almost all the students in this College have complied with their obligations - the exceptions indeed are very few - of going to the Missions in Ireland, and have supplied their own Island, and even England and Scotland with eminent prelates , missioners and martyrs, as is well known to the natives of those kingdoms, to the number 510. Among those were men illustrious for their virtue, learning and apostolic preaching, learned writers, controversialists etc, who often shed their blood for their faith. More than 130 others became conspicuous members of different religious orders in your Majesty’s dominions, as for instance 3 OSB, one of whom became General; 12 of the Cistercian Order; 17 OP; 1 Trinitarian; 26 OsF; 20 OSA; and more than 50 of the Society of Jesus. Each are more famous than another for their piety and their valuable writings. I pass over in silence 12 more Provincials it has given to these Orders, and to the Secular branch of Ireland, 4 Archbishops, 1 Primate, 5 Bishops, 2 Protonotaries Apostolic, 5 Vicars General, 18 graduates of Theology in the most celebrated Universities of Europe, and finally more than 30 Masters of Theology and Sacred Scripture, famed as Professors in those great theatres of learning.”
He may be called the “founder” of the College, having completely rebuilt it and largely increased its revenues. He died there 09/10/1728

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he studied at the Royal College Salamanca and was Ordained there 1693
1694-1708 After Tertianship he was sent to teach at the College of León for a year and then to the College La Caruña, where as well as teaching he was also at times Minister and Procurator.
1708-1728 Appointed Rector of Irish College Salamanca 20th May and he was to die in office twenty years later 19 October 1728. His Rectorship was was the longest in the history of that College. He laboured zealously at Salamanca for the temporal and spiritual well-being of the students, and it owed him an immense debt of gratitude for pushing to make the College worthy of its purpose : a training ground for learned and zealous priests to work in the dark days of the Penal times in Ireland.
The eulogy composed after his death rightly stated “justamente se le llame restaurador del seminario”

Born: 15 December 1867, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 December 1885, Loyola House, Dromore, County Down
Ordained: 27 July 1902, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1906, St Aloysius College, Milsons Point, Sydney, Australia
Died: 04 July 1949, St Ignatius College, Manresa, Norwood, Adelaide, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed HIB to ASL: 05 April 1931

Came to Australia for Regency 1892
by 1904 at Drongen Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship
by 1905 returned to Australia

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
He Entered the Society at Loyola, Dromore and Milltown Park.

1888-1889 He was sent to St Stanislaus College Tullabeg for his Juniorate.
1889-1892 He returned to Milltown Park for Philosophy
1892-1893 He was sent to Australia and St Patrick’s College Melbourne for Regency
1893-1896 He continued his Regency at St Ignatius College Riverview
1896-1900 He continued his long Regency with four years at St Aloysius College, Bourke Street, Sydney.
1900-1904 He was back in Ireland and Milltown Park studying Theology.
1904-1905 He made tertianship at Drongen
1905-1915 Apart from some short periods during these years at Riverview and St Patrick’s College Melbourne, he spent this time at St Aloysius, variously as Prefect of Studies, Prefect of the Church and responsible for the Choir
1915-1949 During these years he did Parish work at Richmond, Hawthorn and Norwood.

He was a small but very robust man, full of energy and vitality. He had a love of melodrama and a deep love for the beautiful. He was interested in music and drama and was very successful directing school plays. A bright and vivacious character he also loved performing all Church ceremonies.

Born: 24 October 1929, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1966, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 01 April 2001, Mater Hospital, Dublin

Part of the St Ignatius, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin community at the time of death.

◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Hubert Delaney was born in Dublin on 24 October 1929. After secondary school at the Christian Brothers in Dublin, Hubert entered the Civil Service for 15 months. However a higher calling brought him to the novitiate at Emo Park in 1948. He did the normal course of studies, B.A., philosophy, regency and then theology at Milltown Park in Dublin and crowned them with his ordination to the priesthood on 1962.

After tertianship, his life was lived in educational work. Up to 1974, secondary education occupied him, first at Belvedere College as prefect of studies of the Junior School followed by a year at Clongowes Wood College as teacher and higher line prefect. This was again followed by a three year stint as Headmaster at Gonzaga College in Dublin.
He moved from this into tertiary education and it was philosophy which absorbed his interests for the rest of his life. He lectured at the Milltown Institute in philosophy for eight years up to 1982. He continued lecturing but also studied for his M.A. in philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. He later obtained a Doctorate at Cork University and then went on a sabbatical 1989/1990. He went back to the Milltown Institute as lecturer and was also Director of the Lonergan Centre. He took a year off lecturing and went to Leeson Street as writer and researcher. For two years, 1993 to 1995, he was a tutor in philosophy at the Milltown Institute.

A complete change of venue brought him to Zambia, Africa, to the University of Zambia in Lusaka, invited by Fr Dillon-Malone, head of philosophy there. He stayed for a year lecturing and returned to Ireland to write but he first moved to Korea to lecture for a semester at Sogang University in Seoul. He was back in Leeson Street in 1997 as writer and doing research work again.

His health had not been good. He developed a serious heart condition and other ailments which hospitalised him several times. A stroke in March 2001 sent him to the Mater Hospital. Cerebral apathy and liver disease were diagnosed. All these led to his death on 1 April 2001.

Spontaneous testimony came from two of his former students who later became members of the staff of the Milltown Institute. Both spoke of him as a wonderful teacher, interesting, stimulating, challenging, but, most significant of all, he invited one to enter into a personal engagement and psychological growth. In his teaching he was not only the educator but also the pastor and the priest.

Friendship and service were two of Hubert's qualities. There were many on-going friendships with his former pupils and their families, as well as in the Jesuit communities in which he lived and in the family of his brother Peter. The Morning Star Hostel for ‘down and outs’, the Patricians, the Cenacle Retreat House were some of the areas where Hubert was of service. He had a love of literature, of classical music and of football. He missed all these when he came to Zambia for a year. After all, he was 66 years of age when he came and it is so difficult to make new friends and to fit into a new culture at that age .However he was of service at UNZA when he did come. Hubert's life was one of developing the talents that God had given him, a life centred on his priesthood and on the Mass.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 108 : Special Edition 2001
Obituary
Fr Hubert Delaney (1929-2001)

24th Oct. 1929: Born in Dublin
Early education in St.Patrick's, Drumcondra and CBS, Richmond Street, Dublin.
1947 - 1948: 15 Months in Civil Service
8th Sept 1948: Entered the Society at Emo
8th Sept 1950: First vows at Emo
1950 - 1953: Rathfarnham, studying Arts at UCD
1953 - 1956: Tullabeg - studying Philosophy
1956 - 1959: Belvedere - Teacher, H.Dip in Ed. at UCD
1959 - 1963: Milltown Park - studying Theology
31 July 1962: Ordained at Milltown Park
1964 - 1964: Tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle
1964 - 1965: Crescent College, Limerick - Teacher
1965 -1970: Belvedere College: Prefect of Studies of Junior school
2nd Feb 1966: Final Vows
1970 - 1971: Clongowes: Higher Line Prefect and teacher
1971 - 1974: Gonzaga College: Headmaster
1974 - 1982: Milltown Park - Lecturer in Philosophy at Milltown Institute
1982 - 1985: Lecturing in Philosophy at Milltown Inst. studying for MA in Phil. Ed. at TCD
1985 - 1989: Doctorate studies in Philosophy at UCC
1989 - 1990: Sabbatical
1990 - 1992: Lecturer in Philosophy at Milltown Institute; Director, Lonergan Centre
1992 - 1993: Leeson St; Writer and Research
1993 - 1995: Tutor in Philosophy at Milltown Institute
1995 - 1996: Lecturer in Philosophy at UNZA, Lusaka Writer;
1996 - 1997: Lecturer in Philosophy at Sogang University, Seoul, Korea (Spring semester)
1997 - 2001: Leeson St; Writer & Research; Chair Virgin Mary School Board, Ballymun
1st April 2001: Died in the Mater Hospital, Dublin

In 1997 Hubert developed a serious heart condition, cardio myopathy, for which he was receiving regular medical treatment. Within the past three years he was hospitalised several times - to have an artificial knee joint fitted, a hip joint replaced and multiple skin grafts on his legs.

The state of his health had been declining noticeably since last September and even more so since February of this year. On March 21st he suffered a stroke and was admitted to the Mater Hospital, where cerebral apathy and liver disease were diagnosed. The combination of his many ailments led rapidly to renal failure, which was the immediate cause of his death.

Des. O Grady preached at Hubert's Funeral Mass...

Hubert has us all where he wants us now - gathered together with him as his sisters and brothers in our Father's house. We are brought together here by our love of Hubert and by the faith we share with him, our faith in the power and love of God who is the Father of us all: “the Father from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name”.

We are brought together today by our sorrow and our need, by our desire for the support we find in the company of one another and by our need to pray for Hubert, to give thanks for the gift he has been to us, and to surrender him back to the Father. In doing so we echo the faith of Job, which is also the faith of Hubert: “I know that my redeemer lives... These eyes of mine will gaze on him and find him not aloof”.

Jesus lives now for Hubert as the one who has gone before him to prepare a place for him. We pray that Hubert will now hear the words: “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord”.

We need not be in any doubt about Hubert's being welcomed into our Father's house. If we who are so poor in love always had a welcome for Hubert in our homes, how much more will our heavenly Father welcome him into his true home now. Unprofitable servants we may be, but beloved children first and last.

Our confidence for Hubert today is our confidence in the Father's love for him. That love has showered gifts on Hubert in this life, gifts that Hubert has turned to good account for us as our presence here today testifies more eloquently than anything I can say

If one looks through the official record of Hubert's assignments as a Jesuit priest Hubert's commitment to education is what stands out most of all. Hubert has worked at all levels of education - primary, secondary and tertiary, as well as in adult education. He taught in Belvedere, Clongowes, the Crescent, and in Gonzaga. He served as prefect of studies in the junior school in Belvedere and as headmaster in the senior school in Gonzaga.

In 1974 Hubert came to Milltown and began his career in third level education and I had spontaneous testimony to the value of his work there from two of his former students who are now members of the staff of the Milltown Institute. Both spoke of him as a wonderful teacher: interesting, stimulating, challenging, but most significant of all, as inviting one to personal engagement and growth. In his teaching he was not only the educator, but the pastor and the priest.

Hubert was able to teach so well because he himself was a lifelong student. And if we look at the topics of his MA thesis, “Imagination in Aristotle”, and his Ph.D. dissertation, “The Self-correcting Process of Learning”, we will realize that Hubert's study, though enjoyed for itself, was always focussed on the service of others. Hubert, like his Lord and Master, was among us as one who serves, and we have all benefited from the graces that God has given to Hubert.

That, as I said, is the official record. But off the record there is a whole parallel world of friendship and service; the Teams of Our Lady, the Morning Star, the Patricians, the Cenacle Retreat House, to name but some of the ones I know of Added to that there is his on-going friendship with many of his former pupils and their families, and, last but not least, his presence in his Jesuit communities and in the family of his brother Peter.

As we pray for Hubert today we can draw confidence from our faith in God and from the evidence of God's love in the gifts and graces he has showered upon Hubert, gifts Hubert turned to good account in his priestly life. Hubert's priesthood was at the centre of his life. He shared the word of God with us all and he gave of himself unsparingly. And at the heart of his every day and every work was the Mass.

There is so much more that could be said - his love of nature, and the joy and inspiration he drew from it - his doctoral dissertation about human development was entitled “The Tree of Life”. Then there was his love of literature. During the last few months he was reading again the novels of Jane Austen. Then there was music - mainly classical, and, of course, football.

Right up to the end Hubert enjoyed all of these. The day before he went to hospital for the last time, just two weeks ago today, he was, much against my wishes, let it be said, in Ballymun to chair a Board meeting of the Virgin Mary School, and then after than he spent the evening with his friends, Michael and Aileen Hardigan. The following day Hubert was too weak to get himself out of bed in the morning, and had to be taken to the Mater Hospital where, in spite of the best efforts of the doctors and nurses he died on Sunday morning of renal failure.

He died, yet he lives. He lives on in our hearts and our thoughts but also, we confidently trust, in our Father's home where he continues to work for us and bless us.

◆ The Gonzaga Record 2001
Obituary

Hubert Delaney SJ

Fr Hubert Delaney was Headmaster of Gonzaga 1971 - 1974, and under his leadership the college expanded considerably. A further stream was added to the school. He was very interested in developing the curriculum of the school and he gave a great impetus to drama and music through his wise appointments. His relation ships with members of the staff were particularly friendly and he is remembered with affection. He is also remembered as an administrator who was capable of taking innovative risks. His period of office was one of growth for the College.

May God bless him for his great work.

Fr J Brennan SJ

Born: 02 August 1896, Dublin City, County Dublin / Drogheda, County Louth
Entered: 31 August 1914, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly - HIB for Siculiae Province (SIC)
Ordained: 31 July 1925, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1932
Died: 12 September 1964, Mater Hospital, Dublin

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

Educated at Mungret College SJ

Transcribed SIC to HIB 1955 by Provincial Father M O'Grady

by 1927 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 21st Year No 3 1946
FROM OTHER PROVINCES :
Malta. (through Fr. Clarke) :
Fr. Devine had an operation for hernia. He hopes to leave Malta in August.

Irish Province News 21st Year No 4 1946
Fr. Charles Devine, a member of the Sicilian Province, who has spent over twenty years in Malta, arrived in Dublin in August.

Irish Province News 40th Year No 1 1965

Obituary :

Fr Charles Devine SJ (1896-1964)

Fr. Devine had just completed fifty years in the Society when he died in the Mater Hospital on 12th September. He had been there since the previous November, almost all the time confined to bed. Fr. Charles was born in Drogheda on 2nd August, 1896. He went to the Apostolic School, Mungret, in 1909, and from there to the noviceship in 1914. His noviceship was in Tullabeg, but he had entered for the Sicilian Province. As a boy he had been quiet, studious, serious, taking little part in games at Mungret. A few times he appeared on the stage, in non-speaking parts. In Tullabeg he was gentle, unobtrusive, contented, and used his free time industriously. He set himself the task of getting through the four or five large volumes of a work called The Catechism of Perseverence by Gaume, and completed it in the two years. Afterwards he enjoyed references to Gaume. Part of his time was claimed also by Fr. C. Mulcahy for choir practices as organist. He also played the piano well and accompanied at concerts. In a verse of a topical song, Fr. W. Long, a Maltese Tertian of the English Province, referring to some musical feat in which Charles had a part, finished by saying: “In fact it was devine”. Then and later, Charles would humorously quote A Kempis : “It is not hard to despise human comfort when we have devine”. During philosophy in Milltown also, Charles played the organ for the choir.
He, with eight or nine other Irish scholastics, began philosophy in Stonyhurst, but in the middle of the years 1917-18 they were called back to Ireland, and with a group from Jersey, continued their philosophy at Milltown.
For many years after philosophy the Irish Province saw little of Charles. His work was chiefly in Malta, teaching at St. Aloysius. College. For a short time he was at Palermo. He worked for some time in parishes in Preston and Worcester. Though his health by this time had become rather poor, he led a very busy life in the parishes, and had happy memories of these two places where he made many friends. From 1956 for five years, he was in the Crescent on the church staff, and directed the Bona Mors Arch confraternity and the Apostleship of Prayer, giving the monthly Holy Hour. He prepared very diligently for all his sermons. He left a great number of fully written sermons and much other writing. He wrote well and gracefully and with serious intent.
After a short stay in Manresa, Fr. Devine joined Gardiner Street community. He was not given long for work at the church. A minor stroke incapacitated his limbs, but left him full use of speech, hearing, and mental faculties, so that he could converse and read and keep in touch with life and with friends, and could also give an example of courage in bearing a very tedious illness.
He was able to be present at Fr. Maurice Dowling's jubilee celebration on 31st August, at Gardiner Street. He was brought into the refectory in a wheelchair and made a short and happy speech. A few days later an operation became necessary, which he did not survive. On 14th September he was buried in Glasnevin. Three of his fellow-novices, Frs. Tyndall, Paye and Quigley, officiated at the Solemn Requiem Mass in Gardiner Street. R.I.P.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1965

Obituary

Father Charles Devine SJ

Father Charles Devine SJ died in the Mater Hospital on September 12th. He had only just completed his fifty years in the Society.

Born in Drogheda in 1896, he came to the Apostolic School in 1908. While in Mungret he was quiet, serious and studious. He took little part in games. He played the piano well, however, and often played the organ.

In 1914 he went to the novitiate. He had elected for the Sicilian Province, so after philosophy he left for Malta. He taught at St Aloysius College. He spent some time also in Palermo. In later life as a priest he worked in parishes in Worcester and Preston.

In 1956 he returned to Ireland and was appointed to the community at the Crescent. He directed the Bona Mors Archconfraternity and the Apostleship of Prayer, and gave the monthly Holy Hour.

After a short stay in Manresa, he was sent to Gardiner Street. However, his time for further labours was short. A minor stroke incapacitated his limbs, A little later an operation was found necessary which he did not survive. Three of his fellow novices officiated at the Requiem Mass, Fathers Tyndall, Paye and Quigley. RIP

Born: 24 January 1877, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 11 September 1894, Barrô, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 26 July 1910, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 23 August 1946, Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil - Brasiliensis Septrionalis Province (BRA S)

by 1910 came to Milltown (HIB) studying 1909-1912

Born: 02 February 1598, County Roscommon
Entered: 09 October 1618, Tournai, Belgium - Belgicae Province (BELG)
Ordained: 1624, Douai France
Final Vows: 1636
Died: 04 August 1650, Waterford City, County Waterford - Described as "Martyr of Charity"

Superior of Irish Mission January 18 April 1646 & 1650-04 August 1650

Dispute over date of death 04/08/1650 or 03/06/1650
Catalogus Defuncti 1641-1740 says 03/06/1650

Parents were Earl of Roscommon and Eleanor Barnewall
Studied Humanities in Ireland. Studied Humanities in Tournai and 2 years Philosophy at Douai. Not in Belgium in 1622
1622 At Douai in 2nd year Theology
1625-1628 Teaching Philosophy and Mathematics at Douai

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of Earl of Roscommon
Distinguished for both virtue and learning. He died a victim of charity, exhausted by daily and nightly attendance upon thee plague-stricken in Waterford, surviving his fellow Martyr James Walshe by two months. Eulogised in the Report to Fr General Nickell on the Irish Mission (1641-1650) by the Visitor Mercure Verdier - a copy of which from the Archives of the English College Rome, is now in the collection of Roman Transcripts in the Library of Public Record Office, London (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of James, First Earl of Roscommon and Eleanor née Barnewall
After First Vows he studied Theology at Douai and was Ordained there c 1624
1624-1629 Taught Philosophy and Mathematics at Douai, and then made his Tertianship at Gemaert (Gevaert?).
1629 Sent to Ireland and to the Dublin Residence where he became Superior 1635
1639 Returned to Belgium in an unsuccessful attempt to establish an Irish Seminary at Douai which came to nothing
1641-1646 On the surrender of Dublin he left and became Superior of the Galway Residence
1646 Appointed Superior of the Mission. However, he could not assume office because new directions came from the Holy See saying that a position of authority could not be held successively without interruption.
1647 Back in Belgium on business with the inter-Nuncio.
He seems to have steered clear of political entanglements during the Rinuccini mission in Ireland. According tom the Mercure Verdier 1649 Report to the General on the Irish Mission he had declared that if he were appointed Superior of the Mission he would admit to the Society no one of old Irish origin without the gravest reasons. He was not alone in this view.
1650 Owing to the death of the General, Verdier’s concerns were not acted on, and so he succeeded William Malone as Superior of the Mission in January 1650 sometime during the year he went to Waterford which was plague stricken after the Cromwellian war, and there he displayed huge courage in his ministrations to the sick, but died a martyr of charity of this plague himself 03 June 1650

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962

George Dillon (1646)

George Dillon, son of James Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, and Eleonora Barnewall, was born in the diocese of Meath on 2nd February, 1596. Having obtained his degree of Master of Arts at Douay, he entered the Novitiate of Tournay immediately after, on 9th October, 1616. He studied theology at Douay for four years, and spent another four years teaching philosophy and mathematics there, until 1629, when he returned to Ireland, and was stationed in North Leinster. He made his solemn profession of four Vows in 1636, and published a controversial work on the Reasons and Motives of the Catholic Faith. He was Superior of the Galway Residence from 1641 to 1646. On 18th April, 1646, he was appointed Superior of the Mission, but this arrangement had to be cancelled on 11th August of the same year, on account of a decree issued by Pope Innocent X (1st January, 1646), which limited the term of office of religious Superiors to three years, and forbade the appointment to a new Superiorship of anyone who had already been a Superior until he had passed a year and a half in the ranks as an ordinary subject.

