Born: 15 August 1919, Dromore, County Tyrone
Entered: 05 April 1937. St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 09 February 2007, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin (Dublin, County Dublin)

Left Society of Jesus: 18 April 1938

https://www.dib.ie/biography/kiely-benedict-ben-a9533

DICTIONARY OF IRISH BIOGRAPHY

Kiely, Benedict ('Ben')

Kiely, Benedict ('Ben') (1919–2007), writer, critic and journalist, was born Thomas Joseph Benedict Kiely near Dromore, Co. Tyrone, on 15 August 1919, the sixth and youngest child of Thomas Kiely, a British army veteran and measurer for the Ordnance Survey (born in Moville, Co. Donegal, son of an RIC man from Co. Limerick), and his wife Sarah Anne (née Gormley), formerly a barmaid. Kiely had two brothers (one of whom died aged eight) and three sisters. When he was one year old the family moved to Omagh, Co. Tyrone, where his father became a hotel porter. Kiely received his primary and secondary education from the Christian Brothers at their Mount St Columba's school in the town; he always spoke of his teachers with respect, recalling with particular admiration a lay teacher, M. J. Curry (model for the central character in his novella Proxopera) and Brother Rice, a most unusually enlightened Christian Brother who introduced him to the work of James Joyce (qv). Kiely was a member of the local GAA club but was suspended for playing soccer with Omagh Corinthians.

Much of Kiely's literary oeuvre draws on his youth in Omagh, and throughout his life he imaginatively recreated the townscape with its surrounding Strule Valley, its social and political divisions, concealed or unconcealed scandals, second-hand reports and fantasies of the wider world, and juvenile sexual curiosity – both the sexuality and the lure of an exotic world being sharpened by Omagh's ongoing history as a garrison town. From 1932 (when he attended the Dublin eucharistic congress) Kiely regularly holidayed in Dublin, staying with a married sister; the mid-Ulster town and the southern city were to become the twin poles of his career and imagination. Other holidays, in the Rosses area of Co. Donegal, also contributed to his imaginative formation.

After completing his secondary education (with a first place in English and second in history), Kiely worked as a sorter in Omagh post office (1936–7) before deciding he had a religious vocation and entering the Jesuit novitiate in Emo Park, near Portarlington, Co. Laois, in the spring of 1937. After a year in the novitiate Kiely was diagnosed with a tubercular lesion of the spine; he spent eighteen months at Cappagh hospital, Finglas, Co. Dublin, and wore a back brace for five years. Kiely later claimed that his vocation dissipated within a week of his arrival in hospital, partly due to his move from an unworldly all-male environment to the presence of shapely female nurses. In hindsight, Kiely believed the short-lived burst of fervour that produced his religious vocation had been a misunderstood yearning for a wider life of culture and scholarship. He retained from the novitiate a sizeable collection of miscellaneous religious knowledge, a number of clerical friends whom he respected, and a lifelong habit of rising at 5 a.m. and getting in several hours' work before breakfast.

Dublin and journalism
On discharge from hospital late in 1939 Kiely returned to Omagh, where he persuaded his elder brother (a self-made businessman) to lend him the money for a BA course at UCD (commencing autumn 1940). While studying history, literature and Latin, Kiely was a part-time editorial assistant on the Standard, a catholic weekly, and wrote articles, stories and verse in journals published by the Capuchin priest Fr Senan Moynihan (1900–70) (notably the Capuchin Annual, Father Mathew Record, Bonaventura and Irish Bookman). During his student days Kiely also organised a protest against the niggardliness of the coverage of James Joyce's death by Irish newspapers.

After graduating in September 1943, Kiely began a research MA in history, but abandoned it after he was recruited by Peadar O'Curry (1907–85) to a full-time job on the Standard, where he took over a 'Life and letters' column previously written by Patrick Kavanagh (qv). Francis MacManus (qv) became a literary 'guide, counsellor and friend' (Eckley, 164), persuading him to cut down a rejected novel, 'The king's shilling', to a long short story (later published as 'Soldier, red soldier'). In 1945 Kiely joined the editorial staff of the Irish Independent. He later commented wryly on the difference between the romanticised image of journalism that he had acquired from his adolescent passion for the writings of the English catholic columnist G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) and his subsequent experience of sub-editors' queries and quotidian visits to provincial towns to cover 'human interest' stories; this experience, however, reinforced his fascination with the interplay of locality and personality. From his earliest journalism to his last years, much of his writing took the form of an itinerary. He also regularly reviewed books in Irish journals and on Radio Éireann.

On 5 July 1944 Kiely married Maureen O'Connell (d. 2004); they had three daughters and a son (born 1945–9). The marriage broke down in the early 1950s, partly because of the strain between family life and the nocturnal, pub-centred lifestyle of a journalist. From the late 1950s Kiely lived with Frances Daly, whom he married in 2005 after his first wife's death in Canada.

Kiely as critic
Kiely's first publications were non-fiction works. Counties of contention (1945) is a series of essays on partition whose central argument is that unionism is a defence of ascendancy sustained by appeals to protestant 'persecution mania', and that reconciliation and an end to partition are necessary to save the whole island from mediocrity. Poor scholar (1947) was a pioneering study of William Carleton (qv), whose experiences as a storyteller, who was both inspired by and at odds with Tyrone, in many respects paralleled Kiely's own. In his last years, Kiely was a patron and regular attendee at the Carleton Summer School in Clogher, Co. Tyrone.

A number of published essays on contemporary Irish writers (mainly in the Irish Bookman) were reworked into Modern Irish fiction: a survey (1950) published by the Standard's Golden Eagle Books imprint. Much of this material, with further reflections and reworking, was incorporated into the essay collection A raid into dark corners (1999), which also contains reassessments of nineteenth-century Irish writers from throughout Kiely's career. (These serve the dual function of identifying material on which Kiely himself can draw and justifying his departures from nineteenth-century idealism and decorum for conservative provincial readers who might still see Kickham (qv) or Canon Sheehan (qv) as models.) Kiely's literary criticism, in its attempt to chart a path for post-revival and post-partition Irish literature, is noteworthy for its implicit rejection of the cultural nationalist view (as expressed by Daniel Corkery (qv)) that most nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish fiction was not really Irish, and the view (associated with Sean O'Faolain (qv) and Frank O'Connor (qv)) that post-revolutionary Irish society was too provincial and uncertain to allow for the development of the novel as a social art form. Kiely presents contemporary Irish literature as divided between an ethos of rebellion incarnated by Joyce and one of acceptance reflected in Corkery. His own literary work tries to bridge this gap, as he moved between the thriving and confidently pious Dublin catholic weeklies and reviews and the more cynical worlds of the dissident literary intelligentsia and of Dublin journalists brought into contact with aspects of Irish life unacknowledged by the idealised self-image of catholic Ireland.

Early fiction
Kiely's first three novels are 'state of the nation' exercises: group portraits of Ireland in wartime as a Plato's cave of stasis. Their narrative structure moves among groups of characters in cinematic style. The first two are set in a thinly disguised Omagh in the period 1938–40, and are characterised by a dyad of naïve young enthusiast and detached older intellectual which recurs in Kiely's work. Land without stars (1946) portrays a romantic triangle involving two brothers (a spoiled priest turned journalist and a romantic republican and ex-postal sorter, brought to destruction by association with a sociopathic IRA killer). In a harbour green (1949), set in 1938–9, is a more panoramic view of small-town Ulster catholic life owing something to Joyce's Dubliners; its depiction of a young woman's simultaneous sexual involvement with a naïve young farmer and a sybaritic older solicitor led to its being banned by the Irish censorship of publications board (while in Britain it was taken up by the Catholic Book Club). The ban encouraged Kiely's move (at the behest of M. J. MacManus (qv)) from the Irish Independent to the less clericalist Irish Press, where he became literary editor, editorial writer and film critic. Kiely's third novel, Call for a miracle (1950), a similar group portrait set in Dublin in 1942, escaped banning despite its portrayal of marital separation, prostitution and suicide, possibly because its dark ending could be interpreted as the wages of sin. Kiely later jocularly commented that he had disproved Aodh de Blacam's (qv) proud claim that no Ulster writer had been banned; this underplayed the anger visible in his 1966 anti-censorship essay, 'The whores on the half-doors', written in response to the censors' last stand against authors such as John McGahern (qv) and Edna O'Brien (b. 1930).

Kiely's next novels continued the earlier works' preoccupation with neurotic states of mind while experimenting with different narrative techniques and closer attention to single protagonists. Honey seems bitter (1952), a first-person narrative of neurotic obsession involving a murder, emotional voyeurism and sexual infidelity, was banned. The cards of the gambler (1953), regarded by some critics as Kiely's best novel, is a literary reworking of a traditional folk tale (a genre often favoured by nineteenth-century Irish writers): the gambler's receiving three wishes from an enigmatic God, and his attempts to evade Death take place in 1950s suburban Dublin. The novel is influenced by Chesterton's novel The man who was Thursday (1908) and by the 1929 play (and 1934 film) Death takes a holiday. After various ambivalent triumphs and traumas (including a narrow avoidance of hell described as another version of suburban Dublin, inhabited by pious haters so concerned with keeping up respectable appearances that they refuse to acknowledge the true nature of their surroundings), he departs for heaven via a celestial version of Dublin airport, then seen as symbolising a new Irish modernity.

Kiely's next novel, There was an ancient house (1955), was also banned. It describes a preliminary year in a religious novitiate seen principally through the eyes of McKenna, an idealistic young novice, and Barragry, a progressively disenchanted ex-journalist pursuing a late vocation, both of whom eventually leave. The portrayal of religious life is respectful but increasingly implies that idealism, religious or otherwise, takes too little account of everyday humanity and is finally inhuman. The book, like Kiely's other fiction with autobiographical elements, should be read as a fantasia inspired by real-life events rather than a simple transcript of Kiely's own experiences. (It is set in the mid 1950s, and involves a fictitious religious order based on the Redemptorists and the Marists as well as the Jesuits.) The ban may have been due to the strong hint that Barragry's spiritual crisis was caused by his girlfriend having an abortion. (After leaving the novitiate he resumes the relationship.) The captain with the whiskers (1960), much admired by Kiely critics, is a grim Gothic study of a tyrannical gentry patriarch's malign overshadowing of his children's lives even after his death, as told by a narrator who himself is corrupted by his fascination with the captain; it can be read as a comment on colonialism.

Broader horizons
The 1960s saw Kiely's professional blossoming as Ireland grew more prosperous and more open to outside influence. From the late 1950s the New Yorker began to publish his short stories, and Kiely established contact with American academics such as Kevin Sullivan, author of Joyce among the Jesuits (1958), whose search for his ancestral Kerry glen inspired Kiely's famous story 'A journey to the seven streams', and the novelist and critic of nineteenth-century Irish fiction Thomas Flanagan (1923–2002). Kiely moved away from professional journalism to become writer-in-residence at Hollins College (latterly University) in western Virginia (1964–5), visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon in Portland (1965–6), and writer-in-residence at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (1966–8). During this period in academia, Kiely contributed a fortnightly American letter to the Irish Times, commenting on American society with particular reference to the black civil rights movement and the wider upheavals of the 1960s; he also wrote numerous book reviews for the New York Times and essays and reviews for other periodicals (including the Nation of New York).

After returning to Ireland in 1968 Kiely spent the rest of his life as a full-time professional writer. (He was also an extern lecturer at UCD.) His later work is more exuberantly pagan and less haunted by faith. The 1968 novel Dogs enjoy the morning, an outspoken celebration of the sexual impulse and the bawdier aspects of Irish provincial life and folk culture which had been denounced or denied by censors such as William Magennis (qv), marks this new confidence and recognition in contrast to the social insecurity and aura of disreputability he experienced as a journalist-writer in the 1950s.

From the appearance of his first story collection, A journey to the seven streams (1963), Kiely's output was dominated by short stories, which became his most popular works and on which his literary reputation chiefly rests. In contrast to the 'well-made' short story encapsulating a life in a single emblematic incident, based on French and Russian models and favoured by many twentieth-century Irish authors, Kiely preferred an outwardly 'artless' approach, in which carefully structured digressions, multiple foci, garrulous narration, incorporation of familiar quotations and verse snatches, drawing on personal memories (generally recombined and reinvented, rather than straightforwardly reminiscent), and refusal to tie up apparently loose ends draw strongly on the oral storytelling tradition. (Surviving drafts in the NLI suggest Kiely composed many of these stories in his head for oral delivery, and that they underwent relatively little revision after being committed to paper.) Some critics complain that with age this operatic or performative style lapsed into self-indulgence, and Kiely's reliance on quotations and allusion grew to such an extent that his later works are virtual or actual anthologies. Kiely's later collections are A ball of malt and Madame Butterfly (1973), A cow in the house (1978), and A letter to Peachtree (1987). Several selections from these stories have also been published, and a Collected stories appeared in 2001 with an introduction by Colum McCann.

The image of Kiely as cosy storyteller was reinforced for a generation of Irish radio listeners by his melodious Northern voice reminiscing in six- or seven-minute radio essays on the Sunday morning RTÉ radio programme Sunday miscellany (from the early 1970s). The germ of these can be found in an Irish Press column about travels throughout Ireland (written with Sean White under the shared pseudonym Patrick Lagan). Kiely the raconteur is also in view in such works as All the way to Bantry Bay (1978), a collection of essays describing journeys in Ireland; Ireland from the air (1991), for which he provided text for a photobook; Yeats' Ireland: an illustrated anthology (1989); and And as I rode by Granard moat (1996), a selection of Irish poems and ballads with linking commentary on their local and personal associations. In 1982 Kiely received an honorary doctorate from the NUI. He served as council member and president of the Irish Academy of Letters, and in 1996 became a saoi of Aosdána. Admirers such as Colum McCann have complained that this late image of the 'grey Irish eminence' conceals Kiely's edge and significance from potential readers.

Troubles fiction
Kiely was profoundly affected by the Northern Ireland troubles from 1969; while denouncing unionist misrule and the extremism of Ian Paisley (qv) as having precipitated the conflict, he was horrified at the revelation of the violence latent in Northern Irish society, lamenting 'the real horrors have passed out the fictional ones', and commenting that the churches had contributed greatly to the divisions which made such things possible (Ir. Times, 29 January 1977). He praised Omagh as a solitary bright spot, marked by its people's efforts to maintain good cross-community relations. His last two lengthy works of fiction were the novella Proxopera (1977), whose cultured elderly protagonist is forced at gunpoint by IRA men to drive a proxy bomb into his native town, and the novel Nothing happens in Carmincross (1985), set in the early 1970s, in which the elderly Irish-American protagonist's joyful rediscovery of Ireland (in the company of an uninhibited old flame) on his way to a family wedding in an Ulster village ends with the death or mutilation of numerous villagers (including the bride) by bombs planted to divert the security forces from an IRA operation elsewhere. (This is based on the murder of Kathleen Dolan, killed by a loyalist car bomb in Killeter, Co. Down, on 14 December 1972 as she posted wedding invitations; Kiely abandoned a commission to write a coffee-table history of Ireland when the publishers refused to allow him to commence with this incident.) In contrast to his usual methods of composition, Kiely worked on Carmincross for twelve years; its narrative techniques experiment with postmodernism (the ageing lovers, pursued by the old flame's estranged husband, are ironically assimilated to Diarmuid and Gráinne (qv) pursued by Finn (qv)) and, beside Kiely's usual collage of literary and folkloric references, incorporate newspaper reports of real-life atrocities committed by republican and loyalist paramilitaries and state forces, and by regimes and guerrillas elsewhere in the world, whose fragmentary horrors mirror both the destructive power of the bomb and the breakdown of grand narratives of identity. These stories acquired additional significance after 15 August 1998 (Kiely's seventy-ninth birthday), when twenty-nine people were killed and over 220 injured in Omagh by a car bomb planted by the Real IRA splinter group.

Some critics hailed the Troubles stories as masterworks; other commentators (generally but not always holding republican views) argued that they were essentially outraged and myopic expressions of bourgeois complacency, and that their reduction of republicans' political motives to one-dimensional psychopathy was an artistic as well as a political flaw. (These criticisms are more applicable to Proxopera, where IRA members are portrayed directly.) A variant on this criticism argues that Kiely's view of culture as a naturally unifying force founded on human decency unfitted him to portray genuine disagreement as anything more complex than a destructive irruption of anti-culture (though his nuanced portrayal of the conflict between sacred and secular calls this into question). While these criticisms have substance, it can be argued that they run the risk of normalising the un-normalisable; a cry of pain and horror has its own integrity.

Kiely's last major works were two memoirs, Drink to the bird (1991), about his Omagh boyhood, and the more fragmentary and anecdotal The waves behind us (1999). He died in St Vincent's hospital, Dublin, on 9 February 2007 after a short illness and was buried with his family in Drumragh cemetery, Omagh. The principal collection of his papers is in the NLI, and additional material is in Emory University. Since 2001 he has been honoured by an annual Benedict Kiely Literary Weekend in Omagh. He awaits comprehensive reassessment; at his best he was a remarkable explorer of the pieties and darknesses of a mid-twentieth-century Ireland overshadowed in popular perception by the first and last thirds of the century.

Sources
Grace Eckley, Benedict Kiely (1972); Daniel J. Casey, Benedict Kiely (1974); John Wilson Foster, Forces and themes in Ulster fiction (1974); Ir. Times, 29 Jan. 1977; 13, 17 Feb. 2007; Benedict Kiely, Drink to the bird: a memoir (1991); id., The waves behind us: further memoirs (1999); Belfast Telegraph, 6 Aug. 1999; Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Fiction and the Northern Ireland troubles since 1969: (de-) constructing the North (2003); Wordweaver: the legend of Benedict Kiely (dir. Roger Hudson, 2004; DVD with additional material, Stoney Road Films 2007); Sunday Independent, 11 Feb. 2007; Guardian, 12 Feb. 2007; Times, 19 Feb. 2007; Anne Fogarty and Derek Hand (ed.), Irish University Review, xxxviii, no. 1 (spring-summer 2008; special issue: Benedict Kiely); Derek Hand, A history of the Irish novel (2011); George O'Brien, The Irish novel 1960–2010 (2012); Benedict Kiely website, benedictkiely.info/index.html (accessed May 2013)

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/author-benedict-kiely-dies-aged-87-1.803094?

Author Benedict Kiely dies aged 87

Novelist, short-story writer, critic, journalist, broadcaster and seanchaí Benedict Kiely, who was a dominant presence on the Irish scene for many decades, has died aged 87.

Novelist, short-story writer, critic, journalist, broadcaster and seanchaí Benedict Kiely, who was a dominant presence on the Irish scene for many decades, has died aged 87.

Born in Dromore, Co Tyrone, Benedict Kiely was brought up in Omagh.

He began working as a journalist in Dublin, where he spent close to 70 years of his life. The first of his many novels, Land Without Stars,was published in 1946 and he will also be fondly remembered for his work on RTÉ's Radio One's Sunday Miscellanyprogramme.

"Over six decades he has created a body of work which is impressed indelibly in contemporary literature," Mary Cloake, director of the Arts Council, said. "His exquisite prose explored and celebrated humanity in all its complexity and intrigue."

Interfuse No 156 : Summer 2014

AN ANCIENT HOUSE

Kevin Laheen

The Omagh-born writer Ben Kiely entered the Jesuit noviciate in 1937 but left before taking vows. Shortly after he left, he wrote a book called There was an ancient house. The ancient house referred to was St Mary's, Emo, which is still standing but is no longer occupied by Jesuits. However, the Jesuits also occupied another ancient house which has since been demolished: Loyola House, Dromore, Co. Down, which for a brief four years (1884-88) was occupied by Jesuit novices. In 1888 Fr Robert Fulton, the Province Visitor from USA, ordered the novices to be moved to Tullabeg, which would prove more suitable for their training. The Jesuits sold the house in Dromore shortly after the novices moved, but until 1917 they retained the 211 statute acres on which that house had stood, leaving it in the hands of a caretaker. In October 1938 I asked Fr T V Nolan why they retained the land but sold the house.

He told me there were two reasons. Firstly, though the Orange Order and the local Protestants were anxious to purchase both house and land, the money they offered was less than what the Jesuits had paid for it. In addition the stock from the farm were regular prize-winners at the annual Belfast Agricultural Show. Eventually when T.V., as Provincial, received a satisfactory offer, he sold the property, making a handsome profit on what they had originally paid for it.

In 1818 four novices arrived from Hodder to continue their training as novices in Tullabeg. They found the building already occupied by pupils of the Jesuit school which had just been opened; there was no room for novices. From that date Irish novices could be found in various novitiates both in Ireland, in Hodder and in other places on the continent. Eventually in 1860 they were located in Milltown Park. In time this location proved incapable of providing the correct atmosphere for the training of novices, so they were moved to Dromore, which was regarded as a more suitable location. So in April 1884 the novices arrived in Dromore and were located there until July 1888.

Towards the time when the novices were about to leave Dromore, T.V. Nolan arrived there. He told me that another novice called O'Leary arrived about the same time. In later years their lives became entwined in a number of ways, when T.V. became Provincial and O'Leary began recording earthquakes.

Although the Jesuits left Dromore, they will always be remembered there, because the names of two of them can be read on a gravestone beside the parish church in Dromore. They were Elias Seaver, who had just completed his training as a novice, and Fr John Hughes who had been bursar and who died some weeks before the Jesuits departed from Dromore in 1888.

I was happy to have had this chat with Fr Nolan in 1938, because he died some eight months later, and the history of this ancient house might well have gone to the grave with him.

Born: 29 March 1929, Drumcondra, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1965, St Aloysius, Washington DC, USA
Died: 20 February 2013, Littleton, CO, USA

Left Society of Jesus: 1970

Transcribed: HIB to HK - 03 December 1966

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1957 at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency studying language
by 1965 at SFX Church, Washington DC, USA (MAR) studying
by 1966 at U Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, USA (DET) teaching
by 1966 at U of Minnesota WI, USA (WIS) studying

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Finbarr_Jones

John Finbarr Jones

John Finbarr "Jack" Jones (29 March 1929 – 20 February 2013) was a researcher and scholar of social development,[1] Dean of the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver from 1987 to 1996.[2] He served on the Advisory Board of the United Nations Centre for Regional Development. As director of the social work program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong between 1976 and 1987, he helped recreate the social work field in China. He wrote or edited more than a dozen books on social development, focusing on human security, international conflict resolution, and transitional economies.

Early life and education
Jones was born in Dublin, Ireland, the fourth of five children born to John Jones, a customs and excise agent, and Kathleen O'Brien Jones. He attended boarding school at Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, until 1948. He then completed his bachelor's degree at National University of Ireland, Dublin (now known as University College Dublin). He joined the Jesuit order after earning his bachelor's degree, and served as a missionary to Hong Kong. He left the priesthood in 1969. After leaving the priesthood, he earned a master's degree in social work at the University of Michigan, and a Master's in public administration, and a PhD in social work at the University of Minnesota. His doctoral dissertation was adapted into his 1976 book Citizens in Service: Volunteers in Social Welfare During the Depression, 1929 – 1941, which he co-wrote with John M. Herrick.[3]

He married Lois McCleskey Jones, in Washington D.C. in 1974. They had two children.

Professional life, research and scholarship
Shortly after Jones completed his doctoral work, the University of Minnesota recruited him to found its School of Social Development, where he was Dean from 1971 to 1976.

Jones then returned to Hong Kong, where he was director of the department of social work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong until 1987. While in Hong Kong, Jones was vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, and a member of the Hong Kong Advisory Committee on Social Work Training. In 1980, he edited Building China: Studies in Integrated Development, which documented the earliest stages of development in the People's Republic of China following the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution.[4]

Jones was influential in promoting the concept of Social development theory in the field of social work.[5] In 1981, he co-edited Social Development which helped define this approach.[6]

In 1987, he was appointed dean of the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. Under his leadership the school founded the Bridge Project,[7] which supports education initiatives in Denver's public housing developments.[8] He also helped form a partnership between DU and the All China Youth Federation and the China Youth University for Political Sciences in Beijing, one of the first such collaborations between American and Chinese universities.[9]

After retiring as dean in 1996, he continued to work as a research professor affiliated with the University of Denver's Conflict Resolution Institute and the Graduate School of Social Work. His contributions to the fields of human security and social development included: The Cost of Reform: The Social Aspect of Transitional Economies which he co-edited with Asfaw Kumssa.[10] Jones was named dean emeritus of the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work in 2004.

Throughout his academic career, Jones served on several international boards and committees, including the Advisory Committee of the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD), and the International Council of Social Welfare. Jones was president of the American Humane Association and served on the Colorado Governor's Business Commission on Child Care Financing.[11]

Jones co-ordinated various private and publicly funded research projects, including:

Research on local social development, transitional economies, and social reforms in Asia and Africa, sponsored by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and United Nations Center for Regional Development (UNCRD).
Research on social development in China and Hong Kong, funded through the U.N. Social Welfare and Development Center for Asia and the Pacific.
Research on the chronic mentally ill, funded through the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Research on child protective services, funded by the United States Children's Bureau (HHS).
Program evaluation of rural violence prevention, and community impact studies, funded by the Blandin Foundation.
Gap analysis study of training, funded by the Ford Family Foundation.
Immigrants' online database creation and evaluation, funded by First Data / Western Union Foundation.
He also served on several editorial boards, including: Social Development Issues, Regional Development Dialogue, Regional Development Studies, Journal of Social Development in Africa, and Hong Kong Journal of Social Work.

Born: 17 March 1920, Rathgar, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1937, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1949, Fourvière, Lyon, France
Died 04 January 1979

Left Society of Jesus: 1976 - Zambiae Province (ZAM) (to Lusaka Diocese)

Transcribed: HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1948 Lyon France (LUGD) studying
by 1952 at Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) working
by 1969 at Camoldolese Hermits, Bloomingdale, OH USA

◆ The Clongownian, 1979

Obituary

Father Patrick Cummins (former SJ)

The recent death of Father Patrick Cummins has saddened his many friends. Though dogged by ill-health his gaiety and sense of humour never left him. On the other hand, he seemed to personify the familiar words of Saint Augustihe "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee", for Paddy always seemed to be striving for something beyond. It was this yearning for closer union with God in prayer and solitude that impelled him to join the Camaldolese in Ohio; but he remained with them for only a year, and returned to the Jesuit Order once more.

Paddy left Clongowes in 1936, and took his first vows after two years in the Jesuit Noviceship in Emo, It was in Rathfarnham, after a year at UCD that he first began to suffer ill-health, which necessitated his transfer to Tullabeg for Philosophical Studies. Perhaps the happiest period of his life was the three years he spent in the Crescent College, Limerick, as a Scholastic. He was very popular with the boys, and they still recall with pleasure outings and picnics with him on the banks of the Shannon. He was ordained in Fouvière, France, in 1950, and completed his final year of Theology there. He also spent his year of Tertianship in France.

Born on March 17th 1920, Fr Paddy shared the same missionary zeal as his great patron. He left for Zambia in 1951, and threw himself with generous zeal into missionary work. Such was his flair for languages that he was sent for a year to the language school to specialise in the Zambian dialects. He then worked for a number of years in Choma, a remote missionary station in Southern Rhodesia. His search for solitude and silence finally impelled him to seek satisfaction with the Camaldolese Monks in Ohio. However, what he sought he did not find there, and so returned to Ireland. His ill-health having grown progressively worse, he spent a year as a chaplain on Lambay Island, His health having recovered somewhat, he returned to Zambia and his missionary work.

After some time there he left the Jesuit Order, but continued to live the Jesuit mode of life in Jesuit houses. His health gradually deteriorated, and he died after a short illness on January 4th 1979. We pray that his generous restless heart has at last found that rest in peace that he sought after all his life.

T McC

Born: 16 March 1925, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 February 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1958, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1963, St Joseph, Seattle WA, USA

Left Society of Jesus: 25 February 1966

by 1962 at St Joseph’s Seattle WA, USA (ORE) working

Born: 27 September 1931, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1949, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1963, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 14 March 2018, Nazareth House, Manning Ave, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Left Society of Jesus: 1980

Transcribed: HIB to ZAM - 03 December 1966

Son of Stephen Guerrini and Ellen McInerney. Studied at UCD

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1958 at Chivuna, Monze, N Rhodesia - studying language Regency
by 1967 at Holy Name Manchester (ANG) working
by 1975 in Oxnard CA, USA (CAL) working

Born: 14 May 1942, Bunnacurry, Achill, County Mayo
Entered: 07 September 1959, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 23 June 1972, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 25 April 1985, Iona, Portadown, County Down
Died: 12 December, 2010, Christ the King Church in Pleasant Hill, CA, USA (Oakland Diocese)

Left Society of Jesus: 1999

Educated at Mungret College SJ

by 1965 at Chantilly France (GAL S) studying
by 1974 at Cambridge MA, USA (NEB) working
by 1975 at Berkeley CA, USA (CAL) studying
by 1981 at Oakland CA, USA (CAL) making Tertianship
by 1993 at San Ramon CA, USA (CAL) working
by 1996 at Fremont CA, USA (CAL) working
by 1996 at Moraga CA, USA (CAL) working

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/teacher-of-ecumenics-and-pastoral-worker-in-north-1.588845

Teacher of ecumenics and pastoral worker in North

FR DECLAN Deane, who has died aged 68, was best known in Ireland for his work as a teacher at the Irish Schol of Ecumenics

FR DECLAN DEANE:FR DECLAN Deane, who has died aged 68, was best known in Ireland for his work as a teacher at the Irish School of Ecumenics and his pastoral work with the Jesuit community in Portadown, near the Garvaghy Road.

Director of the school’s Northern Ireland programme, he believed that as far as a church followed the example of Jesus, it was a distinctly Christian church. It was Christian when it refused to acquiesce in the boundaries imposed by a politically segregated society but took a lead in breaking through them.

In 1983, he urged Catholic clergy and people to take the lead in crossing the boundaries as they had greater freedom to do so.

A strong critic of paramilitary violence and its apologists, he nevertheless signed a letter of protest against strip-searching in Northern Ireland’s prisons. Likewise, he was, in 1988, a signatory to a letter deploring the British government’s decision to conceal the findings of a report into the killings of six unarmed men in 1982.

His talents were multiple and often unexpected – a national champion at Scrabble, a passionate observer of horse racing and a prodigious memory for cards – so much so that he was banned from some tables in Las Vagas.

Declan Deane was born in Dublin in 1942 but grew up on Achill Island and was educated at Mungret College, Limerick. He began his two-year novitiate in 1959. He then went to UCD after which he studied philosophy at Chantilly near Paris and theology at Milltown Park, Dubin, where he was ordained in 1972.

After ordination he became one of the first students at the recently-established School of Ecumenics, and graduated in 1973 with the Hull University postgraduate degree of B.Phil. He pursued doctoral studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Berkeley, California.

During this time he developed a special interest in the ecumenical theology of the French Jesuit theologian, Henri de Lubac (later to be made a cardinal), with particular reference to his understanding of Buddhism.

In 1980 he was appointed lecturer in continuing education at the School of Ecumenics and for most of the 1980s taught in the school’s certificate course of the then New University of Ulster.

He lived as a member of the Jesuit community in the Garvaghy estate in Portadown. Very popular as a teacher and as a priest, he enjoyed the friendship of Catholics and Protestants, nationalists and unionists.

In 1989 he moved to Dublin where he did youth retreat work.However, in search of more theological freedom than he felt in Ireland (he was always a strong advocate of women priests), he moved to California in 1992. Later he formally left the Jesuits to become a diocesan priest in the diocese of Oakland, California.

He enjoyed pastoral work and was popular with all his parishioners. He is remembered for his dry sense of humour, thought-provoking homilies and easy-going manner. He was most recently attached to Christ the King Church, Pleasant Hill, California.

https://gladysganiel.com/irish-catholic-church/in-memory-of-fr-declan-deane/

In Memory of Fr Declan Deane

Fr Declan Deane, a former lecturer and student at the Irish School of Ecumenics, passed away this week of cancer. Fr Deane was serving at Christ the King Church in Pleasant Hill, California.

A native of Dublin, he grew up on Achill Island and was ordained a Jesuit in 1972. He was one of the first students to enrol on the Irish School of Ecumenics’ programme in Dublin. During the 1980s he lived as a Jesuit in Portadown and taught on the Irish School of Ecumenics’ Adult Education course in Northern Ireland.

Fr Deane immigrated to the US in 1992 and worked in five parishes before his death. A memorial on the Christ the King webpage describes him this way:

Despite his struggle with esophageal cancer, despite his being first on chemo and then a seven month hospice patient, Declan steadily did more and more rather than less and less. He continued to take his turn at weekly confessions; he returned to weekday masses especially with our school children, including the classroom preparation that went with that. Just a few short days before his death, he preached at all six weekend masses, concelebrated three and was outside greeting and visiting with parishioners for all the masses. To that he added the Monday morning mass and two days with visits to school and classrooms. To those who advised him to slow down and do less, his response was , “that is the way I want to be remembered” and “when I promise I’m going to do something and be somewhere, I always do it”.

I never met Fr Deane. But I can appreciate the energy and dedication that he must have exhibited in helping to get the ISE’s Northern Irish work off the ground. He is remembered fondly by many colleagues and former students.

https://jesuit.ie/news/parting-from-declan-2/ December 21, 2010

Parting from Declan

Declan Deane, who died in California on 12 December, had been an Irish Jesuit for over thirty years, before joining the diocese of Oakland. He is remembered with deep affection and regard by many friends, especially in N.Ireland, where he worked with the Irish School of Ecumenics. His talents were multiple, often unexpected: a national champion at Scrabble, a passionate observer of horses, a prodigious memory for cards at the gaming tables of Las Vegas, such that the bankers had him banned. But above all he was a priest, who during his struggle with esophageal cancer took on more and more ministry. A few days before his death he preached at all six weekend Masses, concelebrated three, heard confessions and greeted the parishioners at the door. His funeral was a huge and emotional occasion, as Donal Godfrey SJ reports:

Last Thursday I represented the Society at the Mass of Christian burial for Declan Deane. The Church of Christ the King in Pleasant Hill, where Declan had most recently served, was packed with two bishops, priests, and so many friends from the parishes where Declan had served. The homilist, Fr. Gerrry Moran in the Oakland Diocese and like Declan from Achill island, spoke of the life of Declan in very moving terms. We heard how at first Declan had objected to working with Gerry as pastor but eventually they became close friends. The homily was interrupted with applause on a number of occasions. The Bishop Emeritus, John Cummins, spoke of the wonderful Jesuit formation Declan had received, quoted Pedro Arrupe in connecting Declan’s strong social conscience and his gift of bringing contemporary theology alive to a wider audience. Declan’s brother John came from Ireland and told us how he had sent a card to Declan with a Christmas poem written especially for him that he discovered unopened in his room. John ended his words with the poem. Afterwards the parish held a wonderful reception and then we went to the Holy Angels Cemetery where Declan had told the pastor that he was very happy to be buried next to Frank Houdek, SJ, the man who had “saved him” when he went into recovery as an alchololic. On another note -we have been having wave after wave of rain storms, however for Declan’s funeral it was a sunny mild day. Declan must have arranged that for us as he always loved the sun! Ar dheis De go rabh a ainm dhilis.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/eastbaytimes/name/declan-deane-obituary?id=32867038 Published by Inside Bay Area on Dec. 15, 2010.

Declan Deane Obituary

Father Declan A. Deane May 14, 1942 ~ Dec. 12, 2010 Pleasant Hill, CA Declan was born in Dublin, Ireland and grew up on Achill Island on the west coast of Ireland. He was ordained as a priest into the Jesuit Order in Dublin in 1972. In his early years of priesthood he devoted his time to issues of faith and justice, including working for peace with Protestants and Catholics during the troubles in Northern Ireland. He also ministered to those in prisons and to those with AIDS. Called to parish ministry, he immigrated to the US and settled in the Diocese of Oakland. His first assignment began in 1992. He served as Associate Pastor in five parishes; St. Joan of Arc, Holy Spirit, St. Monica, All Saints, and most recently Christ the King. He quickly endeared himself to his parishioners and became a much loved, admired and respected priest in every community. People enjoyed his dry sense of humor, the thought-pro-voking depth of his homilies and his easygoing approachable manner. Being a good friend and inclusive to all was important to Declan. When not engaged in ministry Declan made sure to enjoy life. He was a scrabble champ in Ireland, Northern Ireland and England, an avid sports fan and very fond of the horses. He took one day at a time. He is survived by his sister Patricia; brothers John (Ursula) and Raymond (Renate); and nieces and cousins. There will be a parish Mass on Wednesday, December 15 at 11:00am followed by viewing and visitation from 12:00 noon to 7:30pm; Vigil Service at 7:30pm. The Funeral Mass will be at 10:30am on Thursday, December 16, with interment at Queen of Heaven Cemetery at 1:30pm. All services will be at Christ the King Catholic Church, 199 Brandon Road, Pleasant Hill. CA.

Interfuse No 144 : Spring 2011

Obituary

Declan Deane (1942-2010) : former Jesuit

Declan Deane, who has died in California, had been an Irish Jesuit for over thirty years before joining the diocese of Oakland. He is remembered with deep affection and regard by many friends. One measure of this affection; during his final sickness he received 28,000 emails and other messages of support from those who had known and loved him. His talents were multiple, often unexpected: a national champion at Scrabble, a passionate observer of horses, a prodigious memory for cards at the gaming tables of Las Vegas, such that the bankers had him banned. But above all he was a priest, who during his struggle with oesophageal cancer took on more and more ministry. A few days before his death he preached at all six weekend Masses, concelebrated three, heard confessions and greeted the parishioners at the door.

Born in Achill and schooled in Mungret College, where he was elected Head of School in his final year, Declan Deane entered the Jesuits in 1959. He earned a BA in UCD studied philosophy at Chantilly near Paris, and theology at Milltown Park, Dublin where he was ordained priest in 1972. After ordination he did a B.Phil. at the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) and doctoral studies in Cambridge, USA, and in Berkeley, California. In these years he developed a special interest in the ecumenical theology of the French Jesuit theologian, Henri de Lubac with particular reference to his understanding of Buddhism. Sadly he never finished his doctoral dissertation, largely because of the disease of alcoholism with which he eventually came to terms.

In Ireland at least Declan was probably best known for his teaching work in the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) and his pastoral work in the Jesuit community in Portadown, near the controversial Garvaghy Road. He lived there for most of the 80's, longer than anywhere else, and greatly endeared himself to his students and to the local people, Protestant and Catholic, Nationalist and Unionist. The troubles were then far from over. Despite the troubles, perhaps because of them, he became popular as a teacher and as a priest.

Hoping however for more theological freedom than he felt he enjoyed in Ireland (he was always a strong advocate of women priests) he moved in 1992 to California for parish work. Later in the decade he formally left the Jesuits to join the diocese of Oakland, California. Happily however he always remained in the best of relations with his former Jesuit colleagues and with his lay friends, some of whom flew over to say goodbye to him before he died. We now deeply mourn his early, but sadly not unexpected, death from cancer on 12 December 2010.

His funeral was a huge and emotional occasion, as Donal Godfrey reports: “Last Thursday I represented the Society at the Mass of Christian burial for Declan Deane. The Church of Christ the King in Pleasant Hill, where Declan had most recently served, was packed with two bishops, priests, and so many friends from the parishes where Declan had served. The homilist, Fr. Gerry Moran in the Oakland Diocese and like Declan from Achill island, spoke of the life of Declan in very moving terms. We heard how at first Declan had objected to working with Gerry as pastor but eventually they became close friends. The homily was interrupted with applause on a number of occasions. The Bishop Emeritus, John Cummins, spoke of the wonderful Jesuit formation Declan had received, and quoted Pedro Arrupe in connecting Declan's strong social conscience and his gift of bringing contemporary theology alive to a wider audience. Declan's brother John came from Ireland and told us how he had sent a card to Declan with a Christmas poem written especially for him that he discovered unopened in his room. John ended his words with the poem. Afterwards the parish held a wonderful reception and then we went to the Holy Angels Cemetery where Declan had told the pastor that he was very happy to be buried next to Frank Houdek, SJ, the man who had ‘saved him’ when he went into recovery as an alchololic. On another note - we have been having wave after wave of rain storms, however for Declan's funeral it was a sunny mild day. Declan must have arranged that for us as he always loved the sun! Ár dheis De go rabh a ainm dhilis”.

Robin Boyd of the ISE wrote about Declan:
Declan Deane was a remarkable man, and a dear colleague and friend. He and I shared a birthday – he was exactly twenty years younger than me - and on one memorable occasion we were able to celebrate it together, at an ecumenical clergy conference at Corrymeeala when we shared - and even cut together - a specially made birthday cake.

He took up his duties in charge of the ISE's Northern Ireland programme in 1981, and it was mainly in the North that we saw each other. It was always a delight to visit that small Jesuit community at Iona, a council house in Portadown, with its memories of Paddy Doyle, Brian Lennon, and a host of unexpected visiting trail-blazers from all the Irish Church traditions. For Declan had friends everywhere. I remember one occasion when he came with me to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. And as we milled around in the clergy-crowded corridor there were delighted and unexpected meetings with Declan's friends among the thronging ministers and elders: I remember especially his happy reunion with Ruth Patterson (the first woman to be ordained as a minister of Word and sacrament in the Irish Presbyterian Church), and Bert Tosh (now senior producer of religious programmes in the BBC, Northern Ireland). Warm, modest to the point of shyness, amusing, and devastatingly honest, he firmly established the ISE's Northern programme in its three main bases of Belfast, Derry and Benburb, making friends wherever he went.

We had many adventures together. One dark night, driving North through Omagh and Strabane, Declan said, “There's a convent I know near here. Let's call on the sisters”. Despite my protest that it was too late, we arrived at the convent and rang the bell. We rang again, and there was no reply. I said, “You see what I mean!” and we drove on. Next day, at our conference, we met one of the sisters, and apologized for ringing their door bell so late. “Och, we were all watching the football” was the answer; Declan knew them better than I did.

On one occasion we did a fund-raising tour in Germany together, staying with German friends of mine in Remscheid, where he quickly made himself at home. The “Tour de France” happened to be going on, and we discovered that Declan was a devotee of the “maillot jaune”. He was also, as befitted a member of a distinguished literary family, a devotee of letters - and numbers. This devotion took a peculiar form: he was fascinated by German car numbers, and quickly worked out their literary and numerical basis, so that before long he could identify the place of origin of every car in the land. “Why?" I asked. “Well, I look forward to the day when I'm at home in Achill, and I see a German car with the family sitting having a picnic, and I'll go up to them and say, “How is everybody in Remscheid today?” We enjoyed that game, and I still do. But I knew better than ever to challenge Declan to a game of Scrabble. His skill there was legendary. In the interests of the ISE we travelled from bishop to bishop, from praese to praeses, from Seminary to Theologische Hochschule, and had a happy reunion in Frankfurt with Fr Gerry O'Hanlon SJ, who was then working on his thesis on Karl Barth. I don't recollect how successful that journey was financially: but it certainly was a trip to remember with great pleasure.

Memorable too were the one or two occasions when my wife Frances and I stayed with Declan in the Jesuit flat normally occupied by Fr Henry Grant in the Newtownbreda area of Belfast. It was full of Henry's tapes of classical music, which delighted Frances. And it was also full of good talk. Declan shared with us his problems: the alcoholism which he had so steadfastly battled and overcome; theology - for he was no stranger to the doubt which is the only real basis of faith; celibacy, women's ministry, relations between the churches. Those were evenings to recall with joy. For Declan was a man who brought warmth and joy to those he met. It was a privilege to have him as a friend, and now to know that he has entered into the joy of his Lord.

Born: 07 January 1930, Portlaoise, County Laois
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 02 November 2006, Palmyra, ME, USA

Left Society of Jesus: 07 September 1966

Younger Brother of Paddy Gannon - LEFT 1949

by 1965 at Loyola Chicago IL, USA (CHG) studying

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2008/09/25/obituaries/donal-robert-gannon/

DONAL ROBERT GANNON

PALMYRA – Donal R. Gannon, 76, died Nov. 3, 2006, in Ireland, after a brief illness. He was born Jan. 7, 1930, in Portlaoise, Ireland. He was educated in Ireland and came to the United States to complete a master’s degree in industrial relations. He married his wife, Peggy, in Chicago, and they relocated to Maine in 1974. As a supervisor in Maine’s Department of Child Support Enforcement, Donal devised a set of guidelines for non-custodial parents that was subsequently adopted virtually nationwide. The family moved to Palmyra in 1977, where, after retiring from the state, Donal and his spouse opened a greenhouse and nursery business, The Shepherd’s Garden, which they ran jointly for 12 years and where he was able to pursue his love of gardening. Donal returned to Ireland in the spring of 2001. He is survived by his ex-wife, Peggy of Palmyra; a daughter, Kirstin Larson of Palatine, Ill.; a daughter, Nancy of Brooklyn, N.Y.; a son, Kevin of Tempe, Ariz.; a son, Brendan of Cambridge, Mass.; three grandsons, Robert and Nathan Krause of Chicago and Benjamin Larson of Palatine, Ill.; five brothers, Anthony and James of Ireland, Ignatius of Wheathampsted, England, Francis of Philadelphia and John of Hong Kong; three sisters, Claire Gill and Gertrude Dunne, both of Ireland and Gabrielle Nahaboo of London; many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by two brothers, William and Patrick, both of Ireland; and a sister who died in childhood. Services and burial took place Nov. 6, in Portlaoise, Ireland.

Chicago
Palmyra, Maine, USA

Born: 30 January 1913, Sunvale, Rathkeale, County Limerick / Drumcondra, Dub;in, County Dublin
Entered: 03 September 1930, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 14 March 2002, Dublin, County Dublin

Left Society of Jesus: 03 July 1934 (from Rathfarnham Castle)

Early education at Athea NS and Mungret College SJ

https://www.dib.ie/biography/o-danachair-caoimhin-danaher-kevin-a2392

DICTIONARY OF IRISH BIOGRAPHY

Ó Danachair, Caoimhín (Danaher, Kevin)

Contributed by
Lysaght, Patricia

Ó Danachair, Caoimhín (Danaher, Kevin) (1913–2002), university lecturer and folklorist, was born 30 January 1913 in Athea (Áth an tSléibhe), Co. Limerick, the second eldest of four sons of William Danaher, a primary school principal, and his wife Margaret (née Ryan) of Martinstown, Co. Limerick, also a primary school teacher. Educated at Athea national school, Mungret College, Limerick, and at UCD, he graduated BA in 1936, and received a Higher Diploma in Education the following year. As an Alexander von Humboldt Scholar (1937–9), he studied comparative folklore and ethnology at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig. He was awarded a first class honours MA (NUI) in archaeology in 1945, and a D.Litt. (NUI) in 1974.