George Dillon (1650)

The first appointment of Fr George Dillon in 1646 had been rendered inoperative by the decree of Pope Innocent X. on triennial government, and now this second appointment was to be rendered almost equally ineffective by death. The Cromwellian war brought pestilence in its wake. Several of the Fathers died in the service of the plague-stricken. When Fr James Walsh was carried off by the disease at Waterford (4th June, 1650), Fr George Dillon continued his ministrations. On the feast of St Ignatius he attended the Mayor of Waterford, who had caught the infection, heard his confession, and gave him Holy Communion. The next two days he exhausted himself hearing the confessions of the terrified people who thronged to him, and was stricken down himself. He died, a martyr of charity, fortified by the rites of the Church and invoking the name of Jesus, on 4th August, 1650.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father George Dillon 1596-1650
The honourable Fr George Dillon, son of Jame Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, was born on February 2nd 1596. At Tournai in 1618 he entered the Society.

On his return to Ireland in 1629, he was stationed in North Leinster. He became Superior of the Galway Residence 1641-1646. In that year, Fr General appointed him Superior of the Mission, but the appointment had to be cancelled, owing to a decree by Pope Innocent X, which required a year and a half in the ranks between two Superiorships. However, in 1650 Fr Dillon eventually became Superior of the Mission, only a short time before his death as a martyr of charity.

The Cromwellian War brought pestilence in its wake. When Fr James Walsh succumbed to the disease in Waterford, Fr Dillon took his place. On the Feast of St Ignatius he attended the Mayor who had contracted the infection. Shortly afterwards, on August 1st, Fr Dillon himself died of the plague, invoking the Holy Name of Jesus.

It is related, that in the same year as him, his brother James Dillon fell down twelve steps of stairs in Limerick, and he died four days afterwards. In the presence of death, he renounced Protestantism and received the Last Sacraments. This great grace was attributed to the prayers of his saintly brother.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DILLON, GEORGE, son of the Earl of Roscommon : illustrious by birth, he was still more illustrious by his virtues. As a missionary he was a pattern of the inward spirit, full of zeal, meekness and charity. He used to insist amongst his Brethren on the necessity of unwearied labour, whilst the Almighty blessed them with health and bodily vigour, as old age was rather a period of suffering than of active exertion. Exhausted with the duty of daily and nightly attendance on the sick at Waterford, when the plague raged in that city, he at length was numbered on the 4th of August, 1650, amongst its fatal victims. He died most piously, invoking with his last breath the sweet name of Jesus.

Born: 11 February 1930, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1961, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 26 May 2006, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1978 at San Francisco CA, USA (CAL) sabbatical
by 1992 at Northridge CA, USA (CAL) working

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 133 : Special Issue September 2007

Obituary

Fr Andrew (Billy) Diviney (1930-2006)

February 1930: Born in Dublin
Early education at CBS, Synge Street
7th September 1948: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1950: First Vows at Emo
1950 - 1952: Rathfarnham - Studied Science at UCD
1952 - 1955: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1955 - 1958: Clongowes - Teacher; Third Line Prefect
1958 - 1962: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1961: Ordained at Milltown Park
1962 - 1963: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1963 - 1977: Clongowes -
1963 - 1966: Lower Line Prefect
1966 - 1969: Minister
1969 - 1977: Teacher
1977 - 1979: San Francisco - Parish Ministry and Sabbatical
1979 - 1980: Loyola - Exec Officer of Marriage & Family Apostolate
1980 -1982: Milltown Park - Assistant to President and Treasurer
2nd February 1981: Final Vows at Milltown Park
1982 - 1983: Gonzaga - Minister; Director, Adult Education Registrar and Treasurer at Milltown Institute
1983 - 1991: Crescent College Comprehensive; Dooradoyle - Teacher
1991 - 2004: California - Our Lady of Lourdes, Northridge, Pastoral Assistant
2004 - 2006: Milltown Park - Praying for Church and Society
26th May 2006: Died in Cherryfield, Dublin

Liam O'Connell writes:
Andrew Diviney was born the third child of six, Michael, Angie, Billy, Margo, Ted and David. Nobody is exactly sure why Andrew ended up being called Billy, but as a young person that name stuck with him in his family and among his friends.

A picture of his parents was always prominent in Billy's room. His family were very important to him, and his strong affection for them extended to his nieces and nephews. He in turn was important to his family, and they loved the attentive, joyful and personal way he celebrated their weddings and religious profession and baptisms. When Billy's niece, Helen, entered religious life, Billy gave her a copy of the Imitation of Christ, with a passage from Philippians inscribed on the front page. This passage was chosen for his funeral Mass and is a reminder of what was important to him in religious life.

Billy went to school in Synge Street, where he was in the scholarship class. He was twice the Leinster Schools 100 yards champion, and won the Lord Mayor trophy for athletics. He enjoyed school and always spoke of his Christian Brother teachers with admiration and great affection. He used to say that they were Great Men.

When Billy joined the Society in 1948 in Emo, he was a member of a large year of 22 other novices. His contemporaries include Joe Brennan, Joe Cleary, Tom Morrissey, Conla O Dulaine and Frank O'Neill. Two others, Jimmy McPolin and Joe Shields died recently. Billy was a gentle and popular member of the group, and an outstanding soccer player. His contemporaries noted his lifelong gift for enjoying good company and appreciating other people.

In Mark's Gospel, when Jesus is baptised, we hear the Father taking delight in Him as He says, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”. Delight and enjoyment and love are at the heart of God. Billy had this divine gift, the ability to delight in other people, and to enjoy and relish what others might have been too hurried to appreciate.

After studies at Rathfarnham and Tullabeg, Billy went to work for three years in Clongowes, and for two of these years he was the Third Line Prefect, in charge of the first and second year students. He still has good friends from these years. Billy then resumed his studies in Milltown, and, after ordination and tertianship, he returned to Clongowes in 1963, first as Lower Line Prefect and Minister, and then as a teacher of Mathematics and Religion. In religion class he taught the Papal social encyclicals, because he. believed that they were revolutionary and liberating, and his teaching method was based on the asking of questions and the querying of the students' assumptions. These classes often produced heat as well as light.

Life in large communities produced its own tensions, and Billy was one of those who oiled the wheels of community life at Clongowes. He turned the annual holiday, the community villa, from being an ordeal into a pleasure for his colleagues. A close Jesuit friend from these years says that Billy regularly took on difficult and unpleasant work, and this friend admired him for his lifelong faithfulness and integrity.

Many people only learn to identify the “good old days” years later and while looking backwards. They end up saying. Those were the good old days, 20 or 30 years ago, and we did not realise it. But this was not so for Billy. He had a great capacity to enjoy small things and his enjoyment was infectious. He took delight in people, and he knew at the time, that these were the good old days. Past students from Clongowes and Crescent remember these qualities of delight and enjoyment and encouragement. While in Clongowes, Billy would go on Saturday afternoons to the races with his elderly father, and this was important to both of them.

Billy was concerned for people who put themselves under undue pressure. I can remember him in Clongowes calming people down who were upset and overwrought, with an extended hand and the word Easy said in a soothing tone. He worried about those whom he described as Driven. He admired people with balance in their lives, and a word of great praise from him was when he described someone as Poised.

During a sabbatical year in San Francisco, Billy studied psychology, which he found personally enriching. On his return to Ireland he worked for a time with marriage counsellors and those involved in parenting courses. He organised a significant Irish visit by the well-known author and counsellor Jack Dominian. At this time he also taught religious knowledge to seniors at Belvedere.

Next he worked for a period as Registrar in the Milltown Institute. In 1983, when he was 53, he returned to teaching, at Crescent College Comprehensive in Limerick. Today people think of retiring from teaching at this stage of their lives, but Billy enjoyed his return to the classroom and was great company in the staff room, where he made many strong and lasting friendships, and these friends still quote his sayings.

During summer holidays Billy had ministered in parishes in the Los Angeles diocese, and when he retired from teaching he worked for 13 years in Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Northridge, California. These were great years, or as he would say himself 'marvellous years'. He treasured his priesthood, and he enjoyed the reading and work he put into preparing his homilies. He was happy to release his fellow priests by saying the Sunday evening Mass. Billy was loved and appreciated and the parishioners were able to express their gratitude to him in 2001 when Fr. Peter Moran and the parishioners celebrated in style the 40th anniversary of his ordination

In his 60's, Billy took up golf and played with Roddy Guerrini in a four-ball every Tuesday at Elkins Ranch, north of Los Angeles. It should not have been a surprise that the athletics champion developed an effective swing and a tidy golf game. But in golf, too, he never became a fanatic. Just as he never needed to be told that these were “the good old days”, Billy did not need to be told as a golfer to smell the flowers. At golf he enjoyed all of the small things, and he delighted in the company of his friends.

When Billy returned to Milltown fourteen months before his death, he faced serious health problems. The support of his own family was important to him at this time. In the last four years, Billy and his family had to cope with the death of four of his own brothers and sisters, and David is the sole surviving family member. Billy did not speak often about the things that were most important to him, but those who lived with him knew that he was strong and serene and happy as he prepared for the final journey, on Slí na Firine.

Billy died close to the feast of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, when heaven and earth are brought close together. We trust that the delight that Billy took in living, the delight that he took in his friends, and the delight he took in simple pleasures, will increase and flourish. We trust the God of Surprises to surprise him when Andrew Billy Diviney learns the length and breath and depth and height of the delight that God takes in his beloved son.

◆ The Clongownian, 2007
Obituary
Father Andrew (Billy) Diviney SJ

Andrew Diviney was born in Dublin on the 11th February 1930; he was the third child of six. Nobody is exactly sure why Andrew ended up being called Billy, but as a young person that name stuck with him in his family and among his friends. A picture of his parents was always prominent in Billy's room. His family were very important to him, and his strong affection for them extended to his nieces and nephews. He in Turn was important to his family, and they loved the attentive, joyful and personal way he celebrated their weddings and religious profession and baptisms. When Billy's niece, Helen, entered religious life. Billy gave her a copy of the Imitation of Christ, with a passage from Philippians inscribed on the front page. This passage was chosen for his funeral Mass and is a reminder of what was important to him in religious life.

Billy went to school in Synge Street CBS, where he was in the scholarship class. He was twice the Leinster Schools 100 yards champion, and won the Lord Mayor trophy for athletics. He enjoyed school and always spoke of his Christian Brother teachers with admiration and great affection. When Billy joined the Society in 1948 in Emo, he was a member of a large year of 22 other novices. His contemporaries include Joe Brennan, Joe Cleary, Tom Morrissey, Conla Ó Dúlaine and Frank O'Neill. Two others. Jimmy McPolin and Joe Shiels died recently. Billy was a gentle and popular member of the group, and an outstanding soccer player. His contemporaries noted his lifelong gift for enjoying good company and appreciating other people. In Mark's Gospel, when Jesus is baptised, we hear the Father taking delight in Him as He says, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”. Delight and enjoyment and love are at the heart of God. Billy had this divine gift, the ability to delight in other people, and to enjoy and relish what others might have been too hurried to appreciate.

After studies at Rathfarnham and Tullabeg, Billy went to work for three years in Clongowes, and for two of these years he was the Third Line Prefect in charge of the first and second year students. He still has good friends from these years. Billy then resumed his studies in Milltown and, after ordination and tertianship, he returned to Clongowes in 1963 first as Lower Line Prefect and Minister, and then as a teacher of Mathematics and Religion. In religion class he taught the Papal social encyclicals because he believed that they were revolutionary and liberating, and his teaching method was based on the asking of questions and the querying of the students' assumptions. These classes often produced heat as well as light. Life in large communities produced its own tensions, and Billy was one of those who oiled the wheels of community life at Clongowes. He turned the annual holiday, the community villa from being an ordeal into a pleasure for his colleagues. A close Jesuit friend from these years says that Billy regularly took on difficult and unpleasant work, and this friend admired him for his lifelong faithfulness and integrity.

Many people only learn to identify the 'good old days' years later and while looking backwards. They end up saying those were the good old days, 20 or 30 years ago, and we did not realise it. But this was not so for Billy. He had a great capacity to enjoy small things and his enjoyment was infectious. He took delight in people, and he knew at the time that these were the good old days. Past students from Clongowes and Crescent remember these qualities of delight and enjoyment and encouragement. While in Clongowes. Billy would go on Saturday afternoons to the races with his elderly father, and this was important to both of them. Billy was concerned for people who put themselves under undue pressure. I can remember him in Clongowes calming people down who were upset and overwrought, with an extended hand and the word 'easy said in a soothing tone. He worried about those whom he described as “driven”. He admired people with balance in their lives, and a word of great praise from him was when he described someone as “poised”.

During a sabbatical year in San Francisco, Billy studied psychology, which he found personally enriching. On his return to Ireland he worked for a time with marriage counsellors and those involved in parenting courses. He organised a significant Irish visit by the well-known author and counsellor Jack Dominian. At this time he also caught religious knowledge to seniors at Belvedere. Next he worked for a period as Registrar in the Milltown Institute. In 1983, when he was 53, he returned to teaching, at Crescent College Comprehensive in Limerick. Today people think of retiring from teaching at this stage of their lives, but Billy enjoyed his return to the classroom and was great company in the staff room, where he made many strong and lasting friendships, and these friends still quote his sayings.

During summer holidays Billy had ministered in parishes in the Los Angeles diocese, and when he retired from teaching he worked for 13 years in Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Northridge, California. These were great years, or as he would say himself ‘marvellous years'. He treasured his priesthood, and he enjoyed the reading and work he put into preparing his homilies. He was happy to release his fellow priests by saying the Sunday evening Mass. Billy was loved and appreciated and the parishioners were able to express their gratitude to him in 2001 when Fr Peter Moran and the parishioners celebrated in style the 40th anniversary of his ordination. In his 60's, Billy took up golf and played with Roddy Guerrini in a four ball every Tuesday at Elkins Ranch, north of Los Angeles. It should not have been a surprise that the athletics champion developed an effective swing and a tidy golf game. But in golf, too, he never became a fanatic. Just as he never needed to be told that these were “the good old days”, Billy did not need to be told as a golfer to smell the flowers. At golf he enjoyed all of the small things, and he delighted in the company of his friends.

When Billy returned to Milltown fourteen months before his death, he faced serious health problems. The support of his own family was important to him at this time. In the last four years, Billy and his family had to cope with the death of four of his own brothers and sisters, and David is the sole surviving family member. Billy did not speak often about the things that were most important to him, but those who lived with him knew that he was strong and serene and happy as he prepared for the final journey, on Slí na Firine. Billy died close to the feast of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, when heaven and earth are brought close together. We trust that the delight that Billy took in living, the delight that he took in his friends,

Born: 26 November 1905, Manchester, Lancashire, England / Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 September 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1938, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1941, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 25 September 1957, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin

Early education at O’Connell’s school Dublin and Mungret College SJ
Tertianship at Rathfarnham

by 1930 in Vals France (TOLO) studying
by 1952 in Australia

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Patrick Doherty came to Australia in 1951 to give the priests of Melbourne archdiocese their annual retreat, and to use the retreat to introduce them to the Pioneers Total Abstinence Association. Archbishop Mannix seems at that time to have been keen to get the PTAA established. When he first approached Mannix it is reputed that the Archbishop said that the PTAA was a very good idea, and perhaps Doherty should start with his own brethren.
Doherty came to Australia with a considerable reputation as a successful leader of the PTAA, who had renewed and modernised it, and also as a sought-after retreat director. He was an excellent speaker, engaging and witty He seemed to connect well with the diocesan clergy. He was a man of vivacity and charm and was much liked. He lived at Richmond when he wasn't on the retreat circuit. When he was not giving priests' retreats, he spent quite some time travelling around Australia. visiting Jesuit ministries especially - setting up branches of the PTAA.
He spent part of that year giving retreats to other religious orders. By the time Doherty left Australia, the PTAA was established and reasonably well known in quite a few parts of Australia. He handed over the management of the Australian PTAA to Lou Dando, who drew other Jesuits into the task of spreading the word and the organisation.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 33rd Year No 1 1958

Obituary :

Fr Patrick Doherty

Not long after his ordination, Fr. Doherty confided to a friend: “When I stand at the altar during my Mass I am so overwhelmed by the thought of what is happening that I feel inclined almost to look down and see if my feet are touching the ground!”
This same spirit of faith developed with the years and reached its climax in his last illness. To visit him and pray with him was a spiritual tonic “as good as a retreat”. He was radiantly happy at the thought of the near approach of eternity. “I am interested in nothing only the growth of divine life in my soul. Never think it is hard to die. Often when giving retreats I used to wish I could only do myself what I was telling others to do. At the stage I have now reached God treats you as if you had done it”. Told of a doctor who had some remarkable successes with cancer patients, his comment was : “Thank God he didn't try his treatment on me!”
He described for the writer the plans for his funeral with the same ease as if he was speaking of someone else. Seeing this, I ventured, to hint that I had been asked to do his Obituary. He seized my hand : “Tell them I am the greatest proof of the mercy of God you ever came across”.
He was the edification of doctors and nurses who declared he was dying like a saint. “He is giving the most effective retreat [ ] gave” was the verdict of his Rector. Nor did his sense of humour ever forsake him. After a severe vomiting or a violent spasm of pain he would at once brighten up and show himself eager to continue a conversation. His poor body was wasted away till be weighed only four stone, but his mind was alert right up to the end. When his aged mother came to see him he twitted her : “Mother, what are you fretting for? Sure you'll probably be on the next old bus anyhow, and I'm only going on ahead to open the gate for you!” Later he wrote her a letter of more than three pages, to console her, “in my best handwriting”.
The effort called for something not far from heroism.
Indeed, he “opened the gate” for many a soul. Tributes flowed from all sides to the selfless devotion with which he gave himself to “talks” and the confessional during the many retreats he conducted. He continued this arduous apostolate when those of us who were near him realised that the work was draining every ounce of energy from him. But “he was too concerned for others to be interested in himself” - to quote from his review of The First Jesuit. The words are descriptive, not of our Father Ignatius only, but of this son of his who wrote them. The secret of his success was, in large measure, his gift of sympathy. He really entered into the trials and difficulties of others and suffered them as if they were his own.
That review evoked high encomiums from the censors and a strong recommendation that he should write more. His “Centre Survey” in the Pioneer magazine, where he had a field for poking fun, which never lost sight of the seriousness of his message, ranks with the very popular “Colum's Corner" in another magazine. Had God spared him he could have wielded a doughty pen in the service of souls.
Mention of The Pioneer reminds us that no account would be complete without at least an attempt to tell what he accomplished for the Association. For many years he was Spiritual Director of the Garda Branch. Before me lies a letter from a member, written in 1955, expressing the deep affection he won from the men, and their grief on learning that he had been transferred to other work. He led a group in pilgrimage to Fatima and “we will never forget the thousand and one things he did for us, and, above all, the cheerful manner in which they were done. It was with pardonable pride that we heard his name announced to give the Holy Hour for all the English-speaking pilgrims”.
In 1948 Fr. Doherty represented the Association at Lucerne and it was as a direct result of his presence and influence there that the Pioneer Movement began on the continent. Later he went to Melbourne where he organised the work, and the best comment on his efforts is that today there are eighty centres in Australia. During that year, too, he gave several retreats, including one to the Melbourne priests with many of whom he formed lasting friendships.
Another instance of his mischievous spirit recurs here. A Father had been asked to address his Garda Centre. A week or so before the address, he received a letter from Fr. Doherty, explaining that the men were keenly disappointed to learn that it was not he himself who was coming, and suggesting that perhaps a last-minute switch could be made! For quite a while that Father was completely taken in.
In many ways he always retained in his make-up some elements of the enfant terrible. A picture of him comes to mind in the early days of theology, in which, with many groans of mock grief, he bemoaned the fact that he was like a dog on & chain! He was a great favourite with the older Fathers and would often speak of his affection for them, His youthful ways endeared him to young people inside and outside the Society. No one escaped his sallies at recreation. He was quick at repartee and told a funny story well, obviously enjoying the telling. He had a keen sense of justice and would quickly flare up where he considered wrong was done, nor did he lack eloquence and vigour in defending a difference of opinion.
He would be the last man in the world to wish that these human. traits should be glossed over here.
Fr. Doherty has gone from us, having given “in his whole life and much more in death” an inspiring example of that “living faith and hope and love of those eternal good things which Christ Our Lord has merited and acquired for us”. No one who knew him but will be glad to meet him again. Our consolation is the hope that he is only gone on ahead to open the gate for us.
He was born in Manchester in 1905, went as a boy to O'Connell Schools and to Mungret; entered the Society in 1924 and followed the. usual curriculum University, Philosophy in France, Colleges in Belvedere, and Theology in Milltown. He was ordained by Bishop Wall in 1938; did Tertianship under Fr. Henry Keane at Rathfarnham, after which he taught in Belvedere till 1943 when he was appointed to the Pioneer Association. He died in Dublin on September 25th, 1957. May he rest in peace!

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Patrick Doherty 1905-1957
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it” could be aptly applied to Fr Patrick Doherty. It is no exaggeration to say that for many years past, no Jesuit of this Province died so happy and so edifying a death. One might almost envy him the joy, happiness and peace he radiated, while at the same time he was racked with pain, which even drugs had failed to stem. People came from far and near to see him and have a few last words with him. “Now I realise what I have so often spoken of in Retreats, the great happiness which God has reserved for us”. Of each member of his family, he asked what they most urgently needed from God, and he promised to get their request. Each one got his petition, and one of these certainly was a near miracle.

He was a great talker in the pulpit, at the conference table, on the stage and in the community. This gift he used to great advantage as Assistant Director of the Pioneer Association. At the request of Archbishop Mannix, he went to Australia to found the Pioneer Movement there. He was also a writer of no mean merit, as the columns of the Pioneer Magazine prove.

At the early age of 52, he died of rapid cancer on September 25th 1957.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1953

A College of the Church Universal : Australian Experiences

Father Patrick Doherty SJ

“It won’t be so cold as this in Melbourne!” exclaimed the priest who was escorting me to the London plane at Collinstown. The gentleman immediately in front of us wheeled round. “Who's going to Melbourne?” he asked in surprised tone. “I am”, I said eagerly; “are you coming too?” “I have just returned from there”, replied this young doctor, a past pupil of Crescent College; “I hope to go back again soon”. On the way to London he gave me his impressions of Australia. “Once you settle down”, he said, “you will grow to love the Australians”. As the following year unfolded itself, I found myself in full agreement with all his favourable opinions of the “Land of sunshine”. Little did I expect, however, on that evening of December 5th, 1950, that my adieu to Melbourne, some fifteen months later, would be one of the hardest farewells of my life.

Since my return many people have expressed surprise at my admiration for Australia. “They don't all like it”, I am told. Oddly enough, some of these criticisms can be traced to articles in cross-Channel newspapers. England is not always the most affectionate of mothers! Of Irishmen in Australia I met only two who judged harshly the land of their adoption. I met hundreds of Irishmen, and many of other European nationality, whose longing for the home land was strictly limited to a desire “to see the old country before I die”.

No one in Australia was more hospitable, helpful and encouraging to me than Fr. Jim English. I was sitting in his presbytery in Mordialloc, outside Melbourne, drinking his health - in Pepsi Cola of course - on his birthday, when the phone. rang. It was a call from his, home in Tipperary town, to wish him many happy returns. I called in to his people in Tipperary since my return, but I did not like to suggest that we put a call through to Melbourne. Two great pioneer priests who stood by me all the way were Father Eddie Durcan and his brother. Father Eddie still has the same Pioneer badge that he received as a boy in Mungret.

I had many delightful meetings with Mungret priests in the course of my travels. Although everyone of them, without exception, spoke affectionately of the College, I think they all preferred Australia!! When I went from Melbourne to Parkes, to give the retreat to the priests of Wilcania-Forbes, I got out at Tocumwal, New South Wales, first stop in the 800-mile flight, to stretch my limbs. Three priests, on their way to make the retreat, were awaiting the plane. Irishmen all, two of them were educated in Mungret. That night, shortly before the first lecture of the retreat, the last group arrived - another party of three - and they were Mungret men all! They had covered 400 miles by car since morning. First to emerge from the car was Dean Sexton, whose Vincentian nephew, Father Kevin Cronin of Strawberry Hill fame, and whose Jesuit nephew, Father Fergus Cronin of Hong Kong, I knew well. The Dean was very thrilled to learn that I had visited his late sister, in a Dublin hospital, shortly before her saintly death. After the Dean came Father Treacy, a fine man, built on generous lines, and hailing from County Galway. The third man was my old friend of Mungret days, Father John Boylan from “the wee County”. He is the same gentle, soft-spoken John, beloved of the people of his vast Bush parish. I began to realise that Mungret belongs very literally to the Church universal!

Among the audience at a retreat to the Melbourne priests, it took me some time to pick out Father Albert Gilhooly. After all, I had not laid eyes on this mature-looking parish priest, whose hair is beginning to recede from the temples, since he was a youngster in Junior Grade in 1924! Some time later I spent a wonderful week with Father Albert in his country parish of Trentham, Victoria, before his promotion to the Melbourne suburbs. We kept very late hours that week, re-living schooldays separated from the present by a gap of thirty years.

“They gave us a great character training”, Father Albert said of the Apostolic School directors. “Don't ever allow yourself to do things in order to be admired by others”, was one of Father Jerry Kelly's famous sayings that burned themselves into our minds. And Father Gilhooly is one of many who paid remark able tribute to the gentle and refining influence of the late Father Freddy Cuffe SJ.

Many of Mungret's past pupils are Jesuits in the Australian Province. First to greet me, when I reached the land of the sun, was Father Tom Barden, Rector of the Jesuit College in Perth. I reminded Father Tom of the day in Septem ber, 1922, when we both left Dublin, via Athenry, on a roundabout first journey to Mungret during the disturbed days of the Civil War. When, at long last, we had arrived at the gates of Mungret, we felt like travelled men who had seen a bit of life! For both of us it was but the first of many long and roundabout journeys. At the gates of St Louis College, Perth, stood the portly. figure of Father John Williams, Gone indeed are the ascetic lines and emaciated appearance that I had always associated with John! But the welcoming smile is more genial than ever and, when I had my farewell chat with him, just twelve months ago, I found myself talking to the same grand person whom I sat beside for the Junior Apostolics' photo in 1924 and whom, thank God, no passage of time could change.

In Richmond, Victoria, I spent a year under the same roof with Father Michael Morrison. Between army and Australian experiences, Mick has seen quite a lot of life in the past decade, and has been in close contact with death too. He was the first chaplain to enter Belsen concentration camp towards the end of the war. From Father Morrison's room in the Richmond presbytery, one can see the dome of the chapel of Xavier College. At Xavier, Father Michael O'Mahony is now a familiar - I had al most dared to say a “venerable”! figure, for he laboured there as a scholastic in the pre-war years and has been there ever since his return to Australia in 1946. With him is Father Dan Fitzpatrick who is quite an expert at teaching chemistry and does a good deal of preaching in his spare time. With these two men I had a glorious fortnight's holiday along the Victorian seaside shortly after my arrival in Australia. I shall always remember the unremitting feud that went on, day and night, be tween Father O'Mahony and the mosquitoes ! Another great Mungret. man, whom I saw, alas! only too rarely, was Father Con Finn who has made a great name in university circles in Adelaide.

I could chatter on endlessly about these and other Irishmen who came and saw and were conquered by Australia. I might as well end this ramble near its starting point - at Tilbury Docks, in fact. I was not long on board the SS Himalaya, on the way down the English Channel, when I was greeted by a very charming young priest - another Mungret man, Father Dan Boylan of Portlaoighse and Ballarat Cathedral. Father Dan was returning to base after a holiday at home. An ideal companion for a long sea journey, he painted a colourful and very impressive picture of Australia as he had known it for some twelve years. Yet not even the masterpiece of an artist could portray the full splendour of the masterpiece of Divine artistry which I was to see with my own eyes for fifteen wonderful months.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1958

Obituary

Father Patrick Doherty SJ

Fr Doherty whose death took place in Dublin on September 25th was born in Manchester. Educated at O'Connell Schools and Mungret College. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1924. After completing his studies in various houses of the Society, he was ordained in 1938.

After Ordination he taught in Belvedere College from 1940 till 1943. In that year he was appointed Assistant Director of the Pioneer Association, in which he was to do so much work. During the succeeding years he visited nearly every town in Ireland lecturing on, and enrolling members in, the Pioneer Association. He was for seven years Spiritual Director to the Pioneer Centre at the Garda Depot, where he made many close friends.

In 1948 he represented the Pioneer Association at the Temperance Congress in Lucerne. It was a direct result of his presence there that the First Pioneer Centres were established on the Continent. In 1951, at the Invitation of Archbishop Mannix he went to Australia. Here he spent a year organising Pioneer Centres in inany Dioceses. While there he also gave many Priests Retreats.

In 1955 he joined the Retreat staff at Rathfarnham Castle, and until shortly before his death was engaged in giving retreats around the country.

He had a strong spirit of Faith, and knew well he was going to die. However it was an event he looked forward to, and calmly discussed plans for his funeral with a friend beforehand. All through his life he possessed a strong sense of humour. Of him it might be truly said as was said of another Jesuit, that he was merry in God. RIP

Born: 18 October 1898, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 30 September 1919, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1929, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1936, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong
Died: 12 June 1975, Vinayalaya Novitiate, Mumbai, India

Part of the Campion School, Mumbai, Marharashtra, India community at the time of death

Older brother of D Leo Donnelly - RIP 1999

Educated at Belvedere College SJ

by 1922 at Valkenburg, Netherlands (GER I) studying
by 1927 at Innsbruck, Austria (ASR-HUN) studying
by 1932 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) making Tertianship
by 1933 at Hong Kong
by 1934 at Catholic Mission, Ngau-Pei-Lan, Shiuhing (Zhaoqing), Guandong, China (LUS) - Language
by 1935 at Aberdeen, Hong Kong - working
by 1946 at St Mary’s, Kurseong, Darjeeling & Himalaya Railway (DH Ry), Darjeeling, West Bengal, India - teaching
by 1944 at Xavier, Park St, Kolkata, West Bengal, India (BEL M)
by 1951 at St Stanislaus, Bandra, Mumbai, India (TARR) teaching
by 1957 at St Xavier’s Mumbai, India (BOM) teaching
by 1963 at St Mary’s High School, Mumbai, India (BOM) teaching
by 1964 at De Nobili Pune (PUN) teaching
by 1968 at St Xavier’s, Mumbai, India (BOM) teaching
by 1973 at Campion School Mumbai, India (BOM)

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :

Note from Joseph TaiYu-kuk Entry
He was a teenager in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded in December 1941. He had joined a group of a dozen Catholics who, it was hoped, might one day become priests, under the charge of Father Dan Donnelly SJ.

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
In his early years he had a brilliant academic career in the Sciences, and he produced a theory in ballistics which engineer’s used refer to as “Donnelly’s Theory”. he later lost interest in Science, but he did retain a fantastic memory for the pedigree of horses, and in India he became a national expert in field hockey.

Always unpredictable, he was remembered with affection by many in the Province for his engaging - if at time exasperating - eccentricities. He originally came to Hong Kong in 1932 as one of the early pioneers of the Irish Province’s new Mission, having already spent a year in Rome as sub-Secretary for Missions. After two years in Shiuhing studying Chinese and doing some teaching there, he was sent to Wah Yan College Hong Kong in 1935, and he was Prefect of Studies there until 1939. In 1940 he began a small Jesuit Apostolic School at Tai Lam Chung which was intended to encourage vocations to the Society.

He spent 12 years in Hong Kong before heading to India on a mission of mercy with 12 Chinese boys towards the end of WWII in late 1944. He enjoyed India and they liked him there, so after a short return to Canton and Hong Kong after the war, he went to Mumbai in 1949 and spent the rest of his life there.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 10th Year No 3 1935
Works by Father Donal Donnelly SJ :

1. “A Prisoner of Japan” - (Sheed & Ward).
2. “Life of B. Charles Spinola, S.J.”
3. “A Nobleman of Italy” - Sands & Co.
4. “Life of St. AIoysius”
5. “A Gallant Conquistador” - Browne & Nolan
6. “Life ofB. Rudolf Acquaviva and Companions” - MS

Irish Province News 21st Year No 2 1946

IN ALIIS PROVINCIIS DEGENTES :

India :
Fr. D. Donnelly gave a series of Lenten Conferences to the men's sodality there on The Authority of the State, Obedience to Law. The Catholic in the Municipality, The Catholic in the State.

Fr. Donnelly to Province News, 20-3-46 :
“A batch of Chinese Navy men passed through Bombay on the way to England for training in December-January last. The Naval Chaplain brought me along to hunt up the Catholics among them. There proved to be very few Catholics, but two of the pagans were old Wah Yan boys, and they gave me a tremendous welcome. I got a big batch to Midnight Mass at Christmas. I also had one of the Wah Yan boys and three others under instruction, but they left for England before I could finish. However, I gave them a letter to the nearest Parish Priest in England.

Irish Province News 37th Year No 2 1962

Fr. Daniel Donnelly, St. Mary's High School, Bombay 10, writes :
I am at present in practically sole charge (one Brother to collect fees, one Father to teach Hindi) of a grand school of 1,100 boys, more than half of them Catholics. We get quite a few vocations every year; this year I am praying for half-a-dozen. The boys are mostly Goans, grand people. The non-Catholic boys are Parsees, Moslems and Hindus; and while very, very few are ever converted, they are wonderfully responsive to moral instruction, easily the most consoling classes which I teach. These young Indians are like no other boys whom I have taught in this : that once they take to you they give you their heart and are astonishingly loyal and friendly.
Retiring age over here is 65, so I have only another year to run as Principal. Then I hope to get away to “real” mission work in the districts. I'd have to learn Marathi, of course, but I learn languages easily, T.G.
We shall see.

Irish Province News 50th Year No 3 and 4 1975

Obituary :

Fr Don Donnelly (1896-1975)

In his letters to various Jesuits in Ireland and Bombay, Don's brother, Fr Leo SJ, St Albert's College, Ranchi, wrote as follows:
“You will have been informed by cable of my brother’s death. He suffered a severe stroke in March and was paralysed on his left side. He became progressively weaker as he was unable to retain solid food. I was with him during the summer holidays, but started back on 10th June. After my return here I received a telegram announcing his death on 12th June, It was, in fact, a merciful release, as it was painful to see so active a man reduced to helplessness. Still, it makes me feel rather lonely.
Donal (latinised in the Society to Daniel) had a very full and happy life. For his early life I can supply a few details. He had an exceptionally brilliant academic record. Under the old ‘Intermediate’ system he won a 1st Class Exhibition in each Grade, and at least one Gold Medal (first place in all Ireland in a given subject) each year (details in the Belvederian). At UCD his record is still, I think, unsurpassed. He took seven subjects in his first year, doing First Arts and First Science simultaneously, and got 1st Honours in all seven and 1st place in five, plus the Delaney Scholarship (this could be checked by reference to the files in UCD). He scored very high marks in the BSc, and MSc (equivalent to a PhD today as it involved research) He produced a theory of ballistics which engineers used to refer to as ‘Donnelly's Theory’. He was also enrolled as a student in Trinity College (his father's university) and won some prizes there - in particular a Foundation Scholarship. He entered the Society still under 21.
He inherited his love of and knowledge of horses from his father, who was an excellent judge. Don had a fantastic memory for the pedigree of horses. I think he carried the whole Stud Book in his head, and knew the breeding of every horse running at that time. When he entered the Society he put all that completely aside, never 'talking horses'. It was only in 1963, when age compelled his retirement from headmastership and he was sent as Minister to our scholasticate in Pune (Poona), that he took it up again. There he discovered a number of stud farms in the neighbourhood, and seemed to take it as a hint from the Lord that it was permissible to use his talent in this field of apostolate. If you really know horses, you are accepted in the horsey confraternity, and so he moved with ease in that circle. At least he saw apostolic opportunities in meeting managers, owners and jockeys on their own ground. He liked to meet Irish jockeys who came to Bombay to ride, and he did them good. Ask Johnny Roe about that.
Don spent so little time in Ireland that he is not well known in the Province - now probably only by those whom he taught in Clongowes from 1923 to 26. But I know that he remained somewhat in touch with the Brutons of Kildare.
It would be difficult to discover the number of priestly vocations he fostered wherever he happened to be. During all his extremely successful career as Prefect of Studies he was above all interested in boys, rather than studies as such. The way he took up hockey in Bombay is an indication of that. It gave him a beneficial influence over a very large number of young people.
Naturally I am a bit prejudiced. All my life he has been an immense inspiration to me, and I still can't quite realise that he is gone. One would like to think that his influence will continue to do good, at least through his publications.
In spite of the amazing amount of work he managed to fit into the day, he always said two rosaries in addition to his Divine Office. Here is a quotation from a letter from a Hindu friend of his: ‘I was very grieved to learn that your dear brother, my good friend, passed away on 12th June. For the past many years we used to meet in Bombay during the annual bloodstock sales, and I used to look forward to the pleasure of seating him by my side and inviting comments on my lots for sale. In the process I learnt a great deal and valued his advice which was always unbiassed. I shall miss him sadly’.
From a letter of one of the boys Don brought from China to India, who entered the novitiate but was advised to leave on account of scruples (apparently Don and he corresponded for 25 years): ‘He was, I think, my ideal man. As a small boy, I was afraid of him, and then I grew to have an extraordinary respect for him both as a priest and for his intelligence; and all the time I had a sincere affection for him. My wife often says I have two fathers, my own and Father Donnelly. Now I certainly know that is true’. (The writer is now an artist and schoolmaster in England).
In case you have not got it otherwise, a short account of Don’s coming to India. In 1939, with no more scholastics coming from Ireland, the Language School in Hong Kong was turned into an Apostolic School. Don and Ned Sullivan were in charge of about 30 boys. When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, the School had to be abandoned. Don and some other Fathers made their way into Free China. Don went to an Apostolic School run by the Maryknoll Fathers, where twelve of his boys joined him. In 1943 the Japs made a drive to eliminate some air-fields used by the Americans, so Don, his boys and some Fathers had to move west. They ended up in Kunming in the south-west corner of China, nearest India. Eventually they were air-lifted to India ‘over the hump’ by RAF planes returning to India after having brought military supplies to China. In Calcutta he met Fr Conget, Superior of Bombay, who advised him to bring the boys to Bandra, the only boys' school which has an almost entirely Catholic pupil intake. Don remained there even after the end of the war to let the senior boys finish their matric exam. Then in 1947 he returned by sea to Hong Kong. The authorities there were not so keen on a large number of Chinese candidates, so most of the boys were ‘brushed off’. Only three were accepted, One left in the novitiate (scruples), one left in philosophy (lack of grey matter), one has been ordained - Fr Joseph Tai SJ.
Don went up to Canton, where he took charge of the Sacred Heart School (formerly run by the de la Salle Brothers for the Archbishop). When the Commies came in he was pushed out, and asked to return to India rather than remain in Hong Kong.
While learning Chinese in 1932, after some months with a teacher in Shiuhing, Don went to a village on the West river to to get practice by acting as assistant priest. Returning to the presbytery one day, he found a man chained to the railing of the church. The man was a leper, caught stealing and condemned to death. He was to be shot the following morning. Entering into conversation, Don discovered that the unfortunate man's mother had been a Catholic, though of course unable to practise her - religion once she had been engulfed in her husband's 'extended family'. Helped by the PP, Don instructed the man, gave him some food, and went back to supper, On an impulse the PP decided to baptise the man that evening - very fortunately, as the man was shot so early in the morning that they had no opportunity to speak to him again. The man was christened ‘Dismas?’