He joined the Irish Folklore Commission in January 1940, and then in May the Irish Defence Forces, with whom he remained for the duration of World War II, becoming an instructor in the artillery school in Kildare and rising to the rank of captain. Rejoining the Irish Folklore Commission in 1946, he was sent to Scandinavia to receive training in major folklore and folklife institutions, including the Nordiska Museet (Nordic Museum) and Institutet för Folklivsforskning (The Institute for Folklife Research), Stockholm, Landsmålarkivet (The Dialect Archive), Uppsala, the University of Lund, Norsk Folkeminnesamling (Norwegian Folklore Archive), Oslo, and Dansk Folkemindesamling (Danish Folklore Archive) in København. He met some of the leading folklore and folklife Scandinavian scholars of the day, including C. W. von Sydow (Lund), Sigurd Erixon, Andreas Lindblom and Albert Eskeröd (Stockholm), Dag Strömbäck and Åke Campbell (Uppsala), Albert Sandklef (Varberg), Knut Liestøl and Reidar Th. Christiansen (Oslo) and Hans Ellekilde (København).

His principal responsibility in the Irish Folklore Commission was the development of the ethnological dimension of the commission's work, but until the late 1940s, when outdoor disc-cutting equipment became available, he also made disc recordings of traditional storytellers, singers and musician, in the commission's office at 82 St Stephen's Green, Dublin, including the only recording ever made of the music of the outstanding piper Johnny Doran (qv) (available in The bunch of keys, 1988).

In 1948 Ó Danachair recorded the last native Manx speakers on the Isle of Man, on behalf of the Irish Folklore Commission, redeeming a promise made by Éamon de Valera (qv) when, as taoiseach, he visited the island in 1947. When the transcriptions, translations, and the digitally re-mastered recordings of this unique collection were published as Skeealyn Vannin/Stories of Man, by Eiraght Ashoonagh Vhannin/Manx National Heritage in 2004, a plaque presented by Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh/The Manx Gaelic Society, was unveiled in the then department of Irish folklore at UCD, in the presence of the speaker of the house of keys, members of Tynwald, the Manx Gaelic Society, and the family of Caoimhín Ó Danachair, to commemorate Ó Danachair's 1948 achievement.

Ó Danachair was visiting professor in Irish Studies at Uppsala University in 1952–3. He served on the National Monuments Advisory Council, and was folklife consultant to the Shannon Free Airport Development Company when Bunratty Folk Park, Co. Clare, was set up in 1964. He was a member of the RSAI, an assistant editor (1971–85) of Béaloideas, the journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society, and co-patron of the society (1988–2002).

Internationally, he was a member of the European Ethnological Atlas Working Group, the International Commission for Ethnological Food Research, the International Society for Folk Narrative Research, the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore, and the Society for Folklife Studies of Britain and Ireland, of which he was vice-president (1979–80) and president (1981–3). He was keenly interested in military history, editing for eleven years the Irish Sword (1960–1971), and serving as president of the Military History Society (1978–87). With the historian J. G. Simms (qv), he edited The Danish force in Ireland, 1690–1691 (1962) for the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

Ó Danachair was a gifted teacher. In 1971, when the Irish Folklore Commission became the Department of Irish Folklore at UCD, Ó Danachair was appointed a statutory lecturer in Irish Folklore. The extent and range of his scholarly publications are evident from Patricia Lysaght's bibliography of his published work in the Festschrift published in his honour in 1982 (see Gailey and Ó hÓgáin), and in Ó Danachair's own publication: A bibliography of Irish ethnology and folk tradition (1978).

In 1951 he married Anna Mary Ryan, a secondary school teacher, of Galbally, Co. Limerick; they had two sons, Dónall (b. 1953), and John Louis (b. 1956). His wife was the eldest of three sons and four daughters of Timothy Ryan, creamery manager, Garryspellane, and of Deborah Ryan (née Scanlan), Galbally, principal teacher of Lowtown Girls’ national school, Co. Limerick.

Caoimhín Ó Danachair died 14 March 2002 in Dublin and is buried in St Fintan's cemetery, Sutton, Dublin.

Sources
Patricia Lysaght, ‘Kevin Danaher (Caoimhín Ó Danachair), 1913–2002’, Folklore, cxiii, no. 2 (2002), 261–4; Patricia Lysaght, ‘Caoimhín Ó Danachair (Kevin Danaher) 1913–2002’, Béaloideas, lxx (2002), 219–26; Patricia Lysaght, ‘Caoimhín Ó Danachair and his published work’, Alan Gailey, Dáithí Ó hÓgáin (ed.), Gold under the furze. Studies in folk tradition. Presented to Caoimhín Ó Danachair (1982), 12–26; Sinsear. The Folklore Journal, iv (1982–83); The bunch of keys. The complete recordings of Johnny Doran (Comhairle Bhéaloideas Éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Council, Dublin, 1988)

Born: 26 December 1915, Montrose, Ailesbury Park, Ballsbridge, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1937, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 03 June 1944, St John’s Seminary, Wonersh (Southwark Diocese)
Died: 25 June 2003, London, England

Left Society of Jesus: 31 December 1937

Early Education at St Gerard’s Bray and Belvedere College SJ

https://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/389521.a-kind-and-holy-priest/

A kind and holy priest

4th July 2003

A CLERGYMAN with strong connections to Richmond, Ham and Mortlake has died.

Canon Francis Davys, one of four children, including an elder sister and two younger brothers, was born on December 26th, 1915, in Dublin.

Known as Frank, he was educated at St Gerard’s Bray and Belvedere College, Dublin. On leaving school, he joined the Royal Bank of Ireland and felt himself called to become a Jesuit novice at Emo Park, Offaly.

He then transferred to Southwark Diocese and completed his studies at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh, where he was ordained priest on June 3rd, 1944.

His first appointment was to a church in Blackheath. After three years, he was appointed a notary to the Marriage Tribunal. In 1948 he took up the position of assistant secretary to the Southwark Rescue Society, where he worked for five years. In June 1953, he became assistant priest at a Reigate church for two years, after which he went to one in Worthing.

His next appointment, again as an assistant priest, was to a church in Cobham in 1958.

He arrived in Richmond in April 1961 when appointed to St Elizabeth’s Church, where he remained for 24 years.

The parish was divided in 1985 and Canon Davys was made the first parish priest of St Thomas Aquinas, Ham, and made arrangements for its consecration.

He continued to serve as Catholic chaplain at the Royal Star and Garter Home, completing 31 years of service there.

After seven years at Ham, he retired to Wimbledon Common before moving to St Mary’s Convent, Worthing, and finally to St George’s Retreat, Burgess Hill.

He was made an honorary canon in 1967 and served the diocese on the Schools Commission as well as being chairman of governors at Christ’s School, Richmond, and St Elizabeth’s Primary School, Richmond. During this time the school moved to new premises in Queen’s Road. He was Dean of Mortlake from 1978 to 1991.

Canon Davys had been ill for some time and suffered a heart attack on the afternoon of June 25th. He died peacefully at home at 11pm aged 88.

Friends say he was a “private man by temperament, a kind, courteous and holy priest with a sense of humour and ever sensitive to the needs of others”.

His Requiem Mass will be held at St Elizabeth’s Church in the Vineyard on Wednesday, July 9th, at noon.

Born: 09 February 1945, Ballsbridge, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1962, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 13 May 2015, Royal Hospital, London, England (London)

Left Society of Jesus: 28 May 1964

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/co-founder-of-focus-theatre-who-became-tv-producer-in-uk-1.2247794

Co-founder of Focus Theatre who became TV producer in UK

Richard Callanan: February 9th, 1945 - May 13th, 2015

Richard Callanan, who has died aged 70, was a founder member, with others including Deirdre O'Connell, Tom Hickey, Sabina Higgins (née Coyne) and Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, of Dublin's famous Focus Theatre, which flourished from 1963 to 2012.

He later made a successful career as a BBC television producer, winning two Bafta awards for children’s programmes in the 1990s.

He also made significant contributions to further education with the Open University (OU) and, after retirement, with the University of the Third Age (U3A).

Callanan had joined the BBC in 1969 to work with the newly established OU. One of his fellow trainee producers at the time was Nuala O’Faolain.

His interest in drama first surfaced at school, at Belvedere and Clongowes, and he was later an active member of Dramsoc at UCD, where he studied English and history from 1965 to 1968.

Among his roles was Antony, opposite Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy's Cleopatra and the title role in John Osborne's Luther.

He was part of the production team for the Focus Theatre's first show, Kelly's Eye by Henry Livings. It was at the Focus too that he began what was to become a lifelong friendship with the actor Sabina Coyne, now Sabina Higgins, wife of President Michael D Higgins.

At UCD, Callanan was also a leading member of the Literary and Historical Society, appearing in the first Irish televised student debate with Patrick Cosgrave, later an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, and John Cooke, who became a High Court judge.

Jesuit training

Callanan had spent two years, after leaving Clongowes, as a seminarian at the Jesuit novitiate at Emo House in Laois, a stage of his life that was terminated, according to his brother Fionnbar, “by mutual consent”.

An Open University colleague, Nick Levinson, remarked at Callanan’s funeral service that his old friend retained the ability to be self-critical, which he speculated might have been a hangover from his Jesuit training, which helped him to “see both sides, and face both ways” when pondering a course of action.

One of Callanan’s special gifts, Levinson said, was casting actors. Among those he recruited were Patrick Stewart, Leo McKern and Ben Kingsley, all of them at a relatively early stage of their careers.

Callanan eventually left the Open University to work for the BBC, especially in children’s television.

In retirement, Callanan returned to further education with the University of the Third Age, where, his colleague Patricia Isaacs said, “he led a group on modern literature, sharing his great love of Irish poets in particular with members”.

Richard Callanan was born in Dublin in 1945, the youngest of five children of Richard Callanan, one of the first recruits to the Army of the Free State, who rose to the rank of major-general, and Margaret McGuinness from Longford, both of whom had been active in the War of Independence, and later, in the Civil War on the pro-Treaty side.

He is survived by his widow, Sally Burr, by his children, Sam, Megan and Joe, his brother Fionnbar and his sister Mona. A sister, Eithne, and a brother, Niall, predeceased him.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/aug/27/richard-callanan-obituary

My friend Richard Callanan, who has died aged 70 after a fall, made important contributions to two great educational endeavours: making TV programmes for the Open University and co-ordinating groups for the University of the Third Age (U3A).

He was a maker of arts programmes for the Open University between 1969 and 1979; and among those he recruited to appear in OU productions were Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley. Richard was largely responsible for the famous appearance of Max Wall as Vladimir opposite Leo McKern as Estragon in Waiting for Godot in 1977. He went on to become well known too as a producer and director of children’s programmes: in 1990 he won a Bafta as producer of the BBC series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men; and in 1993 a second for Archer’s Goon.

Richard was born in Dublin, the youngest of five children of Richard Callanan, an Irish army officer, and his wife, Margaret (nee McGuiness). He was educated at Jesuit schools and spent two years training to be a priest at Emo House, in County Laois, before the arrangement was terminated by mutual consent. From 1964 until 1967 he studied English and history at University College Dublin – during which time he became a founder member of the city’s Focus theatre – before moving to London to study for a diploma in modern social and cultural studies at Chelsea College.

Richard’s Jesuit education provoked some stark recollections of the pedagogic arts from him. It also, though, helped him to “see both sides and face both ways”. He never forgot the importance of drawing out his students and he was a supremely attentive listener. This attracted him to what the U3A, in north London, had to offer.

U3A’s guiding principle - “those who learn shall also teach and those who teach shall also learn” – was natural to him and his work on James Joyce, WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney was revelatory. He also taught a Shakespeare course to students in a residential home for the elderly, Mary Feilding Guild, who were not able to make even the shortest journey to reach normal classes. Prognostications of failure because of the age of the students were triumphantly repudiated.

He is survived by his wife, Sally, and his children, Sam, Meg and Joe.

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: 04 May 1930, Cork City, County Cork / Dundrum, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 06 September 1947, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1960, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February1966, St Ignatius, Lusaka, Zambia
Died: 20 May 2012, Enstone, Oxfordshire, England

Left Society of Jesus: 25 February 1972

Transcribed HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

by 1964 at McQuaid, Rochester NY, USA (BUF) studying
by 1965 North American Martyrs, Auriesvill NY USA (BUF) making Tertianship

Born: 07 January 1935, Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim / Birr, County Offaly
Entered: 06 September 1952, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 1967
Died: 06 February 2013, Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin (Priest of the Westminster Diocese, England)

Left Society of Jesus: 20 June 1966

Educated at Mungret College SJ

Priest of the Westminster Diocese, England

Funeral at Milltown Park, Dublin

Buried in Glasnevin Cemetary in the Jesuit burial plot.

Irish Jesuit News, February 20, 2013

Mourning Fr Ken McCabe

Fr. Ken McCabe (Westminster Diocese) died peacefully on the evening of Wednesday, February 6th. In recent years, a series of strokes left Ken struggling with severe health issues. Since 2010, he received wonderful nursing care from the team in Cherryfield Lodge. He had an unusual history, as Kevin O'Higgins recounts.

Ken had life-long links with the Irish Province. He was educated at Mungret College, and entered the Jesuit Novitiate in 1952. As a scholastic, he spent several years teaching in Belvedere College. During those years of Jesuit training, the plight of disadvantaged children became the main focus of his concern. In the mid-1960s, his efforts to sound the alarm about the mistreatment of children in Industrial Schools led to difficulties with both Church and State authorities. The upshot was that Ken departed from both Ireland and the Society. He was ordained to the priesthood for Westminster Diocese in 1967.

For the next 40 years, Ken devoted his energies to working on behalf of children from distressed families. He founded the Lillie Road Centre, which offered education and residential care to over 400 such young people. His final project was to establish a branch of this Centre in Edenderry, near Dublin.

During all those years in London, Ken maintained close links with many Irish Jesuits. Thanks to Fr. Joe Dargan’s decision to send novices to work with Ken on summer placements, those links transcended Ken’s own generation. It is wonderful that, in his final years, Ken returned to Milltown Park and the loving care of the nursing staff in Cherryfield. Fittingly, his mortal remains were laid to rest in the Jesuit burial plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Ken was a great man, and a dedicated priest. May he rest gently in God’s love.

Interfuse No 151 : Spring 2013

Obituary

Fr Kenneth W (Ken) McCabe (1935-2012) : former Jesuit

Kenneth W. McCabe was born in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Ireland on 7th January 1935. After education at the Presentation Brothers School in Birr, Co. Offaly and Mungret College, Co. Limerick, he entered the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus in September 1952. After his Novitiate he studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree at University College Dublin and later taught at Belvedere College in Dublin. His theological formation was at Milltown Park in Dublin.

A profound interest in the connection between poverty and delinquency deepened during his studies and various pastoral placements, so much so that he saw this as his particular vocation as a priest. At that time – the early 1960's - the Irish Province of the Jesuits was involved mainly in running schools and colleges. In conscience Ken did not see his future in teaching and asked to be released from his Jesuit vows to work as a secular priest in Westminster. He was granted this leave in the spring of 1966 and after some months residing in Edgware parish while taking up a probationary year as a teacher at St James' School, and after a short period of study at Allen Hall, he was ordained to the Diaconate at St Edmund's in December 1966. He was ordained to the Priesthood at Sion Hill Convent in Dublin on 27th May 1967 by Bishop Pat Casey.

He returned to Edgware immediately after ordination and was then appointed to St Charles' Square. He became chaplain at the Cardinal Manning Boys School where he also did some part-time teaching. He moved residence from Ladbroke Grove to Brook Green. During this time he set up the “Lillie Road Centre - a service for children and families in times of trouble”. Fr Ken spent the next thirty years running the charity he had set up which had various incarnations in Chiswick and Osterley. He returned to Dublin to live with his sister Muriel in 2007. His health began to deteriorate and after a period in the Mater Hospital he was very kindly given a place at the Jesuit Retirement Home in Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park.

A personal appreciation by Kevin O'Higgins

Ken McCabe was a complex man, but with a very simple, straightforward faith. He took the Gospel seriously, made it the guidebook for his life, and everything he did followed from that. The Beatitudes could be seen as the script he tried his level best to follow. Perhaps because he kept his Christianity simple and straightforward, he was a force to be reckoned with! Ken was passionate about the causes he espoused, and stubborn to the point of driving other people to exasperation. Yet he was always in touch with the lighter side of life, especially when he could persuade a couple of people to join him at a table adorned with a pot of tea and some nice biscuits! He had a great sense of fun, and often enjoyed being mischievous, particularly when things were serious. His life was devoted to doing good, helping others, especially the most vulnerable, and always standing up for the truth. He was uncompromisingly true to his conscience, a maverick of the kind that the Church and society need more than ever!

Ken's life story merits a book. In fact, he has been mentioned in several books and articles already. Fifty years ago, at a time when few people wanted to listen, he tried his best to sound the alarm about the mistreatment of children in Industrial Schools. In a dark period for the Irish Church and State, the young Jesuit scholastic Ken McCabe took a courageous stand, even though it meant standing in a cold and lonely place and, ultimately, accepting exile from his beloved Ireland. He tumed that exile into a magnificent opportunity to do good. His children's charity in London helped to transform the lives of hundreds of young people, many of them of Irish descent. In the persons of Cardinal John Heenan and, later, Cardinal Basil Hume, Westminster Diocese encouraged Ken in his pioneering work, freeing him from more conventional parish work in order to help children in danger.

Over the years, more than 400 children passed through the Lillie Road Centre. Ken cherished every single one of them. Many young Jesuit students passed through the Lillie Road Centre also. Shortly after Ken began working in London, Fr. Joe Dargan decided to send novices to work with him on summer placements. This decision kept alive Ken's life-long link with Irish Jesuits. Providentially, many years later, when decisions had to be made regarding Ken's nursing care and, indeed, the final resting place for his earthly remains, one of the young Jesuits who had worked with him as a novice, Fr, Tom Layden, was now Provincial of the Irish Jesuits. Ken's family and friends, as well as his Diocese of Westminster, will be eternally grateful to Tom.

Initially, Ken fought against the process of slowing down. His last big project was to open an extension of his London charity near Dublin, in Edenderry. He acquired a wonderful house, and opened a new centre for troubled young people. Those who worked with Ken on this project knew that, even early on, there were signs that all was not well with his health. He did his very best to carry on regardless, but was actually relieved when he was finally persuaded that it was time to see a doctor. Scans revealed that he had suffered several minor strokes, and these bad begun to impair his memory and his ability to communicate.

Ken knew his energy, dynamism and even his independence were all slipping away. That was an unimaginably painful realisation for someone like Ken, who had always been, literally, in the driving seat, always pursuing some new project, always in control. The fact that he came to accept his new reality with so much grace was an indication that, in spite of appearances, Ken himself always knew that he wasn't really the one in charge. He fought the good fight for as long as possible.

About three years ago, in addition to his struggle with memory loss, Ken's physical health began to decline and he had to spend a couple of months in the Mater Hospital. From there, he moved to Cherryfield, into the loving care of Mary, Rachel and the entire staff. He was cared for also by the Jesuits of Cherryfield community, who went out of their way to make him feel welcome and at home. In his final two and a half years, Cherryfield gave back to Ken what he had offered to so many young people - care, understanding, love and a refuge from the storm.

To end, a recent memory of Ken. One Sunday afternoon, about four months ago, we were sitting in Cherryfield watching an Andre Rieu concert on the television. When the orchestra began to play the beautiful 2nd Waltz by. Shostakovich, Ken suddenly called to one of the nurses and said “I want to dance!” So they danced a waltz for a couple of minutes. I hadn't seen Ken so happy for many months. When he sat down, there was look of triumph on his face, as if to say “The old Ken McCabe spirit is alive and well”. It was. And it still is. May he waltz away to his heart's content, in God's loving company, forever and ever. Amen!

◆ Mungret Annual, 1959

Behind the Jesuit Curtain

Kenneth McCabe SJ

A Thing that always puzzled me w about the Jesuit in Mungret was the secrecy they inevitably displayed in any discussion about Jesuit life. Later I was to discover that the problem was by no means confined to Mungret. Men from all other Jesuit colleges had experienced the same mystery. For some unknown reason what took place behind the “Jesuit-curtain” was a secret.

I remember on one occasion bringing the subject up with a scholastic, This man had a sense of humour and decided to treat me to a highly imaginative account of what went on in the Jesuit novitiate. None of the common misconceptions of the novitiate of fiction was left unexplored. I heard of the practice of sweeping endless corridors with the inevitable tooth-brush. I was given vivid pictures of innocent-eyed novices obediently planting young cabbages upside down, I was even convinced of the benefits of sweeping swirling leaves against the fury of fierce March winds. The whole fantastic description (which I partly believed) filled me with a nagging curiosity, Surely, I told myself, there must be even stranger things to be seen by the initiated. It was with a spirit of adventure that I set out a year or two later to share in a first-hand peep behind the “Jesuit-curtain”.

The Irish Jesuits have their novitiate at Emo, near Portarlington, Co Leix I arrived there on September 7th, 1952 prepared for the worst. My first surprise was meeting another Mungret re presentative who had entered there the previous year. It was a relief to see tha: he was none the worse for his year with the Jesuits, and, in fact, he seemed to have benefited by the country air and Jesuit food. As I hadn't heard a word about this man since he left Mungret a year previously (another example of Jesuit secrecy) I was greatly relieved at what I saw. With this extra assurance I walked bravely into the Jesuits.

The Master of Novices was on the door-step to meet me and with him was a young man wearing a Jesuit gown over his ordinary lay clothes. This man I was told, was a second year novice and would be my guide or angel for the first two weeks in the house. When I said good-bye to my parents I began my grand tour of the house eager to see the worst.

I was amazed at what I saw. The house literally swarmed with young me dressed like my guide. The funny thing was that they all looked extremel cheerful and full of the joys of life. I met, too, the other young men who were to be my companions for the next two years in Emo. The whole place seemed so natural that I already began to have my doubts about the novitiate of fiction. However, I daren't ask my guide any thing the first night, so I decided to wait till morning to discover the worst.

A good night's sleep is always a revitalizing tonic. Next morning the clang of big bell left me with no illusions as to where I was but I found no difficulty getting up, eager to begin my round of exploration. (I must admit that the “first-fervour” attitude to getting up, which I had on that great morning, has ever since eluded me). First there was Mass and then breakfast. There followed an interview with the Master of Novices and also with his assistant. Then my guide told me we would have half an hour's manual work. This was it. I smiled bravely to myself and obediently went along to collect my tooth-brush. But here I had my first disappointment. I was given an ordinary, if well worn-out, brush and told to sweep, in an annoyingly normal way, a long corridor. The only item that came up to my expectations was the phenomenal length of the corridor. Bang went the tooth-brush myth.

The other items on the list of my Scholastic friend were eventually exploded in the same very ordinary way. Emo is blessed with extensive and very beautiful grounds and it takes forty vigorous novices all their spare time to keep them in reasonably good order, without wasting valuable time planting cabbages upside-down or sweeping leaves against the wind.

Life in the novitiate is divided mainly between prayer and learning the rules of the Society of Jesus. There is, of course, no shortage of games and recre ation that every normal young man must have. One or two features of novitiate life merit special mention. A month after his entrance the novice begins a thirty day retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Without seeming too “pitious” every Jesuit must admit that this is one of the greatest experiences of his life. Even the schoolboy doesn't take long to be gripped by the intensity of the thirty days.

Perhaps the most unforgettable of the “tests” imposed on the Jesuit novice is the month he must spend in the County Home in nearby Mountmellick. The novice works there as a wardsman helping in the many chores of the hospital and around the old and straggling house. Comparatively speaking the work in the County Home is tough but the novelty carries him over the first few days and then he begins to enjoy the experience, It is no exaggeration to say that his month in “Mellich” is the most vivid memory the average young Jesuit carries with him from Emo. Perhaps for the first time in his life he will come face to face with real poverty and suffering. It is an experience that does much to mature the schoolboy novice and to imprint and mould in the future priest a respect and a love for Christ's poor.

At the end of two years in Emo the novice takes three perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Now he is a Jesuit for life. He says good bye to his friends in Emo and sets out for the next stage in his training, his university studies, which he does for three years at Rathfarnham Castle in Dublin,

University studies: the very idea might send a tremor of fear through the innocent reader. He might even think that it is at this stage that the Jesuit sheds his cloak of humility (it is a well known fact that all novices are humble) and begins his quest for wisdom and superiority. But this is not true. The average Jesuit confines himself to Bachelor of Arts degree and finds the work as tough as everyone else. At the end of three years, instead of being proud and superior, he is much mo likely to be humbler and far more aware of his own limits. Of course, occasionally the law of averages will send in the ranks of the society a genius, This young man might very well take pride in his achievements but if he does, he does so, not because he is a Jesuit, but because he is a man, as such, subject to the weaknesses of human nature. Strange though it may seem the briliant man is generally the most humble of all.

Three years in Rathfarnham is followed by three years in the midland bogs. In St Stanislaus College, near Tullamore, the Jesuit Scholastic studies philosophy to deepen his knowledge of the realities of life. More than anywhere else this is the place where the “schoolboy Jesuit” becomes the mature man, who in a short year or two, will called on to share some of his learning and training with the youth entrusted to the care of his society. This is duty that the young Jesuit eagerly to forward to.

So after eight years of training Jesuit Scholastic is considered ready for the colleges. This is where most of us first meet him. There are always three or four Scholastics in every Jesuit College. They are generally full of enthusiasm and ideas, both of which have been brewing since the young novice was first inspired by the ideals of St Ignatius. The mystery still remains however, why the Scholastic is so slow to share his secrets of Jesuit life. One explanation is that he does not wish to give the impression of “fishing” for vocations. St Ignatius wisely forbids his men to do this. However, once a possible “vocation” approaches a Jesuit friend and tells him of his intention, then the Jesuit will do all he can to encourage and direct him in his choice.

What kind of people join the Jesuits? There is no definite answer to this question. It is true to say that the majority of Jesuits are young men straight from school but many, too, have already tasted the pleasures of life in the world. Late vocations come from all walks of life and it is not unusual to find a wide variety of men in a Jesuit novitiate. How does his training affect the Jesuit-to-be? Jesuits are often accused of being all of a type; moulded in a set fashion and turned out stamped “Jesuit”. This accusation is losing vogue nowadays. The great diversity of work undertaken by Jesuits all over the world is an undeniable proof of the individuality of each member of the Society of Jesus. One thing is true, however. Every Jesuit is the same in so far as all are dedicated to a common cause, all are fired by a single ideal, all work under the same motto: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, to the Greater Glory of God.

This brief peep behind the “Jesuit curtain” shoud help to show that Jesuits are really human despite appearances or accusations to the contrary. Life in a college community is as rich in human experiences as is the life of any large family. Schoolboys see their Jesuit teachers as a group of austere but well-intentioned men, (at least I hope they do) men, who to all outward appearances may seem devoid of the many faults and weaknesses that are part and parcel of human nature.

The Jesuit, on the other hand, knows himself for what he really is. He has a fairly shrewd idea, too, of what his confrère really is beneath the cloak of external trappings. He knows his good qualities as well as his weaknesses and admires him for both. Together the Jesuit community try to preserve as much of the family spirit as can be preserved outside the natural family, Christmas in a Jesuit house would amaze even those who think they know Jesuits well. No effort is spared to make this homely of feasts as happy and as enjoyable as possible, Anyone still convinced of the legend of the Jesuit of fiction would be well advised to ask a Jesuit friend about his Christmas fes tivities, He will discover, that at least once a year, the Jesuit sees fit to doff his mask of formality and take an active part in the little simple joys that human nature delights in,.

Before concluding it might be well to retrace our steps and complete the description of the Jesuit training. After colleges the Scholastic goes to Milltown Park in Dublin where he reads Theology for four years, and is ordained at the end of the third. A final year of novitiate, called Tertianship, is spent at Rathfarnham Castle. Here the young priest does the full thirty days retreat for the second and last time. From then on he will make an annual retreat of eight days. At the end of his Ter tianship he is assigned to one of the many works carried on by his order.

This article is written to help anyone interested, to pierce the barrier of Jesuit secrecy. Anyone wishing to learn something of the Jesuit way of life will get enough from it to enable him to open a discussion with a Jesuit friend. There are no Jesuit secrets. If anyone still believes the Jesuit-of-fiction legend he should make a point of meeting and talking with a real Jesuit, Knock on the door of any Jesuit house. Ask to speak to a Jesuit priest. If he turns out to be a tall dark figure equipped with the legendary cloak and dagger, and a hat well down over his eyes, be sure to let me know of your discovery. However, I don't think such a person will have much trouble in realising that every Jesuit is first of all a man endowed in varying degrees, with the virtues and eccentricities of his kind.

https://dominusvobiscuit.blogspot.com/2012/05/autobiography-of-stamp.html

I read a very powerful piece about moral courage, and the lack of it, by Dermot Bolger in yesterday's Irish Times.

He mentioned Fr. Kenneth McCabe:
"The young Jesuit, Kenneth McCabe, got a truthful report about Irish industrial schools to Donogh O’Malley in 1967. The minister was sufficiently shocked to establish a committee that abolished these lucrative sweatshops, but at the last minute McCabe was excluded from the committee. Tainted as a whistleblower, he resigned from the Jesuits and went to work as a priest with deprived London children."
The name rang a bell but it took me a while to place it.

When I was editing the Shanganagh Valley News in 1958, Fr. McCabe had contributed a short story called "Autobiography of a Stamp, or, Converted by the Jesuits" as a vehicle for appealing for used postage stamps for the Missions.

I bet at that stage he had little idea how his career was to pan out ten years later. I checked out the priest list in the Diocese of Westminster and he is listed there as retired and in a Jesuit nursing home in Milltown.

Until today, I had no idea he had run into trouble for following his conscience. This upset me enormously. I'm not sure why. I never met Fr. Kenneth. I had only corresponded with him by letter. But he was nonetheless part of my growing up and he belonged to a more innocent era, as the story of the stamp so strikingly illustrates. So perhaps my upset was at a loss of innocence, a nostalgia for a time when things seemed simpler, and fixed, and true for all time.

Mind you, my upset is slowly turning into a cold anger at how he was treated. From what I read in the Ryan Report he was one of four people proposed for the Committee of Inquiry, and came recommended by Declan Costello TD, but his name got "dropped" somewhere between the Government Memorandum and the final Cabinet decision. It is not clear what role the Jesuit order played in all of this but his resignation from the Order, if such, would not reflect well on them. On the other hand, he seems to be in some way under their care today.

This post is just a small contribution to making sure he, and his bravery, are not forgotten.

Of course I don't have as many readers as the Irish Times, but, never mind.

Update - 9/2/2013

In the third comment below, Fr. Kevin O'Higgins has informed me that "Fr. Kenneth McCabe died peacefully a few days ago (Wednesday, Feb 6) in Cherryfield nursing unit, at Milltown Park". He says Fr. Ken was "a genuinely great man" and I totally agree. May he rest in peace.

Fr. Kevin himself is no slouch, as his bio on the jesuit missions website shows. He says Fr. Daniel Berrigan inspired him to join the Jesuits, and as I was reading the bio I was also thinking of Fr. Roy Bourgeois who seems to have shared some of the same experiences as Fr. Kevin on the missions.

Born: 26 April 1913, Keadue, Boyle, County Roscommon
Entered: 16 November 1931, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 10 August 1938

Born: 23 March 1931, Clonaslee, County Laois
Raised: Loughloon and Drummindoo, Westport, County Mayo
Entered: 07 September 1959, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1969, St Mary’s, Westport, Co Mayo
Final Vows: 11 June 1980, Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
Died: 23 January 2023, Mayo University Hospital, Castlebar, County Mayo

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

FSS
Born : 23rd March 1931 Clonaslee, Co Laois
Raised : Loughloon and Drummindoo, Westport, Co Mayo
Early Education at Portumna NS, County Galway; Brackloon NS, Westport,County Mayo; CBS NS Westport, County Mayo; CBS Secondary School, Westport, County Mayo; Cadet School, Curragh, County Kildare; Commissioned officer in Defence Forces, 3rd Curragh Batallion
7th September 1959 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1961 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1961-1962 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1962-1965 Leuven, Belgium - Studying Philosophy at Heverlee
1964 Leuven, Belgium - Studying Social & Political Science at Katholieke Universiteit
1965-1966 Kent, OH, USA - Studying Sociology at Newman Centre, Kent State University
1966-1970 Milltown Park - Studying Theology; Lecturing in Sociology at Milltown Institute and CIR;
National Chaplain to Pax Christi
31st July 1969 Ordained at St Mary’s, Westport, Co Mayo
1970-1998 Sandford Lodge, CIR - Lecturing at UCD; Consult in Research & Development at CCI
1971 Lecturer in Sociology at St Patrick’s College (NUI), Maynooth; Visiting Lecturer at UCD, Milltown Park, & CIR
1974 Research Fellow Ford Foundation: University of Michigan and UCD
1978 Tertianship in Tullabeg
1979 Guardian Máméan Pilgrim Shrine; Secretary Inter County Railway Committee
11th June 1980 Final Vows at Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
1988 Editing ‘Memoirs of Monsignor Horan (1911-1986) published in 1992
1992 Chair Pioneer Total Abstinence Association Board
1994 President of Aontas
1996 Pastoral Research in Archdiocese of Tuam (‘Quo Vadimus’ Report; Academic Associate NUI Maynooth
1998-2023 Gardiner St - Pastoral research Diocese of Meath (Report ‘Our Living Church’ 2005) – Residing partly at Loughloon, Westport, Co Mayo
2007 Director of National Survey of Intergroup Attitudes (NUI Maynooth)
2010 Research for Memoir “The Ongoing Project”
2012 Survey of Attitudes and Practices in relation to Tourism in Westport
2014 Guardian of Máméan Pilgrimage Shrine; Survey Research Director NUI Maynooth College; Pastoral Supply work
2015 Research for PTAA Book “Abstaining for Love”
2016 Researching own publications and sermons
2017 Guardian Máméan Pilgrim Shrine; Survey Research NUI; Pastoral Supply Work
2018 + Séiplínach do Ghaelscoil, Cill Dara
2021 + Pastoral Assistant in Aughagower & Cushlough Parish, Tuam Diocese

Jesuit whose influential research spanned decades of social change
“There is only one race, the human race” was one of the many memorable apho- risms of Micheál Mac Gréil: Jesuit priest, long time lecturer in sociology at NUI Maynooth (now Maynooth University), pacifist, defender of prisoners’ rights, friend of Irish Travellers and promoter of the Irish language.

Born in Co Laois but reared in Co Mayo, Mac Gréil – who has died at the age of 91 – is best known for his ground-breaking sociological research, which led to three books – Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland (1977), Prejudice in Ireland Revisited (1996) and Pluralism and Diversity in Ireland (2011).
His research, based on interviews spanning four decades, recorded the transforma- tion of Ireland from a deeply religious socially conservative community-focused society to a more inclusive yet more individualistic and materialistic country.

In his memoir and social critique of Irish and world affairs, The Ongoing Present (2014), Mac Gréil commented on the impact of his early research. “It made Irish people aware of their prejudices and encouraged them to be more tolerant. This self-awareness would, I believed, do much to undermine some of our more destruc- tive prejudices and result in a better life for our minorities.” But, he added, “we should not be under any illusion with regard to the persistence of racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, class or religious prejudice.”

Mac Gréil was involved in many causes throughout his long life. He was a member and national chaplain for Pax Christi Ireland – the Irish branch of the international Catholic peace movement. He was chairman of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Asso- ciation, whose members abstain from drinking alcohol. He was also a long time campaigner for the reinstatement of the Western Rail Corridor from Limerick to Sli- go and a passionate advocate for the restoration of the Mám Éan (Maumeen) shrine in the Maamturk mountains in Co Galway.

Award
Following the publication of his first book in 1977, Mac Gréil was invited to the British-Irish conference at the University of Oxford. Later that year, he was the joint awardee of the first Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Peace Prize (British ambassador Ewart-Biggs had been assassinated on his way to work at the embassy in Dublin on July 6th, 1976). In his memoir, he writes about how following that award, he was asked to give up his membership of the Irish language and culture organisation Conradh na Gaeilge. And while this request was later rescinded, Mac Gréil bemoaned the extreme politicisation of that organisation following the out- break of violence in Northern Ireland.

Micheál, born in a log cabin in a forest in Clonaslee, Co Laois, was second of six children of Austin McGreal from Loughloon, Co Mayo, and Máire Ní Chadhain from An Cabhar, An Mám, Co Galway. His father was a forester working for a Scottish timber company and his mother was a nurse who had worked in St Ultan’s Children’s Hospital in Dublin before marriage. Although brought up in a republican household, he later said that his family was never strongly anti-British nor anti- Protestant.

When his father was given responsibility to manage woods throughout Munster, parts of Leinster and Connacht, the family moved first to Portumna, Co Galway for four years and then to his father’s family home in Loughloon, Westport, Co Mayo.

Following his secondary school education with the Christian Brothers in Westport, Micheál trained as a shop manager in Dublin and returned to work in Hastings Garage in Westport. In 1950 he joined his older brother Sean as a cadet in the De- fence Forces. He served as an officer in the Third Battalion at the Curragh Camp from 1952-1959, after which he resigned to become a priest.

Mac Gréil joined the Jesuit Noviceship in Emo Park, Co Laois, and was sent to Tul- labeg (Rahen) outside Tullamore, Co Offaly, to study philosophy. In 1962 he was sent to the Jesuit Philosophate at Heverlee, Leuven, in Belgium to continue his studies (through Flemish) to licentiate level.

He went on to study social and political science at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he met Prof Larry Kaplan, professor of American political history at Kent State University in Ohio. Prof Kaplan invited him to that university, where he completed his master’s in sociology and began his study of intergroup relations (that is, social prejudice and tolerance).
Back in Dublin, he completed a four-year course in theology at Milltown Park, during which time he lectured at the Jesuit-run College of Industrial Relations (CIR, later the National College of Ireland) and at the Holy Ghost Fathers missionary college in Kimmage Manor. He was ordained a priest in St Mary’s Church, Westport, in 1969. The following year he started his PhD in sociology at University College Dublin, the thesis for which would later be published as his first book, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland.

In 1971, Mac Gréil began working as a junior lecturer in sociology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, while continuing to lecture part time at UCD, the Milltown In- stitute and the CIR for the next 10 years. In his memoir, The Ongoing Present, he writes at length about the academic struggles within NUI Maynooth and his own personal tussles with authority during his 25-year career up to his retirement as a senior lecturer there in 1996. A strong advocate of workers’ rights, he was shop steward for the University Teachers Union for nine years during that time.

Mac Gréil’s lifelong dedication to social justice brought him into some ex- traordinary situations. For two consecutive Septembers in 1968 and 1969, he lived on the roadside as a Traveller in disguise to learn about the social, personal and cultural mores of Irish Travellers.

March
Following the Bloody Sunday shooting and killing of civil rights marchers in Derry in January 1972, Mac Gréil joined the Dublin march organised by Irish trade unions that ended up in the burning of the British embassy on Merrion Square, Dublin. In his memoir, he recalls saying, “we came to protest but not to burn”.

As a member of the prisoner’s group in Pax Cristi, he was invited to visit the notori- ous republican prisoner Dominic McGlinchy in Long Kesh prison. He later worked with the Prisoners’ Rights Organisation alongside academics, politicians and barris- ters including Mary McAleese, Michael D Higgins, Gemma Hussey, Una Higgins- O’Malley and Paddy McEntee.
In 1983, Mac Gréil was called as a witness in Senator David Norris’s constitutional case against the criminalisation of homosexuality, given that his research in 1972- 1973 had found that 45 per cent of people in Dublin would favour decriminalisa- tion. He denounced homophobia as one of the most invidious prejudices and be- lieved the Catholic Church should review its pastoral relationship with gay people.

From 1970 to 1998, Mac Gréil lived in the CIR residence in Ranelagh and then moved to the Jesuit community on Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin 1. After his retire- ment he divided his time between academic research in Dublin and pastoral work in Westport.

In his latter years, he spent more time in Mayo, serving as a priest in the Aughagower and Cush Lough parishes in Westport and bringing pilgrims to his beloved Maumeen shrine in north Connemara. In 2021 he published a book, Westport: When Visitors Feel at Home, based on the views of visitors to the town.

At the launch of that book, he called for the democratisation of tourism and the right to annual leave for all, including the unemployed, the poorly paid, people with a disability and those under the poverty line. “In a truly democratic society,” he said, “social tourism, funded by the state primarily, should be the norm.”

Micheál Mac Gréil is survived by his brother Austin, (Fr) Owen and Padraig and members of the Jesuit Community. He was predeceased by his brother Sean and his sister Mary.

Activist was ‘colossus in mind, body and spirit’

Tom Shiel

Well-known Jesuit, sociologist, and social justice activist Micheál Mac Gréil, who died on Saturday at Mayo University Hospital aged 92, was laid to rest yesterday at Aughavale Cemetery in Co Mayo.

Large crowds attended the earlier Requiem Mass in St Mary’s Church, Westport. One of Fr Mac Gréil’s brothers, Fr Owen Mac Gréil was the main celebrant.
Dr Michael Neary, former Archbishop of Tuam, a colleague of Fr Mac Gréil at Maynooth College, delivered the sermon. Journalist and publisher Liamy McNally gave a eulogy.
In his sermon, Dr Neary recalled Fr Mac Gréil’s life as a university lecturer, trade unionist, campaigner for various causes including the revival of the Irish language, the rights of minorities, promotion of the Irish language and the reopening of closed railway lines.

“But he was always primarily a priest,” Dr Neary noted.

Dr Neary went on to describe his late friend’s life as “radical yet profoundly traditional”.

It was radical, he maintained, in the true sense of the word, a life of forging back to the roots of where we came from, back to St Ignatius Loyola, St Patrick and Jesus Christ.
Delivering the funeral eulogy, Liamy McNally described his late friend as “a colos- sus in mind, body and spirit”.

Mission of justice
He continued: “Regardless of opposition, church or State, justice was his mission. He was central to the legal case seeking the decriminalisation of homosexuality.”
“Fr Micheál was ahead of his time”, he remarked.

Mr McNally went on to describe his late friend as a great ecumenist and supporter of women in the church, always wanting women to have more responsibility rather than “little jobeens”.
Éamon Ó Cuív TD delivered the first reading while the second reading was given by Geraldine Delaney, a former student at Maynooth College.

The final prayers were recited by the present Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Francis Duffy.

President Michael D Higgins was represented at the funeral by aide de camp Col Stephen Howard.

https://jesuit.ie/blog/guest-blogger/my-year-with-micheal-mac-greil-sj/

My year with Micheál Mac Gréil SJ

Eoin Garrett

I first met Micheál Mac Gréil SJ (1931-2023) when I was a pupil at Gonzaga College and he was a student of theology in neighbouring Milltown Park. An early sign of his energy and capacity for organizing major projects was evident when he was asked to assist Fr Michael Hurley in promoting Milltown Park’s series of weekly public lectures. The outcome was an overflow of attendances every week! I attended Mícheál’s ordination in Westport in 1969 (by which time I was a Jesuit novice) – “a most memorable event” to quote his own description in his memoir The Ongoing Present (2014).

The main focus of this brief essay, however, is the year I spent working full-time as Micheál’s assistant (1972/73). How this came about need not detain us here. Suffice to say that the year was a more valuable education than the studies I was mismanaging both before and after it. In that year, Micheál was doing the work of several people. He remarks in his memoir that around this time a friend “detected the makings of a ‘workaholic’ in me. So be it. It did not worry me … I used to work night and day with great satisfaction”.

That academic year, he was acting head of the Department of Social Studies in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth (having joined the Department just a year previously). He was also directing research for the Survey of Intergroup Attitudes, the results of which would be the material for his Ph.D. thesis, and would eventually be published as Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland in 1977.

My role in this was to be an “administrative assistant”, a suitably vague title, which involved among other tasks, driving some of the fourteen interviewers to their interviewees in outlying areas (e.g., Tallaght, where the first new residents had recently arrived), helping to code the information from completed questionnaires, and eventually proof-reading the thesis and the book (I was also to proof-read the follow-up publication, Prejudice in Ireland Revisited, 1996). Micheál was also acting as editor of the Social Studies journal that year, several issues of which I also proof-read.

Some years later, after I left the Jesuits, I was being interviewed for a position in a national institution. A member of the interview board spotted Micheál’s name on my CV and asked what had struck me most about his research findings. I said something about the clear signs of latent racial prejudice, at which another member of the board angrily denied there was any such prejudice in Ireland. The question had little relevance to the job I was seeking. My interview was unsuccessful!

My close contact with Micheál and with his research broadened my mind considerably. His sharp observations in our many conversations, and his clear exposition in his writings of the nature of prejudice have, I hope, helped me to be tolerant of difference and open to listen to opinions I disagree with without dismissing those who hold such opinions.

Once he asked me why my parents had sent me to Gonzaga College. This was a loaded question, as I well knew his views on Jesuits running private fee-paying schools. Fortunately my answer was the only one he could not object to: “it was the local school”!

An unintended consequence of the amount of proof-reading I did that year and subsequently is that I cannot read anything since then without seeing misspellings and typos!

Micheál was National Chaplain of Pax Christi. 1972 was Ireland’s turn to host the annual Pax Christi International Route. This involved groups of young adults of many nationalities and their leaders walking from various starting points for a week and converging on Kilkenny. Each evening they would be hosted by families in the various towns and villages in which they stopped.

Micheál organized this hospitality with military thoroughness, as befitted his pre-Jesuit career as an army officer. We sent letters to each parish priest in the stopover places. Based in the Capuchin Friary in Kilkenny, I then followed up, visiting the parish priests, travelling by-roads within a hundred-mile radius of Kilkenny on my motor-bike. I got to see many parts of the country for the first time, and to meet some great characters among the clergy. The whole operation was, of course, a great success.