In Bombay, 1944-1975 (from the Bombay Province newsletter Samachar, July 1975):
Father Daniel Donnelly, after having laboured in Hong Kong and China for 12 years, came to Bombay on a mission of mercy with 15 Chinese boys. He liked us and we liked him, and after safely depositing his boys in their native land, he returned to Bombay for good and worked like a Trojan here for the next 25 years and more until he was struck by partial paralysis.
During these years he had time to work in most of our Bombay City houses, generally in the capacity of Rector and/or Principal and/or Minister and/or Parish Priest. He was never at the Institute of Education, Sodality House or Diocesan Seminary. At Vinayalaya he was only for some weeks as a sick man. De Nobili College, Poona, too had him for a couple of years as Minister and treasurer, and his last community was the one of the Christian Brothers in Bassein.
Barring the last three months, which he spent at the Holy Spirit Hospital or in the novitiate infirmary, he had always been in excellent health. He believed in brisk walking, light meals, early rising and hard quick work. Since childhood he loved horses, and from the day he landed in India he loved hockey.
His hobbies were solving a daily cross-word puzzle (for a time he composed one daily), an occasional game of patience, reading novels and also other more serious stuff (including science magazines - he was an MSc); and writing articles (by the dozen, and keeping two or three series abreast) for the Messenger and other papers. Many an author did not know (?) who had censored his book; Fr Donnelly knew at least one of the censors. Organizing school hockey leagues and tournaments and watching the games he considered not a hobby but part and parcel of his work in the all-round education of the boys.
As Rector and School Principal he could not be accused of curtailing the freedom of his subordinates or unduly interfering in their spheres of action. He expected every Jesuit, teacher or boy to do his duty. Even in the days of greater regimentation in schools, he could not pass as a disciplinarian.
He trusted boys, even when he knew some would take advantage of his kindness and liberality. Few did more than he did, chiefly in Bandra days, to foster vocations to the Society (for Bombay, Hazaribagh, Jamshedpur). Yet it was well known that in his optimism he was inclined to count his candidates before they were hatched. Yet, in later years, he could count quite a few Jesuits whom he had encouraged to break the egg-shell. Some will remember the vocational booklets he wrote and the Bombay Vocation Exhibition (for the Seminary and for religious orders of men and women) he organized in Bandra.
He loved the Society and found it hard to reconcile his loyalty to the Jesuit spirit with some of the changes introduced in the last decade. In his lovable frankness and literary wit he showed what he thought of some modern trends in his devastating piece of satire - which he called parable or vision - whereby he regaled(?) the ears of scores of fellow Jesuits assembled on the terrace of St Xavier's High School one evening in 1969 to celebrate his 50 years in the Society.
Although his speech in ordinary conversation was at times difficult to follow there were some stories too about the legibility of his handwriting even when in block capitals), hardly anyone could miss a word when he spoke in public, which he did often. For a couple of years he was entrusted with the monthly domestic exhortation (you may recall that ancient custom) at St Xavier’s High School. He was always original, even if not to everybody's taste. Many a Catholic in Bandra, St Mary's and St Xavier's made it a point to attend Fr Donnelly's Sunday Mass to hear his sermons. You could never predict the subject of the homily, but most people found it interesting and profitable. On a certain Sunday he spoke on some changes in the Liturgy. The following Sunday he read out from the ambo two letters on the subject he had received from the pews during the week.
His last months in a sick bed must have been a severe trial. Fortunately he had most of the time his younger brother Leo from Ranchi with him. Many others of the Vinayalaya community helped him in his hour of need. He mellowed during those last 100 days. Illness bridged for him the generation gap that had opened before him.
Unshorn novices in mufti watched over him day and night. He was grateful to them. For him they were a concrete token of the motherly love of the Society he had joined in far-away Ireland when the century (though no longer he) was in its teens.
After a Eucharistic concelebration at St Peter’s, Bandra, he was buried on June 13, in the porch of the church and beside the school that had been his first centre of apostolate in India.
Fr Don Donnelly’s curriculum vitae shows the man's adaptability to varying circumstances: 1898 - born in Dublin; 1919 - Jesuit novitiate in Tullabeg; 1925 - philosophy in Valkenburg; 1927 - theology in Innsbruck; 1929 - ordained in Dublin; 1930 - Subsecr, of Missions, Rome; 1931 - tertianship; 1932 - arrival in China, teaching in Shiuhing; 1933 - studying Chinese language; 1934 - Wah Yan, Hong Kong, teaching in Regional Seminary; 1935 - Prefect of Studies, Wah Yan; 1936 - final vows; 1940 - director of Minor Seminary, Hong Kong; 1944 - arrival in Bandra (India) with Chinese boys, teaching; 1947 · back to Canton (China), teaching; 1949 - back in India, studying Hindi in Ranchi; 1950 - Rector of St Stanislaus High School, Bandra; 1956 - Minister, St Xavier's College; 1957 - Principal and Minister, St Mary's High School; 1963 · de Nobili College, Minister and Treasurer; 1965 - Minister and Treasurer, St Xavier's College; 1972 - Principal and Superior, Campion School, Bhopal; 1974 - chaplain to Christian Brothers, Bassein road; 1975 - death at Vinayalaya, 12th June; burial in Bandra, 13th.

Obituary :

Fr Don Donnelly (1896-1975)

More about Fr Don Donnelly († 12th June 1975)

When the last number of the Province News had gone to press, the editor discovered fifteen pages of notepaper which Fr Fergus Cronin, Rector of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, had filled with this account of Fr Don:
For one who was so well known in the countries in which he worked, Fr Daniel Donnelly, who died last June in Bombay, was relatively little known in Ireland. This was largely due to the fact that apart from his noviceship and his period in the Colleges, all his life in the Society was spent abroad,
He came from a Dublin family. His father was a doctor practising in Parnell square, and he went to school at Belvedere.
He entered the Society in 1919, having already obtained a Master of Science degree. My recollection may be at fault, but I think I remember him telling me that he had got a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin, and that he attended lectures there, in order to fulfil the conditions of the cash grant, and also studied for a degree at University College, Dublin.
Having finished his novitiate, he studied philosophy in Valkenburg, came back for his Colleges to Clongowes and then did his theology in Innsbruck.
After tertianship he spent a year in the Curia in Rome as assistant to the Secretary of the Missions, and from there he went to work in the Missions - in Hong Kong.
He studied Chinese (Cantonese) in the Portuguese Mission at Shiuhing and then came to teach in Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, which had just been given to the Society by its founders. Again my memory may be at fault, but I believe I heard that while the negotiations regarding our taking over the College were in progress, Fr Donnelly dropped several Miraculous Medals into the grounds!
After a few years he was made Prefect of Studies in Wah Yan College and was in this position until just before the beginning of World War II. He was extremely well known in Hong Kong because of his position in the world of education. He had very positive ideas on most subjects, and in education he believed in being very firm, but he was also very approachable. A recently published book by Fr P O'Connor of the Columban Fathers, under the title Buddhists find Christ, gives a number of accounts, written by the persons themselves, of their conversion to Christianity. One of these was Dr Lert Srichandra, a Thai doctor educated in Wah Yan College and later in UCD. The book recounts many very amusing conversations, often held late at night in Wah Yan, between Dr Lert and Fr Donnelly. In his account, Dr Lert gives a great deal of credit for his finding the answers to his problems to the very direct, frank and friendly handling by Fr Donnelly of a young student's fumbling approaches to the mysteries of our faith. Dr Lert has many pages of such interchange, all very revealing of the mentality of both of these men.
Just before World War II struck Hong Kong, Fr Donnelly had collected a group of teenagers, who had shown some signs of a possible vocation to the priesthood or to the Society. These were known to all of Ours in Hong Kong by Don's name for them, “the little lads”. They were in his care in the Language School in Tai Lam Chung, and when the war came, Don succeeded, first in getting these lads out of Hong Kong to the port of Kwang Chow Wan, and then to the part of South China not occupied by the Japanese. Finally he got them flown over “The Hump” from Kunming in Yunnan province to Calcutta in India. From Calcutta he brought them by train across India to Bombay and finally was able to house them in St Stanislaus College in Bandra, just outside Bombay. Many years later, Don was to be Rector of this college.
After World War II, Don brought the group of young men back safely to Hong Kong. Of them Fr Joseph Tai is the only one in the Society, but many of the others grew into pillars of the Church and of the community in other walks of life.
Returning after this tremendous odyssey to Hong Kong, Don was able to arrange the future of these young men, and then was himself assigned to Canton. There he was a teacher in the Sacred Heart School, but was also concerned with the planning of a Jesuit secondary school which was to be built there. Fr Thomas Ryan was the Superior of the Hong Kong Mission, and his idea of a Jesuit college was one which would in every way make its own impression on all, not only for its standards of excellence in teaching, but also as being a building such as to do us credit. Don was always a man whose idealism was to be realised in a very practical form, and at one time he brought a brick down from Canton to show Fr Ryan what a suitable material it could be from which to build the proposed college. Fr Ryan’s reaction, it is believed, was to throw it back to him in disgust!
Don was in Canton until the communists came to take over South China. He was fairly sure that they would also take over Hong Kong, and in any case, since for the foreseeable future we had no work in Canton, he in his practical way wanted to go elsewhere. To Fr Ryan, leaving China at such a time was not to be thought of - it betrayed a lack of faith in the future of our work in China, a thing he refused even to think of. To Don, it was just being practical to find some other field in which to labour. Fr Ryan rather hurt Don by the manner in which he viewed Don’s desire to go to India, where he was assured he would be very welcome and much needed. But Don was never a man to be discouraged or even much affected by what others thought of him or his actions, so, about 1950, off he went to start a new life in India.
In India he later became Rector (as mentioned above) and Principal of St Stanislaus, Bandra. He was also Principal in several other Jesuit colleges, ending his teaching career as Superior and Principal of Campion High School in Bombay.
During these long years he developed many new interests. Most of those who knew him remember him, apart from his great ability in the scholastic field, as the man who produced the standard book on hockey (for which, I have been told, he was decorated by the Indian government). He is remembered also as an incessant writer of verse. Every school annual of the colleges where he was Principal (or Superior, or both) contains many poems, some as short as sonnets, some quite long narrative poems on current or on spiritual themes.
When finally he retired as a teacher he went to St Augustine’s High School, Bassein, a school run by the Christian Brothers (to quote his own words from one of his last letters) ‘where I act as chaplain, teach a little, and make myself generally useful’.
He enjoyed really good health until April 1975, when he suffered a severe stroke which left him paralysed on the left side. He was moved to the Jesuit novitiate of Vinayalaya, Andheri, Bombay, where he was cared for until a second stroke caused his death.
His death leaves the Society the poorer by the loss of one of its most loyal sons. In his later years, by all accounts, he had become rather critical of many of the changes taking place in the Society, particularly in the life-style of its members, but this was largely due to the high standards he had set himself, and which he believed he should see everywhere.
His love of the Society is seen in all of his writings. He was a man who studied the theory of anything in which he was concerned. This is seen in his writing his book on hockey. He saw everything as the carrying into reality of the theory which he had formulated about that particular subject. This too is seen in his writings about Society subjects, eg, his pamphlet on the Spiritual Exercises and his short Life of Blessed Charles Spinola. This latter was an adaptation of an Italian life which had attracted his attention. This tendency to take over the work of others is seen when later he produced a catechism in Chinese and English which was largely based on My Catholic faith by Bishop Morrow. Don was always practical, and if someone else had written something that he thought well expressed what he wanted to say, he felt free to use this material in a way that some of his fellow Jesuits felt was a little too close to the original without sufficient acknowledgement.
He was a man of tremendous energy, who faced without any self-consciousness any situation which arose. He was a man of great and strong convictions. Above all, he was a really observant religious whose love for the Society came through in everything he did or wrote. He had thousands of friends and admirers, and I think it is true that of this great number of men of all kinds who admired him for one or other of his many gifts, all saw him first and foremost as a man of God

Irish Province News 52nd Year No 2 1977

Calcutta Province

Extract from a letter from a Jesuit of Calcutta Province, Darjeeling Region (Fr. Edward Hayden, St. Joseph's College, North Point, Darjeeling, Western Bengal)

I was one of the old “Intermediate” boys of the Christian Brothers, Carlow. I left off in 1910, 67 years ago, at the end of June. Yes, we learnt the Gaeilge. The Brothers - or some I met, one in particular, a Brother Doyle, was very keen on it. The others didn't teach it as it was only in the “Academy” that they began with languages: French, Gaeilge, Algebra, Euclid and of course English. (5th Book - Senior Elementary Class - was followed by the “Academy”). The Brothers had dropped Latin just before I joined the “Academy”. We were living at a distance of 5 Irish miles from Carlow, and I was delicate, so I often fell a victim of 'flu, which didn't help me to make progress in studies - made it very hard: but at that time the rule was “do or die”. There was only one excuse for not having home work done – you were dead! That was the training we had: it stood me in good stead through life; it is the one thing I am grateful for.
We had a number of Irishmen here, a handful: Fr Jos Shiel, Mayo, died in Patna. Fr James Comerford, Queen's County, died in Bihar. I met the Donnelly brothers, they were Dubliners. The one who died (Don) was Editor of the Sacred Heart Messenger. Many of his stories were about horse-racing - he must have read plenty of Nat Gould when he was a boy! (Nat wrote a number of horse-racing stories supposed to have been in Australia). There are three Irishmen in Ranchi: Frs Donnelly, Phelan and Lawlor. Fr Phelan has spent nearly his whole life in India. As a boy he was in North Point, and after his Senior Cambridge he joined the Society. At that time there was only the Missio Maior Bengalensis of the Belgian Province. The Mission took in half or more of north-east India - Patna, Ranchi and south of it, Assam, Bhutan and Sikkim - an area four or five times that of Ireland! Needless to say, there were parts of it which had no SJ within a hundred miles ...Down here in the Terai where I am “hibernating” out of the cold of Darjeeling, some forty-five years ago there was no priest. One or two of the professors of theology from Kurseong, some 40 miles away, used to visit this district at Christmas and Easter. It was very malarious. Catholics from Ranchi came here to work on the tea plantations. Then a Jesuit was sent to reside in it. Now the district has schools and Jesuits galore, also non-Jesuits. Great progress has been made. The Salesians took up Assam, the American SJs took over Patna. The Northern Belgians took over Ranchi and the Southern Belgians took Calcutta. (The Belgian Province grew till its numbers reached 1400. Then, about 1935, Belgian separated into Flemings - North - and Walloons - South). Ranchi was given to the North and Calcutta to the South. On the 15th August last year (1976) Calcutta was raised from being a Vice Province to be a full-blown Province. 100% of those joining the SJ now are sons of India. Madura in the south has been a Province for years. Nearly all the Europeans are dead: no more are allowed to come permanently unless for a very, very special reason, India has begun to send her sons to East Africa in recent years.
Fr Lawlor is Irish-born but somehow joined the Australian Province about the time it started a half-century or so ago.
Brother Carl Kruil is at present in charge of an ashram: a place for destitutes, in Siliguri. Silguri is a city which grew up in the last forty years around the terminus of the broad gauge railway and the narrow (two-foot) toy railway joining the plains with Darjeeling - one of the most wonderful lines in the world, rising from 300 feet above sea-level, 7,200 feet in about 50 miles and then dropping down to about 5,500 feet in another ten. Three times it loops the loop and three times climbs up by zig-zags. I seem to remember having met Fr Conor Naughton during the war. Quite a number of wartime chaplains came to Darjeeling. The mention of Siliguri set me off rambling. Br Krull remembers his visit to Limerick. (He stayed at the Crescent, 11th 13th June, 1969). He is a born mechanic. Anything in the line of machinery captivates him. He has to repair all the motors and oil engines – some places like this have small diesel generators which have to be seen to from time to time and all other kinds of machinery: cameras, typewriters etc. At present he comes here to do spot welding (electric welding of iron instead of bolts and nuts.
The PP, here is replacing an old simple shed with a corrugated iron roof by a very fine one with brick walls and asbestos-cement roof. Two years ago or so, the roof was lifted by a sudden whirlwind clean off the wooden pillars on which it rested. Since then he has been saying the Sunday Masses on the veranda of a primary school. In this school 235 children receive daily lessons and a small mid-day meal. The Sisters are those of St. Joseph of Cluny – all from South India. They are really heroines: no work is too difficult for them. They do all their own work and cook for us. Their Vice-Provincial is from somewhere in the centre of the “Emerald Gem”. They are growing in numbers and do great work, running a dispensary amongst other things. The church is very broad, approximately 90 by 60 feet. As no benches are used - people sit on the floor - it will hold nearly 450 people at a time. The altar is in one corner. :
Fr Robert Phelan (Ranchi Province) had a visit one night from dacoits (armed robbers), but with help managed to beat them off.
Ranchi had several of these raids last year. In nearly every case the dacoits managed to get some cash.
One night about two weeks ago a rogue elephant (one that is wild and roaming away from the herd) came to a small group of houses close by. A man heard the noise and came out. The elephant caught him by the leg and threw him on to a corn stack - fortunately. The corn stack of rice waiting to be thrashed was quite broad and flat on top! He was very little the worse for the experience. And that is the end of the news.
One more item: please ask the new Editor of the Irish Province News to let me have copies as (?) and send them by overland (surface mail). Even if they are three months coming, they will be news. God bless you and reward you handsomely.
Yours in our Lord,
Edward Hayden, SJ (born 15th October 1893, entered S.J. Ist February 1925, ordained 21st November 1933, took final vows on 2nd February 1936. Now conf. dom. et alumn. and script. hist. dom. at the above address).

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1945

Letter from Father Donal Donnelly SJ

By all accounts the Missions in China, so far from being set back, are actually progressing during war-time, most of the missionaries having turned their hand to hospital and relief work thereby increasing the prestige of the Church and bringing more souls to Christ. All of the Irish Jesuit Mission in China are safe and sound.

Fr Don Donnelly, has travelled by rail, road; water and air, accompanied by a little troop of seminarians, from end to end of Asia. After the capture of Hong Kong, he first went to French Indo-China to reconnoitre for the mission, then to Wuchow in Kwangsi, where he taught science and philosophy in the Junior Seminary of the Maryknoll Fathers. There he was joined by a remnant of the boys whom he had been training for the priesthood in Hong Kong, and another older boy who wished to become a Jesuit. As the invading Japanese armies approached, the Seminary was transferred to Paaksha in the same province. In a letter dated last September, Fr Donnelly describes the rest of his odyssey :

“An urgent warning came from the American Consul to us in Paaksha in June, urging us to clear out without delay. The Maryknoll Fathers promptly closed down the Seminary, and Fr Grogan and I, with our ten little protégés, set off for Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichow province. We had a very mnixed trip. The first bit, by sampan floating down the West River to Kweiping, was very pleasant; it took about nine hours. Then we had a day or two waiting in Kweiping, before we were picked up by an American Army barge, towed by a launch. (The lad in charge was an Irishman, from Fr Grogan's part of the country.) This dragged us past the most glorious scenery, and through the most wonderful rapids, I have ever seen, to a place called Taai Waan, south of Lauchau. There should have been a train to Lauchau, but there was none; so we contacted the big shot at Taai Waan, a Catholic, and he squeezed us on to a boat leaving that evening for Lauchau. We got there after a very leisured trip. and hung about Lauchau for a couple of days, waiting for a train. Finally we got one, and then started the most appaling train journey ever made. The train was packed to the doors, corridors and steps; we had no seats, most of us; the journey was about 250 miles, and was supposed to take 23 hours; it actually took almost four days. The nights were terrible - nodding about all over the place, without room to rest or move; However, we reached the railhead at Tushan at last, and then our troubles were over. We had a great welcome from the Chinese Father at the Catholic Mission, and in a few days, the British military authorities (who have been extraordinarily kind to us) gave us a free ride in a truck to Kweiyang, about 150 miles.

I left the boys with Fr Grogan at Kweiyang and came on myself (by American truck this time, also free) to Kunming, to see about getting the boys and ourselves out to India. That was a very pleasant trip, though a bit long, about 400 miles. I saw for the first time the real old Chinese walled cities; and the scenery was marvellous. I arrived here three months ago; since then I have brought Fr Grogan and the boys along here. We hope to leave now any day for India (by RAF plane, I hope, as I say, the British authorities, and indeed, the Americans also, have been most kind and helpful) but there are still documents to be obtained and arrangements to be made”.

And in a letter dated April 19th, he writes, this time from St Stanislaus High School, Bandra, Bombay :

“I am out here in India now with these grand Spanish Fathers for the past four months, and the years in China seem like a bad dream. Still, I must say that I am very grateful to Almighty God, not only for His marvellous Providence over us all during these past three years, but also for the trifle of war experience which He sent my way. I cannot truthfully say that I should like to go through the war and its aftermath again; but just for once it was a most salutary and sanctifying experience. I certainly shall never listen again without a slightly contemptuous smile to the saying that ‘war is heil’. War is certainly very terrible, but it is equally certainly not hell; on the contrary, many men get nearer to heaven in wartime than in times of peace.

The Chinese boys and I are quite settled down here now and thoroughly happy. There are eleven of them; ten are junior seminarians who hope to join the Society of Jesus, while the last boy is a university student. He is an old Wah Yan boy named Philip Chau Pak Harig; he has wanted for years to join the Society. I brought him along with me on the understanding that I should teach him Latin, and that he would teach my boys Chinese. He (as indeed, all the boys without exception) has made an excellent impression on all here. So,I am trying at present to get him into the Bombay university, so that he can finish his degree (medicine). The rest of the boys are not so far advanced; they will be taking their Matric. in 1947 and 1948, and will then, I hope, go to the novitiate, Vinayalaya, a delightful spot about half-an-hour from here by surburban train and bus. It is really most creditable for these lads, because, despite the handicap of learning through a foreign language (English) and of broken, unsatisfactory studies for the past three years since the war, they are actually a year ahead of time; had they been in Hong Kong, they would not be due for Matric. before 1948 or 1949.

These Indian boys are very different from the Chinese. The Chinese is quiet, shy, reserved, very industrious, patient, gentle, and altogether charming; your Indian boy is lively, very friendly, distinctly less industrious, cheery, clever and not less charming, I shall certainly leave a bit of my heart here in Bandra when the time comes to return to. China. The Indian boys here are far more fickle than the Chinese, but they are solidly Catholic, and to them the priest is the priest, as he is to any Irish boy. In China it is not so; the priest is just another schoolmaster, usually somewhat ‘more decent’ and kindly and painstaking than the lay teacher, but as far as priestly dignity is concerned, you might just as well be Mr Ezechiah X of the China Inland Mission.

I am teaching here myself, and helping out in the church, the finest parish church I have ever seen, and as busy a place as Gardiner St nearly 250,000 Communions a year. I have given several Retreats since I came, to Matric, boys, to our Scholastics at the Theologate in Poona, to teachers, etc. I start another retreat this evening to nuns. The last little job I had was, of all weird. things, to write a new libretto for an operetta ! You would be amazed at the amount of verse I have perpetrated since coming here. It started with the demand for translation of Spanish Christmas carols into English, then came requests for Papal anthems, Mission anthems, Rector's Day songs, and so on, and now this is the last straw!

Well, best wishes to all old friends in Belvedere”.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1986

The Travelling Donnellys

Don Donnelly SJ (1915) died in 1975 after a varied life in a different world. His brother Leo (1920), now in Sacred Heart Church Limerick, sends this report which he calls “The Travelling Donnellys”:

The older, Donal or Don (later Latinised into Daniel or Dan), Belvedere 1903-1915, was always first in his class. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1919 after taking his MSc in UCD After two years in Tullabeg, Rahan, he went for Philosphy to Valkenburg, Holland, with the German Jesuits expelled from Germany by Bismarck. After three years teaching in Clongowes, he studied Theology in Innsbruck, Austria. Ordained in Dublin in 1929, he spent a year in Rome attached to the Jesuit Mission Secretariat. Then, after Tertianship in North Wales, he sailed for Hong Kong in July 1932.

Having learnt the Cantonese version of Chinese mainly with the Portuguese Jesuits in Shiu Hing, he worked as Headmaster of Wah Yan College in Hong Kong until the second World War broke out. No more Scholastics would come from Ireland, so the house intended for their Language School was vacant, and was utilised as a Minor Seminary for boys intending to become Jesuits. Don was put in charge. Then, on 8th December 1941 the Japanese invaded and occupied Hong Kong. The Irish Jesuits, as neutrals, were not interned. So, after things had quietned down, Don made his way into Free China with a dozen of the “Little Lads”. He settled down with the American Maryknoll Fathers at Tanchuk. Alas, a year orso later, the Americans began to construct an airfield nearby. Whereupon the Japanese Army made a drive to occupy that part of China as well, so the Maryknoll Minor Seminary had to be abandoned.

With his charges Don made an adventurous journey westwards by antiquated train, up turbulent rivers in over-crowded boats, and finally up steep mountain roads in delapidated trucks, ending in Kunming, the Capital of Yunnan Province, the nearest to India. To Kunming the Allies were bringing supplies by air over the “Hump” for the Chinese Army of Chiang Kai Chek. The planes were returning empty to India, so Don succeded in getting passage for himself and the twelve boys. Eventually they settled in St Stanislaus School, Bandra, Bombay. When the war was over and the older boys had completed their matriculation, the party returned to Hong Kong by sea.

Don went on to Canton, now liberated, to act as Headmaster in the Archbishop's school. But all too soon the Communists took over the whole of China, and Don was on his travels again. He asked to return to India and worked in Bombay for twenty five years as Headmaster in various schools until his death of a stroke in 1975.

The younger brother, Diarmuid Leo (the second name was always used) Belvedere 1908 - 1920 was never first in his class. He entered the Jesuits straight from school. After two years in Tullabeg, he was sent for a year to study Humanities in France. Then after three years Science in UCD, he began Philosophy in Milltown Park. However, owing to illness, a colleague returned to Ireland and, to replace him, Leo was transferred to Pullach-bei-München in Germany.

There followed three years teaching and coach ing Rugby in Belvedere. Then, after Theology and Tertianship he returned to Belvedere to teach Mathematics as a side-line to coaching Rugby.
In September 1941 he was appointed Chaplain in the British Army. He spent nearly three years in various posts in Great Britain, then transferred to Normandy on D-day. Always remaining safely behind the lines, he ended the war in Ostend, Belgium. Shortly after he was appointed to the Irish Guards in Germany, and was demobbed early in 1946.

On suggestion ot his brother he was appointed Professor of Church History in Kurseong, the Theologate of the Jesuits in India, situated in the foothills of the Himalayas, After a little over two years, he was transferred to Australia, visiting Hong Kong on the way. There followed one year in Newman College, Melbourne, and then five years in the Holy Name Minor Seminary, Christchurch, New Zealand

The Belgian Jesuits in India were having difficulty in securing Visas for new blood from Belgium, so a “swop” was arranged. Leo went to Ranchi, Bihar, India, while a Belgian went to the Irish Jesuit Mission in Zambia. Leo remained as Professor of Philosophy in the Regional Seminary, Ranchi for twenty six years, and finally returned to Ireland in 1981.

(Editor: Fr. Leo forgets to mention something about his 1938 SCT...)

Born: 09 May 1839, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1858, Beaumont, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 19 September 1874, Laval, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1879
Died: 11 May 1919, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway

by 1867 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1872 at Laval France (FRA) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He had two brothers Priests in the Dublin Diocese, one the PP of Dunlavin and another PP of Celbridge. Both predeceased Edmund.

Early education was at Belvedere College SJ.

After his Noviceship he studied Philosophy and Theology at Laval, finishing his Theology at Milltown.
He spent many years in Tullabeg, Clongowes and Galway.
1886 He went from Tullabeg to Galway, and remained there until his death 11 May 1919.

The following appreciation appeared for Edmund in a local paper after his death :
“Father Donovan entered the Society of Jesus on 07 September 1858 and made his Noviceship at Roehampton, under that distinguished Spiritual Director Father Tracey Clarke SJ. He made his Philosophical and Theological studies in France and was Ordained at Laval, and Final Vows 02 February 1879.
His life as a Priest in the Society of Jesus was mostly spent in the seclusion of the classroom and Church. The results of these long years of useful and self-effacing labour are written in the Book of Life and in the hearts and minds of his many pupils. In the year 1883 we find him Vice-Rector at his old Alma Mater, Belvedere.
For the last thirty four years of his life he worked in Galway. Father Donovan is too well known to the residents of Galway to need any eulogies to raise him in their affection and esteem. The sympathetic crowd of all conditions that attended his Solemn Requiem Mass on Tuesday last testify to that. The members of the Sodality of Our Blessed Lady formed a guard of honour at the funeral, and vied with each other for the privilege of bearing his remains to the grave. The poor, whom, as a true Priest, he loved while he lived, also showed that they had not forgotten him in death.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the Board of Guardians, a vote of condolence was passed with the Jesuit Fathers on the death of Father Donovan, the proposer remarking that in both religion and amongst laymen, the deceased was one of the most respected clergymen in the city.”

Note from Patrick Hughes Entry :
He was then sent to Laval for Theology, and in the company of Edmund Donovan, was Ordained there.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Edmund Donovan 1839-1919
Fr Edmund Donovan was born in Dublin on May 9th 1839. He had two brothers priests in the Diocese, one was Parish Priest of Dunlavin, the other of Celbridge.

Fr Donovan’s life as a Jesuit was spent in the seclusion of the classroom and the Church. The results of these long years of useful and self-effacing labour are written in the Book of Life and in the hearts of his many pupils, but they deserve to be recorded here, if only as typical of the lives of many of Ours in the Province, especially those who toil in the classroom.

In 1883 Fr Donovan was Vice-Rector of his old Alma Mater, Belvedere, but the main years of his life, 34 years in all, were spent in Galway.

He died in Galway on May 11th 1919 at the age of 80. The huge crowd, rich and poor, which attended his funeral testify to the esteem and affection in which he was held in Galway. The members of Our Lady’s Sodality formed a guard of honour at the funeral, and vied with one another for the privilege of bearing his remains to the grave. The poor, whom, as true priest, he had loved in his lifetime, showed that they had not forgotten him in death.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1920

Obituary

Father Edmund Donovan SJ

Owing to going so early to press last year we were unable to record the death of Fr Donovan at St. Ignatius' College, Galway, on the 11th of May. He was one of our oldest pupils, having entered Belvedere in 1852. We have before us as we write a faded pink programme which records how “at the Christmas Exams. 1855, of the College of St Francis Xavier, the following young gentlemen particularly distinguished themselves”. Then follow the names of these distinguished alumni, and amongst them we see in the “Class of Humanity” Edmund Donovan, figuring as first in Classics and German, and second in English and French.

This promis ing beginning was followed by a long life of successful work in the Society of Jesus. As a master in Tullabeg, Galway, Limerick, Clongowes, as Vice-Rector of Belvedere in 1883, and as a zealous Church worker in Galway for the last thirty four years of his life, Fr Donovan ever played the part of a zealous, unostentatious, sincere worker in the vineyard of the Lord. RIP

◆ The Clongownian, 1919

Obituary

Father Edmund Donovan SJ

On the 11th of May, at the age of 80, Father Donovan passed away at St Ignatius College, Galway. His School career belongs rather to Belvedere than to Clongowes for he had been five years at Belvedere before coming to us for the last year of his school life. A few months after leaving Clongowes he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in England. That was in 1858, so that ten years ago he had the happiness of celebrating the Golden Jubilee of his Jesuit life. And that life was one of uninterrupted usefulness and self-effacing labour. He taught in Tullabeg, Limerick, Galway, Clongowes, and Belvedere. Of the last-named, his Alma Mater, he was made Vice-Rector in 1883. “During the time”, says the Belvederian, “he guided her destinies not only did the number of her students increase, but the spirit of work and the general efficiency that marked his reign will bear favourable comparison with the best periods in her long history”.
.
For the last thirty-four years of his life Father Donovan worked in Galway. Up to the last he took his full share in the work of the Church - sermons, late Masses, direction of sodalities, the confessional. His rôle was unostentatious and unassuming, but the sick and the poor will not soon forget his charity, nor his penitents the kindliness and patience of their director.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father Edmund Donovan (1839-1919)

A native of Dublin, entered the Society in 1858. He was prefect of studies at the Crescent from 1883-1885. After a year in Tullabeg, he was transferred to St Ignatius' College, Galway where he was at different times, prefect of studies, master, minister and member of the church staff until his death.

Born: 05 January 1716, Edgeworthstown, County Longford
Entered: 26 July 1732, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1747/8, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 17 April 1758, Dublin, County Dublin - described as Martyr

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Taught Grammar, Humanities and Rhetoric in Lisbon.
1750-1758 In Dublin
In the 1755 HIB Catalogue is the date “17/04/1758” by a different hand, which is presumed to be the RIP date.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1734-1737 After First Vows studied Philosophy at Coimbra
1737-1742 Sent on Regency at Lisbon teaching Rhetoric
1742-1749 Sent for Theology at Coimbra and Ordained there 1747/48
1749-1750 After Tertianship at Coimbra, he was sent as Minister at Irish College Lisbon
1750 Sent to Ireland working as an Operarius in Dublin, but was already in poor health, and he died there 17 April 1758

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DORAN, EDMUND, of Leinster. He was born on the 5th of January, 1716, and entered the Society at Lisbon on the 26th of July, 1732. This Professed Father came to the Irish Mission in 1750; he was naturally of a weak constitution. Dublin was his usual residence, where it seems he died on the 17th of April, 1758.

Born: 27 July 1918, Belfast, County Antrim / Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1937, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1950, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1955, Loyola, Tai Lam Chung, Hong Kong
Died: 23 March 1988, Our Lady of the Rosary, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong - Macau-Hong Kong Province (MAC-HK)

Grew up in Dublin; educated at Belvedere College SJ (final year)

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Father Seamus Doris, SJ, assistant parish priest at Our Lady of the Rosary Church, Kennedy Town, died in Queen Mary Hospital on Wednesday 23 March 1988, after a very brief illness, aged 70. He had dined at Wah Yan College, Wanchai, on the previous evening and seemed to be in excellent health. He felt unwell in the tram on his way back to Kennedy Town and collapsed soon after his return. He was brought to hospital, where he was able to receive the Sacrament of the Sick with full attention and was even able to chat a little on Wednesday morning. But he sank rapidly and died shortly after noon.

Father Doris was born in Ireland on 27 July 1918. He joined the Jesuits in 1937, was ordained priest in 1950, and came to Hong Kong in 1952.

After language study, he taught physics and chemistry to the higher forms in Wah Yan College, Kowloon. For about a quarter of a century, combining his educational tasks with zealous pastoral and apostolic work. About seven years ago he turned to whole-time pastoral work, serving in Macau, Cheung Chau and finally in Kennedy Town.

He was a man of conservative bent, and accepted liturgical and other changes stemming from Vatican II with reluctance, but never allowed that reluctance to hinder full acceptance of lawful change. He was an exceptionally devout priest, a very hard worker, and a good companion. A fellow priest in his last parish described him as a man who never said an unkind word about anyone and never said No to a request. That is his just and enviable epitaph.

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He joined the Society in 1937 and came to Hong Kong after Ordination in 1951, and he studied Cantonese at Cheung Chau for two years. He was a man who led a simple and austere life, one of dedication and serious work.
He was good friends with Harry Naylor, Joe Mallin and Dan Fitzpatrick.

1954-1982 He taught Physics at Wah Yan College Kowloon and Hong Kong.

According to Harry Naylor “- “He never missed a day or a class, was always teaching seriously, and demanding accurate and careful work. He would have no new lab equipment or teaching materials or methods. It was the same i his Jesuit life. His real love was to be with simple ordinary people, where his integrity and simplicity was highly revered..