These were the main activities I was involved with that year. Micheál himself had countless other commitments, lecturing in UCD and the College of Industrial Relations as well as in Maynooth, involvement in various civic campaigns, and fulfilling frequent speaking engagements. He showed great trust in me to do whatever he asked, mostly without supervision. He was an inspiration to work with and any person who reads his memoir, The Ongoing Present, can only be similarly inspired.

Born: 30 January 1913, Listowel, County Kerry
Entered: 03 September 1930, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 13 March 1943

Early education at St Michael’s College, Listowel and Mungret College SJ

Born: 04 October 1916, Derrymihan, Castletownbere, County Cork
Entered: 07 September 1935, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 17 September 1942

Educated at Mungret College SJ

Born: 25 December 1915, Ballindangan, County Cork
Entered: 10 September 1934, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1948, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1952, Chiesa del Gesú, Rome Italy

Left Society of Jesus: 26 February 1961

by 1952 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying

Born: 08 April 1924, Ballitore, County Kildare
Entered: 18 December 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 31 October 1955

by 1951 at Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) working

Born: 25 June 1919, Moville, County Donegal / Rathgar, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 24 September 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 03 June 1944, pre entry
Final Vows: 02 February 1959, Clongowes Wood College SJ

Left Society of Jesus: 13 November 1974 (Returned to Dublin Diocese)

by 1949 at Villefranche France (FRA) - studying

◆ The Clongownian, 1997

Obituary

Father Kevin McDowell (formerly SJ)

Kevin McDowell was ordained for the Archdiocese of Dublin and joined the Society of Jesus in 1948. He came to Clongowes in the autumn of 1950 fresh from the Noviciate to succeed a relatively elderly Jesuit as Spiritual Father. In those days the Spiritual Father was responsible for the whole school and Kevin struck us immediately by his youthful energy and enthusiasm. We grew to love his Omagh accent and his sense of fun.

Daily Mass at 7.30 am was compulsory for everyone and it was Kevin's duty to say Mass day in day out. In those days of frequent Confession, he was also available in his room every morning before Mass, as well as on every Saturday evening. From time to time he used also to give talks on “topical” matters - occasionally (especially following “Line matches” in rugby which he might have been called on to referee) making pleas for a decrease in unparliamentary language!

Kevin was a great soccer player and - along with Fr Frewen - was a regular companion on “soccer evenings”. Although always very fair and sporting, he was the sort of player who took no prisoners and was a much feared member of the “Community” XI = in those days there was a sufficient number of able-bodied Jesuits to face the Boys XI, with a little help from one or two “Laymasters”!

More than once Kevin played a very important role in pouring oil on troubled waters, acting as negotiator-cum-peacemaker in differences of opinion between the student body and school administration. On one famous occasion he managed to cram all of the 52 members of Sixth Year into the Spiritual Father's room to parley about a possible resolution of a row which had developed on account of “unacceptable behaviour” in the Refectory!

My own personal memory of Kevin is of a pleasant, if shy, person, gifted with immense patience and a great judge of character. His long years of service to Clongowes were interrupted only by the year of his Tertianship (a final year of spiritual formation in a Jesuit's training). When transferred from Clongowes, Kevin spent time in Mungret College, until its closure was announced. At the end of its penultimate year, Kevin left the Jesuits (with a broken heart? - or so it was said) to return to the Dublin Archdiocese. He served as Parish Priest in a number of parishes in and around Dublin and eventually retired from Ringsend, having reached the age of 75.

He had spent some time convalescing in Cherryfield after a serious cancer operation, and it was that terrible illness which carried him off. I used visit him in the Bullock Harbour Retirement Home and he was so grateful to be remembered, appreciating even the most fleeting call. He often surprised me by his detailed recollection of events in Clongowes over 40 years previously. He never lost his youthfulness and zest for life and he regretted his enforced inactivity. But I will always remember Kevin as ever-young and am grateful to have known him and to have been guided by him during my time as a boy in Clongowes in the 1950s. May he rest in peace.

MLS

Born: 11 June 1930, Fairview, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1965, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 2007, Edgworthstown, County Longford

Left Society of Jesus: 1995

by 1974 at Rome, Italy (DIR) sabbatical
by 1993 at Glasgow, Scotland (BRI) working

Interfuse No 139 : Easter 2009

Obituary

Fr Val Mac Lochlainn (1930-2007) : former Jesuit

Paul Andrews (Interfuse Obituarist) writes:
Because Val died as a married man, in Edgeworthstown in August 2007, we never had an obituary of him in Interfuse. That was an oversight, because he was an Irish Jesuit for 47 years, and remained a close friend after he left the Society in 1995. What follows is a memoir put together with the help of Tom McGivern in Zambia,

Val's education took him from “Joey's” CBS in Fairview through Emo, UCD (BA in Latin and Irish), philosophy in Tullabeg, theology in Milltown and tertianship in Rathfarnham. He then taught for two years in the Crescent, and three in Galway, where he had done his Regency. There followed four years in Gardiner Street church, a sabbatical in Rome, and then the work for which he is probably best remembered, nine years as National Promoter for the Christian Life Communities. There were 310 CLC groups in Ireland, and Val worked assiduously to encourage them all. When he left the job in 1983 he wrote in his CV of “mental exhaustion resulting from over zealous commitment to study while at secondary school”.

At the age of 53 he volunteered for Zambia, and he worked there for seven years, mostly in Charles Lwanga Teacher Training College. He suffered greatly from the fact that his mother had fallen into dementia, and in 1981 had to be put into a home; she died in 1988.

For Val the 1990s were years of uncertainty. He returned to Ireland in 1990, and while working as a priest - mostly in Scotland - he went through a period of painful discernment, with strong help from his Irish Jesuit director. In 1995 he decided to leave the Society and the priesthood. Through the remaining twelve years of his life, in England and Ireland, he stayed in close contact with Jesuit friends, especially Michael O. Gallagher who now holds Val's old post in CLC. Val married an old friend in 2000, and contributed energetically to the parish of Edgeworthstown where they lived.

Val was a good man, a zealous priest, a brilliant footballer who might well have made the Dublin team, a cherished husband, and, above all, a searcher. May he rest in peace, having reached his goal.

Born: 09 November 1939, Derry, County Derry
Entered: 06 September 1957, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 20 June 1971, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 19 October 1977, Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin
Died: 14 February 2020, Swords, County Dublin (a Romanian Orthodox priest)

Left Society of Jesus: 1986

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1963 at Chantilly France (GAL S) studying
by 1973 at St Louis MO, USA (MIS) studying

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/funeral-held-of-pioneering-irish-romanian-orthodox-priest-fr-godfrey-o-donnell-1.4176696

The funeral Mass of Fr Godfrey O'Donnell (80) the only Irishman to be ordained a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Ireland, took place on Monday at St Columba's Church, Blakestown Way, in West Dublin. A total of 28 Romanian Orthodox priests from Europe and Ireland took part in the Mass.

From Derry, Fr O’Donnell died peacefully at his home in Swords last Friday. A Jesuit priest for 28 years, Fr Godfrey left the Catholic priesthood to marry Ruth in 1985, but had grown increasingly drawn to the Orthodox Church.

He was ordained a Romanian Orthodox priest in February 2004 by His Eminence the Metropolitan Iosif in a six-hour service at the chapel in Dublin's Belvedere College.

The ceremony was attended by representatives of the other Orthodox churches, in Ireland, the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, and from the Romanian Embassy in Ireland.

As he explained at the 2004 ordination, “I had to make a choice to let go of my Catholic heritage and to embrace Orthodoxy. It has been a great gift this last four years. I have met so many extraordinary people, very gifted people, great Christians who have also had to give up a lot to come to a strange country like Ireland.”

In 2000, he was instrumental in establishing the first Romanian Orthodox parish in Dublin, based at Leeson Park. It followed contact in 1999 with Paris-based Metropolitan Iosif of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Western and Southern Europe.

Fr O’Donnell had been Orthodox representative to the Irish Council of Churches and the Irish Inter Church Meeting, and was chairman of the Dublin Council of Churches for a period. In 2008 he was elected President of the Irish Council of Churches.

In November 2013 he was awarded the accolade of ‘Stavrophore’ by the Romanian Orthodox Church. ‘Stavrophore’ is derived from the Greek stavrophoros, meaning ‘cross–bearer’. It is the highest award bestowed upon married priests in the Romanian Orthodox tradition.

It conferred on Fr O’Donnell the the right to wear a cross in recognition of his work to firmly establish the Romanian Orthodox Church in Ireland and of his long service to the Romanian Orthodox community.

Survived by Ruth, burial took place on Monday afternoon at Dardistown cemetery in north Co Dublin.

https://dublin.anglican.org/news/2020/02/17/archbishop-pays-tribute-to-fr

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of Fr Godfrey O’Donnell, Romanian Orthodox priest and ecumenist, who died at his home in Swords on Friday February 14.

In 2004 Fr Godfrey became the first Irish–born person to be ordained as a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The Derry man had been a Jesuit priest but left the priesthood in 1985. He felt increasingly drawn to the Orthodox Church and was instrumental in establishing the Romanian Orthodox parish in Dublin in 2000. His work for the Romanian Orthodox Church in Ireland was honoured in 2013 when he was awarded the accolade of Stavrophore, the highest award given to married priests in that tradition.

Known for his active ecumenism, he represented the Romanian Orthodox Church on both the of Dublin Council of Churches and the Irish Council of Churches. He was chair of Dublin Council of Churches and became the first representative of the Orthodox traditions to hold the role of president of the Irish Council of Churches from 2012 to 2014.

Paying tribute to Fr Godfrey, Archbishop Michael Jackson recalled a priest of tremendous vitality. “All of us who knew Godfrey recognised his faithfulness to God and rejoiced in his tireless and joyful presentation of the Romanian Orthodox tradition within Irish Christianity. He was always ready and willing to participate in the promotion of a better understanding of faiths and advocate for ecumenism through the Dublin Council of Churches. The sympathies and prayers of all of us in the United Dioceses lie with his wife, Ruth, and the Romanian Orthodox community,” he said

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_O%27Donnell

Fr. Godfrey O'Donnell (1939[1] – 14 February 2020) was a priest from County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the Romanian Orthodox Church.

From County Londonderry, O'Donnell, was a Jesuit priest for 28 years,[2] who left the order in 1985 to marry Ruth.[3]

Godfrey and his wife Ruth became involved in the Greek Rite church in Arbour Hill in Dublin, and joined the Romanian Orthodox church in 1999.

O'Donnell was asked by the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan Joseph, based in Paris, to help secure a Romanian Orthodox priest for their community in Ireland.[3] In 2000 Godfrey was instrumental in the establishment of Romanian Orthodox services in Dublin, which began in the Chapel in Belvedere College in 2001.[4] In 2004 O'Donnell became the first Irish-born person to be ordained a Romanian Orthodox priest.[5] He was ordained in the Jesuit Chapel of Belvedere College, where Romanian Orthodox services were held each weekend.

Fr. O'Donnell ministered from The Romanian Orthodox Church based at Christ Church Leeson Park.

O'Donnell was elected President of the Irish Council of Churches in 2008. In 2013 O'Donnell was awarded the accolade of 'Stavrophore' by the Romanian Orthodox Church.[6]

O'Donnell served as head of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Ireland, and attended ecumenical and inter-faith, state services such as the National Day of Commemoration in this capacity.

He died at his home in Swords, Dublin, Ireland, on 14 February 2020, aged 80.[7][8]

Born: 04 April 1935, Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary
Entered: 07 September 1953, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1967, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1972, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Died: 15 April 2020, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin (Monkstown, County Dublin)

Left Society of Jesus: 30 May 1975

Educated at Mungret College SJ

Born: 28 December 1932, Clontarf, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1964, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 25 March 1968
Died: 05 February 2013, Eastern Hospital, Hong Kong - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Part of the Xavier House, Cheung Chau, Hong Kong community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to HK: 25 March 1968; HK to CHN 1992

by 1958 at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency studying language
by 1967 at Mount Street London (ANG) studying

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
A dignified missionary presence lost
A quiet, but dignified missionary presence was lost to Hong Kong on 5 February 2013 with the death of Jesuit Father Ciaran Finbarr Kane. He was 80 years old.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1932, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1950, graduating from the University College Dublin, now known as the National University of Ireland, before coming to Hong Kong in 1958. He was ordained a priest at the Jesuit house of Milltown Park, Ireland, on the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, on 31 July 1964. A talented and adaptable man, he taught at both Wah Yan Colleges, in Kowloon and Hong Kong, but in 1971 he became the founding chaplain at the Adam Schall Residence of the United College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he forged good relationships with both the administration and teaching staff until the university took over management of residence in 1994. A tribute from the current management of the college notes, “Throughout his distinguished affiliation with United College in the past decades, Father Kane has given invaluable advice and guidance to the development of the college. He was loved and respected by the college community; his dedication will be forever cherished.” During his time in Hong Kong, Father Kane was also on the staff of Star of the Sea parish in Chai Wan, but in 2004 he moved to the society’s retreat centre, Xavier House, in Cheung Chau, where he lived quietly as a spiritual director until 2012, touching the atmosphere within the walls and grounds with the serenity of a man of God. His other great love was music and he became the well-known voice of RTHK4 (Radio Television Hong Kong) presenting sacred music for its programme, Gloria.
The director of the Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra paid tribute to Father Kane’s appreciation of the religious dimension of music last year, when he took part in a presentation of Johann Sebastian Bach by cellist, Artem Konstantinov. The musical presentation was interspersed with the words of Christ, read by Father Kane.
“It has been a pleasure to develop the idea of combining Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites with passages from the bible with both Father Ciaran Kane and Artem,” the director wrote at the time. “It has also been a thought-provoking task, for such a combination of scripture readings and unaccompanied music has never been done before worldwide, I imagine,” she continued. The newsletter also pays tribute to the artistic suggestions of Father Kane in creating a suitable atmosphere in the small chapel of St. Stephen’s College in Stanley, with candlelight and shadows. His broadcasting career saw him presenting both Catholic and ecumenical programmes, including Morning Prayers and a twice-weekly Midday Prayers, together with live broadcasts of Sunday religious services on a monthly basis. He is especially remembered for his tribute to fathers on a Fathers’ Day programme, featuring the music of Eric Clapton. He was a member of the Religious Broadcasting and Television Advisory Committee at RTHK and made the move to free-to-air television, taking part in discussions on the infant TVB on matters as diverse as Christmas and Easter, coverage of the visit of Pope Paul VI to Hong Kong in December 1970 and the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to usher in the Jubilee Year in 2000. His sister, Eileen Kane, said on 13 February at a vigil Mass in St. Margaret’s, Happy Valley, the evening before his funeral, that her brother had no other dream than to join the Jesuits. She related how she accompanied him to a talk given by a Jesuit priest when he was a young man, saying that from that day on, he was quite convinced he had found his true vocation and road in life. Father Kane died peacefully after being hospitalised for three weeks in Eastern Hospital. He was buried from St. Margaret’s on 14 February in St. Michael’s Happy Valley Cemetery.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 24 February 2013

Note from Frank Doyle Entry
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 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.”

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions : https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/213-missionary-in-hong-kong-2012

Missionary in Hong Kong 2012
Ciaran Kane, SJ
Being a missionary anywhere today is very different from what it was 50 years ago, when I first arrived in Hong Kong. Both the world and the church have changed so much in the meantime. For the church, a richer understanding of what ‘mission’ means, and that the idea of ‘mission’ is a call to all Christians. For the world, the onset of globalisation bringing peoples and cultures into closer contact and mutual influence and interdependence.
In the past, more than today, being a missionary implied coming from a faraway place bringing a set of beliefs, practices and values that were ‘foreign’ to the people you came to serve. Whether admired or reviled, the missionary had a distinctive status with his/her people. But global communications, international travel, studying and service abroad, and the shrinking of our world have now levelled the ground, and, I think, integrated the missionary more into the local church and society.
So, for me being a missionary today is a consciousness of serving the universal church, the international body of Christ, people of many races and places. As a Jesuit my specific mission is a ministry that involves me with Catholics and other Christians, local Chinese and foreign residents, working with men and women, young and old, religious and lay, married and single --- in short a microcosm of the universal church. But it’s also important for me as a citizen of this city to be concerned about society as a whole, about the social milieu in which I live and work, and to give witness to a Christian presence in civic and cultural life. I hope I can be a useful instrument in the Lord’s vineyard.

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He was born in Dublin and was educated at Belvedere College SJ, and he then joined the Society in 1950.

1958-1961 He came to Hong Kong for Regency where he learned Cantonese and taught at Wah Yan College Hong Kong.
1967 After Ordination he returned to Hong Kong with a mission to focus on communications.
1972-1994 With the opening of the Adam Schall Residence at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he became its founding Warden serving students and faculty.

He was known to be always friendly and approachable and had a keen interest in Church music. His sister taught Organ Music and Music History at University College Dublin. He became involved in Radio Hong Kong (RTHK Radio 4), and was greatly appreciated by them for his religious broadcasts and religious music programmes from 1967. That year he was appointed as a Member of the Advisory Committee on Religious Broadcasting nd Television, an ecumenical committee, and in 1969 was appointed Chairman.

When he retired he went to Cheung Chau helping in the Parish and as an advisor on Spirituality at the Centre.

Note from Paddy Finneran Entry
Among his students were Ciarán Kane and Frank Doyle in Belvedere

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 152 : Summer 2013

Obituary

Fr Ciarán Kane (1932-2013)

Fr. Ciarán F. Kane S.J. died in Hong Kong on 5 February 2013, at the Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital. During the final weeks of his long illness, and in the days around his funeral, the structural lines and the wide outreach of his ministry were brought into focus. Visitors came to the hospital from United College, in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, from RTHK's Radio 4, from the Star of the Sea parish in Chai Wan, and from Cheung Chau. Some were past pupils of the Wah Yan Colleges, others alumni of United College. There were broadcasters and people who had come to know Ciarán through his work on radio, friends at whose marriages he had officiated and whose children he had baptized, people who had come to him for spiritual direction. Other friends telephoned from the United States, Canada, England, Malasia and Ireland as well as from Hong Kong. All showed a real affection for him, as well as great appreciation of all he had accomplished in fifty years of ministry in Hong Kong.

Ciarán was born in Dublin on 28th December 1932. He attended school, first locally in Clontarf, and then at Belvedere College, which had a decisive influence on him. There, his intelligence and his giftedness were fostered. Not only did he shine academically, but his fine singing voice was recognised, and he was given leading roles in the annual Gilbert and Sullivan operas that were a feature of those years. It was also at Belvedere that he came to know about the work of Irish Jesuits in Hong Kong.

Ciarán entered the Jesuit Noviciate at Emo, on 7 September 1950. There followed, from 1952 to 1955, three years of studies in Latin and French for a B.A. at University College Dublin, and three years of Philosophy at Tullabeg, at the end of which, in the Summer of 1958, he was assigned to Hong Kong. His parents had no need to ask whether Ciarán was happy about being sent to Hong Kong - nothing could have been more evident. For two years, based in Xavier House, in Cheung Chau, he studied Cantonese, and then spent a year teaching Mathematics, English and Religion in Wah Yan College, Kowloon.

Back in Ireland, after three years of Theology, Ciarán was ordained a priest at Milltown Park on 31st July, 1964. Then, having completed the Tertianship year, also in Dublin, he embarked upon courses in media studies, in order to train as a broadcaster on radio and television. These courses took him to England, to work at the B.B.C. with the well-known broadcaster of religious programmes, the Franciscan Fr. Agnellus Andrew. He also went to Paris, to the French broadcasting station, ORTF, and worked in Dublin at the Catholic Communications Centre in Booterstown. Thus equipped, he returned to Hong Kong in the summer of 1967. In due course he became a member of the Chinese Province.

Ciarán's first assignment as a priest was at Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, teaching English and Religion, but right from the start, he was also scripting and presenting religious programmes on radio. Not long after his arrival, in 1967, he was asked to take over the twice weekly programme called 'Midday Prayers', and from then on, for the next twenty-something years, he was heard each week by a growing and ever more appreciative audience. When Ciarán's mother visited Hong Kong, in 1970, she was introduced to a lady who said she loved to listen to Midday Prayers. “I'm not a Catholic”, she said, “but I asked my Pastor, and he said it was all right to listen to Fr Kane”. Forty-three years later, at Ciarán's funeral, a gentleman came to say that he had listened regularly for twenty-two years, and that, spiritually, the prayers had helped him greatly. He had taken notes from them, which he still used, he said, and he spoke of the programmes as part of “Fr. Kane's spiritual legacy”. His one regret was that he had missed the first few years, because he had not known about the broadcasts then, but he had got in touch with Ciarán personally, and, over the years, had met him regularly to talk about spiritual matters. Another of Ciarán's friends, and a former colleague, expressed a keen interest in helping to publish those programmes, or a selection from them, either in book form or on disk. It is hoped that this may indeed be possible. In the course of time, “Midday Prayers” became “Morning Prayers”, and by August 1994, Ciarán had presented these programmes more than 2700 times.

There were other broadcasts, too. Still in the 1960s, he broadcast a series of programmes on English cathedrals, called “Sounds in Stone”. Later, in the series he called “Kyrie” he introduced sacred music, as well as the spoken word. “Kyrie” was hugely successful, and reached the highest audience ratings of any English-language programmes on Radio 4. Another popular series was called “Gloria”, and he also, for a number of years, presented sacred music for Advent and Christmas. Besides all this, in 1969, he was elected Chairman of the Religious Broadcasting and Television Advisory Committee for Radio-Television Hong Kong - RTHK He was also a member of the Sacred Music Commission in the Diocese of Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the Jesuits, along with the Maryknoll Sisters, had taken the initiative of providing a new Student Hostel, Adam Schall Residence, in United College, in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, at Shatin in the New Territories. The residence opened in 1971 with Ciarán as its first Director. That new position brought with it new possibilities, and also new tasks, in liaising with people on various levels, whether students, administrators, academics or higher management. The tiny Jesuit community at Adam Schall was international, consisting of at most three men of as many different nationalities. Ciarán enjoyed his work there, and created an atmosphere in which the students' work flourished. Ciaran celebrated Mass each morning, and found himself acting as what he himself termed "the unofficial Catholic Chaplain' at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

At Adam Schall, he also kept up his interest in music. He sang with the Hong Kong Philharmonic chorus and with the Bach Choir. His voice had an unusually wide range, so that he could sing with the basses as well as with the baritones and the tenors. He even discovered, though, as he said himself, it was a bit too late to be useful, that he could sing falsetto.

In 1994, at the close of the academic year, Ciarán retired from United College. He took a sabbatical year, which he spent, for the first semester, at Boston College, and then in spiritual renewal at St. Beuno's in Wales. On his return to Hong Kong, in 1995, Ciarán was assigned, as assistant to the Parish Priest, to the new parish church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the district of Chai Wan, which the Jesuits had undertaken to run. Again, it was a new sphere of work, with new possibilities, especially where the Liturgy was concerned. Typically, he embraced the task, and quickly made an impact, as well as many new friends. This assignment was also an opportunity for him to get to know better some of his Irish Jesuit confrères, from whom he had been somewhat isolated during his twenty-two years in Shatin. After six years of parish work in Chai Wan, Ciarán returned to Cheung Chau, and Xavier House, where his life in Hong Kong had begun. Tasked with heading up a renewed Centre of Ignatian Spirituality there, he had first to undertake extensive renovation and rebuilding of part of the house itself. This meant that he had also to fund-raise, a task which brought him back into contact with at least one Old Belvederian, who had 'made it good' globally, and visited Hong Kong on a regular basis. In the task of renovating Xavier House, he also had scope for using his artistic flair, and he enjoyed collaborating with the project's architect, in creating and furnishing new spaces for prayer, both indoors and in the gardens, as well as ensuring that the rooms for retreatants and staff were more than just basically fit for purpose.

Ciarán's return to Cheung Chau coincided with the onset of illness. This began with a heart attack in Manila, in the year 2000, a degenerative condition in the spine about two years later, which made walking somewhat difficult, a diagnosis of prostate cancer in 2006 and leukaemia in 2007. Characteristically, he took it all in his stride – literally, it might be said, because he continued to come and go, up the steps or by the longer pathway between the ferry-port and Xavier House, sometimes more than once in the day. He was meticulous about taking his medicines at the correct times and the correct intervals, but otherwise, he did not allow his condition to interfere with his life, and would not even speak of it except in response to a direct question. He continued to broadcast on RTHK Radio 4, and to participate in the musical life of Hong Kong. In his last series of programmes on Radio, entitled “Oratorio”, he presented extracts from most of the best-known titles, as well as many that had scarcely been noticed before.

In 2010, he was presented with a 'Veteran Broadcaster award, and he continued to plan and work on new ideas for programmes for Radio, the medium he liked best. His last stage appearance was in January 2012, when he read excerpts from the gospels of Luke and Mark, in a performance over two evenings of Bach's solo cello concertos, entitled “Words of Christ in the music of Bach”.

In recent years Ciarán was able to return to Dublin for one month in the Summer, usually June. It was a break to which he looked forward eagerly, because it gave him the opportunity to meet and catch up with news of his friends, Old Belvederians, colleagues and cousins. He particularly looked forward to meeting for an annual lunch with the men who had entered the Noviciate with him. He also made sure that he met up with all his many cousins, and was delighted to have an excuse to travel to Cork or to Connemara. Travelling, going on pilgrimage - to Japan or to Spain - were the mature version, in his later years, of the cycling trips that had taken him, in his youth, over every possible road - or so it seemed to his family - that could be traversed in either Dublin or Wicklow

On his last visit to Dublin, in June 2012, it was obvious that Ciarán's health was relentlessly deteriorating. In September, he was airlifted from Cheung Chau to hospital in Hong Kong. There were tests, and more tests, in four different hospitals, over the months of October and November, in between which he stayed at Ricci Hall. Finally, on 17th December, he was admitted to the PYN Eastern Hospital. He celebrated his 80th birthday in hospital, on 28th December. That week, which included Christmas, he was undergoing radiation treatment daily for pain relief, but he still smiled for the cameras of all those who came to visit him, and they were many.

Towards the end of the eight weeks of his final stay in hospital, Ciarán was not always able to respond to visitors, but they continued to come. Some simply came and went. One group, and one individual friend, sang to him. Some came and wept, and went away again. As his sister, there was nowhere else I wanted to be other than by his bedside, in those last weeks. “I know that the Lord is calling me”, he told me, “and I want to go, but I can't. It is all a great mystery”. He received Holy Communion for the last time on Monday 4th February. Next day, peacefully, serenely, he was able to answer the Lord's call.

Eileen Kane

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 2013

A Missionary in Hong Kong

The following is an article written by Fr Ciaran Kane RIP (OB 1950) in 2012 :

Being a missionary anywhere today is very different from what it was 50 years ago, when I first arrived in Hong Kong. Both the world and the church have changed so much. For the church, a richer understanding of what 'mission' means, and that the idea of 'mission' is a call to all Christians. For the world, the onset of globalization has brought peoples and cultures into closer contact and mutual influence and interdependence.

In the past, more than today, being a missionary implied coming from a faraway place bringing a set of beliefs, practices and values that were 'foreign' to the people you came to serve. Whether admired or reviled, the missionary had a distinctive status with his or her people. But global communications, international travel, studying and service abroad, and the shrinking of our world have now levelled the ground, and, I think, integrated the missionary more into the local church and society.

So, for me being a missionary today is a consciousness of serving the universal church, the international body of Christ, people of many races and places. As a Jesuit my specific mission is a ministry that involves me with Catholics and other Christians, local Chinese and foreign residents, working with men and women, young and old, religious and lay, married and single - in short a microcosm of the universal church. But it's also important for me as a citizen of this city to be concerned about society as a whole, about the social milieu in which I live and work, and to give witness to a Christian presence in civic and cultural life. I hope I can be a useful instrument in the Lord's vineyard.

Fr Ciaran Kane SJ

Born: 03 October 1924, Armagh, County Armagh
Entered: 07 September 1942, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1956, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 28 May 2014, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1973 at New York NY, USA (NEB) studying

◆ Interfuse No 157 : Autumn 2014 & ◆ The Clongownian, 2015

Obituary

Fr Brendan Woods (1924-2014)

3 October 1924: Born in Keady, Co. Armagh.
Early education in CBS, Armagh and St. Patrick's College, Armagh
7 September 1942: Entered the Society at Emo
8 September 1944: First Vows at Emo
1944 - 1947: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1947 - 1950: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1950 - 1952: Clongowes – Teacher
1952 - 1953: Mungret College - Teacher
1953 - 1957: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1956: Ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin
1957 - 1958: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1958 - 1972: Clongowes – Teacher
1972 - 1973: New York - Pastoral Studies
1973 - 1989: Milltown Park; Promoting “Marriage Encounter”; Teaching at Gonzaga; Teaching at Belvedere
5 November 1977: Final Vows
1985 - 1989: Director SpExx; Assistant Librarian
1989 - 1995: Campion House - Director SpExx; Assistant Librarian Milltown Park and Manresa
1995 - 1996: Leeson Street - Librarian, Assistant Librarian at Milltown Park; Director SpExx
1996 - 2002: Milltown Park - Assistant Librarian Milltown Park & Manresa
2002 - 2010: Manresa House - Assistant Librarian Milltown Park and Assistant Comm.
2011 - 2014: Milltown Park - Assistant Comm. Librarian; Director SpExx
2011: Resident in Cherryfield Lodge. Praying for the Church and the Society

Brendan settled well into Cherryfield and appeared happy and content. His condition has been deteriorating for some time. He died peacefully on 28th May 2014. May he rest in the Peace of Christ.

Brendan Woods was an Ulsterman, who spent his Jesuit life in the South; he was a man attracted to solitude, but he entered an apostolic religious order, and thereby guaranteed himself the constant presence of others for nearly seventy-two years. Brendan's Northern accent was not strong, but his upbringing in Northern Ireland, under triumphant and intolerant Unionism, left a deep impression. Very occasionally, Brendan spoke about “What we had to put up with” and he had no sympathy with some Jesuits when, towards the end of the Troubles, they empathised with the fears of Unionists, of whom Brendan said: “They had it all their own way for a long time; they won't anymore; they'll have to get used to it”.

Brendan did not talk about his family, and it was almost by accident that some of us discovered that his sister is a Carmelite nun. He had three brothers, one of whom died the day before Brendan's own death. His friendships were many, including one with a laicised priest working in Dublin as the caretaker of a block of flats. Brendan offered friendship and moral support to a number of 'lost souls', but he never spoke about them; he really did 'do good by stealth.

Community life was never easy for Brendan, and he could seem remote, but in reality, he was warm, witty and quietly supportive. Being so intensely private, he was comfortable expressing his feelings through humour, rather than directly. He could be very perceptive. When Brendan said, of a particular Jesuit, that “He goes around giving retreats to well bred nuns”, he spoke in the light of a major shift in his own life, one that took place after he left teaching at Clongowes in 1972; he had lost interest in any apostolate to the privileged and preferred to work with those who had less money and less security.

Brendan gave many guided retreats at Manresa House, but his greatest satisfaction came from the weeks of guided prayer, usually given as part of a team in many outlying parishes in Dublin. Brendan never learned to drive, so those guided prayer weeks meant long bus journeys, and waits for buses, in all weathers. The effort meant little to him in the light of the reaction of so many ordinary people, as they had their first experience of praying with Scripture and asked “Why did nobody tell us about this before now?” This invigorated and encouraged him, but Brendan, not always a patient man, had no patience at all with one aspect of post-Conciliar religious life: the emphasis on self-improvement. He was impatient with techniques, had no time for the Myers-Briggs Table and regarded the Enneagram as pernicious, being convinced that it was Sufism diluted for Western consumption.

Brendan set very high standards for himself, and never felt that he had met them. He was an excellent teacher at Clongowes and a hardworking assistant librarian at Milltown Park. In neither job did he accept praise, nor feel that he had done well. In even the coldest weather, with only a small radiator for comfort, Brendan worked on the top floor of the Milltown Jesuit Library, cataloguing the collection of books about Ireland, discovering rare pamphlets and taking a special interest in Irish Catholic printers. Being over-cautious, he kept duplicate and even triplicate copies of books, which packed the shelves.

Having had some experiences of book theft, Brendan was a bit paranoid about library security. His love of books, however, meant that even the most tedious library work never seemed to be a chore. When a Jesuit house closed and its library was being cleared, Brendan had a remarkable ability to notice precisely what was lacking in Milltown.

With his a deep appreciation of what it meant to be both Irish and Catholic, Brendan concentrated on the essentials. He had no interest in the disputes about clothes that were so common in Irish Jesuit life in the 1960s and 1970s. Brendan was quick to abandon clerical clothing, and it is doubtful if, latterly, he even owned a Roman collar, but, somehow, there was an indefinable quality about him, so he always looked priestly. Being blessed with a fine head of white hair, Brendan cut a striking figure.

Brendan was quick to appreciate other countries and cultures. He read a vast number of travel books and had a balanced, even sardonic, appreciation of the United States. American crime fiction (to which Americans themselves give the more euphemistic title 'Mystery') was his secret passion and he read many authors long before their fame spread west across the Atlantic.

Marriage Encounter gave him, for thirteen years, a strong link with the United States and had him working closely with Bill White SJ, who was as committed to the work, but was utterly unlike him. Brendan was the organizer, Bill was the inspirer; as in many unexpected pairings, they were a very successful team. Some years before the onset of his own prolonged final illness. Brendan gave up attending Jesuit funerals, because the homily had been replaced by a eulogy, so he had difficulty reconciling what was being said with the reality of the man he had known. His feelings, whether positive or negative, about everything and everybody were strong, but his shyness often made him seem remote or indifferent and was a barrier for many who might have become closer to him. Those who persevered, or who worked with him regularly, discovered his warmth and his compassion.

Brendan's stories were many. Some were based on experience in retreat direction: “If a person on a retreat says that they'd like to meet you after the retreat, for further spiritual direction, you can be assured that you'll never hear from them again!”, in parish supply work, such as the Italian-American parish in New York, where terrified black teenagers returned the chalices stolen on the previous day, because their fence told them that the silverware bore the names of local Mafia families. But was there really an English Jesuit who, in his own retreat talks, used to refer, in his examples for edification, to “a humble Irish lay sister”?

Brendan rose early and prayed often. One year, his entire annual retreat was centered on the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”). Any hints about his own prayer were revealed inadvertently.

As Brendan's memory began to weaken, his brow settled into a permanent frown, which was very distressing for his friends. Everything seemed to worry him, but he was able to sustain a conversation by focusing on the person speaking to him, never on himself. He was not aware that he had celebrated yet another Jubilee in the Society, which was just as well, because he would have striven, with all his might, to avoid it!

Brendan has earned his rest.

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: 27 May 1933, Arklow, County Wicklow
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 24 May 1964, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare
Final Vows: 02 February 1977, Loyola House, Eglinton Road, Dublin
Died: 17 December 2022, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

FSS
Born : 27th May 1933, Dublin City
Raised : Arklow, Co Wicklow
Early Education at CBS Callan, Co Kilkenny; Clongowes Wood College SJ
7th September 1950 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1952 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1952-1955 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1955-1958 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1958-1960 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Regency : Teacher; Studying for CWC Cert in Education
1960-1961 Crescent College SJ - Regency : Teacher
1961-1965 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
24th May 1964 Ordained at Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, Co Kildare
1965-1966 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1966-1968 St Mary’s, Emo - Socius to Novice Master; Minister; Teacher
1968-1972 Coláiste Iognáid, Galway - Rector; Teacher; BVM & S Ignatius Sodalities
1972-1974 Loyola House - Socius to Provincial; Province Consultor
1974-1986 Gonzaga College SJ - Minister; Bursar (House & College)
2nd February 1977 Final Vows at Loyola House, Eglinton Road, Dublin
1980 Assistant Provincial Treasurer; Curator Rocky Valley - Villa house
1981 Revisor Irish Province; Treasurer Gonzaga
1986 Sabbatical - half year (from 01/02/86)
1986-1995 Arrupe - Parish Curate in Church of the Virgin Mary, Ballymun
1989 Superior
1992 Socius to Novice Master
1995-2003 Iona, Portadown - Community Development; Reconciliation Ministry; Librarian
1996 Superior
2003-2005 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Minister; Treasurer; Guestmaster; Ministers in People’s Church
2004 Vice-Rector
2005-2013 John Sullivan, Mulvey - Superior; Directs Spiritual Exercises
2006 Director of Lay Retreat Association; Socius to Formation Director
2007 Formation Commission
2011 Minister
2013-20 Gardiner St - Assists in Church; Director of Lay Retreat Association
2014 + Superior’s Admonitor
2016 + Prefect of Health; off Director of Lay Retyreat Association
2018 Assists in Church; Superior’s Admonitor
2021 Superior’s Admonitor
2021 October - Prays for the Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge

https://jesuit.ie/news/fergus-okeefe-sj-a-gentle-and-humble-presence/

Fergus O’Keefe SJ – A ‘gentle and humble presence’

Fr Fergus O’Keefe SJ died peacefully, aged 89, in Cherryfield Lodge nursing home, Ranelagh, Dublin on 17 December 2022. His Funeral Mass took place in St Francis Xavier’s Church, Gardiner Street, Dublin on 21 December 2022, followed by burial in Glasnevin Cemetery. At the end of this article you can read the homily at the Funeral Mass by Fr Gerry Clarke SJ.

Fergus was born on 27 May 1933 in Dublin City. Raised in Arklow, Co Wicklow, his early education was at CBS Callan, Co Kilkenny, followed by Clongowes Wood College SJ, Co Kildare.

He entered the Jesuit novitiate at St Mary’s, Emo, Co Laois in 1950 and took his First Vows there on 8 September 1952. His Jesuit formation included studying arts at UCD; philosophy at Tullabeg; regency in Clongowes Wood College SJ and Crescent College SJ; and theology at Milltown Park, Dublin.

Upon ordination at Clongowes Wood College SJ on 24 May 1964, Fergus served in a number of roles including Socius to the Novice Master; Rector and teacher at Coláiste Iognáid SJ in Galway; Socius to the Provincial; and minister and bursar at Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin. He took his Final Vows in the Society of Jesus on 2 February 1977.

He continued to experience variety in his Jesuit life from 1977 to 2003 including acting as assistant provincial treasurer; revisor of the Irish Province; Parish curate in Church of the Virgin Mary, Ballymun, Dublin; and working in community development and reconciliation ministry in Portadown, Northern Ireland.

From 2003 onwards, Fergus lived in three other Jesuit communities at Clongowes Wood College SJ; Mulvey Park in Dundrum, Dublin; and Gardiner Street Parish in Dublin. He assisted in church and ministered the sacraments, guided people in the Spiritual Exercises, and was Director of the Lay Retreat Association.

Fergus moved to Cherryfield Lodge nursing home in 2021 where he prayed for the Church and the Society of Jesus. He accepted the situation with his usual serenity and calm, never complaining as his health declined. He died peacefully surrounded by his family on 17 December 2022.

Homily at Funeral Mass by Gerry Clarke SJ

There are, I know, many Jesuits who stand in the queue to make the homily at Fr Fergus’s Funeral Mass. And speaking to them over the last few days has brought back to mind the many and various ministries and communities where Fergus has lived and where he has graced people with his gentle and humble presence.

I had the privilege of sharing community life with Fergus in three locations:

Iona Community in Portadown
John Sullivan House in Mulvey Park, Dundrum
St Francis Xavier’s Gardiner Street

I am consoled by the fact that no words can ever capture the richness of a person or of a person’s whole life. So this is my attempt to capture something of Fergus’s grace and gift as we gather to lay his mortal remains to rest.

Remembering Fergus brings us closer to the mystery of the Incarnation

Fergus has given us a gift as we approach Christmas because, remembering Fergus and his personality, brings us closer to the mystery of how God comes into the world: Christ’s Nativity

Always speak well of others

I never, ever heard Fr Fergus utter a bad word about another person. I’ll repeat that: “I never, ever heard Fergus utter a bad word about another person.” It was part of his character never to indulge his anger or frustration by spreading gossip about others. It was just not part of his DNA. And in not gossiping about others, he forced those who might have a tendency to gossip to refrain. Being around Fergus meant only ever speaking well of others. And if you can’t speak well of others, then don’t speak at all.

Pope Francis is a past master at this too. He simply goes silent. And this is what Jesus does before the authorities who, sitting on the throne of judgment would condemn him and sentence him to death.

Pope Francis, Fergus, Jesus refuse to condemn others.

Always place others before you

We all knew Fergus as a shy person. He shunned the limelight and stuck to the shadows, doing his duty with the utmost dedication. And duty has to be the hallmark of his life as a priest. Placing himself after others and always placing others before himself.

And this is another feature of Fergus that leads us into the mystery of the Incarnation. As we read from an early Christian hymn in St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians:

“he humbled himself and became obedient” (Philippians 2)

It was a feature of his life that Fergus took on what he was asked to take on, one thing after another. Sometimes when it involved quite a challenge to his own personality and character:

In his breviary I find on the inside page, written in Fergus’s unmistakable hand … each with a line drawn neatly through it:

Ballymun
Portadown
Clongowes
Mulvey Park
Gardiner Street (where there is no line yet drawn)

And then in his later years, Fergus was free and willing to proof-read texts for the Messenger and other Jesuit publications – dutifully, tirelessly and with great attention to detail. Sometimes he would present you with a really prickly problem in grammar, which you couldn’t solve and which he would have to slope off and solve in his own way!

One of the gifts of old age has to be a slowing down and a reflectiveness. Fergus embraced that generously. I remember him moving out of Mulvey Park, where, like the younger Jesuits in formation, he cooked and cleaned and kept house. But there was a moment when he realised that he wanted to and needed to move somewhere where there was a little more support and where he didn’t have to shop or prepare meals for 8! So, he moved to Gardiner Street. And when his sense of duty in the parish could no longer drive him strongly enough to celebrate daily Mass or hear confessions in the parish, Fergus, gracefully asked to be relieved of his responsibilities and step down from the daily rostering for masses and confessions.

This showed a freedom and knowledge of himself and a humility to accept the inevitable weakening of later life.

Conclusion

Fr Fergus, like his elder brother and Jesuit, Fr Ed O’Keefe had a great love for Blessed Fr John Sullivan. And it was Fergus who composed the prayers for the ceremony of beatification of Fr John which took place here at Gardiner Street on 13 May 2017. You’ll find those prayers on the wall display in the shrine at the back of the church. They remind us of Fergus’s own virtues and are, perhaps, his prayers for us today here:

We thank and praise God for every moment of this celebration; for everybody present here, especially those who are sick or unwell. May the Lord open our hearts to the needs of the poor that, like Fr John, we may be witnesses to the love of Christ Jesus, our Saviour and friend.

We pray for the leaders of our churches and for all those who serve the Christian community as pastors. We pray especially for Pope Francis, (for his representative here today, Cardinal Angelo Amato,) and for all the pastors leading us in prayer at this Mass. May they be strengthened in the gifts of leadership and service, humility and courage.

We pray for our young people facing decisions in life: that they may find in Blessed John the inspiration to be men and women for others, thoughtful, generous and kind.

Blessed Father John used to say “Be beginning. Be always beginning. The saints were always beginning.” We pray that the Lord will release us from the things that hold us down, the habits and ways in which our churches stifle growth and unity. May we “be always beginning”.

As we gather to pay tribute to Fergus, to thank God for his life and witness, we draw that line which he never drew through the final place on the list of his Jesuit life:

Gardiner Street

And we pray for him now, in the sure and certain hope that this humble, kind and self-effacing Christian, priest, brother, uncle and companion of Jesus is now beginning his new life with the Lord, meek and humble of heart.

May he rest in peace.

Born: 30 April 1943, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 07 September 1961, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 21 June 1974, Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 May 1981, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway
Died: 10 October 2014, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Coláiste Iognáid, Galway community at the time of death.

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1970 at University of Warwick, Coventry (ANG) studying
by 1975 at Rome, Italy (DIR) studying
by 1997 at Cambridge MA, USA (NEN) Sabbatical

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/loss-leader-john-humphreys/

Loss of a leader: John Humphreys
Last Friday, 10 October, the Irish Jesuits lost one of their great servants. John Humphreys, aged 71, had been unconscious for two days, and increasingly sick with a brain tumour for five months. John was a Limerick man, a passionate fan of Munster rugby. His father, 25 years older than his mother, had died in 1953, leaving 10-year-old John as man of the house. He learned to manage the burdens of responsibility in a calm and kindly style, and as a result was landed with them all his life, as captain of Clongowes, beadle of scholastics during his years of study, Socius (companion and close advisor) to three Provincials, and Rector of several houses. When he was taken sick he was in his ninth year as rector of St Ignatius, Galway, charged with the thankless task of raising two million for school buildings.
John’s administrative gifts would not explain the grieving crowds who packed Gardiner Street church for his funeral. John was loved, and will be terribly missed. His style was upbeat, encouraging and giving. He was a humble man, a quiet listener, ready to learn from his mistakes. A Jesuit friend remembers him as good company at table, not saying much, but smiling at the craic and adding to it.
The source of this warmth became particularly clear in his last months of life. When he learned that his cancer was probably terminal, he lived with it, and his increasing sickness, with good humour nourished by his prayer. He asked a friend to seek out the text of a prayer which touched him, and described his spiritual state:
I asked God for strength, that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 158 : Winter 2014

Obituary

Fr John Humphreys (1943-2014)

30 April 1943: Born in Limerick,
Early education at Sacred Heart College, Limerick and Clongowes Wood College
7 September 1961: Entered the Society at Emo
8 September 1963: First Vows at Emo
1963 - 1967: Rathfarnham - Studied Science at UCD
1967 - 1969: Milltown Park - Studied Philosophy
1969 - 1970: Warwick University - Studied Philosophy
1970 - 1971: Clongowes - Lower Line Prefect: Regency
1971 - 1974: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
21st June 1974: Ordained at Gonzaga Chapel, Dublin
1974 - 1976: Gregorian, Rome --Studied Theology (Residence: S. Roberto Bellarmino)
1976 - 1981: Galway – Teacher
1978 - 1979: Tertianship in Tullabeg; Vice-Rector; Teacher
1979 - 1981: Rector; Teacher; Province Consultor (1978)
15 May 1981: Final Vows at Galway
1981 - 1987: Milltown Park - Rector; Delegate for Formation; Province Consultor
1987 - 1996: Loyola - Socius; Vice-Superior; Province Consultor
1991 - 1996: Socius; Province Consultor. Chair of Board Crescent College Comprehensive
1996 - 1997: Sabbatical – Weston Jesuits, New England
1997 - 1999: Clongowes - Chaplain; Pastoral Care Corordinator; Chair, Vocations Vocations Promotion Team
1998: Acting Socius
1999 - 2002: Loyola - Superior; Socius; Prov. Consultor; Provincial Team; Chair Vocations Vocations Promotion Team
2002 - 2005: Dominic Collins - Province Consultor; Prov. Assistant for Strategic Planning; Delegate for Child Protection; Revisor of Province Funds
2005 - 2014: Galway - Rector; Revisor of Province Funds; Province Consultor; Child Protection Delegate; Spirituality Delegate; Chair Coláiste lognáid Board
2008 - 2014: Galway - Rector; Director of Spirituality Centre; Revisor of Province Funds

Fr. John Humphreys was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge on 19th May 2014. He settled in well though his condition deteriorated over time. He died peacefully in Cherryfield on 10th October 2014.