He always helped in parishes. Wang Tau Hom and Diamond Hill (1954-1981) in Macau, and Kennedy Town as an Assistant Pastor in Our Lady of the Rosary Parish from 1985 until he died in 1988

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1965
Sons of Xavier
Father Séamus Doris (1937) is the physics and mathematics Master of the college. University science levels are rising steadily here every year, and the pressure on the schools is very great. Father Doris' pupils have been conspicuously successful, so it was not surprising that when illness struck down the physics master in the Hong Kong College he should be asked to help out there too, in the vital last two months of the year. He did it bravely and the undying gratitude of the science-hungry pupils,

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1988
Obituary
Father Séamus Doris SJ (1937)
Seamus Doris was born in Belfast in 1918. His family moved to Dublin when their house was burned down during the “Troubles” of 1921. Most of his schooling was with the Christian Brothers and he came to Belvedere only for his final year. He obtained first place in the country in Physics in the Leaving, presaging a lifetime spent in teaching the subject of Science in Hong Kong.

He joined the Jesuits on leaving school and, after the ordinary course of formation, was ordained priest in 1950. In 1952 he went to Hong Kong and began his long career as a schoolmaster at Wah Yan in 1954, retiring in 1982. One of the “old school” in this as in much else, it is said of him that he was never sick in all those years, never missed a class and was never absent for a single day. Many of his pupils obtained credits and distinctions; many went on to become teachers at school or university in their turn. He was very committed to his teaching.

Every Sunday for 25 years he said the early Mass at Bishop Walsh Primary School, later Lok Fu parish, He was deeply respected and loved by the people as a frugal, simple, devout and dedicated man. When he retired from the classroom he engaged more extensively in pastoral work, in Macau for two years and in Kennedy Town Parish from 1985 until his sudden death in March.

The six pages of tributes to him from his Jesuit brothers in the March Macau-Hong Kong Province SJ Letter bear eloquent testimony to the regard in which they held him. May he rest in peace.

Born: 1612, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 19 March 1633, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1638, Douai, France
Died: 09 August 1650, New Ross Residence, Nerw Ross, County Wexford - described as a “Martyr of Charity”

1633 Is at Douai
1638 Studying Theology at Douai
1650 Died in service of and stricken by the plague

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1640 Came to Irish Mission
He died a Martyr of Charity in his service to the plague stricken of New Ross.
He was the only Priest left in New Ross when it was taken by Cromwellian (Parliamentary) Rebels. He went in many disguises and was a holy and humble man. Five others had remained in Waterford, two of whom were Priests - George Dillon and James Walshe. (Report of Irish Mission 1641-1650, by Mercure Verdier, Visitor, to Fr General - a copy at English College Rome) (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had already completed Philosophy at Douai before Ent 19 March 1633 Rome
1635-1639 After First Vows he was sent back to Douai for Theology due to ill health and was Ordained there in 1638
1640 Sent to Ireland and to New Ross. He was Minister at the Residence at the time of Mercure Verdier’s Visitation, and he reported favourably on him in his Report of 1649 to the General.
1649 At the capture of New Ross by the Puritans Gregory was the only Priest left in the town, and he spent his time bringing consolation to the plague-stricken up to his death there 09 August 1650
He is described as a “Martyr of Charity”

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Gregory Dowdall 1614-1650
At New Ross on August 9th 1650 died Fr Gregory Dowdall, a victim of charity in the service of the sick. During the siege of the city by Cromwell, he was a source of great comfort and strength to the citizens. When the city was finally captured, he was the only priest left at his post, ensuring the ravages of the plague which inevitably followed, he devoted himself single-handedly to the sick and the dying. Disguised as a gardener selling fruit and vegetables, he eluded the vigilance of the Puritans, and thus was enabled to minister to the Catholics.

He himself was struck down by the plague, and assisted by a fellow Jesuit, Fr Stephen Gelous who had been sent from Waterford, he died at the early age of 36, having lived 18 years in the Society.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DOWDALL, GREGORY. This Father, the model of zeal, humility, and self-denial, during the Siege of Ross, Co. Wexford, was like an angel of comfort to its inhabitants. When the town was taken by the Parliamentary troops, he was the only Priest that remained at his post; and during the ravages of the plague, devoted himself to the service of the sick and infected. Overcome with exertion, he at length took the infection, and fell a victim of charity on the 9th of August, 1650. As soon as the Superior, F. Malone, heard of his illness, he sent F. Stephen Gelosse to his assistance from Waterford, and from his hands the dying Father received all the consolations of Religion and all the attentions of friendship.

Born: 04 October 1931, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1949, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 25 March 1963, Wah Yan College, Kowloon
Final Vows: 22 April 1977, St Francis Xavier, Kulala Lumpur, Malaysia
Died: 17 March 2011, Arrupe, Quezon City, Manila, Philippines - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Part of the Gonzaga College, Dublin community at the time of death.

Educated at Belvedere College SJ

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966; HK to CHN : 1992

by 1958 at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency studying language
by 1961 at Bellarmine , Baguio City Philippines (ExOr) studying

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Former editor dies

A former editor of the Sunday Examiner and the first Jesuit to be ordained a priest in Hong Kong, Father Frank Doyle, died in Manila, The Philippines, on 17 March 2011, after suffering a stroke on 6 February 2011. He was treated at the Medical City in Manila, but his condition continued to deteriorate.

He was farewelled from the Loyola House of Studies on the campus of Ateneo de Manila University on 23 March 2011, with Father Mark Raper as the main celebrant at his requiem Mass, and buried at the Jesuit novitiate in Quezon City.

Born in Ireland on 4 October 1931, he entered the Society of Jesus on 7 September 1949. His ordination at Wah Yan College Chapel in Kowloon on 25 March 1963 is described as being a big moment in the history of the Jesuits in Hong Kong, receiving headlines in the newspapers and on the radio news.

The newly ordained priest did interviews for the radio and historian, Father Thomas Morrissey, described it “a widespread manifestation of friendliness towards the Church and the society,” in his book, The Jesuits in Hong Kong, South China and Beyond.

He is described by Paul K. B. Chan, as “as a very friendly teacher and a good spiritual director.”

During his years in Hong Kong, Father Doyle was at the forefront of many activities and was particularly active in the push for direct elections from 1988 into the early 1990s. He addressed a forum of 10,000 people, along with the Democratic Party champion of the cause, Martin Lee Chu-ming, and on 21 May 1989 was present at a prayer meeting in St. Margaret’s Happy Valley at the end of a day when an estimated crowd of between 400,000 and one million people walked the streets of Hong Kong in support of the issue.

Father Doyle also worked in the Jesuit Centre of Spirituality at Cheung Chau, as well as among the students at Ricci Hall, and was among the first group to go from Hong Kong to the East Asia Pastoral Institute in Manila to study.

After an initial stint teaching at Wah Yan College, Father Doyle went to Singapore, where his career with newspapers began, working on the diocesan publication, Catholic News. He later became the founding director of the Pastoral Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he stayed for the full 10 years allowed to a foreign resident by the government at that time.

Back in Hong Kong, he continued his writing at UCA News, before coming to the Sunday Examiner. He is remembered from his years at the editor’s desk (1991 to 1993) as an extremely good speaker of Cantonese, as well as a joyful and enthusiastic person.

“He would sing as he worked,” one of the staff said, “adding that he seemed to be able to do almost everything from writing articles to designing advertisements and doing the artwork himself.”

He is also remembered for giving a job to a hearing impaired woman. Staff who go back that far, say that he was patient and took time to teach her how to cut and paste to set out a page for the printers. They say that he continually encouraged her and, gradually her self-confidence grew and she began to speak more freely. Eventually, even, her hearing appeared to improve and in the end, she could talk quite fluently.

Father Ciaran Kane, from Xavier House in Cheung Chau, studied with him in high school in Ireland and they were again together in the Jesuit formation programme, coming to Hong Kong at about the same time.

Father Kane described his old friend as charming and a man who made friends easily, although in many ways he could be called a loner, as he liked to do his own thing in his own way. Father Kane said that something changed in him in later years. In describing him as dapper, he noted that in his later years he become really casual and even grew a beard.

“But he really loved writing,” Father Kane said, “and he was good at it. For many years after he went back to Ireland, he would return to Kuala Lumpur and do a month at the Catholic paper each year. He wrote many things.”

Father Doyle left Hong Kong when he finished at the Sunday Examiner and returned to Ireland where he worked in high school ministry and also retreat work.

Father Kane said, “He never forgot his Cantonese though and kept contact with Chinese people in Ireland and England, as well as in Vancouver and New York for many years.”

Father Doyle finished his days in Manila among the Jesuit scholastics as a spiritual adviser. He is also remembered as an author of prayers and reflections.

He once wrote, “Perhaps I haven’t seen things from this perspective, or have forgotten it, but it is the truth of my life: I am called by name, journeying along a unique path, God with me, God before me, all along the way that is mine.”

Tributes to him have poured in from every country in which he worked. May he rest in peace.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 3 April 2011

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013.

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/frank-doyle/

Frank Doyle, an Irish Jesuit priest of the Chinese Province, died on Saint Patrick’s Day 2011. After some years working in Ireland, Frank had returned to Asia in 2010, undertaking
work as a spiritual director in Manila. For many years he wrote the Living Space commentaries – reflections on readings and saints – on the Sacred Space website. His requiem and burial took place in Saint Ignatius Oratory, Loyola House of Studies, Manila on 22 March. Messages sent on news of his illness and other more general comments indicate how meaningful his apostolate had become to so many whom he had helped in their search for the Lord. The text of the homily delivered at his funeral can be read at Living Space, courtesy of Mark Raper SJ, President of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific. The text of the homily (http://sacredspace.ie/livingspace/funeral-homily/)

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/frank-in-sweaty-manila/

Frank Doyle SJ (left in photo) recently exchanged the green and leafy delights of Gonzaga for the humid heats of Manila, where there has been no rain for a long time and it is extremely hot, exceeding 30C and going up to 36, with humidity to match. After years in Hong Kong, Frank served Chinese exiles in many parts of the world, including Dublin. His ease with groups of diverse languages and cultures will stand to him in his new job as spiritual director to Jesuit students from at least twelve different countries. On arrival he joined a team directing the spiritual exercises in an upcountry retreat house. He lives on the large (Belfield-size) campus of the Jesuit university, Ateneo de Manila, and is praying for some cool rain

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :

Note from Paddy Finneran Entry
Among his students were Ciarán Kane and Frank Doyle in Belvedere

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 145 : Summer 2011

Obituary

Fr Frank Doyle (1932-2011) : China Province

Obituary by Myles O'Reilly
Who is Frank Doyle? He had so many lives within one life that no one seems to know the whole Frank. On top of that, he was quite a private person and very self-sufficient. No wonder the editor found it so hard to find someone to write his obituary and the lot falls to me, being his last Rector in Ireland. Outwardly Frank was an exemplary novice like monk who never wasted a minute of his time. He rose at six in the morning, faithfully meditated for an hour, had breakfast in silence on his own, dutifully sat at his desk dealing with emails, researching, reading and writing for his Sacred Space contributions, celebrated Mass once weekly in Gonzaga school, and for the rest of the week at 10 30 a.m. with the Cherryfield community, for whom he had great affection, continued his morning desk-work until lunch to which he went with a certain reluctance (Frank was strongly one-to-one in preference).

After a short friendly chat in the kitchen with Linda the cook, he went to his room for a siesta, continued his reading and writing but interlaced it with listening to the radio, listening to his favourite music, usually jazz, and getting some physical exercise. This brought him to a late supper where he was careful to eat a healthy diet. After this, he played the piano for half an hour, relaxed in the library, having a chat with Kennedy O'Brien, whenever he was there, and then went off to bed. He was usually cheerful, had a great hearty laugh, loved a joke, passed many a one by email to his friends (including blue!!). He wore simple clothes, always wore a ring as a sign of his commitment to Christ, and always kept his room simple and uncluttered.

Yet he was also deeply serious and reflective and could be easily drawn into a theological discussion, usually taking a liberal line but in a gentle, non-aggressive way. Despite being wedded to his routine, he was always ready to drop it at the request for some help of any nature. He was also generous with his time for directees or friends that came to visit him. On Sundays he joined the Dublin Chinese community for Eucharist, after which he would join his brother Philip and his family for lunch, where he was a great hit with his nephews and nieces, and their children, all of whom he baptized and with whom he would watch television (only time in the week he permitted himself such an indulgence!). . For some of his summer, Frank became a curate in an all-Chinese community in New York, In September he offered himself as chaplain to a group that went to Lourdes every year. Occasionally throughout the year he would give a preached retreat, usually to nuns in the Loreto retreat centre in Linsfort, Co Donegal. He also loved to stand in as chaplain in St Vincent's private hospital in Dublin when required. So far this is only a brief external description of Frank in his Gonzaga incarnation

From his outer conformity to routine, you could be forgiven for thinking that Frank could just as easily have been a Cistercian as a Jesuit, but when you read his retreat reflections from the early 90's you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. True to Ignatian spirituality, we are defined by what is our deep heart's core. Even the ancient spirituality of the Upanishads recognized this. “You are what your deepest driving desire is; as your desire is, so is your will, as your will is so is your deed” The following is how Frank expressed his deepest desire.

    “My deepest desire is
    to work for the kingdom of God
    in whatever place
    and in whatever work
    to which I believe God is calling me
    In the spirit of the beatitudes
    especially in companionship with Christ today
    in the poor and the discriminated against
    even if it means suffering and rejection
    using only the weapons of compassion, justice and freedom”.

We can easily hear the call of Christ the King, and the “Two Standards” in this deepest desire. True to it, throughout his reflections in his diary and his retreat notes, Frank is always questioning himself as to whether he is in the right place or doing the right work in terms of promoting God's kingdom. Could he be more effectively employed elsewhere? Even though the Chinese left the deepest imprint in his heart, it did not stop him from wondering whether it would be best for the Hong Kong mission that he leave, as a more indigenous Church would be more acceptable to mainline China when they would take over Hong Kong in 1997. Ought not the Hong Kong Church stand on its own feet, and best evangelize its own people? A combination of external circumstances and internal discernment led Frank to switch his missionary life to Malaysia where he put down fruitful roots for 10 years, enhanced by his willingness to learn the Malay language. He was deeply impressed by the strength of the indigenous church there, which gave him the freedom to consider turning the last quarter of his life to the Western world. The first part of this was spent in Canada where he was confronted with the challenge of making a stand for the gay community on what he saw as a human rights issue. This led to his having to leave ministry there and come back to Ireland as chaplain to Gonzaga school, which he undertook for three years.

Inwardly Frank was always chiding himself for writing just for himself alone. He saw it as too self indulgent. “Did not Ghandhi write solely for the edification of people? And Jesus did not write at all!!” But somehow he knew his vocation was to write. He had been editor of the “Hong Kong Examiner” and he had ambitious writing goals to fulfil. He longed to write about the Eucharist, the Beatitudes, New Testament syllabi for Hong Kong schools, sermon notes, Discernment of Spirits, and the use of “eros”, “philia”, and “agape” in the New Testament.

Late in his life he got his opportunity, a chance to channel all his in-depth reflections over the years on these topics through “Sacred Space”, which had an outreach to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. He was asked to provide reflections on the liturgical readings of each day in the year and on the lives of the saints. He thrived on this mission and even found time to write a book on “A New Sexual Ethic” in his spare time, that I hope the Jesuits will find in his computer in the Philippines. The quality of the responses that Frank got from all over the world from his readers, when they heard of his stroke, was amazing. Emails came flooding in from Italy, Canada, India, Scotland, Brazil, Norway, USA, England, Portugal, Philippines, Malta, Korea, Honk Kong, Malaysia, Australia, Ireland and Spain in their hundreds. I quote a few just to give the reader a flavour of the remarks.
“You communicate the message of Christ convincingly to contemporary culture”...
“You touch, inspire and challenge me, I relish the Jesuitness that oozes out from your deep integrated life” ...
“On many occasions, I felt like the disciples on the way to Emmaus having the scriptures opened to them”...
“You are like St Paul, Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” etc

When Frank was riding high apostolically at the age of 77, his deepest desire, the guiding principle of his life, did not leave him. It led him to agreeing to go back to Manila in the Philippines, to where he did his theology as a scholastic, as chaplain to 40 Chinese students. There was a feeling of St Paul leaving one of his missionary communities, never to return, as we said good bye to him on the steps of Gonzaga community two years ago, as he headed off to the East yet again to fittingly die among the people that struck the deepest chord in his heart, the Chinese on, of all days, St Patrick's Day!! St Francis Xavier will surely gladly be among the welcoming party for Frank, but might be a little envious that Frank got to work and live among the Chinese, spoke their language, and travelled his missionary 100,000 miles by plane and train!!! May he rest in peace.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1965

Sons of Xavier

Father Frank Doyle (1949). The only other who belongs to this part of the world and is within it is Father Frank Doyle, who is just now concluding his Tertianship and is due to return in the middle of May. He is to work with the “China News Analysis”, a weekly publication run by Jesuits which sifts the news published in China and is highly respected as an interpreter of current events and trends in Communist China.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1986

News of the Past

Frank Doyle SJ

Frank Doyle SJ (1949) was in Belvedere this summer: I spent seven years in Belvedere, from 1942 to 1949.

In that year, I entered the Society of Jesus with three other classmates, two of whom are still in the Society - Denis Flannery(Zambia) and Percy Winder (Clongowes). There followed two years as a novice in Emo, three years in Rathfarnham studying Classics at UCD. (then in Earlsfort Terrace), and three years of philosophy at St Stanislaus College in Tullabeg, near Tullamore.

In 1957, I went to Hong Kong. The first two years there were spent in our language school and the third year was spent teaching in a Jesuit secondary school, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong (not to be confused with Wah Yan College, Kowloon).

At the end of the third year, I returned to Ireland to begin theology at Milltown Park in Dublin. But after one year, I transferred to Bellarmine College at Baguio City in the Philippines. Studying here also gave me an opportunity to study Mandarin Chinese, the mostly widely spoken form of Chinese. (In Hong Kong I had learnt Cantonese which is spoken by “only 30 million” people.)

In 1963, I was ordained priest at the chapel of Wah Yan College Kowloon in Hong Kong - the first Jesuit to be ordained in Hong Kong.

After completing theology at Baguio in 1964, I went to Chabanel Hall in Manila for tertianship, my final year of formation, “Hall” was really a euphemism for a collection of galvanised metal huts which had in previous years served as a prisoner of war camp for both Americans and Japa nese during the Second World War.

In 1965, I returned to Hong Kong to start my career as a “formed” Jesuit. In the first year, I worked with Fr Ladany, a Hungarian Jesuit, on “China News Analysis”, a weekly newsletter which Fr Ladany single-handedly edited from 1953 to 1982. He has now retired and handed over to a younger generation.

In the following year, I was assigned back to Wah Yan College Hong Kong as “spiritual father” to the boys and minister to the Jesuit community.

In the summer of 1967, I was asked by the superior Fr Fergus Cronin if I would like to spend two months of the holidays in Singapore. I was delighted at the idea.

The day after I arrived in Singapore towards the end of July, I was put in the editor's chair of the local Catholic newspaper although I had no experience whatever of this kind of work. The two months became two years. In 1969 I parted company with the paper. The Archbishop of Singapore was not too happy with my freewheeling editorial policy.

Instead I was transferred to neighbouring Malaysia where I was to spend 10 years (so much for the two months in 1967). I only left after 10 years because the government's policy towards missionaries did not allow me to stay any longer.

My work in Malaysia was very varied. There are not many priests there and one finds oneself doing all kinds of things. So I found myself helping out in parishes at weekends, being chaplain to two universities (at the same time), helping out in a pastoral institute, editing a diocesan newsletter, giving retreats, seminars and talks, teaching religion in schools... In my final year (78-79) I was a parish priest. My time in Malaysia was a very enriching experience.

In 1979, I was back in Hong Kong. My first year back was spent relearning Cantonese, which had. grown rusty from lack of use over 12 years. There followed one year of teaching but since then I have been mostly engaged in editing work of one kind or another. In 1982 I began editing “Correspondence”, a newsletter whose intention was to keep Jesuits informed on what was happening to the Church in China. Also in that year, I began an association with UCAN (Union of Catholic Asian News). UCAN is a Catholic news agency which covers the East and Southeast Asian region. Each week it sends out a dispatch to subscribing newspapers. It has also been preparing a directory of Catholic dioceses in the region of which I was the editor. In more recent years, it began publishing a weekly newsletter of Church news in Asia. I was also involved with this.

On a more directly pastoral level, I have been helping out in a parish at weekends and been spir itual adviser to a Christian Life Community group in one of our schools. There have also been retreats and talks to various groups.

Hong Kong in many ways is an exciting place to be. The Pacific Basin is now probably the fastest growing area economically in the world today and Hong Kong is one of its hubs. The many changes taking place in China and it assumption of sove =reignity over Hong Kong in 1997 also present excit ing challenges. Not least to the Jesuits. I am very happy to be part of that.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1991

Interview

At Home in the World : Talking to Father Frank Doyle SJ

Frank Doyle SJ (1949) has spent most of his time since joining the Jesuits in the Far East and works in Hong Kong, now facing reunification with China in six years' time. On one of his occasional visits home, when he likes to stay in Belvedere, Conor Patten interviewed him for The Belvederian in October 1990.

When did you enter Belvedere?
I joined the Junior House in 1942 at the age of eleven and a year later went on to the Senior School, where I spent all six years of my secondary education.

What are your memories of the school?
Well, I can remember being very happy there, I enjoyed the school a lot. I was very involved with the Vincent de Paul Society - in those days there were terrible slums down in Parell Street and we would visit people there and bring them food tickets, which were worth about five shillings, sometimes ten. That's roughly twenty-five pence nowdays. It was really Sean O'Casey poverty - have you seen Juno and the Paycock? It was just like that. Whole families living in rooms. I was also very keen on the Camera Club. We had a Jesuit (Fr Scantlebury) in charge who was also editor of The Irish Messenger. He was very interested in archeology and every Saturday or Sunday we would head out for some archeological site in the country and photograph it, so combining the two interests. I can remember the bicycles that we used, it was always bicycles. In that way I visited most of the archeological sites in Dublin and the surrounding counties,

Do you think the school has changed since then?
Of course! It has changed a lot! Mostly for the better, I think. I haven't had much exposure to the classroom since I returned and I haven't been in contact with many of the students but I can see changes have taken place. The curriculum has certainly changed: everybody studied Latin up to the Leaving when I was in school and there was a straight choice between Science and Greek in Fifth Year. Society changes and the school changes with it.

Do you think that the Jesuits in Belvedere influenced your decision to become a Jesuit yourself?
Yes, I do. We had nine scholastics in the school during my final year and I got to know the Jesuits well. I think they did influence my decision.

Did you know any of the community back then who are still here today?
I knew quite a lot - Br Coigan [R.I.P.), Fr Reidy, Fr Schrenk, Fr McLaughlin and Fr MacSeumais.

How do you think Ireland as a society has changed in the years that you have been away?
Well, I think that there is a lot of wealth around now that was not there when I was at school. The greatest changes are economic, People seem to have more money, even students have more money. I remember receiving two and sixpence a week, which is about fifteen pence now. Looking back, those days seem a very austere time. Those who were considered the “comfortable middle class” would not be considered middle class today. There also seems to be a much greater split in society - the gap between rich and poor and the haves and have-nots seems to have grown.

Did you join the Jesuits straight after leaving school?
I graduated from Belvedere in 1949 and went straight to Emo Park where I spent two years, then I took my vows and then spent four years studying Classics in UCD, then came my three years of Philosophy.

Why did you volunteer for the missions?
I think that it was because I saw that nobody else from my year was going to apply, and I knew that there was a great need for people out there. They usually send at least one scholastic out every year and it seemed that no one else was interested in going. I think I also wanted to see other parts of the world, I wanted to travel.

How did you feel on arriving at Hong Kong?
It was very exciting - the day I arrived must have been the most exciting day of my life. I can remember being very impressed by Hong Kong, it seemed a very impressive place compared to Ireland's bare existence. For instance, we had a brand new Jesuit school which was very modern. I think I fell in love with Hong Kong. I wasn't homesick at all, as a matter of fact. I found leaving Hong Kong a lot harder than leaving Ireland.

What were your duties while you were there?
I spent two years learning the language, Cantonese Chinese. Although it is a British colony, the work of the Church is in Chinese, and in my third year there I taught in the two Jesuit schools - one on the mainland and the other on the island.

How did you find the students in Hong Kong compared to students in Ireland?
The Chinese are very future-orientated: from a very young age they are talking about their careers and what they want to become. There are always exceptions, just like there are anywhere, but discipline is not a major problem. There seemed to be a very good relationship between the pupils and staff. I found myself so much at home there I didn't want to leave at all!

Your next posting in the Far East brought you to the Philippines: what were your experiences there?
I spent my tertianship, which is a period of renewal before your Final Vows, in Manila. It was suggested that I go out there because I would be able to lean Mandarin Chinese in a theology house that was near the city. After the Communist take-over, there was a lot of pressure on the Jesuits to leave China, so they just moved the whole community from Shanghai to Manila. Of course, they never expected the Communist regime to last so long! After that I spent some time in a place out in the countryside which was called Chabanel Hall of, as it was sometimes called, Chabanel Hell! It was a former prison used by both the US and Japan during the forties and was just a collection of corrugated iron sheeting which, of course, became very, very hot during the day. The only window was a small mosquito-screen which we would leave open to try and cool the place a little.

Did you witness any of the events which led to the elction of Ferdinand Marcos?
Yes, they held the election just before I left in 1965. He was just like any other Filipino politician - presumed corrupt. But he seemed very capable, a very canny and shrewd politician, He was a qualified lawyer, and the most prestigious exams in the Philippines are Law exams that take place every year. To come in the top ten of your class marks you out as an exceptional man, Marcos came first. He was also known to have killed a man, but he defended himself and was acquitted.

I think he probably could have brought the country out of the problems it had, but he got caught up in the political system that exists in the Philippines. It's very feudalistic, the country is iun by the powerful families. Things haven't really changed, even under Aquino. If you can remember back to the revolution when they stormed the palace, there was a lot of talk about “People Power”. “People Power” is a myth! Mrs Aquino is finding it hard to cope with these powerful families, just like he did.

Where did you go after your Final Vows?
I returned to Hong Kong where I expected to spend a lot of time, but things were not to work out as I had expected, I began working with a priest who was a well known expert on China, There is only one paper allowed out of China and that's The People's Daily. Of course, it's just a mouthpiece of the Communist Govertiment, full of propaganda, but by carefully reading between the lines this priest could see some of the power struggles that were taking place in the party. It didn't really work out too well though: he was the sort of man who could only work by himself and after a year I went back to teaching.
'
At the beginning of the summer holidays it was suggested to me that I work in Singapore for a couple of months. A week later, I arrived there, was brought downtown to the headquarters of the Catholic newspaper, shown the editor's chair and told to sit down! So I had to start from scratch and my two months quickly turned into two years. I was eventually fired from my post by the local Archbishop who was not happy with my work.

Was there any particular reason for your dismissal?
Yes, to be honest there was. At the time I was editor, around 1968-69, Humanae Vitae was published and there was a great debate going on inside the Church for and against it. I regarded myself as a serious journalist and set about publishing views for and against the document, and this angered the Archbishop. He didn't mind me publishing articles in favour of Humanae Vitae but he wasn't too happy with me publishing articles against it. I think we had a basic difference of opinion - he felt the paper should have been an organ for teaching the faithful the doctrine of the Church, whereas I felt it should give both sides of the story and let people know what was going on. Anyway, at the end of my second year, it was the general feeling that it would be better for me to leave.

Where did you go?
I volunteered for Malaysia because I know they were very short-handed and Jesuits from Hong Kong were reluctant to go there. As it turned out, I spent almost all of the seventies there, from 1969-79. I was chaplain to two universities and I gave a lot of retreats and things like that. In my last year I was a parish priest.

In 1979 you returned to Hong Kong. How had the colony changed in the years you had been away?
Hong Kong is constantly changing, new buildings are always going up, new property constantly being created. For instance, they had a totally new road system which had been built while I was away. I didn't feel the same excitement that I had felt when I first arrived in the colony, but it is still a very vibrant place. I taught in a school up until 1981 but then I decided that teaching was not my strongest skill so I started to work in a new Catholic newsagency called UCAN. I've been helping to edit and report for the agency from then until now.

What is your opinion of the student demonstrations that took place last year in China and their significance for Hong Kong?
Well, the year that looms larger over the colony is 1997 when Britain hands it back to the Peking government, but I'm optimistic in the long run. : Hong Kong has gone through a lot of crises through the years and its people are very resilient. The people of China are very pragmatic, and I think the crackdown on the students was a setback, not a real change in direction. Two years ago China was regarded as the leading reformer in the Communist world, flow it is the last. Its political struggles are happening at the top, and things will change in the end.

Hong Kong is of colossai importance to China, in terms of economic and political power. It's very small but it is the eleventh largest industrial unit in the world. If China would only unleash the energies of its people it would become a huge power.

Your trip to Ireland is nearly at an end. Where do you think your travels will bring you next?
I could be spending a lot of time in Hong Kong, but you can never know for sure. If there was somewhere else I thought I was needed theri I would go. This is a very exciting period for the whole region - for the whole of the Far East and the Pacific Rim.

After spending most of your life in the Far East, where do you consider home?
I love Ireland, but I think I belong to the whole world rather than a single place. I see the whole

Did you ever think you would have ended up on the other side of the world when you decided to become a Jesuit?
To be honest, I had no idea! My original ambition was to become a teacher in a Jesuit school somewhere in Ireland. I volunteered for Hong Kong because I thought no one else would go.

Any regrets?
None at all.

Born: 24 April 1922, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 October 1954, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1963, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 16 November 1974, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 14 September 2008, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Father Provincial of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus: 09 September1975-1981

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

by 1965 North American Martyrs, Auriesvile NY USA (BUF) making Tertianship

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/the-death-of-fr-paddy-doyle-sj/

The death of Fr Paddy Doyle SJ
Former Irish Jesuit Provincial Fr Paddy Doyle SJ died in Cherryfield in the early hours of Sunday morning. His body was in repose at Cherryfield on Tuesday Sept 16 at 2.30pm
followed by prayers at 4pm. His funeral mass will take place in Milltown Park chapel on Wed Sept 17th at 11am. As he had worked for peace on the frontiers, he crossed the final frontier peacefully. God be good to him. In sickness and in health Paddy was a man who meant a lot to the Irish Province. He was 31, a seasoned engineer, when he entered the noviceship, almost a grandfather figure for his peers. For the Jesuit students he cared for in Rathfarnham, he was a source of encouragement and affirmation, giving them a sense of warmth and freedom in their vocation. Succeeding Cecil McGarry as Provincial he showed a strongly contrasting style, but like Cecil contributed to the Province’s growth in a providential way. Paddy had negotiated first with Derry, then with Armagh, for access to the North, and he spent the rest of his active life as a brilliantly unobtrusive yet effective presence in Portadown. When he was gradually debilitated by strokes, his personality remained serene, humorous, accepting, deeply rooted in his faith. As he had worked for peace on the frontiers, he crossed the final frontier peacefully. God be good to him.

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/paddy-doyle-and-the-ise/

Paddy Doyle and the ISE
Many others besides Jesuits have felt the loss of Paddy Doyle SJ, former Irish Provincial, who passed away recently. Below is a piece from Robin Boyd, the second director of the
Irish School of Ecumenics, who offers an intriguing perspective on Paddy’s contribution to the school at a crucial stage of its development. “Slight in stature but strong in presence,” Boyd comments, “Paddy was a man of warmth and quiet friendliness, sometimes few in words, but the words were worth waiting for.”

Remembering Paddy Doyle SJ - By Robin Boyd
With the death on 14 September of Fr Patrick Doyle the Irish School of Ecumenics has lost a true friend and effective supporter. Born in Dublin in 1922, Paddy Doyle studied Physics at UCD, and became a research worker at ICI and the Research Institute; and it was not until he was thirty-two that he entered the Society of Jesus. He was ordained in 1963 and took his final vows at Milltown Park in 1974. He became Provincial of the Irish Jesuits in 1975, and was succeeded by Fr Joseph Dargan in 1980, the changeover happening at precisely the time when I entered on my term as Director of the ISE. So although he was no longer the Roman Catholic Patron of the School and President of the Academic Council by the time I assumed office, I knew that in those capacities he had played a vital part in the process whereby the School’s founder, Fr Michael Hurley, was succeeded by a Protestant, and not – as had been widely expected, not least by the Hierarchy – by a Catholic. The story is told by Michael in chapter 2 of The Irish School of Ecumenics (1970- 2007).
It was – for Paddy and Michael as well as for the School – a very tense and difficult period; but Paddy was tactful as well as fearless, and was able to pilot the School through stormy waters not only safely but successfully. For myself I am glad to relate that my relations with Archbishop Dermot Ryan were always cordial; Paddy had smoothed the way. And I think I can truly say that had it not been for Paddy Doyle I might never have come to the ISE; and that was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Paddy was largely responsible for the establishment of Jesuit communities in the North of Ireland, first in Portadown (1980) and later in Belfast (1988). The Portadown experiment coincided with the development of the School’s Northern Ireland programme, when it first became affiliated with what was then the New University of Ulster. Paddy’s presence in Portadown was a great help and encouragement to Brian Lennon SJ and later Declan Deane SJ – who operated the Certificate programme from this base – as well as to me and other members of staff who were frequent visitors to “Iona”, the small but welcoming council house where Paddy lived.
Slight in stature but strong in presence, Paddy was a man of warmth and quiet friendliness, sometimes few in words, but the words were worth waiting for. He suffered a number of small strokes in 2002, and latterly lived at Cherryfield Lodge, where he continued to exercise a ministry of prayer. The last time I saw him, his powers of communication were sadly diminished, but his smile and the twinkle in his eye were still there. We give thanks to God for this good man.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 138 : Christmas 2008

Obituary

Fr Patrick (Paddy) Doyle (1922-2008)

24th April 1922: Born in Dublin
Early education in CBS, Synge St, BSc (Phy) and MSc (Phy) at UCD.
He was employed in research work at ICI and the Research Institute before joining Society.
1st October 1954: Entered the Society at Emo
2nd October 1956: First Vows at Emo
1956 - 1959: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1959 - 1960: Clongowes - Teacher (Regency)
1960 - 1964: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1963: Ordained at Milltown Park
1964 - 1965: Tertianship at Auriesville, USA
1965 - 1967: Mungret College - Prefect of Studies
1967 - 1971: Rathfarnham- Rector, Minister of Juniors; Co-ordinator of Studies in the Province
16th November 1974: Final Vows at Milltown Park
1971 - 1974: Milltown Park - Rector, Co-ordinator of Studies in the Province; Provincial Consultor
1974 - 1980: Loyola House -
1974 - 1975: Vice-Provincial
1975 - 1980: Provincial
1980 - 1988: Portadown - Superior, Pastoral Ministry
1988 - 1994: Belfast - Superior; Directed Spiritual Exercises; Church Assistant, CLC
1992 - 1994: Tertian Director
1994 - 2002: Milltown Park - Directed Spiritual Exercises
2002 - 2008: Cherryfield Lodge - Prayed for Church and Society
14th September 2008: Died at Cherryfield

Brian Lennon Remembers taken from his Funeral Homily):
.....Paddy went to school in the Christian Brothers in Synge St, then to UCD, and then he worked in England for over 10 years as a physicist before finally joining the Society at the then ripe old age of 32. Eddie O'Donnell tells us in one of his books that Frank Browne, a famous Jesuit, was saying Mass in Beechwood Avenue Church - it is less than a mile from our chapel here in Milltown and during his sermon he said that he was now an old man and was looking for someone to take over from him as a Jesuit. So he asked any young - or not so young man who felt like responding to come and see him in the sacristy after Mass. Paddy Doyle turned up.

Paddy made an enormous contribution to the Irish Province. He spent 25 years in administration. He became Provincial in 1974-75 at the age of 52. Much of his work as Provincial was about planning, as we worked out how to respond to Vatican II. One of the ideas going the rounds was MBO (Management by Objectives). Someone came up with the idea of CFP (Concept of Forward Planning), but Paddy capped that with CRP (Concept of Retrospective Planning). That was the one that worked! It allowed Paddy to proclaim modestly “I always said that was the way things would turn out!”

Some people wondered where all the planning was going. In fact I suspect Paddy didn't know, any more than the rest of us. To me this was one of his most attractive qualities - he was an explorer, not somebody with all the answers, and he never pretended otherwise. So, I have memories of him at large meetings of Jesuits, drawing overlapping circles on the board to make some big point about organisations and I don't think he knew where it was all headed. But it didn't worry him. He trusted his instinct. And he was right. He made a real contribution to helping us to take on changes that were absolutely necessary,

He was great with younger Jesuits. I doubt very much if I myself would still be a Jesuit had it not been for the support, encouragement and challenge of Paddy. I know that is true of others who were with him when we were in Rathfarnham going to University. Before his time as superior, young Jesuits were meant never really to mix with other students in College. God knows what that could lead to. Paddy changed all that – he allowed us to do our own exploring, because he believed deeply that exploring was a large part of what human beings are about. He allowed us to grow as human beings, to test our vocations, to see where it was that God was really calling us. He opened up possibilities for us to explore. That mattered a lot.

In 1981 Paddy moved to Northern Ireland. He was the one who set up JINI (Jesuits in Northern Ireland) and during his time as Provincial he had made a major effort to open a house there. He succeeded when Cardinal O'Fiach gave us permission to open the community in Iona in Portadown. Ask any of the older people in the local estates in Portadown and they will remember “Wee Fr. Doyle”. Paddy had to deal with local Church people, with ecumenical encounters, with political difficulties and with local people, and he did all that - as far as I could see - without making enemies. I can think of the night that the police fired 135 plastic bullets into a local crowd, the night they put an Orange parade up the road having banned it a few hours beforehand, and decisions had to be made about how to respond to these and other events. On all these occasions Paddy was passionate about justice, but he was also wise. He was able to think things through, to look at the wider consequences, to recognise that no one side had all the right or all the wrong, that it was important to think about future relationships.

My biggest memory of him, though, was of him with local people. I remember going out one evening and seeing him with one man who was a great talker. Four hours later Paddy was still there, still listening, still involved, still caring.

One of the locals said to me: "You could learn from Paddy what it means to be a Christian”. They really felt his loss when he moved to start the new community in Belfast in 1988.