“Past all grasp God-throned behind death with a sovereignty that heeds, but hides, that bodes but abides”. Hopkins stretching words about the mystery of death and God.

I remember my mother told me one time whenever John's father, Louis, would tell a funny story – long before be got to the punch line he would get into helpless fits of laughter and tears were running down his face, so that everyone around started laughing with him and you mightn't get the punch line at all, but it didn't matter. And the same was true of John. The abiding truth of John was that you just felt better in his company - his humanity and palpable goodness made those with him feel good about themselves. An extraordinary gift!

When Sir Thomas More heard about the sudden death of Bishop John Fisher at the hands of Henry VIII because he had refused to bow to his bullying: More said: Ah, Fisher, a lovely man. An amazing number of people would say just the same of John Humphreys: a lovely man.

Karl Rahner, the German 20th century Jesuit theologian, was asked in an interview how could a modern man become or remain a Jesuit. And part of his answer was: my reason is not because the Society of Jesus still has a significant influence within the Church or in the broader world. Rather, it is because I still see around me living in many of my companions a readiness for disinterested service carried out in silence, a readiness for prayer, for abandonment to the incomprehensibility of God, for the calm acceptance of death in whatever form it may come, for the total dedication to the following of Christ crucified.

It could be a pen-picture of John's life-of many others too as Rahner says – but John is the focus today : disinterested service – John was the Provincial's (three of them in fact – Philip Harnett, Laurence Murphy & Gerry O'Hanlon) Socius, or right hand man or consigliere for many years - I used to refer to him as 1A - the servant of us all in the Irish province of the Jesuits – enormously competent; painstaking, generous, good-humoured, compassionate, including his hidden & committed labour in the not-easy area of child-protection. Readiness for prayer: John's faith in Christ Risen was the constant and the anchor in his life, and his abandonment and calm acceptance were astonishing when he suddenly became ill in April and was soon diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, which claimed his life within 6 months - John's dealing with this was for us Jesuits an embodiment of the P & F in the Spiritual Exercises where Ignatius writes that we were all made to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and everything else in creation was made to help us do this - and so we should neither prefer a long life to a short life, sickness to health - John lived this freedom or detachment as it's sometimes called. Mary Rickard, our Province Health Supremo who with John's doctor-niece Sally masterminded John's care, said of his time in Cherryfield, where he was so lovingly cared for, that he was no trouble - So easy to look after – and he just slipped away last Friday afternoon - no trouble - he died as he lived.

However, unlike yourself or myself, John wasn't perfect in every way. My mother again was a source of information on his earlier years - reminding me that she asked John once when he was about eight, how do you say what time is it in French - John replied grumpily claratelle - my mother (a French teacher) tried to correct him, but John wouldn't budge - his father had told him it was claratelle. And claratelle it was. As stubborn as a mule. Loyal to the end. Then shortly afterwards he got his appendix out and he completely changed, she said, and became the delightful John we all knew! John and I use to play Mass too when we were about 10 - though he claimed that I was always the priest and he was the server. Well, that all certainly changed in later life! But he could be fussy and get a bit ratty too - on holiday he once rebuked me for not getting to the washing up. I replied any time I go to it you have it half-done already - it was so strange seeing him completely passive in our most recent holiday last July in Alison & his late-cousin Seamus’ Glandore house.

As you well know, John had a great sense of humour - his great friend Tom told me that John's own father had named a horse Bundle of Fun after John when John was only an infant! he was always ready for a party and dance - Louis told me he burned up many a dance-floor at weddings, had a spontaneous awareness of beauty and beauty responded; he was a charmer ! Always happy for a sing-song -- now he was no Pavarotti and would never have got into OLCS, but he was totally involved, with his head and feet going steadily to rhythm right to the end in the Cherryfield masses. We'd often speak in authentic Limerick accents when together - and he'd get great mileage if I told him I was listening to two men talking at the traffic lights in Limerick one time : and one said the doctor told me to take it easy; Geez, replied the other fella, you'll find that very hard you've done feck all for the last 40 years !

He loved Galway - spending two sustained spells there in the Jes both in the 70s and for the last eight years in many roles-where he has been loved and hugely appreciated, and where he will be, like in so many other places, greatly missed.

John was matured and purified by his life's experience: his father died when he was about 10, his mother (my godmother) was very unwell in her latter years, his lovely sister Reena, and only sibling, died 18 years ago after a long illness and her husband Paddy, 10 years ago – their legacy is the delightful family of his nieces and nephew, Sally, Louis and Judith, whom he dearly loved. And now John, just over the Biblical three score and ten. He had his difficult moments too: having an academic stumble in Warwick University in his earlier years, where he went full of Lonergan philosophy to the uncomprehending English - there he found that so many conversations ended with: Oh, how very interesting – but after all, who's to say?! And all his time of shepherding Jesuit scholastics in Milltown Park was no bed of roses.

I think that this purification made him such an attractive person to so many people - there was nothing threatening or intimidating about John - he was a great listener -- and when he had positions of responsibility he was just so human, so humble, so understanding, so compassionate.

The readings: Wisdom 4: 7-15; 2 Tim 4; 6-8; Mt 5: 1-12 - speak for themselves, perhaps most eloquently Paul's own farewell.

Fr Pedro Arrupe, the then General of the Jesuits, meeting with the provincials of the Philippines some years ago, was trying to clarify the main characteristic to be sought in Jesuits who are making final vows (sjs take final vows a few years after ordination) and thrashing it around for a while someone eventually said 'disponibilité' ie availability, freedom from possessiveness, or a sustained freedom from selfishness and self-concem. Arrupe nodded vigorously and said, that's it. John was available. The late Fr Michael Sweetman was a boy in Clongowes when Fr John Sullivan was there and Sweetman wrote about him: ‘he had wiped out selfishness so completely that you could not fail to see what, or rather Who, was in him.

There was nothing else there: he was all goodness, all Christ.' I think that's not a bad description of John. There wasn't a bone of selfishness left in him. I think Ignatius would have been pretty pleased.
And when you come to think of it isn't that what the Christian life is all about too !

So, while John's death is profoundly sad for us all, it's not tragic, though leaving us all bereft -- he did live over the three score and ten: the psalmist says our span is 70 and 80 for those who are strong - though we thought John was strong! We have all been enormously enriched by him. He was sublimely ready to go. He was just serenely waiting for the call in the last few months. So while we grieve as we must, we grieve not as vague agnostics, but like John himself as followers of Christ Risen, recognising as Paul Claudel wrote that Christ has come not to explain suffering, but to share it and to fill it with his presence.

There is, of course, no way in which anyone's life, not to mention that of a person of John's calibre and influence, can be remotely captured adequately in a homily or a panegyric - it can just be hinted at. But we are surely called to give profound thanks for John, for his life, his companionship and his service. And his swift departure is a call to all of us to get our own lives more into perspective, to shed some of our illusions and foolish obsessions and preoccupations – we are so easily seduced by the ephemeral and unimportant. John's death can teach us how to walk more lightly through life – to live in a less cluttered way - to attend to what is essential & important – to live more nobly and more generously – in the words of St Paul, to live a life more worthy of our vocation. And more in the spirit of inner freedom & serenity that John embodied. Helmut Thielicke, the German Lutheran theologian wrote: “Because of the Resurrection everything is now different: we do not know what is to come, but we do know who is to come. And if the last hour belongs to us, we do not need to fear the next minute”. And in conclusion St John of the Cross pithily: 'In the evening of our lives we will be judged on love'. It's an exam in which I think John will do rather well.

Peter Sexton

Born: 31 July 1933, Wexford / Ballyhale, County Kilkenny
Entered: 07 September 1954, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 29 July 1965, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Mukasa Seminary, Zambia
Died: 27 January 2015, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin - Zambia-Malawi Province (ZAM)

Grew up in Ballyhale, County Kilkenny.

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

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 15 August 1971

by 1960 at Chivuna, Monze, N Rhodesia - studying language Regency

Early Education at St Kieran's College, Kilkenny and Defence Forces (Cadetship and Commission)

31 July 1933: Born in Wexford.
Early School years in Ballyhale National School, Kilkenny
1945 - 1951: St Kieran's College, Kilkenny
1951 - 1954: Defence Forces - Cadetship and Commission
7th September 1954: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1956: First Vows at Emo
1956-1959 Tullabeg – Studied Philosophy
1959-1960 Zambia – Studied the language
1960-1962 Chikuni College – teaching, prefecting, games, helping in Parish
1962-1966 Milltown Park – Studied Theology
1966-1968 Zambia – Chikuni College, teaching
1968-1969 Mukasa Minor Seminary – Teaching; Prefecting; Games; Helping in Parish
1969-1971 Chikuni College – Teaching; Prefecting; Games; Helping in Parish
1971-1972 Tertianship: Liverpool/St. Bueno’s
1972-1976 Chisekesi, Zambia – Teacher; Prefecting; Games at Canisius College, Chikuni
1976-1978 Mukasa – Teaching; Prefecting; Games; Helping in Parish
1978-1981 Namwala; Chikuni; Chivuna, Assistant Parish Priest
1981-1985 SFX, Gardiner Street – Vocations and Church/Parish Work
1985-1988 Chikuni; Namwala – Teaching; Parish Work; Marriage Encounter
1988-1991 Namwala-Superior, Assistant P.P.
1991-1992 3M Course at St. Beuno’s, Wales
1992-1994 Namwala/Mukasa – Teaching; Parish Work; Marriage Encounter
1994-1995 Milltown Park – Directing Spiritual Exercises; Pastoral Work;
1995-2005 Galway – Church/Parish/Retreats
1997 Parish Priest; Librarian
2003 Prefect of the Church
2005-2006 Sabbatical (USA); Rome C.I.S. Course on Spiritual Exercises
2006-2010 John Austin House – Assistant Director Jesuit Mission Office; Assisted in Aughrim Street Parish
2008 Superior
2010-2015 St. Francis Xavier’s Church, Gardiner St. – Assisted in Mission Office; Spiritual Director, Legion of Mary
2015 Residing in Cherryfield Lodge, praying for the Church and the Society

◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Note from Joseph B (Joe) Conway Entry
Two days before his death, Joe became semi-comatose and was moved to a nearby hospital run by the Sisters of St. John of God. While in this state, he spoke Tonga and also answered Fr O’Driscoll in Tonga who was with him the day before he died.

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/rip-fr-neil-odriscoll-sj/

RIP: Fr Neil O’Driscoll SJ
Fr Neil O’Driscoll died peacefully in St. Vincent’s Hospital on Tuesday 27th January, aged 81. The eldest of five children, he was born in Wexford but moved as a child to Kilkenny, the county that commanded his loyalty from then on. He was a fine figure of a man who never lost the military bearing that reflected his three years in the army, moving from cadetship to commission. Was it the example of the soldierly Ignatius Loyola that moved him to the next stage, entering the Jesuit noviciate at Emo? Or the fact that Neil, like his father, was born on St Ignatius’ feast, 31 July? As with Ignatius, what met the eye was impressive, but less important than the depth and gentleness that lit up his face when he smiled. He was a dear and delightful companion.
Of his fifty years of priesthood, he spent half in Zambia, first learning the language, then schoolmastering and parish work in Chikuni and Namwala. When Bishop James Corboy founded Mukasa Minor Seminary in Choma, Neil went there as Prefect and teacher, and had a great influence on the boys there. His ability to encourage vocations and his good-tempered approach to teaching and to discipline made him a valued member of staff. I don’t think it is just coincidence that among his pupils there were two who later became Bishops and many others who were priests in various dioceses.
Neil was 61 when he returned to Ireland for a new ministry of giving retreats and running St Ignatius’ parish in Galway – he was the last Jesuit Parish priest. It was a good time for him. He always spoke of Galway with special affection; he found a warm welcome there and made many close friends. Meeting Neil you sensed a man who was happy in his priestly vocation, right up to his last years in Cherryfield. And he was a man of strong loyalties: to his family, his county of Kilkenny, his Alma Mater St Kieran’s College, and to the Jesuits, his comrades and spiritual home for sixty years of his life. May the Lord reward him.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 159 : Spring 2015

Obituary

Fr Cornelius (Neil) O’Driscoll (1933-2015)

Neil O'Driscoll died peacefully in St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin on 27th January 2015, aged 81. Like his father, he was born on the feast of St. Ignatius, something that may have had a bearing on his decision to enter the Society. He was baptised as Cornelius, though his Jesuit colleagues will ever remember him as Neil. But there are more significant things they will surely remember about him; his bright reassuring smile; the twinkle in his eye; his personal concern for his fellow-Jesuits and their work; the warmth, kindness and sincerity of his friendship; his gentle manner; the patient resignation with which he bore adverse health conditions; the uncomplaining way in which time and again he readjusted the course of his life in answer to the demands of his deteriorating health; his deep spiritual life, never paraded openly, but obvious in his great devotion to the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament and the Rosary.

The human context for all of this was the characteristic that first met the eye: Neil's impressive, almost military, bearing and the measured way in which he would deal with an issue. The years he spent in the Irish Army Officer Cadet Corps before entering the Jesuit novitiate made a deep impression on him and in God's surprising ways equipped him for some of the roles he would fill in the Society. A very early one, while still a novice, was to take some of his fellow-novices for drill, marching them round in efforts to improve their carriage and bearing. This was at a time when Ireland was experiencing renascent Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity; so it is no surprise that when light aircraft were seen flying over Emo, the rumour went round that the Irish authorities were checking in case the Jesuit novitiate had become a hot-bed for training IRA recruits! Neither is it any surprise that Neil was affectionately known to so many fellow-Jesuits as “the Captain” - almost instinctively you wanted to salute him when you first met him!

Neil spent 27 years, or almost exactly one-third of his life in Zambia. He would certainly have remained longer if the problems with his health had not made it necessary for him to return permanently to Ireland in 1994. In 1959, he arrived in what was then Northern Rhodesia for his three years of regency, spent most of his first year learning Chitonga and the following two years teaching in Canisius College, the Jesuit secondary school at Chikuni, He returned to Ireland for theology and was ordained on 27th July 1965, along with two other stalwarts of the Zambia-Malawi Province, Frank Wafer and Frank Woda. Following his fourth year of Theology and then Tertianship, Neil returned to Zambia in 1967. There he found both national and church scenes greatly changed compared with the way they had been when he left in 1962: what had been Northern Rhodesia had become Zambia; the Diocese of Monze had been established, with James Corboy as its first bishop; and Mukasa, a Jesuit run minor seminary for Monze Diocese, had been opened in Choma.

Neil was always happy to be sent where there was a need. At the time of his return to Zambia the need was for dynamic teachers and exemplary role-models in the schools for which the Society was responsible. And so it was that he spent the next eleven years of his life teaching either in Canisius or Mukasa. His colleagues remember with great admiration the way he always gave himself totally to the job. Very cheerfully he would take on extra classes or deal creatively with double sized classes of 75 or more (necessitated by a shortage of teachers). And as might have been expected from such a fine figure of a man, he knew how to use his impressive presence to bring control out of what otherwise might have been bedlam.

In some ways these were Neil's best and most fulfilling years. He was totally engrossed in his work, never seemed to have a moment for himself, and clearly enjoyed almost every minute of the diverse demands of his teaching apostolate. Around this time he began to show the attractive personality trait that was to become his hallmark in later life - pausing in a reflective and somewhat ponderous manner when asked a question and then giving a characteristic "hmmm” before answering. But for Neil one great thing about these teaching years was that he was just too busy to be able to pay attention to the dark and nameless anxieties that were lurking under the surface of his personal life and that became such a heavy cross for him in later years.

As was not unusual at that time in schools in Zambia, Neil also had to provide back-up and support for his teaching colleagues and the school administration if there were any disturbances among the students. This was a challenge for him, often involving a situation where he did not feel comfortable or at ease. But invariably he provided courageous support and showed unswerving loyalty. The experience of such situations burned deeply into him, unsettling him in some ways, though in later life he could recall them with sardonic humour. Thus, in mid-March 1974, he was with Jerry O'Connell one Sunday evening in the Canisius Headmaster's office when they heard sounds of shouting and rioting that were getting ominously louder. Quickly, Jerry and Neil switched off the lights and remained low, letting the disorderly students pass by outside. All settled down that night, but ever after when he would meet Jerry, Neil would say in characteristic fashion, “Jerry, beware the ides, beware the ides of March”

The legacy that Neil brought with him into the Society as a cadet officer in the Irish Army stood him in good stead during the years of his assignment to Canisius. Under Tom McGivern, a cadet contingent, attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Zambian Army, had been established at the school in 1964 and flourished over the years. On his return to the school in 1967, Neil enthusiastically became involved with these Cadets - the records show him as “Lieutenant the Rev. N. O'Driscoll” for five years and then for a year as Contingent Commander until he withdrew gracefully from this position so that a Zambian could take charge.

In 1979 Neil moved from school to parish work, becoming assistant parish priest in Chivuna. He served in this position for two years before returning to Dublin to spend three years in Gardiner Street on vocations promotion and parish work. From there he moved back to Zambia, first to a teaching post for three years in Canisius, then to Namwala for five years as superior and assistant parish priest, and then once again back to teaching, this time in Mukasa for a year.

The background to these many adjustments and changes was Neil's uncertain health status. For a considerable period he suffered from the undetected condition of excess iron in the blood, something that necessitated regular replacement of his blood supply. It was this that eventually made it necessary for him to leave Zambia in 1994 and return permanently to Ireland, At the same time he had to withstand the almost unremitting onslaughts of what St. Ignatius called the "evil spirit”. This plagued the second half of his life with a great burden of nameless anxieties, apprehensions and uneasiness. Notwithstanding his fine presence, he disliked being in a position of responsibility as he felt it difficult to make important decisions. But for as long as he was able, he continued with his apostolic work despite the physical and psychological burdens that he was carrying. Unfailingly he also continued to show himself a warm-hearted and delightful companion.

That he never deviated from the steady paths of apostolic engagement and very agreeable companionship shows that spiritually as well as physically Neil was truly a man of God and a man of stature. This made a strong impression on his Jesuit colleagues as well as on the Zambian people. It is gratifying to be able to record that late in 2014, just some months before he died, former parishioners of his recalled with great appreciation the work that he and Frank O'Neill had done when they were running Namwala parish. Even today, more than twenty years after his departure from the country, the people of Zambia remember with affection and appreciation Neil's pastoral presence among them.

Neil was 61 when he returned to Ireland in 1994 to a new ministry of giving retreats and running the parish in Galway, This was a good time for him. He always spoke of Galway with special affection. Meeting him, you sensed a man who was happy in his priestly vocation, right up to his last years in Cherryfield. And he was a man of strong loyalties: to his family, his county of Kilkenny, his Alma Mater St Kieran's College, the people of Zambia, his fellow-Jesuits, and the Society that was spiritual home for sixty years of his life.

In his wonderful book Where To From Here? Brian Grogan envisages a person who has just died moving with Christ in a small boat into the unbelievably wonderful life that lies ahead and being welcomed on the other side at a crowded quay. Undoubtedly it was that way with Neil when, towards the end of January, he got into that boat and left us. And surely among those offering him a thunderous welcome when he arrived at the other side were the Jesuit colleagues with whom he had worked in Zambia and who had pre-deceased him in Cherryfield - John Fitzgerald, Dick Cremins, Paddy Kelly, Charlie O'Connor, John McCauley, Jim Dunne, Denis Flannery and, of course, Frank O'Neill – and the countless Zambian people to whom he was such an inspiration, guide and genuinely good person. Can't you see him characteristically raising his bushy eyebrows, smiling radiantly with his whole being, joy shining through his eyes, completely overwhelmed, unable to find a word, and a small sound coming from his lips -- "hmmm”? Neil, you were a great and wonderful companion and priest. We greatly took forward to the welcome you will have for us when the time comes for us also to get into the boat and cross with the Lord to where you are now.

Michael J Kelly

Born: 22 May 1921, Kilbeggan, County Westmeath
Entered: 07 November 1949, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final vows: 02 February 1960, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 07 November 2014, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Transcribed : HIB to ZAM 03/12/1969; ZAM to HIB 1979

by 1952 at Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) working - fourth wave of Zambian Missioners

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Note from Bernard (Barney) Collins Entry
In 1951 he accompanied the first two scholastics, Bob Kelly and Joe Conway, and Br. Jim Dunne, on their way to the then Northern Rhodesia.

Note from Joe McCarthy Entry
In the late 50s, Joe pioneered the Chivuna Mission where he built the community house, church and Trade School with the co-operation of Br Jim Dunne and won the esteem and affection of the people in the locality

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 158 : Winter 2014

Obituary

Br James (Jim) Dunne (1921-2014)

22 May 1921: Born in Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath.
Early education at Rahugh National School and CBS Tullamore.
Worked in the family business
7 November 1949: Entered the Society at Emo
8 November 1951: First Vows in Zambia
1951 - 1959: Chivunia Mission, Zambia – Teacher in technical and building skills
1959 - 1960: Manresa, Roehampton - Tertianship
1960 - 1974: Bishop's House, Monze - Builder
2 February 1960: Final Vows at Chikuni
1974 - 1981: Belvedere College - Minister
1981 - 1983: CIR - Secretary to the College
1983 - 1985: St. Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street - Minister; Supervisor of staff
1985 - 1987: Tullabeg - Minister
1987 - 1988: Tullabeg - Sabbatical; studying Theology at Milltown Institute
1988 - 1995: Milltown Park - Treasurer
1995 - 1999: St. Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street - Assisted in the church
1999 - 2007: Milltown Park - Assisted in the Community
2007 - 2014: Cherryfield Lodge – Prayed for the Church and the Society

Brother Jim Dunne was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge on 13th July 2007. He was a happy resident and enjoyed fairly good health over the years. His condition deteriorated over time and he died peacefully in Cherryfield Lodge. May he rest in the Peace of Christ.

On Friday, 7th November 2014, Brother Jim Dunne, a member of the Milltown Park community, died at Cherryfield Lodge, at the age of 93 years and several months - a monumental age for a man of many monuments. Always a man of few words, Jim became more quiet-spoken as the years advanced. But underneath this quiet exterior lay a deeply spiritual man whose longings and desires were always for the Lord and how he could use his talents to make the love and service of Christ our Lord a reality in his own life, as well as in the lives of his fellow-Jesuits and the many individuals whom he encountered during his many years with us.

From the very beginning of his religious life, Jim was a rock-solid man of God. Very early witness to this was the trust that the Irish Provincial, Fr. Tommy Byrne, placed in him by sending him in his second year as a novice to Northern Rhodesia, to what was then a newly developing world for Irish Jesuits. Jim was just over 30 at the time, mature in years but still grappling with the beginnings of the religious life. However, there was no need for any fear about the depth of his commitment. His solid spirituality stood by him through the long sea and rail journey from London (via Cape Town) to Chisekesi and on to Chikuni, where he arrived early in September 1951, and during the months of learning Chitonga in the somewhat spartan conditions that then prevailed. And it never deserted him after he took vows in Chikuni on the feast of St. Stanislaus Kostka later that year. This gave Jim the remarkable distinction of being the only Irish Jesuit ever to take his First Vows in what today is Zambia. He reaffirmed his Jesuit commitment on 2nd February 1960 when he took his Final Vows, again at Chikuni.

Endowed with great practical intelligence, Jim brought into the Society a wide range of skills developed and exercised in the family's workshop not far from Tullamore. Construction, artistic brick-laying, carpentry, joinery, plumbing, electrical work – he took all of these in his stride, almost as if they were second nature to him, and yet he was always prepared to learn more from those who were more qualified than he was. Jim was also a gifted manager, with a flair for organising and getting the right people, with the right tools and equipment, into the right place at the right time. His ability to give directions simply and effectively, and his own manifest skills, helped greatly in building up confident teams of proficient and well-motivated building workers. Working with and through these, Jim became key to building-development in what was to become the Diocese of Monze. But in addition to the buildings that bear his stamp even today, Jim also left a great monument in the skills that he passed on to the local people with whom he worked. He was very particular that anything he turned his hand to should be of the highest quality and he always tried to make sure that his trainees and workers would also be concerned not just with getting a job done but with getting it done to the highest possible standards.

One of Jim's earliest assignments was to develop and run with Father Joe McCarthy the Civuna Trades Training Institute (TTI). In time, the TTI gave way to a secondary school for girls, but not before, under Jim, it had qualified several hundred first-rate carpenters and brick-layers who fanned out to bring building development across much of the southern part of Zambia. Later, when the Diocese of Monze was established, Jim became in effect its building manager, working closely with Fr. Fred Moriarty and others in the development of Kizito Catechetical Centre, churches, parish houses, schools, and houses for teachers and catechists.

In the strangely coincidental ways in which God's providence works, another Jesuit Brother from the Irish Province came to Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1952, one year after Jim's arrival in Chikuni. This was Pat McElduff who in his younger years had done some of his apprenticeship as a tradesman in Rahugh on the borders of Westmeath and Offaly where, in the years before he joined the Jesuits, Jim himself had been trained. The two knew each other from these early years and now they found themselves working together again, this time on a larger canvas. And almost after the manner of the Apostles Peter and Paul, building responsibilities were assigned to them in different ways: Jim became responsible for all projects that belonged to Monze Diocese, while Pat took on those that belonged to the Jesuits (or Chikuni Mission). As a result of this arrangement, for the last period of his life in Zambia, from 1960 to the time of his return to Ireland in 1974, Jim lived in what was to become the Bishop's house in Monze. While he was happy there and got on very well with Bishop Corboy and the rest of the community, at times he felt almost out of his depth and yearned for more interaction with the fellow-Jesuits he had lived with in earlier days. In the way of many quiet people, things sometimes got through to Jim, making him feel that bit down in himself. However, as a solid religious man, he would not let this interfere with his commitment as a hard working Jesuit but would eventually regain his equilibrium through his prayer, work, community involvement and, sometimes, rest and better physical health.

Jim was a very agreeable companion, one who was easy and enjoyable to live with. He was quiet in his manner but this did not stop him enjoying a game of cards, a good movie or the comradeship of a walk in the evening with one of the community. He was greatly loved by the Batonga people among whom he worked and is particularly remembered for the concern he showed that their marriages be happy and stable and that their children attend school. He showed special kindness and understanding towards Jesuit scholastics newly arrived in the country and was particularly attentive to their health needs; many a young Jesuit received gentle but firm admonitions from him about taking their anti-malaria medicines or wearing a hat until acclimatised to the sun.

Ironically, it was malaria that brought Jim's years in Zambia to a close. He contracted fever in days long before Artemesin or other drugs could provide powerful protection. Though frequently quite unwell, he continued with his work as best he could, but in time developed a recurrent form of malaria that was intractable to treatment. In the circumstances, the Holy Rosary Doctor-Sisters (Lucy O'Brien, Maureen O'Keeffe, Eileen Kane) advised that he return permanently to Ireland, because remaining in Zambia would always mean serious health problems for him.

So it was that after 23 years in Zambia, from 1951 to 1974, Jim returned to Ireland and was re-incorporated into the Irish Province. Until his mid-80s he was busy, a wonderful man to have on your side, practical and resourceful, moving where he was needed, always concerned about those around him; ever seeking perfection in anything undertaken by him or any of those for whom he was responsible; and always, simply always, a solid man of God, devoted and faithful to his religious duties, serving the God he loved through what he could still do, building up others through his sympathetic and understanding nature. Jim, sparing of speech, gentle and perceptive, contributed massively to the smooth running of the five Irish houses in which he served. These were not always the havens of peace one would like to imagine. Belvedere, where he was Minister for seven years, was a settled (I nearly wrote entrenched) community, hard-working but not easy to administer. If Jim was quiet, he was also alert, and concerned about everyone around him. From his sick bed in Cherryfield he would admire and appraise the craft of workmen in the building opposite. His regular greeting of How are you? was no formality. He wanted to know. No wonder he is missed. May God be good to this deeply spiritual Jesuit.

Michael J Kelly

Born: 07 August 1934, Ringsend, Dublin
Entered: 10 August 1966, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Professed: 15 August 1985, Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia
Died: 12 March 2015, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1974 at Canisius Chikuni, Zambia (ZAM) working
by 1979 at Babati, Tanzania (AOR) working for “Concern”
by 1995 at JRS Malawi (MOZ) working

Early Education at National School; Ringsend Vocational School

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/br-martin-murphy-sj-may-he-rest-in-peace/

Br Martin Murphy SJ: may he rest in peace
Death has finally got the better of Martin Murphy, but after a mighty struggle. Born in Ringsend, he learned his building skills and qualifications (a Diploma from the Catholic Workers College) before he entered the Jesuits at the age of 32. Over the next 50-odd years he practised or taught motor mechanics, building maintenance, construction, irrigation and pastoral care of refugees. Nearly thirty of those years were given to Africa, especially Zambia and Malawi.

Martin was strong as an ox, but he suffered enough sicknesses to fill a text book. His multiple health problems, touching all his senses and most parts of his sturdy body, involved treatment in four hospitals. He made full use of medical help, and carried his oxygen supply with care as he walked the pavements round Gardiner Street. He would not let medical problems absorb his energy.
At the age of 73 he embarked on a 5-year course in theology with the Tallaght Dominicans. He worked his way right up to the last assignment, on “The Just Society”, at which he balked. Why? they asked. “Because I never lived in a just society, and do not know what it is like.” Dear Martin was a strong and distinctive presence in the Irish Jesuits, a model for anyone who with God’s help has to fight sickness. “Death, be not proud.”

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 160 : Summer 2015

Obituary

Br Martin Murphy (1934-2015)

7 August 1934: Born in Dublin.
Early Education at National School; Ringsend Vocational School
1961 - 1965: NCIR. Socio-Economics Study (Diploma)
10 August 1966: Entered Society at St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
15 August 1968: First Vows at St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
1968 - 1969: St Mary's, Emo - Mechanic; Maintenance
1969-1975: Chisekesi, Zambia - Construction; Irrigation; Teaching at Canisius College, Chikuni
1975 - 1978: Milltown Park - Maintenance
1978 - 1983: Tanzania, East Africa - Working for “Concern” at Babati, Tanzania
1983 - 1984: Tullabeg - Tertianship
1984 - 1986: Lusaka, Zambia - Minister at Luwisha House
15 August 1985: Final Vows at Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia
1986 - 1992: Mazabuka, Zambia - Concern Development Project
1987: Youth Development Project at St Paul's, Nakambala
1992 - 1993: Santry - Pastoral Care of Refugees
1993 - 1994: Limbe, Malawi - Working for JRS
1994 - 1995: Mozambique - Working for JRS
1995 - 1996: Clongowes - House and College Maintenance
1996 - 2015: Gardiner St - Assists Director of Arrupe Society
2009 - 2014: Hospital visitation; Studying at Priory Institute, Tallaght
2014 - 2015: Residing at Cherryfield Lodge

In October 2014, Martin was admitted to hospital after a fall. He had many health problems, which meant treatment in four hospitals. He moved to Cherryfield Lodge on 25th February 2015. He was happy to be in Cherryfield again, where he died peacefully on 12th March. May he rest in the peace of Christ.

After a mighty struggle, death finally got the better of Martin Murphy on March 12, 2015. His sisters had prayed to St Francis Xavier that the Lord would spare him further suffering, and in response he died on the final day of the Novena. His funeral was delayed because an autopsy was required, and so he was finally laid to rest on March 19, the Feast of St Joseph. Martin had had a strong devotion to Joseph the Worker, so things fitted in nicely at the end of his life.

Like Joseph, Martin was a great worker: before he joined the Jesuits, he worked for Cramptons, the builders. His grandfather had been in the same trade, and had helped to build the Titanic! This came to light only when Martin showed up in Youghal in 2012 for the launch of Eddie O'Donnell's book on Fr Browne and the Titanic! Sadly, Martin's building work, so helpful to many people, carried the seeds of his own death, because as we now know, he died of asbestos poisoning.

His early education was in the National and Vocational Schools in Ringsend, where he was born. He then began his building career, From 1961-65 he did a Diploma in Socio-Economics at the Jesuit-run NCIR. It appears that he was so impressed by the Jesuit teachers there that he decided to join them in 1966, at age 32. He waited till his mother died to do this, as he was one of her carers.

Martin was a perfectionist, took pride in his work, and always did a great job. He could turn his hand to anything, including leatherwork. He was also a great teacher of his crafts and skills. I had the good fortune to discover him early on, and we became lifelong friends, even if not without some awkward moments! In 1967 I wanted to build a back wall to the handball alley in Milltown and got his help, though he was a novice at the time. It was very definitely his wall, not mine, but he never emphasised the fact. We worked in the early mornings before my classes began, and he would then continue through the day, while I dug academic furrows. One dull morning Martin looked up with an innocent smile at the Milltown buildings and asked, 'Why is it that the scholastics mostly pray in the dark'? Later Martin built the bindery which still stands at the back of the Library. And when a Le Brocquy mosaic of the Madonna and Child came our way mysteriously in the late seventies, he put it up single handed, though it weighed three quarters of a ton. It is now in the Milltown Community foyer. He was, as one of the Brothers said admiringly, “a mighty man”.

He liked philosophy, and especially the ideas of Bernard Lonergan. He could get so animated about these that when driving in Zambia he would slow down to get his point across, which lengthened journeys considerably. At the age of 73 he embarked on a 5-year course in theology in the Priory Institute in Tallaght. He worked his way right up to the last assignment, on “The Just Society”, at which he balked. Why? they asked. “Because I never lived in a just society, and I don't know what it's like”. He enjoyed the phrase “the hermeneutic of suspicion” because it gave him the leeway he needed to be devastatingly honest.

Africa
He went to Zambia in 1969, and worked there and in Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique, with occasional breaks, for 25 years. He built churches and schools, dug wells and cultivated a huge garden. He practised or taught motor mechanics, building maintenance, construction, irrigation. He also engaged in pastoral care of refugees. He was well loved by those who worked with him. He delighted in planning and carrying projects through. He loved the moment when he could hand over a set of keys of a new building and say: 'The job is done’. But he had time for soccer also. I have it on reliable authority that when he was playing in Dublin for Transport FC, he was considered to be of international standard. And the Zambians used watch him admiringly: Kalango mulilo! they'd shout - “Look at his fire!”

The Acting Provincial of Zambia, Jim McGloin, said in his message of condolence: “The hidden nature of the work is often the case for the Jesuit Brother. Although Brother Martin did the actual building of the Church in Chikuni Mission in the 1970's, it was the parish priest who received the credit. The serving tables in Luwisha House are still used today, thirty years later, but no one remembers that it was Brother Martin who built them.... While the workmanship was appreciated, the worker often went unnoticed. Yet the professional workmanship of Br Martin itself stands as its own monument. And those who saw his effort and dedication were grateful.'

Martin had used his many talents 'to help others' in simple ways, as Ignatius would have wished. But by 1995, the outer job was done: he had to retire because for the remaining twenty years of his life, ill health dogged him -- glaucoma, diabetes, arthritis, lung problems. But even when exiled from Zambia he always kept in contact and retained a deep love for his 'first mission'.

The inner side
Martin had his own unique relationship with God - his secret scripture. He prayed. He loved his time in the Holy Land. He lived simply. But like the rest of us, he had his own fixed attitudes, his weaker points, his awkwardness. A mature man by the time he joined the Jesuits, he had, not surprisingly, something of a Trade Union perspective on things. This included a keen sense of what he perceived as injustice, foot dragging, and so on. The Jesuit way of proceeding, he felt, was not always the most efficient. With his critical mind, he found it hard to be asked to do things by people who, he felt, didn't know what they were talking about. He had little time for eloquence that was not matched by action. “They can talk the talk” he'd say “but can they walk the walk?”

Martin would tell it like he thought it was, and his craggy style disconcerted more than a few, and left people feeling uncomfortable. He was, one might say, of the warrior class. Critical of many in authority, at the same time he was a great defender of the small and the poor. He volunteered for Tanzania because it was one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. He was both admirer and critic of Julius Nyerere, founder of the state of Tanzania. But his mischievous humour carried him a long way. He would say outrageous things just to get a reaction: often he didn't want to be taken too seriously. And he could get caught out himself on occasion, as when he had an appointment with a consultant about his glaucoma: the great man was late and eventually came into the waiting room to apologise, only to find Martin reading the Irish Times. And he would smile and laugh at himself. A stern commentator on the foibles of humankind, he also had a great and welcoming smile.

Stay Clear! God at Work
God was steadily at work in him, as in us all. That work is to make us grow in love', to bring out the best in us. In the final phase of his life, a deep mellowing took place while he endured enormous discomfort, especially in his breathing. He carried his oxygen supply as he walked the pavements round Gardiner Street. He did not complain. His time and energy were taken up with coping with his own illnesses. He made the rounds of many hospitals and consultants, and his reports of medical encounters were never dull. To one man who wasn't measuring up, Martin said: “Take a good look at my face!” “Why?” said the consultant. “Because”, said Martin, “you won't see it again!” His humour never deserted him, and he would get great joy out of recounting such incidents. He told me how grateful he was to his family for all their care and love; and to the Cherryfield staff for looking after him so well. In turn, they enjoyed his company; he had a word - often funny - to say about everything. They loved him. And he became a grateful man.

So when the moment of death came, and Martin met the Lord face to face, the “inner job” was substantially done. Like Peter in the Gospel, he jumped out of the safety of his life's boat and struggled to the shore where Jesus was waiting, watching. Surely like Peter, Martin heard Jesus say, “Bring the fish you've caught, and come, let's have breakfast!”

Then, we may surmise, came the one-to-one chat with Jesus, who now could safely ask him: Martin, do you love me more than these others do? There would have been no digging-up of the failures of the past. No comparisons and contrasts with others. The present state of his heart was all that mattered. He would have answered like Peter: Lord, “You know everything, you know I love you”. That would be enough. Because in the evening of life we will be examined in love.

It so happened that when the news came to me that Martin had died, I was reading a book titled Love is Stronger than Death, by Cynthia Bourgeault. It tells of a Trappist monk in Colorado who had a turbulent personality and was awkward in his relationships. Community life fell short for him, and so he moved out and became a hermit. He wrestled much of his life with God and others. But at the end he became liberated and happy. I felt this man's life and Martin's had parallels! In our final conversation a week before he died, he had told me he had been struggling, not with the problem that others were not measuring up, but that he wasn't measuring up. He found it consoling to hear Pope Francis' remark from The Joy of the Gospel, “When everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved”. Perhaps, then, he felt, all would be well at the end, because God's love is stronger than our failings or our death.

And so, off he went, happily, into eternal glory. He is now fully alive, radiant with his best self, supporting us on our pilgrim way, looking forward to the great reunion when all will be made well.

Brian Grogan

Born: 31 October 1931, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1949, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1963, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 15 November 2015, John Chula House, Lusaka, Zambia - Zambia-Malawi Province (ZAM)

Transcribed : HIB to ZAM HIB to ZAM

by 1958 at Chivuna, Monze, N Rhodesia - studying language Regency

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 162 : Winter 2015

Obituary

Fr Anthony (Tony) Geoghegan (1931-2015)

Fr. Anthony (Tony) Geoghegan was born and raised in Dublin. There he was educated by the Christian Brothers. In 1949 he entered the Jesuits at Emo Park. He followed the usual course of studies: a degree at UCD (in Irish and English), philosophy in Tullabeg and later theology at Milltown Park. He was ordained in Dublin on 31 July 1963.

Tony spent all his apostolic life in Zambia and Malawi. Coming originally as a scholastic for regency in 1957, he spent time learning Chitonga and then teaching at Canisius Secondary School. When he returned as a priest in 1966, he began a ministry in the classroom that lasted twenty years. He was a teacher and chaplain in a secondary school, a headmaster at a minor seminary, a lecturer in education in a primary teachers' college and later a secondary teachers' college.

In 1987 the bishop in charge of seminarian formation asked that he be appointed spiritual director of the major seminary in Lusaka. While teaching spirituality at the same time, he served in that position for the next five years. In 1992 he went to Malawi to serve the philosophy section of the major seminary in the same position. Tony spent the next 13 years as spiritual director and lecturer in the seminary.

In 2005, his movement began to deteriorate because of osteoporosis. Over the next six years he did pastoral work as well as he could in a number of parishes in Malawi and Zambia. Finally in 2011 the Provincial asked him to move to the Province Infirmary where he began a ministry of prayer.

Apart from his dedicated apostolic work, Tony was a pleasant companion in community. He was a great story teller with an abundance of tales to tell. A welcoming presence, with a warm smile, visitors always felt at home with him. He also could be a support especially to young Jesuits in times of difficulty.

After a few weeks in the hospital, he died on 15 November 2015 following complications from a surgery. May God welcome his faithful servant and missionary into the fullness of life and joy.

Jim McGloin

Born: 04 September 1923, Carndonagh, County Donegal
Entered: 07 September 1942, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1956, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows; 05 November 1977
Died: 26 December 2015, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Part of the Coláiste Iognáid, Galway community at the time of death.
Buried at Carndonagh, County Donegal

Transcribed HIB to HK: 03 December 1966

by 1952 at Hong Kong - Regency

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Death Notice

Father Anthony Farren SJ, who returned to his homeland of Ireland in 2001 where he lived in retirement in Galway after almost 50 years’ service in Hong Kong, died at 12:30am on 26 December 2015 last year.

His funeral was held at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Carndonagh on 29 December.

A memorial Mass will be offered for his intentions at 7:30pm on January 13 at the chapel of Wah Yan College in Kowloon, where he was principal from 1960 to 1966, in addition to remaining on the staff until 1978, before returning as supervisor from 1985 to 1997.

Born on 4 September 1923, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1942, coming to Hong Kong in 1950. He was ordained a priest on 31 July 1956.

Au Lok-man wrote in a letter published by the Apple Daily that although there was no apparent relationship between Father Farren’s native Ireland and Hong Kong, he crossed the seas to serve its people for almost 50 years, many of whom will mark the moment he passed from this world with deep gratitude for his life.

May he rest in peace.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 10 January 2016

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He first came to Hong Kong in 1950 for Cantonese language studies and then he taught at Wah Yan College Hong Kong for a year.

He returned as a Priest in 1958 to Wah Yan Kowloon and in 1960 he was appointed Rector. As a young dynamic man in his 40s, he was highly respected by other local Catholic Schools such as St Francis Xavier College (Marist Brothers), La Salle College (Christian Brothers), Maryknoll Convent, and St Rose of Lima (Franciscan Missionaries of Mary). As Rector, he lived Jesuit life prudently and peacefully. As a Principal he was looked up to as a model teacher and he was liked. He spent much time with the teachers and he encouraged everyone.

During his time Wah Yan Kowloon was at its peak. The large Chapel of St Ignatius with 600 seats was opened just before he came. He took a keen interest in the Masses there, principally for the students and their parents, past students and friends. After six years there was a rule that Jesuit Rectors would change and so he moved to Yah Yan College Hong Kong as an English teacher. He again returned to Wah Yan Kowloon in the 1980’s as Rector and in 1991 Supervisor. Thomas Leung succeeded his as Rector in 1997, and Tony went back to Wah Yan Hong Kong, and he remained there until he retired to Ireland in 1999.

He is still remembered with love and respect by many. He was known to be a man of patience and discretion, peaceful and simple.

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’Neilland Tony Farren. He spent two years at the Battery Path Language School learning Cantonese.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 163 : Spring 2016

Obituary

Fr Anthony (Tony) Farren (1923-2015)

It is a long way from Carndonagh to Hong Kong where Tony gave forty six years of his life as teacher and friend to numerous pupils and past pupils. That journey began with a shorter journey, though an arduous one for a twelve-year-old, when he took the bus and train to Mungret College.

The most striking thing about Tony's room in Galway, where he lived for eleven years on his return from Hong Kong, was the scattering of letters with Chinese stamps and photos of Wah Yan past pupils and their families. It was obvious was that his past pupils held their former English and history teacher, football, tennis and debating coach and priest, in great esteem.

Esteem wasn't lacking among his fellow Jesuits. Twice he was appointed rector of the Jesuit community - a duty, according to one of his contemporaries, that weighed heavily on him, especially when his first appointment came only two years after Tertianship, and he was at the same time made headmaster of Wah Yan College where he worked. Equally unusual was his appointment some years later to a second term in the same community. It testifies to the level of trust shown by both those who made the appointments, and by his fellow-Jesuits who welcomed him as their superior. Tony was the opposite of ambitious. He saw himself as an ordinary guy serving his brethren; but in the consistency and quality of that service over many years, he was truly extraordinary. He was a rock of sense with a sharp eye for people's needs. That caring kindness was evident even in the last days of his life.

A sign of our growth in faith is gratitude. Tony was immensely grateful to his family, for their care for him in later years when staying in the family home, and for their many visits. However he hated people to fuss over him and he didn't want parents away from their families coming up to Christmas. They didn't always listen to what he said. On my last visit just before his death, he told me that he had sent out an edict to his family: no visits! And what was the result? Three nieces arrived, followed by two nephews! So I jokingly said to him: weren't they were very disobedient? Yes, but the right sort of disobedience, he answered with a smile.

The marks of family stay with us to the grave. Family affects our faith: With all its imperfections and changes, it gives us a first experience of love, and therefore of the Lord of love. It is hard for anyone to believe in the unmerited love of God who has not enjoyed the unmerited love of a parent. In Tony those marks were evident: in his stability and strength, his gentleness and kindness. It showed in his football, the ideal centre half, masterly but unselfish, feeding his forwards. It showed in his work, a natural leader, inspiring huge loyalty. Tony's pastoral care of students in Hong Kong left a lasting mark, as his plentiful post and visits testify to. His students would happily come from Hong Kong to Cherryfield to touch base with him again - distance no object. After Tony came back to Ireland, his old friend Dr Simon Au, came here every year to visit.

I only knew Tony when he was in his 80s, in Galway. Even then, he wanted to be fully informed of all that was going on in the church and school, Wanted also to fulfil his priestly duties in whatever way he could. Galway parishioners spoke of his kindness to them. When he was no longer able to say a public Mass, he still continued to hear confessions every Saturday afternoon. When I visited him three days before his death, his voice was weak, but his mind clear. We parted by giving one another a blessing. What was striking was his enormous gratitude to the nursing staff. He was emphatic that he couldn't be receiving better care anywhere else. The nurses and carers for their part loved and cherished him.

Being a teacher was in his DNA. His nephews and nieces recalled how on his infrequent but lengthy stays in Carndonagh, he taught them swimming, tennis, played football with them and took a keen interest in their studies, he was their fond priest uncle.

While a pleasant presence in community, ever attentive to visitors, Tony maintained a certain reserve. There was an anxious side to him, and maybe it was this that made him slow to share more of himself? No more than the rest of us, he could be impatient with the foibles of some of his brothers,

He was ready for death, was anointed and shriven, peaceful. As we give back his soul to God and his body to Carndonagh, we Irish Jesuits would like to thank the Farrens for giving us such a man. The great mystery of God's providence is how God uses us fragile creatures to accomplish great achievements. May the Lord now complete what He began in Tony many years ago and reward him for his goodness: all those goodbyes to family and friends to remake that journey to Hong Kong, not to mention the letting go of all those Hong Kong friendships when he felt the time had come to return to Ireland at seventy-eight because he thought he could be of more use back in Ireland. May he rest in peace.

Charlie Davy, with help from James Hurley

Born: 06 July 1933, Pery Square, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 14 September 1951, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 29 July 1965, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 31 January 2016, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Educated at Crescent College SJ

by 1976 in London, England (ANG) working
by 1991 at Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland (BRI) working
by 1994 at Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland (BRI) working
by 2001 at Liverpool, England (BRI) working

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/jim-hayes-sj/

Jim Hayes SJ
AMDG Express has saluted two of the Irish Jesuits working in Britain: Kieran Barry-Ryan and (posthumously) Jack Donovan. Jack’s near-contemporary, Jim Hayes, is living in
Liverpool, but for many years he has hardly featured on the horizons of Province activities despite a remarkably active priestly life. Paul Andrews’ report on a recent conversation with Jim.
When I rang Jim Hayes to hear his story, one picture stayed vividly with me. Jim asked had I seen “Tunes of Glory”, and in particular the scene in an officers’ mess, where you see officers at each end of the dining room table, eating in a shared solitude, with nobody saying hello. Jim’s first breakfast in Belvedere, in the early 70s, was like that. He had moved across the city from Milltown, appointed as Minister to a large community which he had never known before. He sat at one end of the table, some of the brethren gathered at the other end, and nobody greeted the newcomer or said hello. Things eased with time. Rupert Coyle, Michael Reidy, Jim Dunne and others became and remained good friends. But the Belvedere of 1970 tolerated unfriendliness, even inhumanity, in a way that reduced everyone’s energy.
Jim is remembered in both Milltown and Belvedere not just for efficiency as a Minister, but for an almost maternal eye for the needs of the brethren, and readiness to take pains and spend money to meet those needs. He is remembered with affection, and it is important for him to realise that.
Despite his frosty start in Belvedere, he worked hard at his job and grew to like it there; so he was sad, and felt it as something of a reproach, when the Provincial moved him after three years. He is happy to recall that years later the same Provincial wrote to him with an apology for making that move, and an acknowledgement that he had followed the wrong advice and done Jim an injustice.
After a short spell in his native Limerick, (at that time there were more priests in its main street than in the whole of Zambia), he was invited by Fr Oliver McTiernan to ease the shortage of priests in London. With the support of both Irish and British Provincials he moved to Islington for fifteen happy years. Both Oliver and Bruce Kent, his companions in Islington, later left priestly ministry, but Jim stayed with his parish, schools and hospital.
In the mid-1980s he felt moved to offer himself for the diocese of Aberdeen, where the shortage of priests was so chronic that it survived only through an infusion of Jesuit volunteers. Jim was parish priest in a Highlands parish west of Inverness, then in a city parish, and then for seven years in the Shetland Islands. When he went there, he found only four native Catholics, but with the development of the oil fields their number was swollen by a surge of workers, from Scotland, England, Ireland, Poland and elsewhere.
Despite the loneliness and the long winter nights, Jim enjoyed Shetland very much, moving round his parish by car and boat. But ten years ago he found that his half-moon glasses no longer served him adequately. A specialist told him that he was suffering from loss of central vision due to diabetes (of which he was unaware). His sight gave way suddenly. He could not distinguish parishioners, and he knew he had to leave the parish and the island.
He was happy to accept an invitation from the British Provincial to serve as full-time chaplain in the Catholic Institute for the Blind in Liverpool. He had to give up the chaplain’s post when he found he could no longer see faces clearly enough to recognise them. Now he is a resident, in a state of high dependency, blind and afflicted by Parkinson’s, but still able to celebrate Mass. When I asked him about the good and bad years in his memory, he said that most of his years had been good, but the last year has been an annus horribilis. Is there anything we can do to bring this good Jesuit closer?

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/20674/

Fr Jim Hayes RIP: committed to kindness and service of the Gospel
There were two sides to Jim Hayes, the Limerick-born Jesuit who has died at the age of 82. At first blush a stranger might find him serious, almost stern, in face and manner; but where he was looking after others – as he was for most of his ministry – he was kindness itself. He is remembered in both Milltown and Belvedere not just for efficiency as a Minister, but for an almost motherly eye for the needs of the brethren, and readiness to take pains and spend money to meet those needs. Any Jesuit in the job of Minister lives in a tension between the needs of the brethren and the moneywise watchfulness of superior and bursar. In that tension Jim put the brethren’s needs first. So he is remembered with great regard and affection. He sometimes felt the pressure of the bursar’s books, for instance when he was unexpectedly moved from Belvedere. Years later the Provincial who moved him wrote to him with an apology for making that move, acknowledging that it was a poorly-founded decision.
After a short spell in Limerick, (at that time there were more priests in its main street than in the whole of Zambia), he was invited by Fr Oliver McTiernan to ease the shortage of priests in London. With the support of both Irish and British Provincials he spent fifteen happy years in Islington. Both Oliver and Bruce Kent, his companions in Islington, later left priestly ministry, but Jim persevered faithfully.
In the mid-1980s he felt moved to volunteer for the diocese of Aberdeen, where the shortage of priests was so chronic that it survived only through an infusion of Jesuit volunteers. Jim was parish priest in a Highlands parish west of Inverness, then in a city parish, and then for seven years in the Shetland Islands. When he went there, he found only four native Catholics, but with the development of the oil fields their number was swollen by a surge of workers, from Scotland, England, Ireland, Poland and elsewhere.
Despite the loneliness and the long winter nights, Jim enjoyed Shetland, moving round his parish by car and boat. But ten years ago he found that his half-moon glasses no longer served him adequately. A specialist found that he was suffering from loss of central vision due to diabetes (of which Jim was unaware). His sight gave way suddenly. When he could not identify parishioners, he knew he had to leave the parish. The British Provincial asked him to serve as full-time chaplain in the Catholic Institute for the Blind in Liverpool. He worked there for fourteen years until, blind and afflicted by Parkinson’s, he returned to Ireland and settled well into Cherryfield Lodge. His condition deteriorated quickly in the past two weeks, and he died peacefully on 21 January, surrounded by his family and Jesuit companions.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 162 : Winter 2015

Obituary

Fr James (Jim) Hayes (1933-2016)

6 July 1933: Born in Dublin. Raised in Limerick City.
Early education at Crescent College SJ, Limerick.
14 September 1951: Entered Society at St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
15 September 1953: First Vows at St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
1953 - 1956: Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1956 - 1959: Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1959 - 1962: Clongowes - Regency : Teacher; Prefect; Studying CWC Cert in Education
1962 - 1966: Milltown Park - Studying Theology
29 July 1965: Ordained at Gonzaga Chapel, Milltown Park, Dublin
1966 - 1967: Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1967 - 1970: Milltown Park - Minister
2 Feb 1968: Final Vows at Gonzaga Chapel, Milltown Park, Dublin
1970 - 1974: Belvedere - Minister
1974 - 1975: Crescent - Minister in Church
1975 - 1990: London, UK - Curate at Church of St John the Evangelist, Islington
1990 - 1993: Aberdeen, Scotland, UK - Parish priest at Sacred Heart Church, Tory
1993 - 1999: Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland, UK - Parish Priest at St Margaret's
1999 - 2013: Liverpool, UK - Chaplain at Christopher Grange Centre for the Adult Blind
2013 - 2016: Loyola - Prays for the Church and the Society at Cherryfield Lodge

Having worked mostly in parishes in Britain, Jim returned home to Cherryfield Lodge from Liverpool on February 2nd 2013. He settled very well into Cherryfield, and while his overall wellbeing was fragile, he enjoyed life again in an Irish community. His condition deteriorated quickly in the past two weeks, and he died peacefully surrounded by his family, his sister Thérèse, brother in law John, nieces and nephew, and members of the Jesuit community, May he rest in the Peace of Christ.

James Francis Gerard Hayes, was born on 6th July 1933, in Limerick City. He was the eldest in the family, and he had a brother and two sisters.

In 1951 Jim joined the Jesuits in Emo, and three others who joined the same day, Sean Coghlan, Dermot Cassidy and Harry Naylor are still living. After doing an Arts degree in UCD and studying philosophy in Tullabeg. He then worked for three years in Clongowes. Here he taught French, History and Geography, and he was he also was the choir master. For the study of Theology Jim went to Milltown Park, where he was ordained on 29th July 1965.

After Tertianship Jim's first appointment was as Minister in Milltown Park in 1967. This was a community of 45 priests, 9 brothers and 54 scholastics, and the Minister also had responsibility for the catering and maintenance of Tabor Retreat House. At this time the furnishings and décor were institutional. Jim had a different vision of caring after people, and of surprising them and giving them more than they expected. The celebrations and fellowship that Jim enabled brought the Jesuit community together, and when Jim died, there were many stories of his kindnesses and care of the Milltown Park Community.

After two years, in 1970 Jim was sent to the Belvedere College community, to bring about the same changes in the community there. Apparently he was not welcomed with open arms, and he remembered his first morning there at breakfast, where the atmosphere was decidedly chilly. However his care for people warmed the atmosphere at Belvedere too, and Jim formed great friendships there. Four years later when he left Belvedere, Jim was especially missed by the catering and maintenance staff at Belvedere House, because he was a wonderful person to work for.

After Belvedere, Jim was then sent to be Minister in the Sacred Heart Church in his native Limerick. However Jim longed for direct pastoral work, and was attracted by the need in London, which were described to him by his friends, Fr Ken Mc Cabe and Fr. Oliver McTiernan,

So for fifteen years Jim went to minister at the church of St. John the Evangelist, in Islington, from 1975 till 1990. When Jim died the present parish priest of St John's, Mgr. Seamus O'Boyle, wrote to assure Jim's family and Jesuit colleagues of his prayers and those of the parish. Seamus reflected that parish register in St Johns tells its own story, of hundreds of baptisms and weddings and Anointings of the sick, conducted by the youthful Fr. Hayes. When Jim arrive at Islington Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, and when he was leaving, John Major was taking over from Margaret Thatcher. These were turbulent years in Britain, with the IRA bombings in Hyde Park and Regents' Park and Brighton. These were also years of deep divisions in society, of the miners' strike, and of massive protests for nuclear dişarmament, led by the secretary of CND, Mgr. Bruce Kent who lived in the same rectory as Jim. These were also turbulent years in the church too, and both Bruce Kent and Oliver McTiernan eventually left the priesthood. During all these upheavals and during all of this unrest, Jim Hayes faithfully preached the Gospel of love and forgiveness and the mercy of God, at the parish of St. John in Islington.

In 1990 Jim moved again, to where the need was great, to Scotland. He worked in Aberdeen for three years, at the Sacred Heart Church in Torry and then in 1993 at St Margaret's Church at Lerwick on the Shetland islands. Lerwick is further north than Oslo and Stockholm, with long summer evenings, and dark cold winters. Despite these extremes Jim loved it there. Here his congregation was made up of a small number of native Shetland people and a large number of immigrants who worked in fisheries and on oil rigs. On hearing of Jim's death, Anil Gonzalves of St Margaret's church wrote to say: “I am sorry to hear about Fr Jim Hayes. I will inform the parish and a Mass will be offered for his intentions”.

Jim's sister Theresa and her family, the Hurleys, were regular visitors to Jim in Lerwick. Jim's sister Mary visited him there too, and Jim had happy memories of Mary clearing the snow with a brush from the roof of the presbytery. When Mary sadly died about 15 years ago, Jim recalled these carefree times. Mary's death was a heavy cross for Jim to bear.

After nine years in Scotland, in 1999 Jim was surprised to learn the reason for the rapid deterioration of his eyesight. It was caused by diabetes, and the damage to his eyes was permanent. Even in in his blindness, Jim was willing to go where there was an apostolic need, and so he went at Chaplain to Christopher Grange Centre for the Adult Blind, in Liverpool. For three years he celebrated the sacraments for this special community, and learned to master technology so that he could 'read' the texts to celebrate Mass, and to administer the sacraments. During his period Fr. Matthew Power SJ from the nearby Jesuit community kept in touch with him, and his long-term medical needs were monitored by his sister Theresa, and by Mary Rickard, the Irish Provincial's health delegate. Theresa and Mary formed a mighty alliance, and they liaised with Bernadette Lavin, who looks after the health of the British Jesuits.

After complex negotiations, diplomatically handled, Jim came to live in Cherryfield in 2013. The transfer was planned with military precision, with a vanguard, a main guard, and a rear-guard action. The time in Cherryfield was a time of great blessings in Jim's life, because he could be close to the Hurley family, and when Jim was able to perform the baptism of baby Sam Fogarty, his grandnephew, last June, in the Cherryfield chapel, it was a special time of blessings for everybody.

The time in Cherryfield gave the Terry and her Hurley family a chance to be close to Jim, and he loved their visits and support. They shared their pride in Munster Rugby and their careers, and Jim was proud of them.

About six years ago, while in Liverpool, Jim prepared the liturgy for his funeral Mass. The readings and the hymns, and special recorded music reflected the interests of a person coping with serious illness and with his blindness. The pealing of church bells, which was a feature of a Sunday morning BBC programme he loved, and the signature tune for the BBC Shipping forecast called “Sailing By”, were played at his request. The Gospel included Jesus reassurance “It is I, do not be afraid”. In Jim's final years he suffered from Parkinson's disease, and despite the kindness of the Cherryfield staff and the support of his family and Jesuit colleagues, these were difficult years. When Jim died on January 31st, 2016, the prayers for eternal rest had a special poignancy.

Liam O’Connell

Born: 10 May 1923, Ardmore, County Waterford
Entered: 10 September 1940, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 15 August 1954, Leuven, Belgium
Final Vows: 03 February 1958, Chiessa del Gesù, Rome, Italy
Died: 15 April 2011, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

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

Older brother of Jimmy - RIP 2020

Founder of the Irish School of Ecumenics 1971
Founder of the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation, Derry, 1983

by 1952 at Leuven (BEL M) studying
by 1957 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying
by 1981 at Nairobi Kenya (AOR) Sabbatical

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Hurley, Michael Anthony
by Turlough O'Riordan

Hurley, Michael Anthony (1923–2011), ecumenist and theologian, was born on 10 May 1923 in Ardmore, Co. Waterford, the eldest of four children (two boys and two girls) of Michael Hurley, a small businessman, and his wife Johanna (née Foley), who kept a guest house. He won a scholarship to board at the Cistercian Trappist Mount Melleray Abbey (1935–40), and on 10 September 1940 entered the Jesuit novitiate at Emo Park, Co. Laois, drawn to the order's intellectual reputation. He studied classics at UCD (1942–5), graduating BA, and philosophy at Tullabeg, Co. Offaly (1945–8), before teaching Latin and Irish at Mungret College, Limerick (1948–51). At Mungret, he established a reputation for radical, independent thinking. He set up a study circle that examined Marxist texts, and published an assessment of The Communist manifesto in the Irish Monthly (1948). A brief student hunger strike at the college (in protest at poor food) was blamed on Hurley by his provincial, and when he was observed by Garda special branch entering the communist book shop in Pearse Street, Dublin, in clerical garb, gardaí visited Mungret to notify his superiors.

He studied theology at Louvain (1951–5), and was much influenced by the ecumenist Professor Georges Dejaifve. Interested in workers' councils, Hurley spent summers volunteering with the Young Christian Workers in the Charleroi coal mines in Belgium (1951) and in a steel factory in the south of France (1952). He was ordained at Louvain on 15 August 1954. His postgraduate work at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome (1956–8) (where his rector was the ecumenical Charles Boyer, SJ) resulted in a doctorate in theology (1961), published as Scriptura sola: Wyclif and his critics (1960), in which Hurley posited a traditionalist view of the teachings and biblical exegesis of the dissident English priest John Wyclif (d. 1384).

Returning to Ireland, Hurley was appointed professor of dogmatic theology to the Jesuit faculty of theology at Milltown Park, Dublin (1958–70). He was instrumental in establishing an annual series of public lectures (1960–81) which anticipated many of the themes addressed by the second Vatican council (1962–5), and propagated its teaching. His lecture on 'The ecumenical movement' (9 March 1960), benefiting from the guidance he received from Raymond Jenkins (1898–1998), later Church of Ireland archdeacon of Dublin (1961–74) (who introduced Hurley to George Tyrrell (qv) and anglican theologians), was published as Towards Christian unity (1961) and praised by Fr Denis Faul (qv). Although Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (qv) of Dublin and Hurley's Jesuit superiors opposed his accepting an invitation to lecture the TCD Student Christian Movement (May 1962), Hurley gave the lecture off campus; it was later published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record (1962). He also lectured methodist theological students at Edgehill Theological College, Belfast (1963), and addressed lay groups such as Muintir na Tíre and Tuairim at ecumenical forums from the early 1960s. Delivering the annual Aquinas lecture at QUB in March 1964, Hurley suggested the Vatican council pursue church reform to 'restore once again that diversity of rite and usage and human tradition which is the authentic and due manifestation of true Christian unity' (Ir. Times, 9 March 1964). In May 1966 the Irish Times intended to reprint his article on mixed marriages from the Irish Furrow, but this was halted at the last minute by McQuaid. Hurley's April 1968 Milltown lecture addressing original sin suffered a similar fate, and McQuaid sought to expel him from the Dublin archdiocese. Only the intercession of Fr Cecil McGarry (rector of Milltown (1965–8) and Irish provincial (1968–75)) allowed Hurley to remain.

A committed ecumenist, Hurley sought to confront the latent sectarianism found among both Irish catholics and protestants. His engagement with the wider international Christian communion, whose variety within and across denominations fascinated him, was marked by his coverage of the 1963 Paris meeting of the World Council of Churches for the Irish Press, attendance at the general council of the world alliance of presbyterian reformed churches in Frankfurt (1964) and at the World Methodist Council in London (1966), and lecture on the catholic doctrine of baptism to presbyterian students at Assembly's College, Belfast (February 1968). He was a member of the organising committees that established the Glenstal (June 1964) and Greenhills (January 1966) unofficial ecumenical conferences, ensuring that presbyterian and methodist representatives were invited to the former, and edited collected papers from these conferences in Church and eucharist (1966) and Ecumenical studies: baptism and marriage (1968).

Hurley's contacts with methodists led to his appointment (1968–76) to the joint commission between the Roman catholic church and World Methodist Council. He was attracted to the ecumenical nature of the spirituality of John Wesley (qv), and edited Wesley's Letter to a Roman catholic (1968) (originally published in 1749 in Dublin), which required adroit navigation on either side of the denominational divide. Hurley's Theology of ecumenism (1969) concisely summarised the relevant theology, urging participative ecumenism and the ecumenising of clerical theological education, which provoked further opposition from McQuaid. To mark the centenary of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, Hurley edited Irish anglicanism 1869–1969 (1970), comprising essays by Augustine Martin (qv) and John Whyte (qv) among others. In its conclusion, Hurley argued that 'Christian disunity is a contradiction of the church's very nature' (p. 211). At its launch, the book was presented to anglican primate George Otto Simms (qv) during an ecumenical service that was broadcast live on RTÉ (15 April 1970). Reviewing in the Furrow (October 1970), Monsignor Tomás Ó Fiaich (qv) commended the volume's 'spirit of mutual respect and genuine reflection'.

In October 1970 Hurley founded the interdenominational Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE). An independent institution, unattached to a theological college or university department, it had patrons from the anglican, catholic, methodist and presbyterian churches in Ireland. Based in Pembroke Park, Dublin, it was named Bea House after the Jesuit cardinal who had piloted Vatican II's decree on ecumenism (1964), and adopted the motto floreat ut pereat (may it flourish in order to perish). The results of the school's consultation and research on mixed marriages (September 1974), addressing Pope Paul VI's motu propiro, Matrimonia mixta (1970), were edited by Hurley as Beyond tolerance: the challenge of mixed marriage (1974). This angered Archbishop Dermot Ryan (qv) of Dublin (1972–84), who complained to Hurley that the ISE 'was a protestant rather than an ecumenical institute' (Hurley (2003), 86). A well-regarded consultation marking the thirtieth anniversary in 1978 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicated the ISE's increasingly expansive and pluralist approach. It promoted ecumenism in pursuit of social justice, human rights and reconciliation, focused on training and education to spur inter-church dialogue, and communicated international ecumenical developments to an often insular Irish ecclesiastical world. In 1980 Hurley resigned as ISE director, primarily to improve the school's relations with the catholic hierarchy.

A sabbatical (1980–81), spent travelling in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe, led to a profound period of spiritual reflection. Hurley was perturbed at the continued resistance to both practical and theological ecumenism by evangelical protestants and the Roman catholic hierarchy, and at how Orthodox Christianity, which he experienced first hand at Mount Athos, viewed western Christians as heretics; he saw this schism reflected in the concomitant stance of conservative catholic theologians towards reformed Christianity. After visiting a variety of Christian communities, Hurley decided to found an interdenominational religious residential community. Developing the idea with the support of Joseph Dargan, SJ, his Irish provincial, he consulted widely among friends and religious communities of varying denominations, and conceived of a liturgical community of prayer combining facets of a Benedictine monastery and Jesuit house, engaging in apostolic outreach. The Columbanus Community of Reconciliation was inaugurated on 23 November 1983, the feast of its patron saint, as a residential Christian community on the Antrim Road, Belfast, to challenge sectarianism, injustice and violence; Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich agreed to be a patron. Hurley led the community until 1991, before withdrawing in 1993 aged 70; he remained a trustee until 2002. Despite deteriorating community relations in Northern Ireland, it made some discernible progress in ecumenical initiatives and dialogue.

Hurley was coordinator for ecumenism with the Irish Jesuit province (1995–2004), and led retreats as director of spiritual exercises (2004–11). His relentless promotion of educational integration and meaningful interfaith dialogue marked the limits of functional ecumenicalism. Anointed the 'father of Irish ecumenism' (Furrow, April 1996) by Seán Mac Réamoinn (qv), Hurley was awarded honorary LLDs by QUB (1993) and TCD (1995), and honoured by a Festschrift, Reconciliation (1993; ed. Oliver Rafferty), emanating from a conference held that year in Belfast. In his memoir Healing and hope (1993), he noted that he would probably have embraced presbyterianism but for his upbringing, and that 'while the change of terminology, and of theology, from unity to reconciliation, is a sign of maturity, resistance to it is also a sign that we are still wandering in the desert' (Hurley (2003), 122). The same memoir lists his extensive bibliography. A selection of his writings and reminiscences, Christian unity (1998), was followed by his editing of a history of the The Irish School of Ecumenics 1970–2007 (2008). At its launch, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin apologised to Hurley for his treatment in the 1970s by the Dublin archdiocese.

Having endured cancer for a number of years, Hurley died on 15 April 2011 at St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, after a heart attack. His brother James Hurley, SJ, was principal celebrant at his funeral (19 April) at St Francis Xavier church, Gardiner Street, Dublin; mass was sung by the choir of the anglican St Patrick's cathedral, Dublin. Hurley's sister Mary was, as Mother Imelda, an abbess of the Cistercian St Mary's Abbey, Glencairn, Co. Waterford. The annual Michael Hurley memorial lecture commenced at Milltown in 2012.

National University of Ireland: calendar for the year 1946; Ir. Times, 12 Oct., 7 Nov. 1963; 9 Mar 1964; 11 Mar. 1965; 1 Jan., 16 May, 2 Aug. 1966; 8 July 1972; 2, 9 Sept. 1974; Michael Hurley, 'Northern Ireland: a scandal to theology', occasional paper no. 12, Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Edinburgh (1987), 26; id., Christian Unity: an ecumenical second spring? (1998); id., Healing and hope: memories of an Irish ecumenist (2003); Francis Xavier Carty, Hold firm: John Charles McQuaid and the second Vatican council (2007); Ronald A. Wells, Hope and reconciliation in Northern Ireland: the role of faith-based organisations (2010); Patrick Fintan Lyons, 'Healing and hope: remembering Michael Hurley', One in Christ, xlv, no. 2 (2011); Clara Cullen and Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, His grace is displeased: selected correspondence of John Charles McQuaid (2013); Owen F. Cummings, 'Ecumenical pioneer, Michael Hurley, SJ (1923–2011)' in One body in Christ: ecumenical snapshots (2015), 40–52

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/michael-hurley-sj-rip/

Michael Hurley SJ, RIP
Well-known ecumenist and co-founder of the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE), Michael Hurley SJ, died this morning, Friday 15 April, at 7am in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. He was 87
years old.
He was Director of the ISE from 1970 until 1980. In 1981, whilst on retreat in India, he had the vision of an ecumenical community of Catholics and Protestants living together somewhere in Northern Ireland. He made that vision a reality in 1983 when he co-founded the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation on the Antrim Rd, North Belfast, in 1983. He lived and worked there for ten years.
He has written extensively on the subject of ecumenism and his publications include Towards Christian Unity (CTS1961), Church and Eucharist (Ed., Gill 1966), Reconciliation in Religion and Society (Ed., Institute of Irish Studies, Belfast 1994), Healing and Hope: Memories of an Irish Ecumenist ( Columba, 2003) and Christian Unity: An Ecumenical Second Spring? (Veritas) – the fruit of some forty years of ecumenical experience in both theory and practice. The book carries prefaces from the leaders of the four main Churches in Ireland who pay generous tribute to the author’s work- work which was once seen as quite controversial.
Michael Hurley was born in Ardmore, Co.Waterford and joined the Jesuits on 10 September, 1940. He was educated in University College Dublin and Eegenhoven-Louvain, before completing his doctorate in theology in the Gregorian University in Rome. He received an honorary doctorate (LLD) from Queen’s University Belfast in 1993, and from Trinity College Dublin in 1995.
He lived with the Jesuit community in Milltown Park from 1993 until the present. He was Province Co- ordinator for Ecumenism from 1995-2004 and writer and Director of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius from 2004 to 2011.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

https://www.jesuit.ie/who-are-the-jesuits/inspirational-jesuits/michael-hurley/

Michael Hurley
Referred to as the ‘father of Irish ecumenism’, Michael Hurley devoted his life to promoting unity in the midst of conflict and division.
Michael Hurley was born in Ardmore, Waterford, in 1923. After having attended school at Mount Melleray he entered the Jesuit noviciate, at the age of seventeen. As part of his studies to become a Jesuit, Fr Hurley was educated in University College Dublin and the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, before completing his doctorate in theology in the Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1954 and, having finished his studies, began teaching at Mungret College near Limerick in 1958.
Throughout his time as a Jesuit, Fr Hurley was a strong advocate for ecumenism, that striving for unity between the various Christian churches which was given real impetus at the Second Vatican Council between 1962-1965. Fr Hurley was a true pioneer in giving practical expression to the revised ecclesiology of the Council. He left his teaching role at Mungret in 1970 and then co-founded the Irish School of Ecumenics at Milltown Park.
The school dealt with relations in Northern Ireland at a time when the Troubles were very much a reality of people’s everyday lives. However, the then Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, did not approve of Fr Hurley’s work with the school, and a ban was issued on him speaking within the archdiocese on ecumenical matters. This was only lifted through the intervention of the Jesuit provincial in Ireland. Archbishop McQuaid died in 1973, but his successor continued his opposition against the school, and in 1980 Fr Hurley felt it necessary to step down as director.
This was by no means the end of Fr Hurley’s active role in ecumenism in Ireland, however. In 1983 he co-founded the inter-church Columbanus Community of Reconciliation in Belfast, as a place where Catholics and Protestants could live together. He himself lived and worked there for ten years before moving to the Jesuit community in Milltown Park in 1993. That same year he received an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast, and Trinity College awarded him one two years later.
From 1995 to 2004 Hurley was the Province Co-ordinator for Ecumenism, and the Director of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius from 2004 until his death in 2011, at the age of eighty-seven. In 2008, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin apologised to Hurley for how he had been treated in the past, and acknowledged the greatly important work he had done.

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/ecumenist-and-friend-to-many/

Many tributes have been paid to Fr Michael Hurley SJ, who died on Friday 15 April at the age of 87. Hundreds attended his requiem mass in Gardiner St. on Tuesday 19 April. Considered by many to be ‘the father of Irish ecumenism’, he was co-founder of the Irish School of Ecumenics in 1970 and remained Director there for ten years. In 1981, whilst on retreat in India, he had the vision of an ecumenical community of Catholics and Protestants living together somewhere in Northern Ireland. On his return in 1983 he co-founded the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation on the Antrim Rd, Belfast. He lived and worked there also for ten years, always giving a sincere and warm welcome to visitors north and south. Read below for an appreciation by Donal Neary SJ, Parish Priest of Gardiner St.
MICHAEL HURLEY SJ
Michael had a huge capacity for friendship. He often remembered all sorts of details, great and small, about novices he had befriended. The renewed community life of the post-Vatican II years gave many Jesuits a new and more personal form of community life. This spoke to Michael, who was an active initiator of the first small community in Milltown Park, and this was the beginning of many sustained links with younger Jesuits, who, he said, kept him young.
He struggled with the loneliness of academic life, working hard not to let it limit his care and interest in his fellow Jesuits and many friends. Today we might call him an iconic figure – he was this in worldwide ecumenical circles, and a larger-than-life member of the Irish Jesuits. His sense of humour, as well as skilled diplomacy, got him through many potential crises. He invited us to many hilarious and kindly gatherings in Milltown Park, and even engaged us in humorous yet deeply spiritual plans for his funeral. A new book, a milestone birthday, a jubilee of priesthood or Jesuit life, to which people of many churches and ways of life would find their way — all of these could be occasions for Michael to gather his friends around him.
He allowed us share some of the frustrations of illness over the last years, whether in conversation over a good lunch or on the telephone. Jesuit students remember the famous occasion when a lecture he was due to give was cancelled as it was considered potentially offensive by certain Church leaders. We younger students looked on him favourably as one of the ‘rebels’ after Vatican II, always pushing the boat out a bit into deeper ecumenical and theological seas.
We might recall that Michael never gave up – on life which he faced always courageously, on his friends whom he thought so highly of even when we did not deserve it, on the church’s movement into ecumenism which he pushed on with patience and zest, and on God whom he heartily believed never gave up on him.
Donal Neary SJ

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 145 : Summer 2011

Obituary

Fr Michael Hurley (1923-2011)

10th May 1923: Born in Ardmore, Co. Waterford
Early education: National School; Mount Melleray Seminary, Cappoquinn
10th September 1940: Entered the Society at Emo
11th September 1942: First vows at Emo
1942 - 1945: Rathfarnham: studied Arts at UCD
1945 - 1948: Tullabeg - studied philosophy
1948 - 1951: Mungret College - regency.
1951 - 1955: Theology at St Albert College, Eegenhoven, Louvain
15 August 1954: Ordained at Eegenhoven, Louvain
1955 - 1956: Tertianship in Rathfarnham
1956 - 1958: Gregorian, Rome: biennium in dogmatic theology
1958 - 1970: Milltown Park: Professor of Dogma
3rd February 1958: Final Vows at the Gesu, Rome
1970 - 1980: Director of Irish School of Ecumenics
1980 - 1981: Sabbatical
1981 - 1983: Special project: ecumenical community in N Ireland
1983 - 1993: Milltown Park: fouding Columbanus House, Belfast Province Coordinator of ecumenism
1993 - 2011: Milltown Park: writer, director of Spiritual Exercises
1995 - 2004: Coordinator of ecumenism
2004 - 2011: Writer, director of Spiritual Exercises
15th April 2011: Died at Cherryfield

Fr Hurley had a successful hip replacement in March 2011. After some time he moved to Cherryfield Lodge for 2 weeks recuperation, and he was expected back to Milltown Park shortly. He was unwell for a few days and died suddenly on the morning of 15th April 2011. May he rest in the peace of Christ.

Obituary from several hands
In the Milltown Park Community, where Michael Hurley had recently celebrated fifty years of residence (though ten of them were spent in Belfast), his death leaves a more than usually obvious hole. He was a strong presence, a genius at finding reasons to celebrate, and also with a sharp sense of how things could be improved, not merely in the Church and the Society, but also in the community. He had a huge capacity for friendship, and remembered all sorts of important and relevant things about his friends. The renewed community life of the post-Vatican II years gave many Jesuits a new and more personal form of community life. Michael was an active initiator of the first small community in Milltown Park, and this was the beginning of many sustained links with younger Jesuits who, he said, kept him young.

He struggled with the loneliness of academic life, never allowing it to limit his care and interest in his fellow Jesuits and many friends, Today we might call him an iconic figure – he was this in worldwide ecumenical circles, and a larger-than-life member of the Irish Jesuits.

Frances Makower's collection of Jesuits telling their faith stories, Call and Response, contains a chapter by Michael, which he called “Triple Vocation" - as an ecumenist, a Jesuit and a Catholic: a Catholic since he was born, a Jesuit since his late teens and an ecumenist since his late thirties. His account relates his rootedness in the faith of his family community in Ardmore, his Jesuit formation and his theological studies in Louvain. He reflects. “For me the Spirit of God lives in all three and is never grieved in all three at the same time. Despite the sin and unbelief in any one or two of them, the Spirit subsists in the others(s) giving me the energy and consolation to persevere”.

Michael was a prophet: not a prophet in the way that popular culture uses the term, but in the biblical sense of someone who is called and sent by God to speak out to the community about its restricted thinking and behaviour, and to call the community to hear anew the voice of the Lord.

In his account of his life and spiritual journey, Michael relates how somewhat to his surprise, in 1959 and then into the 1960s, he found himself moving into and developing both ecumenical theology and personal relationships with the churches, leading of course to the commemoration of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1969 for which he edited a volume of essays, Irish Anglicanism. He founded the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) in 1970, and published his classic little book The Theology of Ecumenism. In 1981, while on a thirty-day retreat in India as part of a sabbatical, he felt called to found an ecumenical community in Belfast and so the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation was born. He wrote extensively on the subject of ecumenism, and his publications include Towards Christian Unity (1961), Church and Eucharist (1966), Reconciliation in Religion and Society (1994), Healing and Hope: Memories of an Irish Ecumenist (2003) and Christian Unity: an ecumenical Second Spring? (2004) - the fruit of some forty years of ecumenical experience in both theory and practice. The book carries prefaces from the leaders of the four main Churches in Ireland who pay generous tribute to the author's work, work which was once seen as quite controversial.

Michael's early ecumenical initiatives were “a source of anguish” to John Charles McQuaid, then Archbishop of Dublin, who decided to impose an absolute prohibition on Michael “speaking within my sphere of jurisdiction”. It was only the able and passionate defence of Michael's cause by Provincial Cecil McGarry that persuaded John Charles to relent. Difficulties continued with his successor, Dermot Ryan. Michael later recalled: “Archbishop Ryan became somewhat unhappy with the Irish School of Ecumenics, and with myself in particular, because, although I'm called after the archangel, I'm no angel in my behaviour. So, towards the end of the ISE's first decade, it seemed best to remove myself from the scene. After that the school's relationship with the Catholic archdiocese did improve”. Cardinal Connell later became the first Catholic archbishop of Dublin to be a formal patron of the school.

In 2008 Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who uncovered the archival material relating to Fr Hurley, apologised to him “for some misunderstandings on the part of my predecessors”. In a good-natured exchange at Milltown, Michael spoke of his "great sense of relief and joy and gratitude" as he listened to Dr Martin's magnanimous apology. It was a mark of Michael's own style in the community that he was quick to apologise if he sensed a cloud over some relationship.

What was central to Michael, as to other prophets, was his deep faith, his unwavering hope and his powerful love. His faith, his hope and his love shine through the risks he took in his many ventures, especially the big ones, the Irish School of Ecumenics, the Columbanus Community and the consultations. Even when he was under pressure from ecclesiastical authorities - and like the prophets, he endured much - he continued to stay grounded in his faith, his hope and his love.

He wasn't a personal empire-builder - witness the ISE's brilliant motto Floreat ut pereat. The honours he received, honorary doctorates from Queen's and Dublin universities, the Coventry Cross of Nails, and the Festschrift, were honours for his work, for what he had been sent to preach and to bear witness. He changed us, not merely through the institutional legacy of the ISE, but through our emotional and intellectual response to other Christian churches, and through our keener grasp of the ministry of reconciliation, a strong theme in the Society ever since the time of Ignatius and Peter Faber.

Michael was energetic for God's work. When that energy began to fade in his latter years, he was deeply frustrated. The perseverance and resilience that he talks about in his memoir became a frustration, both for him and his community. Prophets find old age and the limitations of health difficult. But he was never bitter. He never gave up - on life, which he always faced courageously, on his friends who he thought so highly of even when they felt undeserving of it; on the church's movement into ecumenism, which he pushed on with patience and zest; and on God who he believed never gave up on him.

Homily at Michael Hurley's Funeral : 19th April 2011 - David Coghlan
This homily has been in incubation for a long time. Frances Makower's collection of Jesuits telling their faith stories, Call and Response, contains a chapter by Michael, from which I'll draw. Michael gave me a copy of that book for Christmas, and on the flyleaf he wrote, “If you are going to preach at my funeral, you'd better have a copy of the authorised version of my story”. The date of that inscription reads Christmas 1994! There was hardly an occasion when we were together since that he didn't ask me if I had written his funeral sermon yet! Michael asked that his funeral be joyful. He looked forward to being in attendance and to enjoying a celebration of his life with his Jesuit brothers, his family, and his friends in all the Churches. My task this morning is not to talk about Michael, though I will do that a lot, but to talk aut God primarily, and about God as he worked in Michael's life.

Michael called his chapter in the Call and Response book, “Triple Vocation” where he narrated his vocation as an ecumenist, a Jesuit and a Catholic: a Catholic since he was born, a Jesuit since his late teens and an ecumenist since his late thirties. His account relates his rootedness in the faith of his family community in Ardmore, his Jesuit formation and his theological studies in Louvain. He reflects. “For me the Spirit of God lives in all three and is never grieved in all three at the same time. Despe the sin and unbelief in any one or two of them, the Spirit subsists in the others(s) giving me the energy and consolation to persevere” (p. 135).

I lived in community with Michael in the early 1970s, in a small community which he referred to as “Finkewalde”, and another Christmas present from Michael that I have since 1973 is a copy of Bonhoeffer's, Life Together, a little book that we often talked about and which was influential in forming Michael's spirituality. The insight I received at that time, and which has not been superseded in the 40 years since, is that Michael was a prophet, not a prophet in the way that popular culture uses the term but in the biblical sense of someone who is called and sent by God to speak out to the community about its restricted thinking and behaviour and to call the community to hear anew the voice of the Lord. Hence the reading from Jeremiah to which we have just listened. In his account of his life and spiritual journey in Call and Response, Michael relates, how somewhat to his surprise, in 1959 and then into the 1960s, he found himself moving into and developing both ecumenical theology and personal relationships with the churches, leading of course to the commemoration of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1969 for which he edited a volume of essays, Irish Anglicanism, the founding of the School of Ecumenics in 1970 and his classic little book The Theology of Ecumenism. In 1981, while on a thirty day retreat in India as part of a sabbatical, he felt called to found an ecumenical community in Belfast and so the Columbanus Community of Reconciliation was born. The gospel story to which we have listened was a treasured text for Michael as it signified for him that he understood how the risen Jesus walked with him, supported him and constantly taught him and led him.

Like prophets, what was central to Michael was his deep faith, his unwavering hope and his powerful love. Whatever we want to say about Michael and there are many things we can say, his faith, his hope and his love shine through the risks he took in his many ventures, especially the big ones, The Irish School of Ecumenics and the Columbanus Community and the consultations. Even when he was under pressure from ecclesiastical authorities, and like the prophets, he endured much, he continued to stay grounded in his faith, his hope and his love. He wasn't a personal empire builder; “Floreat ut pereat” bears witness to that. The honours he received, honorary doctorates from Queen's and Dublin universities and the Coventry Cross of Nails, and the feschrift were honours for his work, for what he had been sent to preach and to bear witness. In this regard he notes in his chapter, referring to the Spiritual Exercises, “Must I not desire and choose, must I not prefer failure with Christ on the cross rather than success, provided equal or greater praise and service be given to the Divine Majesty?” (p.146)

Michael was energetic for God's work and when that energy began to fade in his latter years, he was deeply frustrated. The perseverance and resilience that he talks about in his chapter became a frustration, both for him and his community, Prophets find old age and the limitations of health difficult. But he was never bitter. When I visited him in Mt. Carmel a couple of weeks ago we spent time talking about the card he had propped up on the windowsill where he could see it from his bed. It was a triptych of religious scenes from old masters, including Fra Angelico's Annunciation.

So then, what about us? There is a sense in which we are all called to be prophets. There is an invitation to hear God's voice, to respond to how God invites us, each in our own personal story and concrete circumstances to confront the challenges in our world that are destructive of faith, of hope, of love, of human dignity, of justice, of peace, of reconciliation and so on,

I suggest that we consider that Michael's life is a life about God - about how God graced a man to be his prophet, to speak to our age about the scandal of Christian disunity not in condemnation, but as a call to a deeper shared faith, hope and love. Jesuits define themselves as sinners, yet called to be companions of Christ sent to the inculturated proclamation of the gospel and dialogue with other religious traditions as integral dimensions of evangelization. Michael devoted his Jesuit life to living this. I am confident, rather than closing this few words with a prayer for him, Michael would approve of me closing with Christ's and his prayer: “That all may be one”.

Call and Response: Jesuit Journeys in Faith. Frances Makower (ed.) Hodder & Stoughton; London, 1994

Born: 27 February 1934, Buncrana, Co Donegal
Entered: 06 September 1952, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1966, Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 19745, Final Vows at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Died: 02 August 2023, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

Part of the Milltown Park Community (Cherryfield) at the time of death

FFS
Born : 27th February 1934 Buncrana, Co Donegal
Raised : Buncrana, Co Donegal
Early Education at St Columb’s College, Derry, Northern Ireland
6th September 1952 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1954 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1954-1957 Rathfarnham - Studying Science at UCD
1957-1960 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1960-1963 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Regency : Teacher; Studying CWC Cert in Education
1963-1967 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
28th July 1966 Ordained at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
1967-1968 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1968-1971 Crescent College SJ, Limerick - Teacher; Spiritual Father & Counsellor
1971-1973 St John of the Cross, San Diego, CA, USA - Doctoral Studies in Human Behaviour at Alliant International University
1973-1976 Rathfarnham - Research into Social Conditioning especially in Northern Ireland
1974 Research on Conflict in Northern Ireland and Workshops on Human Relations in Zambia with Jesuits
5th November 1975 Final Vows at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
1976 Working in Nigeria with St Patrick’s Missionary Society
1976-1981 Tabor House/Belfast - Research into Northern Ireland; Writer
1981-1989 Iona, Portadown - Works in Social Renewal in Northern Ireland; Manresa Associate; Writer (till Jan 89)
1989-2003 Asunción, Paraguay - Advisor to ADEC;Assists in CEPHSI; Community Education Organisation and Pastoral Renewal at Collegio Tecnico Javier
1991 Community Development (April - September 1991 - 1993) & London (Oct - Mar, 1991 to 1993)
1992 Secretario y Profesor en el CEPHSI, Assists in Parish Trinidad y de la Sagrada Familia
1998 “Out from the Centre” Project; Vice-Superior; Advisor to ADEC and Paraguay Japotiva; Co-ordinates Department of Humanities; Teaches Social Psychology at Department of Philosophy at ISEHF; Assists in Parishes of Trinidad and Sagrada Familia
2001 Commission Member of “Paraguay Japotiva”; Assessor ADEC
2002 Co-ordinates Parishes of Trinidad and Sagrada Familia
2003-2023 Milltown Park - Academic Tutor Milltown Institute; Writer
2005 Academic Tutor to students in SJ Communities
2007 JUST Ballymun coaching students for Third Level Learning; Writer
2009 JUST Advisory Group
2017 Academic Tutor to students in SJ communities; Writer
2020 Tutor Emeritus
2021 Cherryfield Lodge - Prays for the Church and the Society

Jesuitas del Paraguay

• P Henry Grant SJ
  27-02-1934 - 02-08-2023

(Translated from thenSpanish by Michael O’SullivanSJ)

Fr Henry Grant, SJ, was born on 27 February 1934 in Buncrana, Ireland. He joined the Jesuits in the Novitiate of Emo Park on the 6th September 1952. After the Novitiate he did the customary studies of Jesuits. In the Society he studied chemistry, geochemistry and maths, then philosophy, and taught for three years while studying education and doing pastoral work with young people. He studied theology for four years. He was ordained on 28 July 1966 in Dublin, Ireland.

After his priestly ordination, he went to the US during summers, and there he studied counselling at the University of Fairfield, Connecticut.
On finishing in Fairfield, he went to San Diego, California, where he studied social psychology with special reference to intercommunity conflicts y leadership. At the same time he used to travel to Northern Ireland in order to work with groups who were working for peace in the midst of the conflicts. There he also did research for his doctoral thesis, centring it on the action of leaders of moderate positions in the inter-community conflicts. While working in Northern Ireland he also collaborated in the South of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, the US, Zambia and Nigeria in Africa.