This was also was a difficult task for him because he had to work at getting the community accepted in the diocese and by the local clergy. There also he got involved with groups of local people, especially with CLC, which was something very dear to his heart. At the heart of community was coming together to work out what they were being called to do by the Lord.

The joint British-Irish Tertianship, which he started with Ron Darwen, was another important new venture. It helped the two Provinces to work together. It trained young Jesuits. And because there were three communities of young Jesuits, from many parts of the world, in different parts of Northern Ireland, it made an impact on local people, and helped young Jesuits to learn from them how to become Jesuits.

Paddy was always committed to ecumenical work and he was a strong supporter of the Irish School of Ecumenics.

In 1994 illness struck – a hard, harsh illness that impaired his memory, at times his ability to read, and at times his speech. It gradually got worse. Yet during that time, more than ever, he showed an extraordinary serenity. He was always able to smile at people, tell them that he hadn't a clue of their names – no change there - he had always been bad at names, and then start communicating deeply with them.

My more recent memory of Paddy was seeing him in Cherryfield where he would – with great difficulty – often end up saying something similar to what he had said many times before: “You are there, and I am here. And I am connected to you, and you are connected to me, and we are all connected with everyone in the whole world”. It didn't come out like that. The words came with groping effort, with hesitancy, but always with the serene smile. Then at the end he would say something like: “The whole thing is a mystery, a complete mystery. But it is going to be great, absolutely great - I am sure of that”.

Noel Barber Remembers (the Novice 1954-1956):
On October 194 1954 I was the first novice into the refectory after evening meditation. There was one person there at the end of the Novices' long table: a small elderly man - he turned out to be all of 32 years. It was the new novice we had been told about who had an MA in Physics and had worked in industry in England. Br. Doyle, as we got to know him, was quite unlike most of us, who had entered straight from school. However, we did have other older novices, among them Neil O'Driscoll, an army officer, but they were younger than Paddy by several years. I remember Paddy Gallagher engaging him in detailed discussions about Physics and his experience in England; another novice, long left us, questioning him endlessly on the possibility of England's conversion back to the true Faith. Paddy was affable, unassuming, gentle, with an unforced superiority that was not sought but readily conceded and taken for granted by all. Never did he show the slightest irritation at the pettiness of the novitiate regime though he must have felt it. Fortunately we had Donal O'Sullivan as Master of Novices, whose magnanimity mitigated that pettiness and would have been particularly helpful for the 'older' novices, Paddy acted from time to time as Donal's driver and this entailed days in Dublin and afternoons on the loose in the big city while the great man went about his business.

I wonder how adolescent we appeared to him and what he made of our almost unnatural seriousness. Whatever he thought, he never gave the slightest indication that he was out of sympathy with anything in the Novitiate, not even the unpredictable interventions of the Socius, Arthur Clarke. His adjustment to the boarding school regime of Emo seemed perfect. Given his subsequent history, I suspect, however, that he smiled inwardly and took some of what was on offer with a pinch of salt.

Senan Timoney Remembers (the Mungret Prefect 1965-1967):
To follow directly in another's footsteps is to get a first hand impression of so much of one's predecessor's activities. Three times in life I followed Paddy - first in 1967, after he had been Prefect of Studies in Mungret for two years, and later in Portadown in 1988 after he had pioneered the return of the Jesuits to the North, and, finally, in 1994 when he set up our house in Belfast in 1988.
Looking back I can see how much he was an agent of change. In Mungret he set about the provision of Science Laboratories and a different regime of study for senior students in their final year. In Portadown he managed to insert the Jesuit ethos in a non-threatening way among the people of all sides who didn't know what to expect; and in Belfast his task was to direct a Jesuit way of proceeding in response to a situation which combined welcome with restriction.

Paddy's gentle nature might suggest contemplation rather than activity but that was not the case. As I read the documents of GC 35 I realise how much Paddy in his relatively short Jesuit life anticipated much of their spirit – especially Decree 3 - Sent to the Frontiers.

Gerry O'Hanlon Remembers (Rathfarnham Rector 1967-1971)
I first met Paddy in 1967 when I arrived as a Junior in Rathfarnham Castle just as he took over as Rector. He was a breath of fresh air: opening all kinds of then closed doors to us in our Jesuit lives as College students (I was given permission to play rugby at UCD), but always with the kind of wisdom and prudence which avoided a populist, overly-permissive approach (I was told I could play matches on Saturdays but not go to mid week practice sessions, in case my studies suffered; a glorious period of a year playing for UCD 3rd B's followed!).

That same wisdom was available to me when I went through a long period, during my time at Rathfarnham, of wondering should I really be a Jesuit at all. About once a month, for well over a year, Paddy listened patiently, completely unfazed, suggesting various strategies for arriving at a decision. I always remember that, in the end, he suggested Easter Sunday as a deadline for decision. I duly trooped up to his office on that Easter Sunday, my heart in my boots, to tell him that I still could not make up my mind. I was afraid he would be annoyed, fed-up at my indecision and what seemed to me like the waste of all his time. Not a bit of it: he was calm, said that while deadlines can be helpful they didn't always work, better not to force, it will come...and it did, about 3 months later, when I wasn't thinking consciously about the matter at all, like an apple falling from a tree. He was such a good father-figure.

He had great intellectual curiosity and ability, without at all being an academic. His musings about Jesus Christ as Everyman, the way we are all, everywhere and from every age, linked to him, so that ultimately to know Christ is to know every man and every woman – these were not the common currency of Christology in those pre-anthropological, pre-interfaith dialogue days. Some of these musings were, if I remember correctly, written up with the help of Des O'Grady as an article for an Irish theological journal.

There was something a little unconventional, even anti establishment characteristic of Paddy's deep humanity which I found very attractive. He was a loyal Catholic and a happy Jesuit: but his obedience was always thoughtful and his belonging was never exclusive of wider interests and loyalties. A great man, a great Jesuit.

I found it touching and inspiring to meet the Paddy Doyle of Cherryfield years. Forgetful and struggling for words, he still radiated that lively curiosity and trustful serenity characteristic of the whole of his life and expressive of his deep faith.

Kennedy O'Brien Remembers (the Provincial 1975-1980):
Paddy Doyle was Provincial when I joined the Society in 1975. I met him first during the interview process. This focussed entirely on my interests, my sporting career at Coláiste Iognáid, my enjoyment of English at school, and my love of nature (including some discussion of fishing Lough Bofin, a small lake just outside Oughterard; I was delighted that Paddy could be as enthusiastic as myself about this little lake).

After the interview Paddy walked to Milltown Park with me, and having shown me to my room, handed me his key to the front door. He asked me to take particular care of this key; he had already lost one, and thought it unlikely he would be given another.

After supper at Eglinton Road later that evening, recognizing that I was no expert on the geography of south Dublin, Paddy got into his little Toyota and led the way to Kenilworth Square where I was due to have a psychological assessment. I was, needless to say, astonished by the level of personal care taken of me by the Provincial; I felt deeply respected despite my schoolboy status.

Another memory that comes to mind was Paddy's arrival at Manresa the evening that Conall O Cuinn and I took vows. It was my father who commented afterwards how impressive it was to see how Paddy, as Provincial, moved about among the other Jesuits without fuss, almost unnoticed, and very obviously a “first among equals” rather than someone who expected to be afforded special treatment in recognition of the dignity of his office.

Declan Deane Remembers (Portadown Superior 1980-1988):
I soldiered with Paddy Doyle for 7 years in Iona, Portadown. Whenever I come across Kipling's line - “(If) you can walk with kings, nor lose the common touch”, I think of Paddy Doyle. Not that we had kings crossing our threshold at Iona, but there was a constant stream of learned people from many disciplines who came to pitch their tent on the notorious Garvaghy Road. Paddy could hold his own, with a considerable degree of dogmatism, on virtually every topic from history to nuclear physics to politics to philosophy to theology. But we knew that his real delight was to sit down before the fire in our neighbours' houses, debating whether the new fireplaces were superior to the older ones or whether the “Wheaten rounds” on sale up the town were the equal of those dispensed by Jerry in the Spar. Basically, everyone in Paddy's life was treated like royalty.

Paddy had an instinctual knowledge of human nature. He knew what made people tick. Example: shortly after I arrived in Iona, a delegation of the local women showed up, presumably to vet me. I offered them tea, but they declined. I tried again and got the same response. Soon Paddy arrived and rounded on me saying, “Why did you not offer them tea?” I replied, “I did, twice”. With a twinkle in his eye he scolded me, “Did you not know you must offer three times?” Whereupon tea was served all round, and a lesson learned.

It was Paddy's extraordinary hopefulness that I now remember most. When things seemed at their bleakest in Northern Ireland, he refused to be downcast. “They'll soon have to sit down and talk, it could happen any day now”, he'd say. To me it seemed the Troubles could go on for five hundred more years. Thank God he was right, and I was wrong.

More on his hopefulness: it extended to the weather. This was a touchy point with me, who am an acute sufferer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder). But for the Irish climate, I would still be living happily in the bosom of Prov. Hib. So there was many a morning when I would greet Paddy gloomily with some comment on the frightfulness of the day. He would “Tsk, tsk” reproachfully, pull aside the curtains, draw on his cigarette and point to the sky: “I'm certain I can see a little patch of blue”. In later years when he was prostrated by his stroke, I often thought of that remark as I joined the many pilgrims to his little room in Milltown and later in Cherryfield. His good humour was indestructible, his hopefulness intact. Alone among us all, he could discern that little patch of blue and knew it would win the day. Lux eterna luceat ei.

Brian Mac Cuarta remembers (Belfast Superior 1988-1992):
It was an evening in February 1988. The scholastics were on a mid-term visit to Belfast. The house had recently opened. We were all gathered in the large lounge of the Jesuit house, overlooking the street and the waterworks, enjoying a buffet meal. Suddenly the cry went up “Some is trying to break into one of the cars!” Without a moment's hesitation, Paddy, then aged 66, rose from his chair, and moved like lightning down the stairs, and onto the street. His presence scared the culprits, and he gave chase, before returning to the gathering.

Ron Darwen Remembers (Tertian Director 1992-194):
My memories of Paddy Doyle are of a very warm and deeply spiritual human being When I think of him my mind always goes back to the community room in Brookvale where, late at night, he would be sitting chatting with Herbert Dargan, cigarette in hand pontificating on the state of play in a snooker match.

He was a man who made friends easily. I was always impressed by the many different kinds of people who came to see him and treasured his friendship. It is true that you always had to give him the leeway to take off on one of his latest scientific theories but he always came down to earth, and was willing to get stuck into the nitty-gritty of life.

I count my days in Northern Ireland among the happiest I have spent in the Society. It was Paddy who set the tone of the house, and made it feel like a home. He did not fuss. The atmosphere he helped to create was warm and friendly yet deeply spiritual. He was insistent that we met regularly for prayer and sharing every Thursday morning. We listened to one another. He always made sure that we were heard. I count it a great privilege to have worked with him as a co-tertian instructor

It was always an inspiration in his later days to visit him in Cherryfield. He would never remember my name but the smile on his face when the penny dropped made the visit worth while. Paddy Doyle, like his great friend Herbert Dargan, was a great man and an inspiring Jesuit.

Colm Lavelle remembers:
I find it fascinating looking at Paddy's curriculum vitae. Most of the tasks he was given in the Society were things for which, in spite of his years of study, he had little preparation, and into which he entered exceedingly well. His vision was not burdened by preconceptions, but carried by the spirit and respect for those around him. He was always accessible. To enter into discussion with him was always a pleasure, whether or not you agreed with him before or after. He was always an alert listener.

In spite of being by nature a philosopher, he was a great lover of people. Was he driven primarily by his love and interest in people or by his love of ideas, or by vision? Was it a capacity to see in the dark, to recognise and work for the possible, or into the future to recognise the Lord's call into the unknown? He was not afraid of uncertainty.

My memory of him in his later years in Milltown during his ill health was that there was always a quiet serenity and humour - even after his move to Cherryfield, that he was glad to be back with old familiar faces and places in Milltown. He was always a grateful patient. Just occasionally in the last weeks, he was frustrated by the feeling that he did not know where he was or what was going on - however this would not last with the help of those caring so well for him.

It was my experience that in his last months or year the old love for discussion and exploring things was as alive as ever, but that you had to fish around for a while to find what roads were still open to traffic and those that were blocked by landslides caused by his stroke or other troubles. In many ways it was a question of trying to show him the patience and respect for his current thought processes which he had always shown to others.

For those friends from Ulster and elsewhere who could not often visit him, it must have been very painful to find him so helpless. But they readily recognised that he was happy to be with them, as they were with him, and that he knew them, whether or not he could name them. He was certainly showing us all how to be ready, and how to walk forward with confidence to the Kingdom prepared for us.

Tom Layden Remembers:
I first met Paddy Doyle just before Easter 1975 in Clongowes during his visitation as provincial. I was a sixth-year student seriously thinking about entering the Society. His low key, self-effacing approach immediately put me at my ease. Though aware that I was in the company of a man who was wise and had broad life experience, I felt treated as if I was an equal.

My next meeting with him came three years later when I was trying to come to a decision about when I should actually enter the novitiate. Some friends were saying to me that I should decide to either join straight away or else give up on the idea of vocation. I did not feel comfortable in either of these options. I have a clear memory of meeting with Paddy in his office in Eglinton Road. In the course of a conversation that helped me to adopt a more relaxed approach to my situation, he made a comment about the mystery of vocation. He said to me “you never know with a vocation. It could all become clear in a year's time. Or it might take ten years”. In my case it would become clear in a year's time. But his words had the effect of giving me a sense of freedom to be led in the Lord's time. There was no pressure to decide straight away. This was enormously liberating for me at the time. And Paddy was the Provincial who admitted me to the Society when I joined in 1979.

My last sustained contact with Paddy was in the summer of 2006. The Belfast house was undergoing refurbishment and I spent most of the summer in my sister's house in Carrickmines. I got into the pattern of attending the Cherryfield Mass on a regular basis. Paddy's benign presence at the Mass and at the subsequent cup of coffee is one of the cherished memories I have from that time. There was that characteristic gentleness, lack of fuss and absence of self-preoccupation which I found refreshing. That freedom of spirit in Paddy I had first encountered in Clongowes over thirty years earlier was still there and I was greatly edified by the way in which he was able to surrender and let go of the past and simply be present to the people in Cherryfield.

Oliver Rafferty Remembers:
Over the years I spent a couple of summers at Portadown and became a member of JINI. Paddy was a considerate chairman of JINI and despite my status as a lowly scholastic he always encouraged me to have my say at meetings. I did not, however, really get to know him until I went to live in Belfast in 1988 when the house there was first opened. Paddy subsequently told me that the Irish Province had asked for me to be loaned to the Belfast house for its first years. The Irish province had produced three 'heavy weights for those early years, Paddy himself, Herbert Dargan and Finbarr Lynch and then there was me.

It was an exciting time and Paddy steered the community through those early days with a mixture of patience, latitudinarianism and steely determination. Herbert Dargan once told me that when he was tertian instructor not one of the tertians had a bad word to say about Paddy as provincial. I think he was at his best when dealing at that macro level. In day-to day decision- making, in a small house with different and competing personalities, his grasp on details was not always comprehensive. There could be flashes of temper but these quickly subsided and so far as I could tell he never held grudges and was the most tolerant and forgiving of individuals. Paddy was a kindly and compassionate man with an immense capacity to listen and was unbendingly supportive to those who had difficulties or problems of any kind.

Paddy was very much a man of faith. The search for God came naturally to him and he had an unaffected piety. He was also something of an iconoclast, in a gentle way, and attributed this to a sceptical disposition he inherited from his father. He sat lightly to what he considered the more overweening demands of ecclesiastical authority. He was, however, no rebel, either religiously or politically.

Although in no way an academic or indeed not even especially widely read, he had a genuine philosophical turn of mind. He thought deeply about people and situations and was as interested in ideas as he was in individuals. It was a sorry sight to see him in his declining years when a once vigorous mind was reduced merely to periodic recollections of personalities, situations and events.

Kennedy O'Brien Remembers:
I was privileged to experience the British-Irish Tertianship, in Belfast, under Paddy and Ron Darwen. The image comes to mind of Paddy, relaxing with his post dinner whiskey one evening, discussing the simple beauty of “chaos theory”. For him “finding God in all things” was not a lofty ideal; it was the everyday experience he shared enthusiastically with anyone who would take the time to listen.

Born: 14 April 1716, Dunsoghly, County Dublin
Entered: 15 March 1735, Nancy, France - Campaniae Province (CAMP)
Ordained: 22 September 1747, Rheims, France
Final Vows: 15 August 1752
Died: 15 January 1785, Cowley Hill, St Helens, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Transcribed to ANG 1771

Cousin of John Austin - RIP 1784
Ordained with John Austin (his cousin) at Rheims 22/09/1747 by Bishop Joppensi

1740 Teaching Humanities at Lyon College
1743-1746 Teaching Humanities at Rheims College and Studying Theology
1749 Is a Priest at Poitiers
1754 Is in Ireland
1758 At Autun College (AQUIT) as Missioner and Minister
1761 At Rheims, a Master of Arts, Missioner and Preacher; Also at College of Colmar
1762 At College of Strasbourg
1763 At Pont-à-Mousson
1764 At Residence of Saint-Michiel (CAMP)
1766 At Probation House Nancy

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
The CAMP Catalogue of 1766 gives the dates DOB 14 April 1717, and Ent 15 March 1735, and places him in Tertianship in Nancy in 1766 (perhaps there were two? - cf Foley’s Collectanea)
Taught Humanities; Prefect at Poitiers for one year
1750-1755 On the Dublin Mission as assistant PP
Subsequently transcribed to ANG
1771 At St Aloysius College in the Lancashire District

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he was sent for Philosophy and graduated MA at Pont-á-Mousson
He then spent time on regency in CAMP Colleges until 1744
1744 Studied Theology at Rheims and was Ordained there 22/09/1747
1747-1749 Two years as Prefect at Irish College Poitiers, and completing his studies at Grand Collège
1749-1750 Sent to Marennes for Tertianship
1750-1755 Sent to Ireland and was worked as an Assistant Priest in Dublin
1755-1757 Sent as Prefect at the Irish College Poitiers
1757-1768 Recalled to CAMP and worked as a Missioner for eleven years at Autun, Rheims, Strasbourg and Saint-Michel
1768 Most likely Transcribed to ANG working in the Lancashire Mission certainly by 1771 and remained there working around the Cowley Hill district, near St Helen’s until he died 15/01/1785

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DOYLE, WILLIAM, of Dublin was born on the 30th of May, 1717, and entered the Society in Champagne 12th of July, 1734. After teaching Humanities for five years, and filling the office of Prefect in the Seminary at Poitiers for one year, he came to the Mission at the age of 33, and for several years was assistant to a Parish Priest in Dublin. I find him labouring in the Lancashire Mission in 1771. This Rev. Father died at Cowley hill, near St. Helen s, on the 15th of January, 1785, and was buried at Windleshaw,

Born: 1657, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 18 April 1693, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: - pre Entry
Died: 08 October 1696, Monterey, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Already a Priest when Ent March 1693 Villagarcía
1695 After First Vows he was sent to teach at Monterey College and died there after a short illness 08 October 1696
His Obit noted a priest of remarkable zeal and religious fervour.