He arrived in Paraguay for the first time in October of 1988, encouraged by his Jesuit companion, Fr Kevin O’Higgins. In February of 89 he returned to Northern Ireland to carry out a work there. In October 1989 he returned again to Paraguay.

From October 1992 as a result of a request of an inter-church agency made through the Provincial in Ireland he began to divide his time between Paraguay and London, spending six months of the year in each place. In Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland he worked with leaders of various churches (Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, etc), facilitating the planning of their work and especially their efforts to act together. Also, he researched with CABE (UNIAPAC in England -The International Christian Union of Business Executives or UNIAPAC is an ecumenical organization for Christian business people (the meaning of UNIPAC was added by MOS)) and other business organisations in St George’s House at Windsor Castle about how to create wealth, and how to utilise and distribute it. On weekends he was involved in ecumenical pastoral work.

In Paraguay he was for a number of years advisor/consultant to ADEC (Association of Christian Businesses). And he was an active member and a great inspirer of the Paraguay Jaipotáva Project (MOS: as far as I know this was a project addressing the need for ethics and accountability in Paraguay because of the corruption of the Stroessner regime – K O’Higgins could be asked about that); he taught at and coordinated the Dept of Humanities of ISEHF (The Higher Education Institute of Humanities and Philosoph)y being very sensitive to the difficulty of Guarani students to express themselves in Spanish; in spite of not knowing Guarani he looked for creative ways to help them. Henry also offered his assistance at Javier Technical College and collaborated in the parishes of Trinity and Holy Family. During the time he was in Paraguay he lived in the community of “Taita Róga” Javier in Asunción. Due to where he came from he was more accustomed to a cold climate, and so had to make great efforts to adapt to the heat of Paraguay, but his self-giving did not lessen because of that. In the end he returned to his province in 2005 in order to stay definitively in Ireland.

Heny Grant went to the house of the Father on 2nd of August 2023, in Dublin. From the Province of Paraguay we give thanks to God for the generosity and dedication of this companion who, being an academic of great quality and high level studies, came as an ordinary man, as a missionary disposed to collaborate with the mission of Christ, giving his great knowledge and his human quality to the Paraguayan people, sharing their faith and their hope like one companion more among us.

On Friday, 4th August, a Mass will be held in memory of Ft Henry Grant, SJ, in the Parish of Christ the King in Asuncion, at 7pm. We are sending a very wide invitation to all Jesuits and friends in Paraguay.

In order to read more (in Englsih): Interview with Fr Henry Grant, SJ https://www.iji.ie/2012/04/12/interview-with-fr-henry-grant-sj/

https://jesuit.ie/news/death-of-a-much-loved-jesuit/

Death of a much-loved Jesuit

Henry Grant SJ, a much loved Jesuit, uncle, brother, and friend, died peacefully in St Vincent’s Hospital on Wednesday 2 August. He was 89 years old. His funeral Mass was held in Gonzaga College chapel and was followed by his burial in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. on Friday 5 August 2023.

Henry was born in Bucrana Co Donegal and all his family from there travelled to Dublin for the funeral. Other family members from various parts of the world either attended the Mass in person or were able to watch it live-streamed by one of his nephews.

Bill Callanan SJ, former rector of Milltown Park (Henry’s community before he transferred across to Cherryfield nursing home) presided at the Mass attended by Jesuits, family, friends, and Cherryfield nursing staff.

In his homily, he spoke of the long and varied years of work that Henry carried out so willingly and competently as part of his Jesuit vocation. The work was underpinned by Henry’s expertise in sociology and group dynamics and his doctoral research in those fields. His training was particularly useful in the wake of Vatican II when many religious orders were seeking to implement the council’s changed and renewed vision of ‘church’ and their role within it. Henry worked with many groups and congregations helping them to negotiate the type of change that would last and bear fruit for them.

Henry also spent many years in the North during the worst of ‘The Troubles’. There his primary concern was trying to help communities in conflict either with each other or with the state. He wanted to help them work out the often unconscious dynamics and processes that fuelled their separation and antagonism so that they could work together for justice using peaceful means. He facilitated ecumenical groups, cross-community groups, and paramilitary or ex-paramilitary representatives.

What he learned up North was also put to good use in his next place of work – Paraguay. He took a crash course in Spanish and tried to learn some Guaranían so he could work with the indigenous people there and over time they set up local community groups who worked together to secure their basic human rights.

On his return to Dublin after almost 15 years in South America, he continued to work in the broad field of adult education. He was a mentor for students in JUST, the Jesuit University Support Trust, situated in Ballymun and which works in partnership with Dublin City University in order to encourage the participation of the local community in the educational opportunities offered by the university.

As Bill Callanan noted, even to his last days, Henry was always interested in the future and how to change life for the better. He would acquire a mammoth book like Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and digest the whole 500 pages by talking to anyone he met about it, said Bill. And many a visitor to his room in Cherryfield would be presented before leaving with an article photocopied from The Guardian or the latest book he was reading, about protecting the environment, or good gut health, or the latest scholarly research on the Christ of the gospels.

Above all, it was Henry’s deep faith that was the bedrock of his lifelong work. “Henry read widely on many topics, but there was always a book about spirituality theology on the go,” said one of his friends when people gathered out in the chapel grounds after the funeral Mass. “He loved the work of biblical scholar and theologian John Shea. For years he read his wonderful commentaries on the Sunday gospel readings, and of course, photocopied them and shared them widely with his friends and fellow Jesuits. He was so young at heart, so forward-looking, even in his faith. He welcomed change, it never scared him”

There were tears shed as Henry was laid to rest in Glasnevin. Tears of sadness but also of gratitude for having had the privilege of knowing such a good and caring man. As all his family said, ‘He will be sorely missed’. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Born: 08 February 1913, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 03 September 1930, Emo
Ordained: 06 January 1945, Sydney, Australia
Final Vows: 15 August 1948
Died: 25 November 1988, Campion College, Kew, Melbourne, Australia- Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

Younger Brother of Jack Moran (MAC-HK) - RIP 1991
Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

Tertian Instructor in Philippines

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Val Moran attended Clongowes Wood College, for his secondary education, and was a clever student, regularly taking the prizes in classics. He was also school champion at tennis, captain of cricket and the opening bat, as well as a very useful second-row forward and goal kicker for the first XV rugby. In his last year he took the Union Gold Medal for English essay. He was also prefect of the Sodality and had the most Rabelaisian wit. He was a good mimic of various teachers.
Moran entered the Society at St Mary's Emo, 3 September 1930, and was sent to Australia as a novice because of poor health with tuberculosis. His ecclesiastical studies were all in Australia, and he gained a BA with honours in classics, 1933-35, from The University of Melbourne. Regency was at Riverview, 1936-38, where he taught English, Latin and Greek, and was involved with senior debating and cricket.
Maybe the threat of death from an early age gave him a remarkable freedom and serenity living quietly in the background, always present, emerging only when the moment was ripe, superb in timing, sharp in judgment but not in tone, humorous, eloquent, never using a word more than necessary.
He was a richly talented man, but never proclaimed his gifts ostentatiously. Above all, he was essentially very human and compassionate. He was easy to approach as spiritual father, and always gave wise counsel, while never intruding on one's personal space.
He was expert in the quick and telling comment about people and situations, usually accurate and humorous, but pointed. His teasing of some was always in good fun. His obituaries of Jesuits were a delight to read.
He was an outstanding Church historian, and probably had an unrivalled knowledge of the Society's history and spirituality He was a fine tertian master, not only in information communicated, but also in his spiritual discernment. His homilies at Mass were short and inspiring.
He was arguably die most interesting lecturer scholastics in the Australian province experienced. His lectures were of such fascination that expiry of time was always a cause for genuine regret. During every one he paused for a light comment on some ecclesiastical practice or misdemeanour. Everyone waited for these enlightened words and applauded in an appropriate fashion, but Moran never paused in his presentation.
He had wide appreciation of the Church. He looked for moments of liberty, of opportunity history, pointing out where he felt ecclesiastical dogmatism or fear had prevented the bearing of possible fruit. This was clearly why he was fascinated with Modernism and the 19th century in general.
Despite his illness, which required much rest and care, Moran held many important positions of authority within the province. He was rector of the theologate, Canisius College
Pymble, 1957-62, was a province consultor for some years, assistant tertian master 1969-74, delegate for formation, 1975-76, and province delegate for tertiary education, 1979-80. He wrote an article for Theological Studies, Vol. 40, No.3, 1979, entitled “Lolsy's Theological Development”, and he spent 1981 as a research scholar on Modernism at the Casa Degli Scrittori, Rome. Articles on George Tyrrell appeared in “The Downside Review”, July 1984, entitled “The Breakings of George Tyrrell”, and in July 1985 , “George
Tyrrell: Theological Journalist of Genius”. Other articles he wrote on Tyrrell were, “George Tyrrell at War with the Society of Jesus”, and “Fr Tyrrell and the Censorship of his Writings”. in 1988 he wrote, “The Universal Catechism at Vatican I” for Pacifica Vol. 1.
Moran's contribution to the Society in Australia was considerable and much appreciated, especially by the scholastics with whom he shared his life and scholarship.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Went to Australia mainly for health reasons

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 7th Year No 2 1932

Australia :
Fr. N. Hehir and Br. V. Moran (scholastic novice) sailed for Australia towards the end of last year. An interesting experience was waiting for them at Naples, which we tell in Fr. Hehir's own words “We found ourselves booked to take part in a remarkable ceremony at Naples. A printed programme announced that I was to say Mass in the Gesù coram Cardinali. Fortunately the boat was late. The Provincial said the Mass. On arriving, the two of us were led down the Church (in white soutanes) in the middle of a stirring sermon delivered by the Cardinal Archbishop. Then came a sermon by one of the two scholastics who were being farewelled. Then an embarrassing ceremony - a Neapolitan tradition - apparently followed. All the clergy, led by the Cardinal, kissed the feet of the four missionaries. Lunch followed in the novitiate. Finally we were raced back to catch our boat just before sailing hour.

Born: 13 October 1929, Stoneybatter, Dublin
Entered: 18 October 1951, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 02 February 1962, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Died: 21 September 2022, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

part of the Milltown Park community at the time of death

FSS
Born : 13th October 1929 Dublin City
Raised : Stoneybatter, Dublin
Early Education at St.James's CBS, Dublin; Denmark Street Technical College, Dublin; Glove Manufacturer
18th October 1951 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
21st March 1954 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1954-1958 Tullabeg - Cook
1958-1959 Mungret College SJ - In charge of Staff; Assists in Community; Infirmarian
1959-1963 Tullabeg - Cook; Cellarer
1961 Roehampton, UK - Tertianship at Manresa House
2nd February 1962 Final Vows at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
1963-1971 Milltown Park - Assistant Cook
1971-1972 Mungret College SJ - Cook; In charge of Staff
1972-1980 Milltown Park - Assistant Cook
1977 Cook
1980-1981 Jerusalem, Israel - Cook at Pontifical Biblical Institute
1981-1985 Rathfarnham - Cook
1985-2022 Milltown Park - Cook at Cherryfield Lodge
1993 Works at Cherryfield Lodge
1996 Assists in Milltown Community
2011 Assists in Cherryfield Lodge; Assists in Milltown Park Community
2020 Assists in Milltown Park Community
2022 Prays for the Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge

https://jesuit.ie/news/br-james-mccabe-sj/

Brother James McCabe SJ died peacefully in Cherryfield Lodge nursing home, Dublin on Wednesday 21 September 2022. His funeral mass took place in Gonzaga College Chapel at 11 am on Tuesday 28 September followed by burial in Glasnevin Cemetery.

In his short homily at the funeral Mass which summed up the essence of Br James, fellow Jesuit Brother Tom Phelan said, “Jamesie spent 68 years among us Jesuits as the one who serves.” (Read full homily below.)

James was born in Dublin on 13 October 1929. Raised in Dublin, he was educated at St James’s CBS and trained as a glove manufacturer in Denmark Street Technical College. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at St Mary’s, Emo, Laois in 1951 at 22 years old.

He spent much of his Jesuit life as a cook in Milltown Park, Dublin, where he served Cherryfield Lodge nursing home and the Jesuit Community.

Many Jesuits and friends remember him for putting a smile on their faces with his inimitable sayings and wonderful stories. For example, he once referred to people who travelled to Dublin by train in the morning as ‘computers’ instead of ‘commuters’ – a play of words that was thought to have an element of truth!

He prayed for the Church and the Society of Jesus during his stay at Cherryfield Lodge nursing home. He died aged 92.

A faithful man of service

We are gathered today to say farewell to our brother James McCabe (affectionally known to us Jesuits just as Jamesie) and to give thanks for the gift of his life and for all that he meant to us.

Jamesie was reared in Stoneybatter one of the oldest parts of Dublin. He never lost his Dublin accent, which was music to my ears, being a Dub myself.

In 1954 Jamesie made his vows to serve the Lord in the Society of Jesus as a brother. It was also the year I was born, and little did I know that 22 years later I would join Jamesie in this band of brothers.

Being the youngest brother, Jamesie was always kind and supportive to me. With Jamesie’s passing, there are now 7 brothers left in Ireland. If we were a hedgehog or a bat, we would be a protected species!

Fr. Pedro Arrupe who was General of the Society once said, “The Brothers are the heart of the Society”.
From its beginning, the Society has conceived itself as a universal body. And the heart is an essential part of that body.

GC34 states that a vocation to religious life is distinct from a vocation to the priesthood. In some ways, the religious brother embodies religious life in its essence.

Jamesie, worked in many of our houses for 68 years. For most of these years, he was the cook and in the larger communities, he was also in charge of staff. Jamesie was a gentle soul, kind and welcoming, even if it was in a gruff Dublin accent. “Howya Phelan!”, he would say to me but always with a smile. A short or long conversation with Jamesie would leave me uplifted and in good spirits. What you saw was what you got. Honest and no pretense.

Jamesie lived a simple lifestyle. His possessions were few. He loved his football, music, and newspapers. He always had time for a little chat and a word of encouragement to those he encountered.

I remember one time when I was a patient in Cherryfield, I was attending Mass and it came time to receive communion, Jamesie was distributing communion. Working his way along the row of Jesuits, everything was going fine until he came to an elderly Jesuit who had fallen asleep. Jamesie waited for a few seconds. No sign of him opening his eyes, Jamesie gave the old Jesuit a gentle kick on the foot. The old Jesuit opened his eyes like a rabbit caught in headlights. Jamesie looking down at him just said “Do you want communion or what?”

Many stories and memories have been shared about Jamesie in the last few days and no doubt, more to come over the coming days. But for now, we prepare ourselves to say goodbye to our brother.

The Gospel today speaks about who is the greater Jesus addressed his disciples; “For who is the greater: the one at table or the one who serves. The one at table, surely? Yet here am I among you as one who serves.” Jamesie spent 68 years among us Jesuits as the one who serves.

And in the first reading of Timothy, Paul in the evening of his life says.”As for me, my life is already poured away as a libation, and the time has come for me to be gone. I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith; all there is to come now is the crown of righteousness reserved for me, which the Lord, the righteous judge will give to me that day; and not only to me but to all those who have longed for his appearing.”

Jamesie, you have fought the good fight to the end; you have run the race to the finish; you have kept the faith. Now it’s time to be gone. Go in peace my Brother to the Lord whom you have served so well and continue to pray for us all. Farewell Jamesie, till we meet again.

Born: 02 June 1924, Murska Sobota, Slovenia
Entered: 07 September 1953, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois, HIB for Japonicae Province (JPN)
Ordained: 10 October 1950, pre Entry
Final Vows: 02 February 1964
Died: 18 July 2022, Loyola House, Nerima-ku, Tokyo, Japan , Japonicae Province (JPN)

by 1954 came to Emo (HIB) Novitiate 1953-1955

Born: 22 May 1930, Ilford, Essex, England / Tramore, County Waterford
Entered: 07 September 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1961, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1963, Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Galway
Died: 12 November 2022, Cherryfiled Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Milltown Park Community at the time of death

FSS
Born : 22nd May 1930 Ilford, Essex, UK
Raised : Tramore, Co Waterford
Early Education at Waterpark College, Waterford; Clongowes Wood College SJ
7th September 1946 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1948 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1948-1951 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1951-1954 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1954-1957 Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Galway - Regency : Teacher; Studying for H Dip in Education
1957-1961 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
31st July 1961 Ordained at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
1961-1962 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1962-1965 Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Galway - Teacher; Assistant Prefect of Studies
2nd February 1963 Final Vows at Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Galway
1965-1966 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Teacher
1966-1980 Instituto Leone XIII, Milan, Italy - Teacher
1980-1981 Milltown Park - Assistant Librarian
1981-1994 Mazabuka, Zambia - Teacher and Spiritual Father at St Edmund’s Secondary School; Community at Nakambala Catholic Church
1994-2006 Choma, Zambia - Chaplain; Teacher at Mukasa Minor Seminary
2006-2008 Mazabuka - Assists in Parish at Nakambala Catholic Church
2008-2010 John Austin House - Recovering health at Cherryfield Lodge
2010-2022 Milltown Park - Assists in Community and Cherryfield Lodge
2018 Prays for the Church and the Society at Cherryfield Lodge

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/john-dooley-sj-gentle-generous-and-good/

Tributes were paid to Fr John Dooley SJ who died in Cherryfield Lodge nursing home, Dublin, on 12 November 2022, aged 92 years. Fr Hector Mwale described him as “gentle, generous, and good” during the opening remarks at the Funeral Mass in Gonzaga College Chapel, Dublin on 16 November 2022. The Zambian diocesan priest, currently studying for his PhD in Church history at St Patrick’s College Maynooth, spoke on behalf of the many students taught by Fr Dooley during his years a missionary in Zambia.

Fr John was known to visit the Jesuit communications office in Dublin before his illness prevented him from doing so. There, he spoke of the need to address the various issues of the day in a respectful manner, including the right to life from womb to tomb. He was always generous, gracious, kind and gentle, even if he didn’t agree with a person on an issue.

Fr John was born in Essex, UK, on 22 May 1930. He was raised in Tramore, County Waterford, and he was educated at Waterpark College, Waterford and Clongowes Wood College SJ, Kildare. He entered the Society of Jesus at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois on 7 September 1946 and he took his first vows two years later.

His Jesuit formation included studies in Arts at UCD, Dublin; philosophy at Tullabeg, County Offaly; and theology at Milltown Park, Dublin. He was ordained a Jesuit priest at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin, on 31 July 1961.

During his earlier years as a Jesuit priest, he taught in Coláiste Iognáid SJ, Galway and Clongowes Wood College SJ, Kildare; and he taught in Instituto Leone XIII Jesuit school, Milan, Italy from 1966 to 1980.

Later, he was an Irish Jesuit missionary in Zambia from 1981 to 2008. He was a teacher and Spiritual Father at St Edmund’s Secondary School in Mazabuka and Chaplain and teacher at Mukasa Minor Seminary in Choma. He also assisted in the Parish at Nakambala Catholic Church in Mazabuka.

Fr John returned home to Ireland in 2008 due to health reasons. Since 2010, he lived in Milltown Park, Dublin where he assisted in the community and at Cherryfield Lodge nursing home.

He moved to Cherryfield Lodge nursing home in 2018 where he prayed for the Church and the Society of Jesus. Following his Funeral Mass on 16 November 2022, he was buried in the Jesuit plot at Glasnevin Cemetery.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal.

Interfuse No 14 : April 1981

FROM BOSTON TO TAMPA

John Dooley

As part of his sabbatical year, John visited many of our secondary schools in the United States. Here's what he found memorable about such places as Boston College High School, Regis (New York), St. Francis Xavier's (Cincinnatil, St. Ignatius College Prep. (Chicagol, Matteo Ricci (Denver), "S.I." (San Francisco), Brophy (Phoenix) and Disney World (Tampa).

I left Milan for Boston on September 18th last on the first leg of a three-month tour of the United States. My sabbatical year is being divided between a visit to the U.S. and a Renewal Course at Nemi outside Rome. Having been Chaplain to the American and English-speaking people in Milan for eleven years, I wanted to take a look at U.S. teaching systeins and get an over-all picture of Church life there. A special discount for visitors allowed me to use internal flights at the modest cost of 400 dollars.

I chose Boston as my first stop because I knew I would be more at home there. I stayed at Boston College High School for a fortnight and sat in on classes, especially Religion and Classics. In some classes (Freshmen and Sophomore, i.e. 1st and 2nd years) Religion teaching was integrated with English Literature, as an experiment. For Juniors and Seniors (15 - 18 yrs age-group), besides formal Religion classes a Retreat Program was organised, presenting a variety of one, two, or three-day experiences to help students explore their relationship with God at a deeper level.

I stayed for a longer period at Boston because I knew that the High School there would be typical of our other American High Schools.

From Boston I went to Regis High School, New York. We have three other High Schools in the city but I had time to visit only one. Regis is unique among Jesuit Schools in that all the students are there on scholarships and have no tuition fee. Of course the 'I,Q.” is very high because the entrance test requires an above-average standard. Although I did not visit Fordhan Prep. School I know that it has a special carisma for individual treatment of boys, directing them to apply themselves to those subjects which most suit their particular character and personality.

From New York I went to Washington D.C., to Gonzaga High School, whose President is a fr. Bernard Dooley. He has the task of integrating pupils from the 70% Negro population of the United States Capital. It is a delicate matter as the legro students must be capable of following a normal course of studies. At present 23% of the students are Negro, and the integration process is working successfully.

Cincinnati was iny next stop. St. Francis Xavier High School is a new building outside the town. There I found Fr. Pat McAteer, a former Co. Down G.A.A. player, now training the school soccer tean. The Science equipment and teaching methods are among the best I have seen. Although there are very few Negro students, the Religion Department is headed by a Negro lay-teacher who does an excellent job. There are quite a number of non-Catholics in the school, but they all attend the Religion classes.

Chicago is indeed a Windy City'. I was met at the airport by smiling Medical Missionary of Mary, Sr. Jeane, St. Ignatius College Prep, has a well-deserved name among the citizens. Integration is a live question here, too, but my main interest in the school was the Religion teaching. I attended Fr. Mark Link's classes and was able to learn something from his method; the textbooks on Scripture written by him are deservedly popular and he has the kack of making them come to life.

From Chicago I was able to pay a flying visit to Marquette University High School in Milwaukee where, as I sat in on a Religion Class I heard students reading and discussing Fr. Arrupe's famous address at Valencia on “Men for Others”.

St. Louis was my next port of call. We have two High Schools there: St. Louis University High School and De Smet High School. I stayed at St. Louis University High, alma mater of the famed Dr. Tom Dooley to whom, I believe, I may be related (since his people came from the midlands). Among the languages taught at this school are Russian and Chinese. The library is excellently laid out and possesses several micro-film units including microfilms of almost all the editions of the “New York Times” since 1850. One of the Fathers teaches shooting!

By early Noveaber I found myself at our High School (also called Regis) in the lone-mile-high' city, Denver, Colorado has the sub-title of “State of the Mountain Plains”. Said Fr. Ralph Houlihan, the new headmaster: “Denver is the fastest developing city in the United States. We are experiencing a large influx of Spanish-Mexican immigrants. Eighteen per cent of our boys are of Latino origin. At one time Regis was the Cinderella of our mid-western High Schools, but standards are improving. From Denver I was able to phone Fr. Joe Carlin, who is P.P. of a parish near Pueblo.

A D.C. 8 brought me from Denver, North-West over snow-covered Wyoming and Idaho to Seattle. There I stayed at Matteo Ricci High School on East Eleventh Avenue. The climate of Seattle is very like our own, temperate and moist. Our school is labouring under a shortage of fathers: there are only seven or eight of them for 600 students - hardly sufficient to give a truly Jesuit imprint.

I arrived at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco; on Nov. 13th. “S.I.”, as the school is endearingly called, is deservedly held in high esteem by the San Francisco people. It is the most modern Jesuit school building that I saw in the U.S. and it has been built to last. I attended a comedy produced by the boys; “The Goodbye People “by Herb Gardner. The excellent standard of acting was enhanced by the presence of actresses from the local Convent of Mercy school.

At Los Angeles I visited a Parish Priest in Bellflower, Fr. Philip McGarth from Kilkenny. This gave me an opportunity of observing American parish life. We have a high-quality school in Los Angeles and the student population is evenly divided between Latino, Negro and white boys.

If you suffer from rheumatism or arthritis, Phoenix is the place to go. The climate of Arizona is dry and warm all the year round. Brophy College Prep., built in a charming Spanish architectural style, has the best centre of audio-visual aids I have come across. Fr, Menard, who is in charge of the Centre, buys equipment and materials at reduced rates, but his speciality lies in making, as much as possible, his own slides, “It's quite easy to make them”, he told me, “and you can build up your own slide library using a simple index system”.
'
In Houston I stayed with a family who used to be my parishioners in Milan. I visited the famous Space Centre where all the scientists and employees are keyed up for the launching of a shuttle space-craft in the near future. I also helped out in a suburb parish delicated to St. Ambrose where Fr. Chang, a Hong Kong Jesuit, is assistant.

New Orleans is a city with a distinct character and wandering through the French Quarter in the evening is a delightful experience. Our students at Jesuit High have a touch of class? and wear Khaki uniforms, a dress which makes them rather conspicuous in public, The school has a tradition of serious study and solid fomation.

Tampa, Florida, was my last overstop. Of course the climate and environment are ideal. There surely is no other Jesuit Community House which can boast of a swinning-pool in the patio. The school buildings are modern and compact. The only lement the staff have is that the holiday atmosphere of Florida makes application to study more meritorious and some times even heroic. I managed to visit Disney World where one is wasted into a drean-world and one experiences the meaning of the word 'enchantment.

During my visit to the United States I was able to enjoy other experiences such as assisting at the Papal Mass in Boston Common, and again at Yankee Stadium New York, My most spectacular moment was an hour's flight in a six-seater plane through the Grand Canyon just before sunset. There is a lot that I did not manage to do, but the over-all picture I have is of the committment of our American Jesuit priests and brothers to the cause of education at all levels, and of a Church vibrant and active even if certain tensions occur which are less in evidence here. It was a bird's-eye view, brief yet enriching, of our sister-continent, “America the beautiful”.

Interfuse No 28 : September 1983

A LEAP IN THE TWILIGHT

John Dooley

A “late vocation” to the Foreign Missions, John encourages others to follow in his foot-steps to Africa where the harvest is rich: and the number of middle-aged labourers from the Irish Province could be profitably doubled.

When I accepted Bishop Corboy's invitation to do a two-year stint in his diocese, I took a leap in the twilight. I would not have so done without the express encouragement of Fr. Provincial, Three times the Bishop had stayed at Instituto Leone XIII, Milan, while attending the Synod of Bishops and paying a visit to Cardinal Colombo: a generous and efficient group of Milan Diocesan priests are working in Monze diocese, particularly in Siavonga and Chirundu, near Kariba. I was glad to come to Zambia and saw it as a happy extension of the eleven years spent in Milan.

My stay in Zambia comes under the category of “lived experience”. It is difficult to give an adequate picture of something one has lived; in fact it is an impossible task, precisely because it is “vital”. Nevertheless I am acceding to the wishes of the Bishop in writing down the general impression left on me after this two year experience. Besides, if we never even tried to jot down our impressions, however imperfectly, how could we ever share with each other? No Interfuse!

The first impression. I had of Zambia was that it is surprisingly modern. The airport, with its impeccably landscaped highway approach, the city of Lusaka with its high-rise banks and public buildings (designed in part by Irish architects), the well built school-buildings and community and teachers houses, the hospitals, the flourishing projects and plantations, the presence of tractors and modern machinery, ... all gave me the impression that Zambia has stepped right into the twentieth century. And all this has been achieved, largely, since independence was won in 1964 .

I was more than happy to see a model library at the Novitiate, planned and carefully built-up by Fr. Eddie Murphy a library with books at arms' reach, no climbing stairs, well-stocked and with artistic touches. An armchair foyer invites one to browse and lends a homely touch. I am told that in Vienna one per cent of money spent on public buildings. is set aside to make them artistic-looking, Fr. Eddie has taken a leaf from that.

I was assigned to act as chaplain to two secondary schools in Mazabuka, 20 kms. west of Lusaka and 60 kms. From Monze. My main duties have been in the boys school which is called “St. Edmund's” (after the 13th century archbishop of Canterbury and patron saint of Edmund Rice). I have not been allowed to neglect the Girls Secondary school which is directed by the Holy Rosary Sisters. The initial adaptation required of me taxed any hidden energies and several times I was tempted to run away. But I stood my ground. I soon discovered that school life in Zambia is no less full of interest than ät home.

My first impression of St. Edmund's was that I was continuing a tradition. Others had sown and I had come to reap. Frs Tony Geoghegen, Bob Kelly, and John O'Holohan had ploughed away happily in the fertile soil of the African soul. They, and the Irish Christian Brothers, had established customs and values that form the boys to piety. I was especially impressed by the unself-conscious devotion of the African student during Mass. It struck me that they have a lot to teach us in Europe about spiritual matters.

Indeed, it is that spiritual, “mystical” character in the Africans that struck me most. Their own traditions keep them very much in touch with the spirit world. They have a rich variety of names to convey the idea of God'. Their spontaneous approach to piety gives their liturgies a joy and élan' that are not so common in cold northern climates. God is a reality in their lives.

Various groups and associations have been well established at St. Edmund's: Legion of Mary, Apostleship of Prayer, Altar Servers (Sodality of St. John Berchmans), Choir, Pioneer Total Abstinence
Association, army cadets, catechumenate, drama, . The boarders, who comprise two thirds of the student population, are naturally. more involved in some of these groups.

The Pioneer Association deserves special mention. The movement has caught on remarkably well in Africa. There are Centres in very many parishes and schools. There is no need to spell . out for the students the dangers of excessive alcohol: beer-drinking after football and dancing, is a national pastime. The Pioneer Association with its spiritual and organized tackling of the problem has proved itself very effective. A new “Handbook for Africa” has just been produced by Fr. Robert Kelly. Last Autumn ('82) we had a very successful Rally between tbe two schools and Fr. Kelly was the principal speaker.

There is even a rival to the “Artane Band” at St. Edmund's: For marching and musical verve, especially on public occasions, the school Band is in the true “Artane” tradition. Almost every public ceremony of any importance in Mazabuka (and occasionally elsewhere) is graced by their musical presence. It is a proud sight, the blue jacketed, white-trousered troupe leading the school children of the entire township to the Show Grounds to attend a Youth or Independence Day Rally. The Band was founded by Bro, Tony McGeagh who was headmaster of St. Edmund's during the crucial years when it was being built up to its present strength. Bro. McGeagh is a former head of Synge St. CBS. He has recently returned to Ireland for good.

The role of the school chaplain has received a growing importance in recent years. Written articles have been appearing in various reviews on the subject, and special commissions appointed by: various Episcopal Conferences around the world such as the Bishops of England and Wales have drawn up an exhaustive and inspiring document on the role, duties and rights of the School-Chaplain. The chaplains operating in Zambia (including chaplains of Third Level Institutions) have formed a National Chaplains' Association. This Association runs a yearly workshop which is very helpful for all involved in this field. A revision has been made of the English document to suit the Zambian situation.

My duties at St. Edmund's have been no different from of those of any normal school Priest-chaplain. Daily Mass in both the Girls' and Boys' schools is well attended. Each of the schools has its own separate Sunday Mass. Teaching Load (in Relig Education) is not excessive, to allow the chaplain time for spiritual animation. A weekly confession period is well availed of. There is ample time for personal conversations with students and spiritual direction. Perhaps in one sense my position has been a bit special: the fact that both schools are being run by religious. This fact calls for a high degree of cooperation and understanding between chaplain and religious community, an exercise in dialogue which requires a certain suave if at times tenacious disposition. The chaplain is a
very important person in a school, but he is not God almighty!

A big problem for the chaplain is the fact that in all mission schools now there is a large proportion of non- Catholics. Seventh Day Adventists, New Apostolic Church, Salvation Army, the whole gamut: the poor people of Zambia have been subjected to the influence of all the divisions that have occurred in the Anglo-Saxon brand of Christ's one, true Church. No wonder they are confused. In St. Edmund's about half the school population is Catholic. In Canisius College the percentage is around 40.

In actual fact, and in the light of modern religious approaches, the religious pluralism of the mission schools works to our advantage Zambia has given a lead from which Ireland itself might well take an example. There is a common religious syllabus for all primary and secondary schools which aims at giving the pupils religious values: these values spiritual and moral involve obviously an appropriate behaviour The pupils are led to appreciate these values by a study of the main religious traditions in Zambia (namely, Christianity, Indigenous beliefs, Hinduism and, Islam). There are religious elements in the Zambian National Philosophy, Humanism, and these are also integrated into the syllabus.

I have often thought that a similar course is urgently needed in Ireland. In our religious formation we must take account of the various traditions existing in our country: English, Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Christianity, with at least some knowledge of world religions.

The Zambian Schools Religious Education Syllabus is heavily Biblical a fact that goes to show that the bible is acceptable to everone (in examinations, the Muslims generally are among the first places, which made one Brother remark that perhaps we should first turn the students into Muslims!). Of course, each student receives additional formation on a separate occasion in the traditions and beliefs of his own religion or church.

Although ecumenical dialogue is one of the key approaches in religious formation today, it still remains true that the faith needs to be defended. This was borne in upon me by my conversations with Fr. Michael Moloney in St. Ignatius, Lusaka. Recently, one of the foreign Sects published a booklet entitled “Comparative Religion” in which all the old supposed skeletons in the cupboard were paraded. Fr. Michael is just completing an answer to this booklet, in which he refutes, line for line, the caricature of Catholic doctrine presented in it. Fr. Michael is convinced that a little theology out here goes a long way, and he is looking for help!

The influence of Religious Sisters is very noticeable in Zambia. The indigenous female religious vocations are numerous, so much so that the “Irish Sisters of Charity” have had to drop the “Irish”. The Holy Rosary Sisters (Meath), Mercy, Ferrybank, Sisters of Charity together with indigenous, Polish and Italian Sisters - to mention only those operating in Monze Diocese - make a formidable company of persuasive evanglisers. A local catechumen declared: “It was either the SDA or the Catholic Church. And then I met the Sisters”. The Holy Rosary Sisters include two Americans and two Nigerians among their number.

The international aspect of the Zambian vice-province appealed to me in a special way. The history of the Zambesi Mission, as it was then called, shows how international it was almost from the beginning, ever since Fr. General Beckx realised it was too great a challenge for any single province. The French Jesuit Fr. Joseph Moreau has left an indelible impression on the Tonga land and People: he even taught them how to plough with oxen. Today Zambian, Slavic and Oregon Jesuits bring an aura of universality to many of our works, not to mention the Chelston Novitiate for East Africa. East and West have certainly met here, and that helps North and South meet, too, at a deeper than monetary level.

These are just a few of the impressions left on me during my first tour of Zambia. It hasn't been a picnic, but neither has it been too difficult. The needs of Zambia are much greater, relatively, than those of home. The poverty is greater, but not human poverty or poverty of values. A lot is being spoken and written at present on the subject of justice. I often think that Fr. John Sullivan, were he alive today, would cut the cackle and come out to Africa where there are so many of his beloved sick and poor. Fr. John had only a bicycle. We have the jet. If there be a Zambian who can speak Irish, he is saying to the reader of these lines (”si capax est”). “Tar agus Feach! Come and see!”

Born: 20 November 1944, Rathmines, Dublin
Entered: 12 September 1963, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 20 June 1975, Gonzaga College SJ, Ranelagh, Dublin
Final Vows: 31 May 1985, Clongowes Wood College, Naas, County Kildare
Died: 25 January 2024 - Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

part of the Milltown Park community at the time of death

FSS
Born : 30th November 1944, Dublin
Raised : Rathmines, Dublin
Early Education at De La Salle, Churchtown, Dublin

12th September 1963 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
27th September 1965 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1965-1968 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1968-1970 Chantilly, France - Studying Philosophy at Séminaire Missionaire
1970-1972 Belvedere College SJ - Regency : Teacher; Studying H Dip in Education at UCD
1972-1975 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
20th June 1975 Ordained at Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
1975-1976 Paris, France - Studying Theology at Centre Sèvres
1976-1980 Belvedere College SJ - Teacher; Assistant Headmaster;
1977 Gamesmaster; Chaplain to French Community in Ireland
1980-1981 Tullabeg - Tertianship
1981-2009 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Teacher; Chaplain to French Community in Ireland
1982 Spiritual Father to Higher Line; Vice-Postulator for Cause of Fr John Sullivan SJ
31st May 1985 Final Vows at Clongowes Wood College SJ, Co Kildare
1987 Vice-President of Alliance Française
1998 Sabbatical in USA
1999 Teacher; Spiritual Father to Poetry; Co-ordinator of Student Exchanges; Co-ordinator of twinning Clongowes and Portora Royal School, Enniskillen; Chaplain to the French Community in Ireland; Vice-Postulator of the Cause of Fr John Sullivan SJ
2000 Moderator Higher Line Debating Society
2001 Patron Higher Line Debating Society; Consultor; Chaplain to Higher Line
2007 Vice-Postulator of the Cause of Fr John Sullivan SJ; Teacher; Spiritual Father to Higher Line; Assists in College; Chaplain to the French Community in Ireland
2009-2024 Milltown Park - Curate in Sacred Heart Parish, Donnybrook; Vice-Postulator of the Cause of Fr John Sullivan SJ; Chaplain to French Community in Ireland
2018 Assists in Sacred Heart Parish, Donnybrook, Dublin 4; Vice-Postulator of the Cause of Fr John Sullivan SJ
2021 Cherryfield Lodge - Vice-Postulator of the Cause of Fr John Sullivan SJ; Prays for the Church and Society

https://jesuit.ie/news/conor-harper-sj-rest-in-peace/

Conor Harper SJ: Rest in peace

Jesuits, family and friends, and Michael Jackson, the Church of Ireland Archbishop, attended the funeral Mass of Conor Harper SJ, in the Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook, Tuesday 30 January 2024, 11 am. Conor died peacefully in Cherryfield nursing home on Friday 26 January, where he was being cared for after a long illness. Many who could not make his funeral Mass in person watched it online.

Fr Conor was part of the parish team in Donnybrook parish from 2009 until 2021. At the start of Mass the parish priest of the Sacred Heart Church, Fr Ciaran O’Carroll, welcomed the large number of parishioners who were in attendance and said that their presence was a testament to the service that Fr Conor gave to the parish.

Bruce Bradley SJ presided at the Eucharist. In his homily, he spoke about Fr Conor’s deep affiliation with France and his contribution as chaplain to the French community in Dublin. He welcomed the French Ambassador Vincent Guerend’s attendance at the Mass noting that Conor loved all things French and was awarded the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2014 ».

Fr Bruce recalled his time with Fr Conor at Emo in 1963 as a Jesuit novice. “He was a larger-than-life figure. He was loyal and generous,” commented Bruce; “And he would truly go out of his way for another person again and again… Conor honoured the work of Pope Francis in mirroring the understanding of the Church as a field hospital for the wounded.”

Fr Bruce concluded by telling those gathered the story of what Conor replied when asked what God might say to him when he returned home. “God will forgive me,” said Conor, “That’s His job, that’s who He is”. Conor died holding the crucifix with which he made his first vows, said Bruce. “He trusted in God’s mercy to bring him home safely to His blessed room.”

Fr Conor joined the Jesuit Order in 1975. He taught at Belvedere College SJ and Clongowes Wood College SJ. He was appointed Vice-postulator of Fr John Sullivan SJ’s canonisation cause and was deeply devoted to Fr John and his cause.

Fr John Sullivan SJ was baptized in the Church of Ireland. His father was a Protestant and his mother was a Catholic. At 36, he converted to Catholicism and later joined the Jesuit Order. It was in this context that Fr Conor became a close friend of the Church of Ireland. On hearing of his death, Dr. Michael Jackson, Church of Ireland Archbishop, issued a statement expressing his condolences to Conor’s family, to his fellow Jesuits, and in particular “to the community of Clongowes where Conor taught for many years”.

The Archbishop noted that “Conor was a lifelong friend of the Church of Ireland and fearless in his expounding and living a gracious ecumenism. He died fittingly on the culminating day of the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. In this spirit, Conor is known throughout Ireland and worldwide for his advocacy of the cause of The Reverend John Sullivan SJ who in so many ways lived the best of both the Anglican and the Roman Catholic traditions. Conor rejoiced in working for this cause and in the family members of John Sullivan whom he met through this”.

Fr Conor’s brother Neil shared some final words at the end of Mass, telling the congregation that Conor was “full of life, and joy and he loved the company of others.”

Before his final commendation, a family relative led the congregation in saying the novena prayer to Fr John Sullivan SJ. Fr Conor’s cortège then made its way to Clongowes Wood College SJ, where he was buried alongside the Blessed Jesuit for whose cause he worked so tirelessly right until the end.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Born: 27 February 1934, Derry City, County Derry
Entered: 27 March 1956, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final vows: 02 February 1966, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 01 August 2023, Coptic Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia - Southern Africa Province (SAP)

Part of the John Chula House, Zambia Community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

1956-1958 St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1958-1959 Milltown Park - Refectorian
1959-1960 Clongowes Wood College - works in school
1960-1962 Rathfarnham Castle - working in the community
1962-1963 Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia - studying language, involved in buildings
1963-1964 Charles Lwanga, Chisekesi, Zambia - maintenance
1964-1966 St Ignatius Lusaka, Zambia - studying Art and Engineering
1966-1971 Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia - Maintenance
1971-1972 Ireland
1972-1978 Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia - Maintenance
1978-1980 St Ignatius, Lusaka, Zambia
1980-1986 Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia - Maintenance
1986-1989 Luwisha House, Lusaka, Zambia
1989-199 Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia - Maintenance

Final Vows 15 August 1966, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia

Southern Africa Province Province Obituary - sent 04 August 2023

Br Gabriel McKinney, S.J.

(1934-2023. In Zambia 1962-2023)

1 August 2023

He was 89 years old and 67 years in the Society of Jesus, 61 of those in Zambia.

Ort.................27 Feb 1934
Loc. Nat......... Derry, Co. Derry, N. Ireland, U.K.
Ingr. ............... 27 Mar 1956
Loc. Ingr. ....... Emo Park, Ireland
Tertianship.....Tullabeg, Co Offaly, Ireland
Transcribed..............HIB to SAP on 03 Dec 1969
Grad. ............. FF Dies.........02 Feb 1966
Loc. Grad....... Canisius, Chikuni Mission, Zambia
Defunc.. .........01 Aug 2023
Loc. Defunc....Coptic Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia

Gabriel McKinney was born on 27 February 1934 in Derry, Northern Ireland, of Thomas and Mary (née Crossan) McKinney. He went to primary school at St Eugenes and then finished off at St Columbus College. He always remained close to his family and would spend most of his home leave with them. One of his brothers, Anthony, became a Carmelite priest working in Dublin. In the time of The Troubles of the 1960s.1970s when there was so much social conflict in the North, Gabriel would have on display in Chikuni recreation room various memorabilia, including a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier.

He entered the Society at Emo in 1956. Afterwards he did some juniorate in Milltown Park before being missioned to Northern Rhodesia in 1962. He spent two years at St Ignatius, Lusaka gaining mechanical experience in a city garage and so preparing himself for his life’s work in the garage at Chikuni. He took his final vows in Chikuni in 1966 and later joined the newly founded Vice-Province of Zambia in 1969.

In Chikuni he took charge of the garage and of all matters connected with the functioning of a large and varied fleet of motor vehicles. These were absolutely essential in the pastoral activities that were carried out not only from Chikuni itself, but also from the more-or-less dependent parishes of Monze, Chivuna, Fumbo and Kasiya. In addition, there were the tractors and other machinery for the farm, as well as the pumps so necessary for the water supplied. Gabriel and his team were always there to keep them in good working condition, even if at times they had to coax some of them back to life after the daily wear and tear, an accident, or even neglect.

A noteworthy factor in all of Gabriel’s garage work was his success in transmitting his knowledge and skills to many local young men. Some of these stayed with him for years, working alongside him. Others left and went on to start small-scale mechanics business and fitness centers of their own. Gabriel may not always have been aware of it, but the work he has doing made a major contribution to the economic independence of the people and to their all-important food security.

He also served as a well-liked and effective house minister, for a year at St Ignatius, for two years at Luwisha House and for two separate periods at Chikuni (1979-1982; 1988-1990). He brought to this work the care for order and detail that characterized everything he did in the mechanical area. In addition, he developed a flair for vegetable growing and maintained a sizeable and productive garden in Chikuni, and also at Kizito’s near Monze during his brief stay there in 2002.

Having spent more than 50 years in Chikuni, Gabriel became almost the embodiment of that community, with its positive reputation for hospitality and for apostolic outreach to the nearby religious communities and the families of teachers, development personnel and workers living in the locality. He was a warm- hearted community man who enjoyed living and interacting with fellow-Jesuits from a variety of nationalities.

Those who lived with him, or knew him reasonably well, were much aware that what really kept Gabriel going, whether in the garage, in the community or in the garden, was his deep spiritual life. There was nothing ostentatious about this, but it was clearly the guiding principle of his whole existence.

https://jesuit.ie/news/remembering-brother-gabriel-mckinney/

Jesuit brother Gabriel McKinney SJ, who spent sixty years on mission in Africa, passed away on 1st August at the Coptic Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia, aged 89. Irish Jesuits International commemorated him recently with the essay below.

Go well, Brother Gabriel

From all the team at Irish Jesuits International we would like to send our thoughts and prayers to the family, friends and loved one’s of Brother Gabriel McKinney who departs this life leaving behind fond memories of his time and work in Zambia.

Gabriel McKinney was born on 27 February 1934 in Derry, Northern Ireland, of Thomas and Mary (née Crossan) McKinney. He went to primary school at St Eugenes and then later at St Columbus College.

He entered the Society at Emo in 1956. Afterwards he did some juniorate in Milltown Park before being missioned to Northern Rhodesia in 1962. He spent two years at St Ignatius, Lusaka gaining mechanical experience in a city garage preparing himself for his life’s work in the garage at Chikuni.

He took his final vows in Chikuni in 1966 and later joined the newly founded Vice-Province of Zambia in 1969. In Chikuni he took charge of the garage and all things regarding the up-keep and functioning of a large and varied fleet of motor vehicles. These were absolutely essential in the pastoral activities that were carried out not only from Chikuni itself, but also from the more-or-less dependent parishes of Monze, Chivuna, Fumbo and Kasiya.

In addition, there were the tractors and other machinery for the farm, as well as the pumps that crucial for the water irrigation. Gabriel and his team were always there to keep them in good working condition, even if at times they had to coax some of them back to life after the daily wear and tear.

A noteworthy factor in all of Gabriel’s garage work was his success in transmitting his knowledge and skills to many local young men. Some of these stayed with him for years, working alongside him. Others left and went on to start small-scale mechanics business and centres of their own. Gabriel may not always have been aware of it, but the work he was doing made a major contribution to the economic independence of the people and to their all-important food security.

Having spent more than 50 years in Chikuni, Gabriel became almost the embodiment of that community. He was a warm-hearted man who dedicated his life to making the lives of others better through his mechanic hands, upskilling and outreach to teachers and the wider parish community.

Go well, Brother Gabriel. Rest in Peace.

Posted on Irish Jesuit International August 8, 2023 by Joe Munnelly

Born: 13 August 1928, Lauragh, Tuosist, County Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1960, Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
Final Vows: 07 October 1976, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner St, Dublin
Died: 02 August 2023, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Son of Thomas Smyth and Frances Lyne.

Born : 13th August 1928 Lauragh, Tuocist, Co Kerry
Raised : Lauragh, Tuocist, Co Kerry
Early Education at Lauragh NS, Co Kerry; Mungret College SJ, Limerick
7th September 1946 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1948 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1948-1951 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1951-1954 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1954-1956 Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency : Studying Cantonese and Teaching Catechetics at Xavier House
1956-1957 Kowloon, Hong Kong - Regency : Teacher
1957-1961 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
28th July 1960 Ordained at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
1961-1962 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1962-1963 Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Minister; Socius to Novice Master; Church Prefect at Xavier House
1963-1966 Kowloon, Hong Kong - Teacher at at Wah Yan College
1965 Prefect of Studies; President of Academic Alumni; President of Past Pupils Union
1966-1971 Belvedere College SJ - Teacher; Assistant Prefect of Studies; Studying H Dip in Education at UCD
1968 Newsboys Club
1970 Spiritual Father 3rd & 4th years; Assistant Career Guidance
1971-1979 Gardiner St - Assists in Church; BVM & SFX Sodalities; Newsboys Club
1976 Parish Chaplain; Chaplain in Hill St Primary School
7th October 1976 Final Vows at St Francis Xavier, Gardiner St, Dublin
1979-1982 Claver House - Curate in Gardiner St; living in Hardwicke St., Dublin; Spiritual Director Belvedere Youth Club
1982-1985 Luís Espinal - Curate in Gardiner St; living in Hardwicke St., Dublin; Spiritual Director Belvedere Youth Club
1985-1990 Gardiner St - Curate in Gardiner St; living in Hardwicke St., Dublin; Spiritual Director Belvedere Youth Club
1988 Resides in Gardiner St Community
1990-1991 Croftwood, Cherry Orchard - Chaplain in Cherry Orchard Parish of Most Holy Sacrament; Assists in Gardiner St
1991-1992 Milltown Park - Sabbatical
1992-2000 Belvedere - Assistant Pastoral Care Co-ordinator; Ministers in Inner City; Assistant Librarian & Sacristan; College Confessor; Chaplain to Social Integration Scheme
1994 Chaplain in Junior School;
1996 Pastoral work in Gardiner St; Spiritual Director
2000-2023 Gardiner St - Assists in Church; Church Team; Spiritual Director
2015 Prays for the Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge

https://jesuit.ie/news/featured-news/death-of-fr-james-smyth/

James Smyth SJ RIP: Friend of the poor

Fr James (Jim) Smyth, at 95 the oldest Jesuit in the Irish Province, has died in Cherryfield Nursing Home, Milltown. He passed away peacefully on the morning of Thursday, 31 August. His funeral took place on Tuesday 5 September.

He had a remarkable lifelong involvement with those on the margins in north inner city Dublin, living alongside them in a small one-bedroomed flat in Hardwicke Street. He was a friend to the travelling community, prisoners and anyone in need.

He was a member of the Gardiner Street Community for many years. Richard Dwyer SJ, Superior of that community offers the following reflection on his life.

Renowned for compassion and kindness

Fr James Smyth SJ was born on 13 August 1928 in Lauragh, Tuosist, Co Kerry. He went to Lauragh National School and received his secondary education at Mungret College SJ, Limerick.

On 7th September 1946 he entered the Society of Jesus at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois and took his first vows on 8 September 1948.

After taking an arts degree at UCD, followed by 3 years of philosophy at Tullabeg, he went to Hong Kong in 1954 to study Cantonese and teach catechetics. He returned to Dublin to study theology at Milltown Park and was ordained to the priesthood on 28 July 1960.

He returned to Hong Kong for 4 years after his tertianship (1962) working as Socius (assistant) to the Master of Novices there and later as a teacher in Wah Yan College, Kowloon.

James returned to Dublin and from 1966 to 1971, he worked in Belvedere College SJ. Through a chance encounter on a bus from Rathnew in Wicklow to Dublin, he was invited into the Newsboys Club not far from Belvedere. He attended the club for a number of weeks and was told to sit in the corner and say nothing. According to himself, he felt awkward and embarrassed and spoke to no one. He missed one session and when he returned, the boys asked him where he had been and that they had missed him. This was the beginning of a remarkable lifelong involvement that James developed with the people of north inner city of Dublin.

He went on to live in Hardwicke Street flats in small one bedroom for a 12-year period and became part of the social fabric of people there. He became close friends with the parents and grandparents and became a trusted and beloved pastor, confessor and counsellor to them. He married their sons and daughters, baptized the children of those unions, and became a priestly grandfather to the numerous children.

He visited the sick and elderly. He was a frequent visitor to Mountjoy and St. Patrick’s prison and was renowned for his compassion and kindness. He highlighted the poor condition of the flats and the lack of any play and recreational facilities. James himself lived on a basic income of £20 per week and had to go without meat to buy a shirt or a pair of shoes. All of this time he worked as a curate in Gardiner Street Church and spent long hours in the confession box. He was loved by all who came to him and he was noted for his compassion and understanding.

Over his years in Hardwicke Street and the Church in Gardiner Street, he also was involved with the Travelling Community and again presided over many weddings and baptisms. In a nutshell, James discovered and developed in his heart a tremendous love of the poor and marginalized and the people of the North inner city and the Travelling Community took Fr James to their hearts and loved and revered him.

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s a heroin epidemic was devastating the lives of young people in the North Inner City. Along with the local residents, Fr James and Dublin City Councillor Christy Burke,set up a committee to rid Hardwicke Street of drug dealers and pushers who were making a lot of money from enticing friends and neighbours to take heroin. It was a wonderful example of a community coming together with great courage and determination to eradicate the scourge of hard drugs from their area and to prevent the death and utter destruction of young lives. Fr James and Christy received death threats as a result of their actions.

Fr James continued to live and work with the poor and marginalized in Gardiner Street Church up to his 85th year when ill health saw him transferred to Cherryfield Nursing Home. He settled in well to life in Cherryfield and was cherished by the staff as one of the oldest residents. The constant stream of visitors from the inner city, the Travelling Community and fellow Jesuits bore strong testimony to the love and affection he was held in, to the very end of his long life.

May he rest in peace and receive the fitting reward of all his good deeds in long priestly ministry.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a ainm dílis.

Richard Dwyer SJ

September 2023

Born: 05 September 1917, Clontarf, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 14 September 1936, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 19 March 1950

Younger Brother of Pearse O’Higgins - RIP 1976

Born: 17 March 1930, Glasnevin, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 08 October 1947, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1961, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 11 November 2020, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Left Society of Jesus: 10 December 1976

by 1954 at Berchmanskolleg, Pullach, Germany (GER S) studying
by 1963 at Sentmaringer Münster, Germany (GER I) making Tertianship
by 1966 at St Louis MO, USA (MAR) teaching
by 1974 at Regis Toronto, Canada (CAN S) sabbatical

https://lonergan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Shane-Hogan-Conn-ODonovan-Eulogy.pdf

A eulogy for Cornelius Patrick O’Donovan (17 March 1930 - 11 November 2020)
Shane Hogan, former Headmaster, St.Ignatius College, Riverview
21 November 2020

We are here to celebrate the precious life of Cornelius Patrick O’Donovan’s, or ‘Conn’ as he was more affectionally known.

Conn was an immensely special person to a great number of people from vast walks of life. From a young Irish lad in a big catholic family to a dynamic Jesuit, his adventurous and influential life in Australia is one worth remembering and celebrating. I pray these words are befitting of Conn and the extraordinary legacy that lives on in his family and friends.

In 2003 I was given a book by Daven Day SJ when he was Provincial. Its title was Heroic Leadership. It was an attempt by the author, an ex-Jesuit, to explain why the Jesuits had survived for the past 450 years while empires and successful corporations have fallen by the way side in that time. He put it down to 4 characteristics that he believes have served the Jesuits over that time: self-awareness, heroic deeds, ingenuity, and love.

Does each of these principals not sum up and epitomise this beautiful man’s character and personality and explain how he had such an impact on each person’s life that he touched.

Conn was born on 17 March 1930 in Dublin. The keen-eyed among you will have noticed the significance of this date – it is surprising he was not called Patrick Cornelius! As the second born male, Irish tradition states that he would be named after his paternal
grandfather and father.

His father was the Land Commissioner Inspector at this time but was famously behind the barricades at the Dublin General Post Office, shoulder to shoulder with Collins, Clarke, Connelly and McDermott, in the Easter Rising of 1916. Conn was very proud of this fact.

Conn had his Secondary education at Roscrea College, Tipperary for one year, and spent the remainder at Colaiste Mhuire, Dublin – an Irish-speaking Christian Brothers School. He entered the Society of Jesus on 8 October 1947, joining the Jesuit Novitiate at Emo, near Portarlington, where he spent two years of spiritual formation. In the Novitiate he was encouraged to read widely and to develop an interest in music and the arts, a passion he maintained throughout his life.

Following his time in the Jesuit Novitiate he travelled to Rathfarnham Castle where he studied for four years at the University College Dublin. An exemplary student, Conn pursued a demanding course, taking four subjects in Science and Mathematics. While he certainly could have obtained an impressive degree in Science, Conn’s heart remained in the realm of the humanities, and at the end of his first year, he switched to a degree in Latin and Irish. He would, of course, obtain First Class Honours. From here, Conn travelled to Germany to study Philosophy and upon commencement, greatly impressed the demanding German Jesuit professors, who promptly marked him as someone set to become a specialist in Philosophy.

Conn spent the next two years teaching and perfecting his craft at Belvedere College, Dublin, where his interest and ability in sports came to the fore. He was an excellent teacher, popular with the students and possessed an effortless and kindly control in the classroom and on the playing field. He then moved to Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy for four years of Theological Studies. It was Milltown that had a decisive impact on Conn, in large part due to his association with Philip McShane, with whom he forged a personal and intellectual friendship, one that would influence not only the other, but a whole generation of students of Philosophy at the Milltown Institute. His interest in philosophy deepened and matured over these years and the expectations of his German philosophy professors were further realised. After his final year of formation - his tertianship - Conn attended the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome where he obtained a Doctorate in Philosophy which he promptly put to use at the Jesuit St. Louis University in Missouri.

Conn returned home to Ireland where he taught Philosophy for 10 years. As ever, he was popular with colleagues and students, being urbane and gracious as he was. With his Milltown friend, Philip McShane, the pair established a philosophy course grounded in the teachings of the Canadian Jesuit Philosopher, Bernard Lonergan. This decision, however, was not without controversy and painful conflict. The modernisation of religious life was under heavy scrutiny at the time of the change, following the second Vatican Council. Although unknown, many believe that this series of conflicts in the 1960s were what caused Conn to leave the Priesthood and the Jesuits. Conn and the Jesuits remained passionately and eternally in a “benign and mutually appreciative relationship”.

Conn met the love of his life, Paddy, sometime after leaving the Jesuits. Paddy was an Australian nurse whom Conn met while she was travelling through Ireland. Conn was besotted with Paddy. Anything that she wanted, Conn was prepared to deliver. The two
become inseparable and shared many crazy adventures. His immense love for Paddy endured until her passing in 2003. A beautiful send-off was held for Paddy at St Canisius in Potts Point, arranged by Conn’s dear friend, Steve Sinn.

Conn arrived on the doorsteps of St Aloysius College in January 1980. He was looking for a job, as were a number of others who have been part of Jesuit education in Australia for the past 40 years. The first time I met him, Conn was sitting outside Father Bruce’s office waiting to go in and get our classes for the year. At Aloysius, Conn was an immediately hit with staff and students (and Jesuits). He played staff football on a Friday afternoon for many years. I did not realise how old he was at this time, probably 50 or close to it, he was easily one of the best players on the field – a great goalkeeper. Off the field, Conn could also hold his own with a drink.

Conn was an exceptional Latin teacher, Latin being one of eight languages Conn had been taught or taught himself to speak. He was also an exceptional Year Coordinator, earning the love of his students whom he loved in return. One of the reasons for this mutual respect was due to the fact that Conn could not bring himself to use the strap as punishment. He opted instead for a slower, arguably more cruel method, to talk them to death! If this did not work, he would refer them to his assistant, Neil Mushan, to sort out matters more… directly.This discipline method did not work when Helen Ephrums became his new assistant, as she also loved the boys to death.

Conn’s time at Aloysius is wonderfully remembered in comedian Ahn Do’s popular novel, The Happiest Refugee, where Conn’s passion and commitment to fair play saw him rest Ahn late in a Basketball game when Ahn was desperately trying to get to 30 points to win a new pair of basketball boots. When Conn was informed of his accidental actions, he was reported to have said, “Jaysus! Why didn’t you tell me earlier you daft eediot! Ahn, next time out, you’re on!” I can hear him saying it! With his right hand on his forehead.

When I first knew Conn, he was living at St Ignatius’ College in the old Infirmary. After that, he resided at Pearl Beach and travelled each day to St Aloysius is his green Morris Minor. He also for a time lived in a plush flat in Bellevue Hill, however the only piece of property he owned in his life, was an old church in the country which he used as a holiday house. Finally, Conn moved to Riverview and lived in a cottage by First Field for many years, a very happy place with classical music always drifting in the air as you approached.

On his departure from St Aloysius in the mid ‘90s, Conn travelled home to Ireland for a number of years. Paddy had convinced him she wanted to go home to Ireland to live and do a cooking course in France. Ever supportive of her dreams and true to his enduring love, whatever Paddy wanted, Conn was always prepared to deliver. While in Ireland, Conn taught at the Jesuit Belvedere College, Dublin, but both he and Paddy soon realised that with the Celtic Tiger enveloping the nation, Ireland was not the place and home they thought it to be.

Conn returned to Australia, commencing at St Ignatius’ College, Riverview, where he would join a number of us who had left Aloysius to start anew. After Paddy died, I asked Conn to come and live at Riverview. With this, a new amazing stage in his life began: that of a Jesuit, mystic and gypsy. Conn did possibly his best and most influential work while at Riverview. As mentor and confidante to the Headmaster, as well as Latin teacher, Conn spent many an afternoon wasting his time on Jennie Hickey and I - who never completed her homework and was inattentive at times - as he tried to get us through the Year 7 syllabus … year after year.

Conn’s impact on the formation of young Ignatian men and on those he worked with can be summed up by the outpouring of emotional responses on social media on hearing the news of his passing. Among the many moving tributes, here are two such examples of the widespread and lasting influence of Conn’s character.

A wonderful person and a great and enthusiastic 4th XI soccer coach! Profound intellect, humility, insight, depth of faith, simplicity of life, ease of finding joy… Conn’s gift for critical, honest thinking and seeking after truth made a big impact on me and many. I am moved to gratitude for his life. May Conn rest in peace. – James O’Brien
A dear friend and teacher who helped educate the whole person - a wonderful teacher of Ancient Greek who, in the course of teaching the subject, taught you also a good deal of literature - particularly the Irish poets - Latin, Gaelic, German, Philosophy and Theology. A great football coach who insisted on character and fair, firm play. But more, just a caring shepherd of people on their way into broader life. My favourite lessons in Greek were when he would turn up with a poem of Seamus Heaney’s,

because the story of the Trojan wars was also the story of all human struggles. Requiescat in pace, Conn. – Dominic Kelly

At this point, can I especially thank, from all of Conn’s friends and family, the care and love shared by the dozen or so girlfriends who spoilt him and gave him a graceful entry to heaven over the past months and were true friends to the end, especially you Christine, you have been an angel by his side.

In the Book of Isiah there is the story of the passing of a close friend of Cicero and when his wife asks him why do you weep so?

“The earth is poorer” said Cicero. “It has lost a good man, and we cannot afford it”

The earth will be a poorer place without Conn, at a time when good men are hard to find. Conn touched each and every one of us and has left us with memories we will cherish forever. Conn loved his Irish heritage, and in particular Irish poets. Conn and Paddy attached this poem to a birthday card they sent me in 2002. When you read it, hear Conn’s words in your head and heart.

https://lonergan.org.au/conn-odonovan-2/

27 November 2020

In Memory of Cornelius Patrick O’Donovan (17 March 1930 – 11 November 2020)

Our colleague and friend, Conn O’Donovan, was a regular attendee, participant and presenter at our biennial Australian Lonergan Workshop. He had a particular expertise and interest in the philosophy of learning.

He will remembered as a passionate and compassionate man, a lover of his wife Paddy, a scholar and a teacher,. He will also be remembered for this love of music and Lindt 85% dark chocolate.

His funeral service can be viewed (until 20th May 2021) at: https://www.FuneralVideo.com.au/CorneliusODonovan. A hard copy of the eulogy by Shane Hogan, former headmaster at St.Ignatius College, Riverview is available to download here. This includes a little of life-story.

In Lonergan circles, he will be remembered an educator, a reformer of philosophy and theology courses and a translator and interpreter of one of Lonergan’s important contributions to theology.

Educator

Throughout his life, Conn was an educator at various institutions – Belvedere College, Dublin; St.Louis University, Missouri; and Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy.

Over the past 40 years, Conn taught at St.Aloysius College, Milson’s Point and St.Ignatius College, Riverview (in Sydney, Australia). He is particularly noted for his course on “Wonder about Wonder: an introduction to philosophy” which aimed to have students grasp their own native wonder.

Reformer

In the early 1960s, Conn worked closely with Phil McShane and others in reforming philosophy and theology courses at the Jesuit Milltown Institute, Dublin. In a 2003 article in the Journal of Macrodynamic Analysis reflecting on the first forty years of Phil McShane, Conn recalled the challenge and the difficulties they faced:

There was considerable discontent, and even cynicism, among those Jesuit students, whether Lonergan inspired or not, who looked on theology as something more than just a canonical prerequisite for ordination, or who had already achieved considerable success in some other field. Many of them simply went along with the system, mastering the matter presented and producing it, on request, at examination time; others registered a kind of protest by pursuing private interests as much as possible; those inspired by Lonergan tended increasingly to raise questions in class in a manner that challenged their professors’ authority, at times, unfortunately, with a crude appeal to the authority of Lonergan. We did not know then that we were living through the final years of a system that Lonergan later described as hopelessly antiquated but not yet demolished, that what was happening at Milltown was happening all over the world, and that the upheaval that was soon to come would affect much more than the traditional seminary courses in philosophy and theology.

Translator and interpreter

In the early 1970s, Conn undertook the long and arduous task of translating, from Latin into English, the first part of the first volume of Bernard Lonergan’s De Deo Trino. It was published in 1976 by Darton Longman & Todd as The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology and examined the dialectical process by which the dogma of the Trinity developed in the first four centuries. The Way to Nicea was the first translation of Lonergan’s Latin writings to be published.

Lonergan was always reluctant to have any of his Latin texts translated because he wrote them in Latin for a very specific audience, I.e., the students from 17 nations at the Gregorian, as well the Holy Office who had to approve all texts used at pontifical universities. He said that he would have written it “differently” in English or French.
Having read Conn’s translation of the first part of de Deo Trino he thought it excellent and agreed to have it published as The Way to Nicea.The book includes an important introduction by Conn in which he sets out to:

survey the content and indicate the structure of the whole two-volume work [De Deo Trino] of which the part translated constitutes one sixth,
Give an account of Lonergan’s academic courses on the Trinity, from 1945 to 1964, with some references to other work in progress at the time of these courses,
Give a brief history of Lonergan’s writings on the Trinity during his years in Rome culminating in the 1964 De Deo Trino,
Discuss the importance for Lonergan of trinitarian theology as the area in which (mainly) he worked out his method in theology
Comment on Lonergan’s enduring involvement with and contribution to trinitarian theology as a topic of the greatest importance within theology
Suggest some reasons why Lonergan has been so far unwilling to release for publication in translation any more than this one part of De Deo Trino and why he has released even as much as he has
Make a few comments on the tasks of translation itself.

Born: 18 February 1932, Bailieborough, County Cavan
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1963, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 01 July 2020, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Left Society of Jesus: 09 February 1973

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_McShane

Philip McShane (18 February 1932 – 1 July 2020) was an Irish mathematician and philosopher-theologian. Originally trained in mathematics, mathematical physics, and chemistry in the 1950s, he went on to study philosophy from 1956 to 1959. In 1960, after teaching mathematical physics, engineering, and commerce to undergraduates, and special relativity and differential equations to graduate students, McShane began studying theology. He did his fourth year of theology in 1963 and in 1968 began reading economics.

In a period that spanned over sixty years, McShane published numerous articles and twenty-five books.[1] His publications range from technical works on the foundations of mathematics, probability theory, evolutionary process, and omnidisciplinary methodology, to introductory texts focusing on critical thinking, linguistics, and economics. He also wrote essays on the philosophy of education. Beginning in 1970, he participated in and helped organize a number of international workshops and conferences addressing topics such as "ongoing collaboration,"[2] reforms in education, and communicating the basic insights of two-flow economics.[3]

Two Festschrift volumes were published to honor McShane, one in 2003[4] and the second in 2022. In the first, eighteen individuals contributed essays, and, at the request of the editor, McShane submitted an essay as well.[5] He also replied to the eighteen contributors in the essay "Our Journaling Lonelinesses: A Response.”[6] In the second Festschrift, twenty-four individuals wrote essays remembering and honoring McShane,[7] who was nominated for the Templeton Prize in 2011 and 2015.

Life and education
McShane was born in Baileboro, County Cavan.[8] When the McShane family moved to Dublin, Philip went to O'Connell School. He continued his education while training as a Jesuit at University College Dublin (BSc and MSc in relativity theory and quantum mechanics), St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg (Lic. Phil), Heythrop College (STL) and Campion Hall, Oxford (D.Phil.).[9] He lectured in mathematics at University College Dublin (1959-1960) and in Philosophy at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy (1968-1973).

McShane entered the Jesuits in September 1950 and spent two years in spiritual formation.[10] In 1952, in spite of having "acquired a 'broken head,' which meant he was unable to study, or even to do any serious reading, he was also allowed to risk a very challenging programme of mathematics, mathematical physics, physics and chemistry."[11] Eleven years later, after completing a B.Sc., an M.Sc. in relativity theory and quantum mechanics, and a Licentiate of Philosophy, he was ordained a Jesuit priest.

In 1956, McShane "shifted from graduate studies of mathematics and physics that included such works as the classic Space-Time Structure by Erwin Schrödinger,"[12] and embarked on what would be a lifelong venture of reading and appropriating the works of Bernard Lonergan, initially through a careful study of Lonergan's Verbum articles,[13] followed by a startling study Insight.[14] In the years that followed, he co-authored (with Garret Barden) Towards: Self-Meaning and wrote Music That Is Soundless. In the mid-1960s, he studied at Oxford University, where in August 1969 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis "The Concrete Logic of Discovery of Statistical Science," which soon after was published as Randomness, Statistics, and Emergence.[15] After the First International Lonergan Conference in Florida 1970, McShane took on the task of editing two volumes of the papers presented at that event.[16] In 1972, he decided to leave the Jesuits.[17]

"Towards a New Economic Order," Nashik, India, September 2010
In 1975, along with Conn O'Donovan, McShane founded the Dublin Lonergan Centre, in Milltown Park, Dublin.[18] In 1979, he served as visiting fellow in religious studies at Lonergan College, Concordia University, Montreal. In his course, McShane encouraged students to work through the exercises in his introductory book Wealth of Self and Wealth of Nations.[19] From 1974 until 1994, McShane taught philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. When he retired from teaching in 1995, he began writing prolifically.[20] After retiring, McShane also accepted invitations to speak at international conferences and workshops. He gave keynote addresses at gatherings in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.

In the last years of his life, McShane wrote about the negative Anthropocene age in which we live and a future positive Anthropocene age of luminous collaboration.[21] In Questing2020, his final series of essays, he wrote of the possibility of human collaboration mirroring the psychic adaptation of starling murmuration.[22] When McShane died in July 2020, colleagues and former students around the globe paid tribute to him. A theologian from Africa described him as akin to an "African elder,"[23] another as someone who "gave counsel to think long-term, in terms of centuries rather than years or even decades,"[24] and a third as "someone I could always be myself around, even when I was angsty, anxious, or depressed … a friend, mentor, professor, and family member all at once."[25] A former student described "being amazed, when I asked him some questions, at his generosity—he tore out a chapter of something he was working on and gave it to me there and then."[26]

Influences
By his own account, McShane was humbled as a young man by the works of Chopin and fortunate to have discovered Descartes' achievement in geometry.[27] He wrote about "the luck of working with Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh in graduate studies of mathematical physics in the mid-fifties."[28] He also studied and had a keen appreciation for Richard Feynman's Lectures on Physics, especially the third lecture.[29] McShane was fond of and often quoted the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Patrick Kavanaugh. "Having music in his genes,"[30] he often referred to particular pieces of music. For example, the quiet emergence of five notes that grow to dominate Bruckner's 8th symphony was symbolic for him of the slow emergence of effective global collaborartion. "Bruckner's 8th has been symbolic for me of the climb to effective functional scientific collaboration: a five note echo trickling in at the beginning of the second movement and finally taking over the symphony: so, we trickle in at, we hope, the beginning of the second movement of the Anthropocene."[31]

In his "story of history,"[32] McShane referred to the works of Karl Jaspers, Arnold Toynbee, and Eric Voegelin and identified an axial period of "fragmented consciousness, a transition between what Lonergan calls the two times of the temporal subject."[33] There are references to the teachings of the Buddha, the music of Beethoven, and the works of James Clerk Maxwell in Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas.[34] In an essay written for a conference on peaceful coexistence,[35] he cited Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Aurora Leigh" and William Shakespeare's Henry IV, and referred to Archimedes' "leap of inventiveness" when he created a hydrodynamic screw to raise water. In the same essay, he referred to Ezra Pound's image of a vortex as symbolic of a global community "committed to a science of cosmic care ... redeeming time from the mad destructive greed of the 'civilized' majority of the present global population."[36]

Various women influenced and shaped McShane's worldview. His extensive writings on the "Interior Lighthouse"[37] were inspired by Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle.[38] McShane resonated with the English novelist and poet Mary Ann Evans, who went by the name of Georg Eliot. He regularly cited this line from the middle of Eliot's Middlemarch: "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.”[39] McShane cited more than a dozen times the lyrics of songs on Sinead O'Connor's album Faith and Courage in Lonergan's Standard Model of Effective Global Inquiry.[40] His appreciation and admiration of greatness extended to the performances of Serena Williams and Venus Williams on the tennis court,[41] the lifework of Nadia Boulanger, who was very much on McShane's mind when he wrote Process in the late 1980s,[42] and to “Molly Bloom’s long Gospel-speech,”[43] which McShane cited time and again. In his writings on economics, he regularly cited the British economist Joan Robinson, who was well known for her disagreement with standard economics, especially American economics.[44] He also referred to the work of Jane Jacobs, with whom he corresponded.[45]

McShane and Lonergan at the Milltown Institute, Dublin, in 1971.
In a lecture introducing the economic analysis of Lonergan at Fordham University in January 2000,[46] McShane quoted Stephen McKenna. When McKenna discovered the writings of Plotinus in his late 30s, he pondered the possibility of translating The Enneads from Greek into English and decided "this is worth a life." It could be said that McShane made a similar decision when he discovered the works of Bernard Lonergan. He described the "central contribution" of his doctoral thesis in these terms: "It is an attempt to establish on a wider basis of contemporary mathematics and science the position of B. Lonergan on the nature of randomness, statistics, and emergence."[47] Thirty years after completing his thesis, McShane edited for publication Lonergan's economic manuscript For a New Political Economy,[48] and two years later Phenomenology and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism.[49] He regularly referred to the final two chapters of the latter as a resource for trying to identify and come to grips with both the ontic and phyletic aspects of the "existential gap."[50]

For more than 60 years, McShane diligently read and reread Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,[51] and is arguably the leading interpreter of this compendious work. In the essay "Insight and the Trivialization of History," he described having been "enormously fortunate in coming to Insight in 1957 after graduate studies in general relativity and quantum electrodynamics."[52] In 2011, McShane was recognized for his contributions to Lonergan studies at the West Coast Methods Institute's 26th Annual Fallon Memorial Lonergan Symposium at Loyola Marymount University.

Capacities, needs, and interests
Towards an Adequate Weltanschauung[53]
The cultivation of an adequate worldview was a focus of McShane's early writings, and remained so throughout his life, although in the later years of his life he would write of Praxisweltanschauung.[54] In his rather peculiar doctoral thesis,[55] McShane aimed to reorient the philosophy of science away from general considerations towards a reflection on scientific praxis, again, through a two-fold attention of the mathematician, physicist, biophysicist, and biochemist. He claimed that the world view "emergent probability"[56] is a verifiable, anticipatory heuristic that is not "abstract" in the pejorative sense of the word.

The Weltanschauung thus given is not a set of abstract propositions or a speculative metaphysics, but a structured anticipation. Moreover, that anticipation may not be the methodical anticipation of the results of just one science, but an integrated anticipation of the results of a hierarchy of sciences, such indeed as our inclusive principle of emergent probability provides.[57]

Regarding the publication of his Oxford doctoral thesis, McShane wrote that "the book might well have been subtitled Towards an Adequate Weltanschauung."[58] This claim might appear odd, even exaggerated, given the questions he dealt with in his thesis—ostensibly specialized questions in the philosophy of math, physics, biophysics, and biochemistry. McShane's position, stated in the original preface, is that a viewpoint on the relationship of physics to chemistry and chemistry to botany is part of an adequate worldview. "Without that thought one lacks a basic component for the conception of world process. The present work deals with the central element and the heuristic conception of world process."[59]

In Music That Is Soundless (1969), he wrote about what he considered a core component of a comprehensive worldview: our human capacity and need for conversations, or what he called "Bud A,"[60] a "bud in our birth that clamours in solitude."[61] The book is an invitation to attend to "the conversation that we are" (Hölderlin) by asking self-attentively: "When was I last understanding, understood? When did I last speak? When did I last listen?[62]

At the heart of the worldview that McShane wrote about, taught, and advocated is the human capacity and need for a particular doubling. We humans are capable of having conversations about conversations while asking ourselves what happens when we are truly understanding, listening, and speaking.[63] Patient contemplation can lead us to a better understanding of understanding, a better listening to listening, and a better speaking of speaking. Regarding the basic question, When was my last real conversation? "one may honestly find that one has little or no data,"[64] especially if cultural conditions are not favorable to real conversations: "Ten thousand people, maybe more / People talking without speaking / People hearing without listening."[65]

"The Inside-Out of Radical Existentialism," chapter 5 of Wealth of Self and Wealth of Nations.
In the introductory book Wealth of Self and Wealth of Nations (1975), which might have been subtitled "Towards an Adequate Worldview,"[66] the double focus took the form of an invitation to appropriate, in as much detail as possible, the "inner"[67] dynamics of the process of understanding why, for example, the rule for getting square roots actually works. McShane included some simple diagrams in this book to help the reader appropriate, or "self-taste," what-ing (chapters 2 and 3), is-ing (chapters 4 and 5), what-to-do-ing (chapter 6), believing (chapter 7), symbolizing conveniently and judiciously (chapter 8), and exploring potentialities for living through the arts (chapter 9).[68] In the final chapter of this book, McShane made the remarkable claim that a change of framework, or point of view, is both possible and desirable if humans are to survive. But there is a Catch-22: "The need for change in point of view is thoroughly clear only from a changed point of view."[69]

In the Epilogue to Music That Is Soundless, McShane wrote that "to raise with seriousness the question, What is understanding? is to venture into a quest of scientific dimensions."[70] What 'scientific dimensions' meant to him in 1968 was mediated by his study of relativity theory and quantum mechanics at University College, Dublin (1952–56). In both his doctoral thesis and "Image and Emergence: Towards and Adequate Weltanschauung"[71] (one of two papers he wrote for an international congress that took place in Florida in 1970), McShane was traveling along what he would later call "Butterfield Way."[72]

The study of organic development
Organic development had been a topic of interest for McShane in the 1960s, and in fact was a possible topic of his thesis. "I recall especially wanting to see could I lift the biological logic of someone like Woodger into a full genetic logic."[73] What he knew would have been a "lengthy aside"[74] in the doctoral thesis, became one of his central interests around 2005, when he took a serious interest in development, in part because of Robert Doran's question "What is systematic theology?"[75] In the spring of 2008, McShane decided to write a series of essays to better read a single paragraph in Insight about three steps for studying organic development. A first step is to descriptively differentiate different parts of an organism;[76] a second step is to accumulate a group of insights relating various parts to events and operations; and

a third step is to effect the transition from the thing-for-us to the thing-itself, from insights that grasp described parts as organs to insights that grasp conjugate forms systematizing otherwise coincidental manifold of chemical and physical processes. By this transition one links physiology with biochemistry and biophysics. To this end, there have to be invented appropriate symbolic images of the relevant chemical and physical processes.[77]

Wealth of Self and Wealth of Nations (2nd ed., 2021), p. 91.
McShane identified the three-step procedure for studying organic development as perhaps the most obscure challenge for scholars with an interest in the works of Lonergan.[78] He would add to the obscure challenge by adding the word self to the sentence to highlight the starting point of a study of the developing human: "Self-study of an organism begins from the thing-for-us, from the organism as exhibited to our senses."[79] He referred to the need to bring the study of human development under heuristic control as "a missing link."[80]

In Interpretation from A to Z (2020), McShane was still focused on the methodological study of organic development.[81] The central problem was and is the genesis of a genetic viewpoint that will replace "daft reductionism that chatters away about genes and information theory."[82] In this, the last book published in his lifetime, he referred to the challenge as "the up-grading of Aristotle, whose flaw is merely his time in history."[83] In chapter "J ~ Inventing Techniques," he wrote that the invention and implementation of convenient and appropriate symbolic images is "the honest starting place of a genuine science of humanity," an "issue that has to be faced in the contemporary reality"[84] of what he called aggreformism, a word he coined in 1969 to refer to a sublation of Aristotelian hylemorphism. The contemporary need is to create an ethos of inventing convenient symbols and reading, for example, the semicolons in the expression f (pi ; cj ; bk ; zi ; um ; rn)[85] or another appropriate symbolic expression. In either case, the symbolism protects those studying development from "substituting pseudo-metaphysical mythmaking for scientific inquiry."[86] McShane wrote that "the semicolons point to the complex solution to the root problem hierarchy theory—aggreformism—a problem that baffles the systems theorists—when they notice it—and the followers of Bertalanffy."[87]

Two-flow economics
In 1968 McShane began reading Lonergan's 1944 manuscript "Essay in Circulation Analysis" and made his first attempt to present the material in the summer of 1977. By his own account, he "estimated that [he] had spent twenty hours on each page of the manuscript over a period of about five years."[88] On various occasions and in various countries—including Australia, Canada, India, Korea, Mexico, and the U.S.—he presented the key issues underlying the significant transition from the Marxist, neo-Marxist, Keynesian, and neo-Keynesian analyses to an empirically verifiable analysis.[89] In January 2000, McShane gave a series of lectures on Lonergan's economics at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus in New York City.[90] Ten years later, he was invited to give the keynote address and lead discussions at a three-day conference on economic theory in Nashik, India.[91]

In his published works on economics, McShane explored different facets of what he called “a triple paradigm shift in economic thinking” that he attributed to Lonergan.[92] One shift is to a theory of two-flow dynamic analysis that will replace one-flow static analysis. With a bow to Schumpeter, McShane identified this shift as “a theory of economics dynamics that definitely crosses the Rubicon.”[93] A second shift is to an emerging framework of global collaboration that, in good time, will subsume all disciplines, all fields of study.[94] The third shift is “towards a deep and precise plumbing of the depths and heights of human desire and imagination.”[95]

McShane drew the following analogy to identify the shift to two-flow economics. Newton reached for a theory of motion that would unify the physics earthly motions and celestial bodies, something that was beyond both Kepler and Galileo. In a sense, he reduced two types of motion to one. The leap to two-flow economics is one that does not reduce, but differentiates, for example between the consumption of a submarine sandwich bought at the local delicatessen and the “consumption” of the meat slicer used to make the sandwich. “Instead of Newton’s great leap to get two into one, we have a great leap of getting one into two.”[96]

The Key Diagrams: From One-Flow to Two-Flow Economics.
The basic oversight that permeates the current study and implementation of economic models is the failure to identify a split in the productive process, one that needs to be made before adding variables such as banks, taxes, and international trading. “There is a type of firm that is pregnant with consumer goods: think of the restaurants in Chinatown or Little Italy. There is also the type of firm that is in the business of providing, say, varieties of large cooking ovens in restaurants all over the borough.”[97] Melding two firms into one has been institutionalized by publishers, research universities, and even papal initiatives over a period of more than 200 years. McShane refers to this as “a staleness of perspective and a settled non-scientific attitude that has haunted economic studies for centuries.”[98] He claimed that the perspective and attitude haunts the diligent research of Thomas Piketty and James Galbraith, as “the drive represented by these and other groups who hover round the issue of inequality of income is not sufficiently scientific in its classificatory backing to escape my extremely odd view that their efforts do not escape the category of statistically-infested journalism.”[99]

McShane's view is that the search for new data to cast light on old questions—for example, whether new inequality metrics are needed and how inequality of household incomes might be estimated—must clear-headedly and consistently keep in mind “the fact that there are two types of firms, a simple local analysis that nevertheless leads to there being pretty well two of everything.”[100] Without identifying two-firms, different phases of economic development,[101] and the possibility of dynamically balanced cross-over payments between two distinct economic circuits,[102] intimations of improvements in standards of living without economics slumps[103] tend to sound like pie in the sky, while analyses of national and transnational exchanges tend to be “grossly unhelpful.”[104]

Towards efficient global collaboration
An emergent need to "Turn to the Idea"
In various writings, McShane cited the work of Arnie Næss, the father of “deep ecology.” In 1989, while in Oxford writing Process: Introducing Themselves to Young (Christian) Minders, “detecting, leaning into India, of history’s effort to educate us, I was astonished to find his [Næss's] detecting of a parallel structure of cosmic deliberation.”[105] Thirty years later, while writing “Structuring the Reach Towards the Future” for The 3rd Peaceful Coexistence Colloquium in Helsinki, Finland (June 2019), he returned to Naess's work for the first time since he had read it thirty years earlier in Oxford.[106]

The stair diagram. Interpretation from A to Z, p. 20.
McShane maintained that Næss was on to something, for example, when he wrote: “Applied to humans, the complexity-not-complication principle favours division of labour, not fragmentation of labour.”[107] The challenge is to discover and implement a way to intervene effectively in intertwined cycles of natural-historical processes.[108] The web of intertwined processes currently presents humans of all colors and creeds with a myriad of challenges that include biodiversity loss and species extinction, water scarcity, unemployment, and children’s health and education. It is no mean problem if one is mindful of the needed restart in economics, not to mention other areas in need of reformation such as education.

Beginning in the late 1960s, McShane wrote about this “turn to the idea”[109] of dividing up labor, citing the influence of Bernard Lonergan,[110] who also wrote about dividing up intellectual labor after puzzling about how that might be done efficiently for more than thirty years. In Method in Theology, after briefly describing a conception of method as an art and second conception of method as a successful science, where “science means natural science” and “theologians often have to be content if their subject is included in a list not of sciences but of academic disciplines,”[111] he described the needed “turn to the idea” of efficient collaboration in these words: “Some third way, then, must be found and, even though it is difficult and laborious, that price must be paid if the less successful subject is not to remain a mediocrity or slip into decadence and desuetude.”[112]

The idea is to divide up the labor of caring for the cosmos “functionally,” so not along the lines of disciplinary silos, but along the lines of “distinct and separable stages in a single process from data to ultimate results.”[113] The various stages, steps, or specializations are essentially open and reciprocally dependent successive partial contributions to communicating to “the almost endlessly varied sensibilities, mentalities, interests, and tastes of [humankind].”[114]

McShane wrote about the needed turn sketched by Lonergan's in the 1969 Gregorianum article in various works.[115] In chapter 5 of The Allure of the Compelling Genius of History, he compared Lonergan's breakthrough discovery to the invention of Hedy Lamarr of a torpedo-guidance system, a system which depended on what she called “frequency hopping.” “In that chapter [5], an article of 1969, Lonergan came ‘to invent a fundamental wireless technology,’† which will slowly come to thrive in post-modern technologies of guidance and communication.”[116]

"Educating for Cosmopolis," First Latin-American Lonergan Workshop, Puebla, Mexico, June 2011
One of McShane’s contributions to implementing transdiciplinary collaboration was to identify disciplinary “sloping.” In the essay "Slopes: An Encounter," he wrote that "as the disciplines move up from research through interpretation to history and to dialectic, there is a convergence of data and interest."[117] He wrote the following about Lonergan's breakthrough to restructuring of theology, indeed of all areas of study—a point that Karl Rahner caught and made[118] against those who might claim the prescribed eightfold division of labor is strictly theological method:

Now he had found it, so to speak, on a string, in a String Theory of the Cosmos of meaning. The scattered beads of disciplinary sweat could be seen now as strung together sweetly. The jumble of theology’s fragmented areas – Scripture studies, doctrines, history, dialectical and pastoral scholarship – strung together in a circle of eight handing-round efforts.[119]

In his keynote address “Arriving in Cosmopolis,” which McShane wrote for the First Latin-American Lonergan Workshop in Puebla, Mexico, June 2011, he estimated the numbers of specialists—identified by Lonergan as researchers, interpreters, historians, dialecticians, foundational (persons), doctrines or policy (makers), systematizers, and communicators—efficiently collaborating around the globe when the earth's total population reaches 10 billion. In the same essay, he placed what is called the Standard Model in physics within a larger standard model of global collaboration, one that situates the dynamics of physics within a dynamics of human progress.[120]

The structure of dialectic
While McShane identified the implementation of genetic method as Lonergan's most obscure challenge to his disciples, he identified dialectic as his clearest challenge,[121] though by no means the easiest. It is hard to say how many tens of thousands of words he wrote about the structure of dialectic,[122] which he described as a “shocking, brilliant, innovative, invitation."[123] To arrive at an approximation, one would need to consider various website essay series,[124] as well as published articles and chapters in books.[125] As with other areas of focus and interest, McShane's prodigious writings and teachings on the structure of dialectic call for the kind of creative research and communal recycling that he did his best to initiate.

In an attempt to communicate the challenge popularly and without footnotes, McShane wrote three chapters on dialectic in Futurology Express. There he described dialectic as a mix of private and public tasks of dialectic elders who are flexible, “like the flexibility of a great tennis player meeting the oddest of volleys,”[126] and who have “minds grasping for the flickers of integral human goings-on.”[127] He related this to the task of Comparison, one of six italicized words in Lonergan's terse description of the structure of dialectic. He adds that those doing Comparison are competent in scientific understanding and autobiographically appreciative of the lengthy, patient messing around required to become intelligently competent, as opposed to merely technically competent. “The issue is the personal cultivation of what is called authentic nescience.”[128] Dialectic becomes radically public when dialecticians “lay their cards on the table,” check one another by asking basic questions, even about themselves, and strive for a hard-won consensus on “what might be called an idealized version of previous reaches of humanity, showing the past something better than it was.”[129]

In a book published posthumously, McShane identified dialectic as needed “to link Aristotle’s three [data, theory, verification] with Drucker’s [policy, planning, executive strategies] and fill out the elements in Næss.”[130] He claimed that what is missing and desperately needed by those concerned about sustainability and survival is methodical deliberation about deliberation. “Deliberating over Archimedes’ deliberation is to push us towards a radical effective shift in our view of the disorientations of industrious humanity.”[131]

McShane’s invitation to contemporaries to lay their cards on the table regarding their personal views on serious understanding reached a humorous, brutally honest, and possibly disturbing high point in one of his final essays, “On the Stile of a Crucial Experiment.”[132] In the first paragraph of this essay, he recalled a scene from the film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a shootout when Virgil and Morgan Earp called out members of a group of outlaws called The Cowboys. "It was a calling-out of the usual sort in Western films, with the good guys and the bad guys clearly identified."[133] In the last paragraph of the essay, McShane did his own calling-out:

There is, then, my simple calling out, which is just a repeat of Lonergan’s: this is the technique of discomforting intersubjectivity that is capable of “providing a statistically effective form for the next cycle of human action.”[134] There is my broader calling out: I challenge you to check—that word in its many senses—your biased corralled stile-sitting against serious understanding.[135] Both my simple call and my broader call-out is to global humanity and not just to Lonergan students, but I have sung out that joke abundantly already.[136]

Engineering progress
The proposed “turn to the idea” of beautiful, efficient global collaborators intending “cumulative and progressive results,”[137] with a sub-group “bearing fruit”[138] in local communications, clashes with notions of “pure science” as opposed to “applied science,” and notions of “hard sciences” as opposed to arts, humanities, and social sciences. These notions tend to dominate both popular culture and academic praxis. The first set of contrasting notions, which was popularly expressed in the American television sitcom The Big Bang Theory,[139] still permeates many a worldview. The second set permeates current divisions of majors, departments, and schools in higher education. It also permeates efforts to use “strictly” or “purely scientific” criteria to establish a precise meaning of Anthropocene,[140] and to pin down where and when the purported new geologic epic began. The ongoing effort to locate a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (informally known as "golden spike") on the part of the Anthropocene Working Group assumes a methodological divide between scientists, humanists, social scientists, and others.[141] It would seem that "aesthetic loneliness" is on the periphery of scientific method while scientific wonder is on the periphery of a liberal arts education.[142]

First page of a 1566 edition of Nichomachean Ethics in Greek and Latin
In various places McShane traced the implicit or explicit views to Aristotelian notions of speculative and practical science.[143] It is an age-old belief and expectation that contrasts practice (from Ancient Greek πρᾶξις [prâxis]—human doing and action, the conduct resulting from deliberations and the choices humans make), theory (from Greek θεωρία [theōria]—contemplation, speculation), and making (from Greek ποίησις [poiēsis]). For Arisotle, praxis differs from theory, making, and the technology used in producing what is made.[144] While both theory and practice involve thinking, the former aims at "speculative" or "theoretical" knowledge of what is unchanging, while the latter aims at practical, less precise knowledge of human actions.[145] It would have made no sense to Arisotle to ask if there were fundamental questions about nature (from Greek φύσις [physis]) whose solution depends on the character of the individual studying nature.[146]

To shake up and out a rather odd meaning of “metaphysics,”[147] as well as what he described as “a psychology conservatively grounded in a certain facticity of the past,”[148] McShane replaced the word metaphysics with futurology,[149] later with engineering.[150] He envisaged a globally shared Praxisweltanschauung of engineering progress, an “adequate geogenetic heuristics of history.”[151] In the last essay of the Æcornomics series, titled “Engineering as Dialectic,” he wrote optimistically of “some few people who will face the details of seeding the slow, serious, self-sacrificing ‘resolute and effective intervention in this historical process.’”[152]

With regard to a possible shared Praxisweltanschauung, McShane regularly posed this question: “Do you view humanity as possibly maturing—in some serious way—or messing along between good and evil, whatever you think they are?”[153] Expressing and defending one's position effectively moves one beyond Weltanschauung to Praxisweltanschauung, even if one's view is that theory and praxis are as different as carrying out specialized research at CERN and signing and implementing the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions and limit global warning to 1.5 °C. Furthermore, expressing and defending one's view about the future of humanity autobiographically, and in the company of others doing the same,[154] is an intimation of doing dialectic, which requires brutal honesty, for example, about one's view regarding the place of heuristic structures and convenient symbolisms in engineering progress.[155]

Criticism
Language, style, and clarity
One criticism of McShane's work was that the language he used, the neologisms he created, and the style of his writings were unnecessarily obscure and were off-putting for some readers whom, at times, he addressed directly: “I will not in fact be talking here about systems of philosophy. I will be talking about the reader, you, and asking you to attend to yourself, to ask yourself certain simple questions, to reach elementary answers.”[156] Time and again, he encouraged his readers to take our eyes of the page while reading and cited what Gaston Bachelard wrote in The Poetics of Space about reading a house or a nest with one's eyes off the page.[157] His colleague and long-time friend Conn O’Donovan recalled reading the typescript of Plants and Pianos in 1971 and “thinking that McShane’s written expression was not as precise as it might be, that he was beginning to let language run away with him.”[158] Some thirty years after reading that typescript, O’Donovan asked:

Was I then witnessing in McShane the emergence of a deliberate, self-consciously new approach to language and meaning? Was he perhaps deciding to allow language to run away with him, but somehow under his control, and not to allow himself to be controlled by already controlled meaning? Was this a key moment in the development of his own special kind of creative scholarly writing?[159]

In Memoriam: Philip McShane (1932-2020)
Another colleague wrote in his tribute to McShane that while he “could be very orderly and disciplined in his writings and lectures, not infrequently in later years both types of his presentations were sprinkled with verbal novelties, asides, puns, jokes, and other unusual elements. Some colleagues find that this style facilitates their understanding, but others find that it impedes it.”[160] A younger colleague wrote in his contribution to the same Festschrift that “soon after Method was published [1972], Phil seized on Lonergan’s notion of ‘linguistic feedback’ and its essential role in advancing self-appropriation, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. For years, he practically flogged the theme of linguistic feedback.”[161] An example of such feedback is replacing the letter “c” with the letter “k” in the word heuristic or pocket.[162]

One of the most extensive published criticisms of McShane's language, style, and clarity occurred in 2001 before the publication of Lonergan's Phenomenology and Logic, which McShane edited and introduced. One of the readers invited by the University of Toronto Press to review McShane's editor's introduction and appendix had significant reservations and asked him to rewrite the appendix or eliminate it altogether.[163] The reader questioned his “intent on mystifying” what is “already familiar to every competent phenomenologist,” and added that “Lonergan himself, in this reader’s opinion, was not in the least inclined towards esotericism or mystification.”[164]

In his reply to the reader, McShane wrote that his efforts to contextualize the volume were aimed at “saving it from haute vulgarization,”[165] or what he would sometimes call negative haute vulgarization—the clear, direct expression that “Joey” had hoped to find in the editor's introduction. He also recalled a favorite quote from Samuel Beckett, about direct expression:

Here is direct expression−pages and pages of it. And if you don't understand it, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is because you are too decadent to receive it. You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one almost without bothering to read the other. This rapid skimming and absorption of the scant cream of sense is made possible by what I may call a continuous process of salivation. The form that is an arbitrary and independent phenomenon can fulfill no higher function than that of a stimulus for a tertiary or quartary conditioned reflex of dribbling comprehension.[166]

Had McShane gone too far or, perhaps, not far enough? While writing about the short-term challenge of implementing a child-friendly pedagogy pivoting on the "Childout Principle,"[167] he acknowledged that a key challenge was to do something requiring a cultural shift and a new language: “You might begin to write yourself and the world with a new alphabet, in a new language. ‘The alphabet writes the world, and the world comes to pass through the alphabet: writing and world coexist in a state of feverish rapture that defies language.'"[168]

Idiosyncratic economics
In 1977 McShane applied to the Canada Council for a grant to work on economics. One of the assessors of his application wrote: “What we have here is a case of two idiosyncratic theologians trying to do idiosyncratic economics. The probability of this being fruitful is not zero, but it is not much higher.”[169] Thirty years later, when McShane addressed an audience at University Seoul, a professor in the audience denied anything idiosyncratic or original in what McShane was presenting and remarked “it is all in Mankiw,”[170] referring to Gregory Mankiw’s introductory economics textbook and blockbuster bestseller Principles of Economics.[171] More recently, the Australian economist Paul Oslington has written a critique of Lonergan’s economics that includes a critique of McShane for “overselling” Lonergan's economics in the editor's introduction to For a New Political Economy.[172]

McShane considered the basic insights of two-flow economic analysis empirically verifiable and accessible to high school students.[173] He did, however, recognize that it would not be easy "to change a recipe that is 200 years old."[174] In addition, he identified a needed correction to a mistake he had made in the area of the pedagogy. In his 2019 essay “Finding an Effective Economist: A Central Theological Challenge,” McShane described his mistake in these words:

Looking back now with wonderful hindsight, we [Lonergan and he] were making the wrong moves. We should have put his request of 1968 in the context of the eighth functional specialty’s follow-through that I call C9. The mood of statistically-effective outreach should have dominated both my two 1977 presentations and his six years of teaching.[175]

What McShane described as "the mood of statistically-effective outreach" refers to teaching as communications, a type of direct discourse that is related to but distinct from the indirect discourse of research, interpretation, and history. Direct communications − which invites, persuades, and cajoles students, colleagues, friends, and neighbors to makes sense out of distinct flows of basic and non-basic (surplus) goods and services − might generate "backfires,"[176] for example when a bright students asks what an IS/LM curve (also known as the IS/LM model) is and why it is not viable for real economic analysis.[177] While McShane wrote introductory texts, including the preface to the 2017 edition of Economics for Everyone inviting the serious reader to imagine "the concrete reality of, say, a small bakery in its dependence on firms that supply its needs,"[178] he also recognized the need for "massively innovative primers that would meet millennial needs, 500-page texts of empirically rich, locally oriented, normatively focused non-truncated writing."[179]

Breaking with tradition
An implicit criticism of McShane breaking with tradition occurred during the planning stages of the conference “Revisiting Lonergan’s Anthropology” that took place in Rome in November 2013.[180] The organizers of the event did not invite him to take part in the event, either by giving a talk or by participating in one of the various panels. McShane, who was never interested in founding a “a little school of Lonergan at the Gregorian”[181] or at some other Jesuit university in North America, published a critique of the conference in Rome, which for him symbolized what he called Lonerganism.[182]

I have, in recent years, made quite clear my disagreement with that tradition that now prevails in Lonergan studies, of avoiding the challenge of functional collaboration. Indeed, of not noticing, ignoring, avoiding—whatever—that the question, “What does Lonergan mean by functional collaboration?” has not been taken seriously by the group. I thus give a definite meaning to the boldfaced word whatever by my title: the group seems—indeed quite evidently is—intent on muzzling the scientific Lonergan.[183]

A Cij matrix of possible conversations, face to face, or through journals or electronic exchanges.
Like Lonergan, McShane took seriously what Butterfield wrote about the scientific revolution "outshining everything since the rise of Christianity and reducing the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom."[184] Both men advocated the development and implementation of apt symbolism and heuristic structures.[185] This had and continues to have what might be called an "electrifying" effect upon those in academic disciplines that seem to thrive without implementing symbolism and heuristics. “Whether it is Cij or W3, the symbolism reminds, cajoles, and forces the authors not to sit comfortably on the fence between commonsense eclecticism and scientific collaboration.† The symbols, you might even say, are a way of electrifying that fence.”[186]

With respect to his and others’ efforts to shift towards the idea and the reality of functional collaboration, which requires some form of communal implementation, McShane knew it would be a form of learning by doing. Since the needed division of labor is not continuous with much of current academic practice, he expected that the adventure[187] in the decades to come would be so-so at best. It was for this reason that McShane would quip: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”[188] He had a leading role in organizing various “doings,” one of them an international conference in 2014 that resulted in the publication of a volume of essays[189] in which each of the twelve authors implemented the same four-part structure: Context, Content, Hand-On, and Final Reflections. He wrote the following evaluation of the volume of essays published in 2016:

We stumbled away, as best we could, from the ethos of academic disciplines. We pretended to be “at the level of the times,”† as any wise doctorate student does in a doctorate thesis. But none of us were. Further, part of the paradox of luminosity and adult growth is that elder members of our group were regularly better tuned to “all that is lacking”†† than younger members. I, then, more than others, knew what a shabby shot we were having at getting the show on the road.[190]

Two years later, McShane participated in a round table discussion of Method in Theology at the West Coast Methods Institute at Loyola Marymount University. In preparation for the conference, McShane had written an essay proposing a paradigm for panel discussions, what he called “a full heuristic paradigm.”[191] He submitted his essay to Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, which had previously published five of his essays.[192] The referee's report sent to him was succinct and did not recommend publishing the essay, as those "involved in 'Lonergan studies' need insights as much if not more than prophetic exhortations."[193] In his reply to the co-editor of the journal, McShane did not take issue with the use of the word prophetic to describe his essay, but he underscored that prior to Lonergan's discovery of the dynamics of functional collaboration in 1965, he had “clearly shifted the norms of the usual trivial comparison-work to the control of a genetic sequence of prior efforts to understanding whatever.”[194] The rejection of McShane's essay for publication inspired him to write the series of essays Public Challenging the Method Board.[195]

From time to time, McShane described his own efforts as “random dialectics,” so not the structured encounter that he wrote about at length and only experienced in the “proto-dialectic”[196] exercises in the last year of his life. Over the years, he invited colleagues to step forth and indicate publicly where and how he had gone astray reading Insight and Method in Theology. The response was what he called “disgusting non-scientific silence.”[197]

While McShane admitted having benefitted from a certain kind of luck in his education, he also realized that some of his works were simply “too far out” and did not expect to see much success in his lifetime.[198] Most contemporaries in philosophy and theology had not worked with Markov tensors or thought to use Greek symbols to imagine the longitude and latitude of Luther or Descartes on an expanding globe of meaning.

"Toynbee's A Study of History can be regarded as an attempt at a great Markovian reduction of the historical process to a very few variables and very large subdivisions and the consequent description of the process by a multiple Markov tensor of manageable rank.”† My own imaging shifts this tensor into an earth-sphere expanding out along a radial axis t—this helps to glimpse—think longitude and latitude for θ and Φ—my meaning of θΦT. Think of the θΦT weave of pairs like Antioch and Alexandria, Luther and Lainez, Descartes and Dilthey, whatever.[199]

McShane's long-term optimism regarding the emergence of a creative minority caring for the globe was and is consistent with the worldview "emergent probability," which was the focus of his doctoral thesis. In the Preface to the 2nd edition of the book version of his thesis, which McShane wrote in the fall of 2012, he cited a long passage from Insight where Lonergan wrote that the possibility of a recurrence scheme beginning to function shifts from a product of fractions to their sum when any one of the events (A or B or C or ...) of the scheme occurs.[200] He concluded the Preface with these words: "The cyclically-summed actualities can, over millennia, shift from Poisson distribution to a Normal and normative law, giving supreme plausibility to a Tower of Able of serious intimate† understanding grounding, literally, a plain plane of radiant life in the next million years."[201]

Born: 08 May 1919, Drumcondra, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 125 September 1937, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 10 February 1945

Born: 15 July 1922, Portlaoise, County Laois
Entered: 07 September 1939, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1956, Loyola, Tai Lam Chung, Hong Kong

Left Society of Jesus: 1970

Transcribed: HIB to HK - 03 December 1966

by 1948 at Yim Yuan, Paak Chue Lo, Tungshan, Canton, China (Hong Kong) - Regency, learning language
by 1964 at Fordham NY, USA (NEB) studying

Born: 28 June 1924, Omagh, County Tyrone
Entered: 24 September 1947, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 11 September 1956

by 1950 at Laval France (FRA) studying

Born: 08 September 1923, Carrigparson, Caherconlish, County Limerick
Entered: 16 September 1941, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 01 July 1949

Educated at Crescent College SJ

Born: 12 March 1914, Cabra, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 14 August 1934, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 02 February 1945, Clongowes Wood College SJ

Left Society of Jesus: 12 August 1949

Born: 04 March 1925, Cabra, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 02 July 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Clongowes Wood College SJ

Left Society of Jesus: 20 June 1960

Born: 22 July 1917, Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary
Entered: 07 September 1935, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 08 May 1943

Educated at Mungret College SJ

Born: 10 November 1936, Crumlin, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1955, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 10 July 1969, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1977, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died : 26 December 2023, London England

Left Society of Jesus: 1988

by 1963 at Loyola Spain (LOY) studying
by 1975 at Medellín, Colombia (COL) making Tertianship

Born: 02 March 1918, Rathmines, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1936, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 20 August 1947

Born: 04 November, 1911, Drumcondra, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 03 September 1930, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 23 November 1933 (from Rathfarnham Castle)

Early education at O’Connell’s Schools

Born: 18 April 1939, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1956, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 25 June 1970, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 25 March 1976, Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
Died: 27 March 2019, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin (Killiney, County Dublin)

Left Society of Jesus: 23 April 1986

by 1963 at Saint-Albert, Louvain, Belgium (BEL M) studying
by 1972 at Rice High School NY, USA (NEB) studying

Born: 06 June 1927, Dalkey, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1945, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 24 April 2016, Clonskeagh, Dublin, County Dublin

Left Society of Jesus: 18 December 1945

Younger brother of Jack Brennan - RIP 2002; Older brother of Joe Brennan - RIP 2018; Harry Brennan - Left 1950

Born: 13 November 1929, Dalkey, County Dublin
Entered: 15 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 02 February 1981, Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
Died: 08 January 2018, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

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

by 1966 at Brussels Belgium (BEL M) studying

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/he-was-a-good-man/

‘He was a good man’
Jesuits, family, friends and colleagues of Joe Brennan SJ, packed the Church of the Holy Name in Beechwood Avenue to bid him a fond farewell at his funeral Mass, on Friday 12 January, 11am. They were joined by the staff and students of Gonzaga College. John O’Keeffe SJ presided at the Mass, and Myles O’Reilly SJ, a former superior of the Gonzaga Community that Joe was a member of for 43 years, gave the homily. Joe had taken ill in late December and was moved to St Vincent’s Hospital where he was diagnosed with a respiratory illness. He died peacefully on the morning of January 8th 2018, aged 88.
Fr Joe was born and raised in Dublin, and he joined the Jesuits in 1948 at the age of 18. He was a keen sportsman, playing inter-provincial rugby for Leinster. He was also an accomplished musician, particularly on the piano, so he would have appreciated the singing of the Gonzaga student choir at his funeral Mass.
Most of his Jesuit life was spent as a teacher of religion and philosophy. He taught in Mungret, Clongowes, Belvedere, and finally Gonzaga. Brian Flannery, Education Delegate, said Joe had been fully engaged with Gonzaga in one way or another right up to the time of his illness in late December. “He was known for always encouraging students to think for themselves,” said Brian; “Also for instilling values. ‘If you don’t stand for something,’ he loved to say, ‘you will fall for anything.'”
Fr Joe had a few such sayings that he was famous for repeating, and the school had them printed on the back of his funeral Mass booklet. “Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved”, he would say. Or, “Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement.” And he would remind the students, “Faith is not against reason, it’s beyond it.”
In his homily, Fr Myles O’Reilly referred to the first reading from Isaiah and the banquet the Lord prepares for His trusted servants. He spoke of the many years of faithful service Joe had given as a follower of Jesus. He had served his fellow Jesuits, his students and his family, all with great generosity and wisdom. It was his turn now to be served and take part in the banquet prepared for him, as promised by the prophet Isaiah, said Myles.
Joe’s many nieces and nephews also attended the Mass. One of them, Ross Brennan, paid a warm tribute to their uncle at the end of the service. He spoke of how loved Joe was by his extended family, of the kindness he always showed, and of the help he always gave to them.
The funeral Mass preceded that of his fellow-Jesuit Kennedy O’Brien, also a teacher in Gonzaga, who had died suddenly, earlier that week. The principal of Gonzaga, Damon McCaul said that it had been a very difficult week for the staff and students in the school. He said that Fr Joe had made such an impact on his students that older past pupils still remembered him with deep regard and gratitude. “And it’s the same with Kennedy for a new generation of pupils and past pupils. Both men were outstanding teachers and educators.”
The final word on Fr Joe was a simple line in the funeral Mass booklet, underneath a photo of him saying Mass in Gonzaga: ‘He was a good man’.

Early Education at Sacred Heart, Leeson St, Dublin, Ring College, Waterford & Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
1950-1953 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1953-1956 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1956-1959 Mungret College SJ - Regency : Teacher
1959-1963 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
1963-1964 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1964-1965 Trier, Germany - Liturgy Studies at Benediktiner Abtei St Mathias
1965-1966 Brussels, Belgium - Catechetics Studies at Lumen Vitae
1966-1968 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Teacher; Prefect; Lecturer in Catechetics at Milltown Park
1968-1969 Belvedere College SJ - Teacher; Musical Director; Lecturer in Catechetics at Milltown Park
1969-1974 Mungret College SJ - Teacher; Gamesmaster
1974-2018 Gonzaga College SJ - Teacher; Lecturer in Catechetics at Milltown Park
1983 Rector; Director of Pastoral Care
2010 Chaplain at Marlay Nursing Home, Dublin; Assistant Treasurer; Teacher of Religion
2014 Ceased Teaching

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: 04 March 1922, Kilfinane, County Limerick
Entered: 14 April 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 15 December 1943

Previously Entered 12 October 1942 and Left 1942

Born: 04 July 1922, Kanturk, County Cork
Entered: 07 September 1940, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 1940

Born: 01 June 1934, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1960, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 1972, Keffi, Nasarawa State, Nigeria (as an SMA)
Died: 27 March 2010, London England

Left Society of Jesus: 21 August 1961

Originally C of I - Baptised Catholic 1957 - father a C of I clergyman, so moved around Dublin regularly to live

Joined Society of African Missions (SMA)

https://sma.ie/fr-douglas-bluett-sma/

Fr Douglas H Bluett SMA dies in London

The SMA British Province has lost its senior missionary with the death of Fr Douglas (Dougie) Bluett in a London hospital on Monday, 27 March 2010.

In recent years he had suffered from cancer though never allowed it to dim his missionary calling. He continually requested a return to front line service in Africa though his illness meant that his wish could not be granted.

Fr Bluett, born in Dublin in 1934 was raised in the Church of Ireland before converting to Catholicism and becoming a Catholic priest.

He was ordained in Keffi, diocese of Makurdi, by Archbishop Peter Y Jatau of Kaduna, Nigeria in 1972. For 36 years Fr Bluett ministered in several parishes in the diocese of Makurdi, most notably Doma. He was a renowned teacher and for many years taught at St Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Makurdi. He had the great joy of seeing part the area where he worked made into a separate diocese, Lafia.

Fr Bluett is mourned by his sister, extended family, friends and his confreres in the British Province as well as in the wider Society.

Fr Rob Morland informs us that, in accordance with his wishes Fr Dougie will be buried alongside other SMA colleagues Manchester.

Born: 30 March 1929, Brzezinki, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland
Entered: St Mary’s Emo, County Laois (HIB for POL Mi)
Final Vows: 15 August 1957
Died: 21 September 2019, Gdynia, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland - Poloniae Meridionalis Province (PME)

by 1953 came to Emo (HIB) Novitiate 1952-1955
by 1956 came to Tullabeg (HIB) working 1955-1957
by 1958 came to Rathfarnham (HIB) working 1957-1959
by 1966 at Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

Born: 02 December 1932, Cabra, Dublin
Entered: 22 December 1954, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 02 February 1965, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Died: 25 November 2023, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the St St Ignatius Leeson Street Community at the time of death

FSS
Born : 2nd December 1932 Dublin City
Raised : Cabra, Dublin
Early Education at St Agatha's William Street North, Dublin; St. Peters, Phibsborough, Dublin; Ringsend Tech, Dublin; Hosiery Mechanic; Cathal Brugha St College, Dublin
22nd December 1954 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
25th December 1956 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1957-1959 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Cook (from Jan 1957)
1959-1981 Rathfarnham - Cook
1964 Tertianship
2nd February 1965 Final Vows at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
1981-1983 Manresa House - Cook
1983-1985 Lahore, Pakistan - Administration at University Hall
1985-1987 Gardiner St - Cook; Social Services Centre
1987-1989 John Austin House - Social Services Centre Gardiner St; Minister
1989-2005 Belvedere College SJ - Minister; Social Services Centre
1993 Subminister; Assistant Sacristan; Pastoral Work in Inner City; Assists in School
2005-2012 Gardiner St - Pastoral Work in Innter City; Assists in Belvedere College SJ; Community Sacristan
2012-2023 Leeson St - Assistant Sacristan & Gardener; Visitor to Cherryfield Lodge Residents
2020 Prays for the Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge

Interfuse No 44 : September 1986

Interfuse Interviews : Gerry Marks

On his career as a Jesuit Brother, ranging from the shining saucepans of Rathfarnham to the black pots of Pakistan. Gerry is now working in the Social Service Centre in Sherrard Street and he tells us what that's like.

Interfuse
How many years have you been in the Society now, Gerry?

Gerry Marks
Well, I entered in 1954 so I'm thirty-two years a Jesuit. I started off as a postulant in the old days in Milltown Park with Fr. Con Murphy. I don't know whether you'd count that as being in the Society: the Catalogus doesn't! Anyway, I was two and a half years there before going to the noviceship in Emo in 1954. I took my vows in 1956,

Interfuse
And when did you volunteer for Pakistan?

Gerry Marks
I went out there in 1983.

Interfuse
So you had been a heck of a long time in the Order before making that decision. Mainly cooking for the troops, right?

Gerry Marks
Yes, I spent most of my Jesuit life in the kitchen.

Interfuse
Did you get fed up with cooking, if that's the right way to put it, or what made you opt for the Foreign Missions?

Gerry Marks
Well, I was a long time cooking and I didn't know whether I liked it at times. It was nice in Rathfarnham Castle; I liked it there. But when I was changed from Rathfarnham to Manresa it felt like going back to the noviceship and starting all over again. So that's why I jumped at the offer of a job in Pakistan.

Interfuse
Had you thought for some years of going on the Missions or was that a spur-of-the-moment decision?

Gerry Marks
Years ago I had thought about going to a place like Zambia but it wasn't a very strong urge. I thought I was doing okay at the cooking. I felt that I was helping out and that I was making a fairly good job of it. I also felt it was the only thing I was capable of doing. I wondered what I could do to help in Zambia and felt that I would need some other talent to be able to help the people out there.

Interfuse
So what made you think you could help out in Pakistan?

Gerry Marks
It was Bill McGoldrick's example, really. When I saw how a man of his advanced age (!) could volunteer and be capable of doing the job out there, well, I said to myself, “If Bill can do it, then the bould Marks can do it!”

Interfuse
So you replaced him out there?

Gerry Marks
Actually, it just happened at the right time, I saw a notice on the board, looking for a replacement for Bill who was coming back for tertianship. I thought I might as well volunteer this time, I thought that there would be several volunteers and I wanted to get in first. In fact I was the only applicant - so the job was mine.

Interfuse
Did you know when you were going out that it was for a limited number of years?

Gerry Marks
Yes, the contract was for two years.

Interfuse
So you hadn't burnt all your boats?

Gerry Marks
No, it would certainly be different if you were going out for an indefinite period.

Interfuse
I don't have to ask you to tell us what you were doing in Pakistan because Interfuse readers have already heard all about the job from Bill McGoldrick. When it came to the end of your time out there, were you dying to come home or would you gladly have stayed on?

Gerry Marks
For me, that's a difficult question to answer. I was sorry to be leaving in one way and I was glad in another. The thing was, I had two types of work out there, I had an apostolate with people in “the villages”, as they're called, and I was working in a hostel with the students. I was sorry to be leaving the village work. But as regards the hostel work, I didn't think much of that. There wasn't a lot to do there, to tell you the truth, I wasn't cooking. I was just looking after the staff and taking in the students' fees. In the villages, on the other hand, I found that I was meeting people and getting to know a lot of them very well. I liked that part of the work and wouldn't have minded staying on doing it.

Interfuse
Would you recommend this kind of a two-year stint to the other Brothers in the province?

Gerry Marks
I would recommend it to them if they were going to be let do the pastoral work and not confined to the hostel. You don't feel it worthwhile if you're working indoors most of the time. You meet the students and talk to them (mostly in English). I am sure that many of our middle-aged Brothers would find the pastoral work in the villages very fulfilling. I'd recommend that to any Brother because he'd be really in the middle of things where there is such great work to be done.

Interfuse
Did you find the living conditions hard yourself or did you get used to them fairly quickly?

Gerry Marks
The living conditions are okay. When I got used to the heat - 110 degrees in the dining room: great if you want to lose a bit of weight - and when I got rid of the mosquitos from my room, then living conditions were grand. The food was okay, too.

Interfuse
How was it cooked?!

Gerry Marks
Oh, it was cooked alright. But I must say that the kitchen that they had was a bit primitive and the standard of hygiene was bad. I don't think it would pass the Eastern Health Board here. I went into the kitchen when I went there first and saw that the pots were jet black. You see, the type of gas they use is a very dirty natural gas and it blackens everything in sight. All the pots were covered with this thick, black stuff, inside and out. Anyway, I got going on these pots and when I finished they were practically shining. Everything was grand for a month or so. Then they began to go black again. I just said to myself, “Sure if they've survived up to now, they can survive a few years longer”. So, I left it at that. The “black stuff” must have been edible.

Interfuse
What was the general standard-of-living like?

Gerry Marks
Some Irish Jesuits talk about Ballynun being poverty stricken. They should see the conditions in the villages in Pakistan and see the so-called housing, the little bits of shacks people live in. It is a very poor nation, materially. The one thing they have out there is the sun. I think that's what keeps them happy in their poverty. They are very happy people, believe it or not.

Interfuse
What did it feel like to live in a non-Catholic country?

Gerry Marks
Strange. I thought that when I went out first. The Moslems are friendly, though, and will shake hands with you when they meet you in the street. When they see a white face coming along, some of them will come over and say, “You are welcome”. Others might ask, “What did you come out here for?” If you say, “to work”, they wonder why you came to Pakistan where there are so many unemployed. In a way I felt sad for them because they were really good people and, if they got the chance, they'd probably make better Catholics than I am. If I ever got the opportunity, of course, I used to speak to them about the Catholic faith.

Interfuse
And how did that go down?

Gerry Marks
Well, there are a lot of things about Christianity that they find peculiar. For instance, they can't understand how God could have a son. They do have a certain devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as you know. They don't call her that; they call her the Mother of Christ the Prophet. They try to make out, through our Gospels even, that Christ promised Mohammed. They quote the text, “I am going to the Father and I will send to you a paraclete who will make all things clear”. This word, “paraclete”, in their script and in their writings, is very similar to the word for prophet. So they take this as pointing towards Mohammed. They don't realise that it was the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised the apostles and when you explain this to them, they do begin to doubt a little.
I was surprised to find that they have “Christian” mountains in the Himalayas. I was out on a trip one day and they pointed out a peak near K2 called Murray. I discovered it meant Mary. It is a big mountain and Mary is supposed to be buried beneath it. Then they point in another direction and tell you that Jesus Christ is buried over there. They say that He didn't die on the cross. His friends took him down off the cross before He died and brought Him off to the East. They can show you the mountain where He is buried.

Interfuse
Did you ever talk about religion with the students in the hostel?

Gerry Marks
Oh yes, in the hostel the students were very open. They each had different ideas on religion. Each one had his own way of thinking. We had one Shiite Moslem with a most unfortunate name. Br. McGoldrick will remember him well. If I had ever to call his name out over the yard for a phone call, I would hear a roar of laughter from the Australian Jesuits in the dining room. They used to think I was using a bad word! Anyway, he was a very nice fellow, going on to be a doctor. There was so much bribery and corruption going on in that profession that he was becoming quite disillusioned. After the doctors had performed an operation, they would go straight back to their own private clinics and leave the aftercare of a patient to the nurses. In this way they made stacks of money, thousands of rupees. That's why this student was so very disillusioned. But he was a very sincere Moslem and he would tell me all about the high moral standards he had set for himself.

Interfuse
So, eventually, the time came when you had to return to Ireland. Did you know what you'd be doing when you came home?

Gerry Marks
No. I didn't know at the time. I went and spoke to the Provincial and he told me he was looking for someone to work in the Social Service Centre, So I agreed to give it a go. Joe went on to tell me they needed someone to do the cooking on Saturdays and Sundays in Gardiner Street and wondered if I'd mind “keeping my hand in”. I didn't mind.

Interfuse
Tell us a wee bit about the Social Service Centre.

Gerry Marks
Well, I did feel a bit at sea here at first. I was always looking for a white collar job. I always had the white collar but never had the job! Anyway, I found myself coming into this job, doing office work for four days a week. As you know, there are three Sisters here and two Brothers, Eamonn Davis and myself. One of the Sisters, Sr. Mary de Porres, works in the Home Help office. The other two, Sr. Joseph and Sr. Susan, work with Eamonn Davis and myself.

Interfuse
I presume you get all sorts of problems with no two days the same? It just depends on who rambles in off the street looking for help in some shape or form?

Gerry Marks
Yes. You have to be ready for all sorts. You can get people who are very nice and polite. You can get ladies who are practically weeping looking for help because they have problems in their homes and that type of thing. Then you have tough lads coming down here straight from Mountjoy Jail. They come in here looking for money. I can tell you that Sr. Joseph is glad to have a few able-bodied men around the place at times.

Interfuse
Have you grown to like the job by now?

Gerry Marks
Well, of course, work being what it is, I sometimes get those Monday morning feelings. It's not terribly heavy work, physically speaking, even though sometimes you may have to move second-hand furniture or washing machines around. But I've got used to it. I was always used to meeting people and talking to people because I am a member of the Legion of Mary.

Interfuse
Did you find your Legion background a big help?

Gerry Marks
Yes, definitely. We visit a lot of old people. Some of them are psychiatric cases. Some of them are people who have been left alone and have no relations. They love you to stay a long time with them and talk to them. I give them as much time as possible. We each have a list of people to visit. There are about twenty-four people on my list. There are poor people and there are lonely people and they love to have you in their home for a chat, I find this very fulfilling work, visiting people who are on their own. I have to take my turn in the office as well, it's the visiting that I find most rewarding. I've discovered that the majority of these people know very little about the different grants and things that can be done for them by the Eastern Health Board or by us. There are a good few lonely old people around that we have done a lot for, Using the Eastern Health Board grants to have their houses done, helping them with their gardens and things like that: that's the type of work I like.

Interfuse
And your overall assessment of the work done by the Centre?

Gerry Marks
It's terrificly well organized and I think Fr. John Murphy is mainly responsible for that. The organizational structure of the Centre is very simple but very effective. We have a Staff Meeting every Thursday where we can discuss problem cases and help one another with advice. All in all, I can assure your readers that the Centre is a work of which the Province can be justly proud.

Interfuse No 70 : Autumn 1992

TO YOUGHAL AND BACK

Christopher Murray

“Little did I realize what was ahead for me when Eamonn Davis and Gerry Marks invited me to join them on this special occasion. I am grateful to them because it was a great day, a very pleas ant and enjoyable one. This was a surprise and delight for me, an American Jesuit on sabbatical who happened to be visiting Ireland and Belvedere College at the right time...”. So writes another participant, Brother Pat Flanagan from New York; and doubtless there will be yet more testimonies to the great day, and to the forth coming pilgrimage to Rome...

Thursday morning had us all on our feet at a rather early hour, a somewhat overcast sky and a hope of a very pleasant day. It was also the end to all discussion as to who was going and who was not and what exactly was the programme for the day.

At Gardiner St. all were ready in good time and waiting for the arrival of the bus after scoffing a plate of Bro. Loftus’ porridge and a cup of hot coffee - which he had been preparing for our comfort at 5 am. amid the sound of some musical noises and some not so musical.

The bus arrived in good time and Tom Phelan was buzzing around (rather early for him too!) making sure the “old men” were able to climb up the steps and find a comfortable seat for the long journey. All in place and then “where are the Belvedere Brothers?” In the distance Bros. Marks and Davis were seen cornering at speed and making their way up Gardiner St. to a general sigh of relief. Then came a gasp and a groan as Gerry headed in the direction of the church door as if to do his meditation, but he quickly had second thoughts and headed for the bus, to a collective sigh of relief. So on we went to collect our other passengers for the journey and found the Provincial waiting at Milltown Park to give us a send-off.

Our first stop was planned for Kilkenny with a pick-up at Naas where Bros. O'Connor and Fitzgerald were patiently awaiting our arrival. A somewhat uneventful run on to Kilkenny to the murmur of voices, which gradually grew louder as the morning blues wore off. A very pleasant breakfast awaited us and arrangement made for a meal on our evening return at 7 pm. It was a very light-heart ed and noisy crowd that boarded the bus for our Onward journey, even the bus driver became one of the excursionists!

The sun was shining brightly and the holiday spirit took over and all bother and curiosity about “what's next” was put aside, and there were some mild attempts at song and joke intermingled with comments on the places we were passing thro' and old memories evoked by some on a former journey through the same place.

Arriving finally and in good “timetable” time we found a welcoming PP, with some others, at the beautiful and ideally situat ed parish church, and were all greeted individually with great warmth. A new church in a new housing area, in very beautiful surroundings, and most pleasing to the eye.

A very restful and inspiring Mass and a reflection on Dominic Collins followed and we all felt it alone was worth the journey. A very pleasant meal, back in the town, in the welcome and warm company of the PP and then a kind of aimless ramble from here to there with Dominic Collins connections, a visit also to the SH Convent where we were graciously greeted by Mother Provincial and a quiet visit to “Exposition of the BS” which was mainly the care of the local laity. A visit to the Protestant pre-Reformation church, with visible relics and reminders of its former owners. We ourselves were the object of no little curiosity and possibly the locals had never seen such a large body of “Clericals” ambling idly around and “gawking” in at shop windows and various other places, - and wondering was this an outing for decrepit clergy! accompanied, of course, by some younger “keepers”.

I would leave it to others to describe the hilarity of the return journey, the very adequate and pleasant dinner in Kilkenny, and the hilarity and variety of real talent we enjoyed on what seemed a short journey home. The satisfaction expressed by all at the well planned day by those who had the care on their shoulders. The MC of what we might describe as the Return Concert was as good as the hidden talent that came to light in such abundance. It wasn't a very prayerful day but I think Dominic Collins would have enjoyed it very much.

Born: 13 September 1913, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1932, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1946, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 08 December 1976, Hong Kong
Died: 01 April 2018, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966

Son of Michael Mallin - executed following he 1916 Irish Rising
Brother of Seán Ó Mealláin - RIP 1977

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Easter farewell to long-serving Jesuit

Father Joseph Mallin (連民安神父), of the Society of Jesus, returned to the Lord he served on 1 April 2018, Easter Sunday. He was 104-years-old.

Born in Ireland on 13 September 1913, he joined the Jesuits on 7 September 1932 and was ordained on 31 July 1946. He made his final vows on 8 December 1976.

He arrived in Hong Kong and proceeded to Canton (Guangzhou) in 1948, returning to the then-British colony in 1949.

Between 1950 and 1968, Father Mallin taught at Wah Yan College Hong Kong and Wah Yan College Kowloon, then served as the principal of Pun U Association Wah Yan Primary School, Stubbs Road, from 1971-1977 and subsequently as the school’s supervisor from 1977 to 2002.

He was chaplain of Pun U from 2009 to 2103, formally retiring when he reached 100-years-old.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated for Father Mallin at 10am on 14 April at St. Ignatius Chapel, Wah Yan College Kowloon.
Sunday Examiner Hong Konh - 8 April 2018

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/child-of-two-revolutions/

Child of two revolutions
When Father Joseph Mallin celebrated his 100th birthday in Hong Kong on 13 September, he was hailed in Ireland’s newspapers as the oldest Irish priest in the world. Sitting in Wah Yan College, he gave a lively interview to Fionnuala McHugh of the Irish Times, who pointed to the two revolutions that Joe has survived: the Easter Rising of 1916, which claimed his father’s life; and the coup which made Sun Yat Sen the first president of the Republic of China, the year before Joe’s birth.
Joe’s father was Michael Mallin, who left home on Easter Monday 1916 to take command of the fighting in St Stephen’s Green, and never came home; he was shot in Kilmainham along with Connolly, Pearse and the other leaders. The night before the execution, 3-year-old Joseph was taken by his mother (then pregnant with her fifth child) to visit Michael in his cell. Though Joseph has no memory of that goodbye, he heeded the plea in Michael’s last letter: “Joseph, my little man, be a priest if you can.” His brother Sean had preceded him into the Jesuits, and both brothers were assigned to the Hong Kong mission.

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/featured-news/fior-eireannach-gan-dabht/

‘Fīor Eireannach gan dabht’
President Michael D Higgins and the Lord Mayor of Dublin Mícheál MacDonnacha are among the dignitaries who will attend Fr Joe Mallins SJ’s Memorial Mass on Sat 21 April, 2018 at 11:00am in St Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner St. Fr Joe Mallin was the son of Commandant Michael Mallin, who was executed for his role in the Easter Rising. He died peacefully and fittingly, on Easter Sunday morning, 1 April 2018, in Hong Kong. He was 104 years old. The funeral Mass for Fr Joe, presided over by the Bishop of Hong Kong, took place at 10am on Saturday, 14 April, at St Ignatius Chapel, Wah Yan College Kowloon. The burial was in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Happy Valley.
In his homily at the funeral Mass, Fr Joe Russell SJ, commenting on Fr Joe’s longevity said, “It is easy to understand why the people of the Old Testament were sure that a long life was the sign of God’s blessing, and explains why extraordinary life-spans were credited to their great men.” He added, “Joe was a private person. He seldom if ever spoke about himself. Which of us knew what his likes and dislikes were? More remarkably he never spoke unkindly about others. I never remember him ever speaking disparagingly about another. He never complained. With a family background like his and proficiency in the Irish language, another might have baulked at being assigned to Hong Kong. But not Joe. This is what God was asking of him; there was nothing more to be said.”
Concluding his short homily which you can read in full below, Fr Russell commented, ”As Joe comes before his judge his good life will speak eloquently for him, not only his service to the community at large but also, as the poet puts it, that best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. These have not been forgotten, they have been indelibly recorded in the book of life. Now, there is a special difficulty in speaking on the occasion of the death of someone esteemed and admired, that in recalling their virtues we may deprive them of the prayers they need for their soul’s repose.”
He was born in 1914, just two years before his father was executed by firing squad, leaving a wife and five small children. One of Fr Joseph’s brothers, Seán, also became a Jesuit priest, and his sister Úna entered the Loreto order in 1925. She was sent to a convent in Spain, where she spent the rest of her life. Commandant Mallin would have been proud of his children. In his last letter he wrote: : “Úna, my little one, be a nun; Joseph, my little man, be a priest if you can ...” Fr Joe joined the Jesuits, and in 1948 he went to Hong Kong and China as part of the Irish Jesuit mission to China. He spent over 70 years of his life there.
Fr Joe entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1932, the same year as the Eucharistic Congress and after his ordination, he was sent on the Jesuit mission to China, where he would spend 70 years of his life. His first posting was in Canton (Guangzhou) in China in 1948. This was the era of Mao Tse Tsung’s and as his Communist Red Army advanced on the city, he and other missionaries had to move to Hong Kong.
According to Fr Alfred Deignan, another Irish Jesuit missionary there, this mission was a new challenge to the Irish Province, “and a new experience for the Jesuits who went there to work among poor people speaking a different language, the Cantonese dialect, with different food, customs and weather, often very hot and humid.” Fr Joe was mission bursar for a time there, and was Director of a social centre before working as a secondary school teacher in a Jesuit-run school. He was appointed Headmaster of their primary school and Principal of Ricci College, a kindergarten in Macau, which was a Portuguese colony until 1999. He was still holding teaching duties there when he returned to Ireland in 2006 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 2006.
Fr. Joseph, a freeman of Dublin, received an invitation from the Taoiseach’s Office to attend the 90th commemoration, as the child of Commandant Michael Mallin, who was chief-of-staff of the Irish Citizen’s Army and commander of the St. Stephen’s Green garrison during the Easter Rising. Commdt. Mallin was executed in the Stonebreakers’ Yard, Kilmainham Gaol, along with the other leaders of the revolt, and buried in Arbour Hill.
His visit at that time attracted a great deal of media attention. The late Gerald Barry interviewed him for the Easter Sunday edition of ‘This Week’ (RTE 1, 1.00pm), and he also spoke to Joe Little for RTE News and to a Sky News correspondent. “I will attend the parade on Easter Sunday, as the Government was good enough to invite me, but what I am most looking forward to is being able to go to the grave of my father in Arbour Hill, with the other families of those executed, for a ceremony in early May,” he said.
Fr Joe was also musical and played the very flute which his father’s had played in Liberty Hall as a member of the Workers’ Orchestra on the eve of the 1916 Rising. The flute and his father’s watch are on exhibition in the National Museum of Ireland.
Coming up to Fr Joe’s 100th birthday, he was asked if he regretted anything about leaving Ireland 65 years earlier. He replied that he would have liked to have spent some more time working as a priest in his home country and that he “missed the rain”.
In a moving statement on his death, Fr Joe’s family in Ireland said, “Fr. Joseph Mallin SJ was the last direct living link with that period of our history... He served for more than 70 years as a missionary and educator in mainland China and Hong Kong... and like most teachers, he often talked with pride of the pupils educated at that college, many of whom went on to become leaders in their various walks of life.”
They also spoke of the kind of man Fr Joseph was to them, singling out his humility and spirituality. “He had a deeply held Christian faith and love for his fellow man and woman. His was a practical faith with a strong base in social justice and equality; not unlike his father who as a trade union activist fought for social justice and workers’ rights and who gave his young life for such a cause.”
Referencing his communication skills they said, “Fr. Joseph was... a prolific letter writer, just like his father, and he wrote letters to his family members on a regular basis and also to many other correspondents, never failing to respond to a letter when anyone wrote to him, be it a young school child from Donegal or an academic historian from the University, they would receive a thoughtful reply.” And they spoke of his love of the Irish language – “His command of the Irish language, written and oral, was unbelievable considering he was out of the country since 1948. He wrote to family members and others as Gaeilge – always, san sean-cló, in the old Irish script, and he was delighted to speak Irish to anybody from Ireland who visited him, Fīor Eireannach gan dabht. He had numerous friends in Ireland and around the world. He kept in contact with them all and whenever he was home in Ireland he would make sure to visit them.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Homily at Funeral of Father Joseph Mallin SJ Wah Yan College, Kowloon, Hong Kong 14 April 2018
When Father Mallin was two and a half years old, his mother took him to the prison cell where his father was awaiting execution by firing squad the following day at dawn for the part he played in his country’s struggle for independence. As his father embraced his then youngest child for the last time he said to his wife: he’ll make a fine priest.
Wish and prophecy splendidly fulfilled in the life we are remembering this morning.
Father Mallin – he was always Joe to us – was born in Dublin 104 years ago. In him it is easy to understand why the people of the Old Testament were sure that a long life was the sign of God’s blessing, and explains why extraordinary life-spans were credited to their great men.
Joe became a Jesuit in 1932, was ordained priest in 1946. In 1948 he arrived in Hong Kong, where – with the exception of a stint in Macau as principal of Colegio Ricci, he spent the rest of his life.
As we gather together in this chapel to commend him to the Lord’s tender mercy, we have wanted prayers offered, God’s praises sung, the scriptures read, the Eucharist celebrated. It is our way of saying thank you to almighty God for the gift of Joe, and to thank him for sharing his life with us, to thank him too for all the good he accomplished with God’s grace in a long life of service of others. His pilgrim journey came to an end on Easter Sunday – on what better day could one choose to die? – and those who were privileged to have walked some part of that journey with him are left to mourn his loss.
Our Mass this morning then is an act of thanksgiving, it is a last public act of love, an opportunity to surrender Joe into the loving embrace of the God he so faithfully served. Our Mass is also the joyful assertion of our Christian belief that we – that all of us – are called to share Christ’s resurrection. We are asserting that we have been created, not for death but for life, that death has not the last word. Because of Christ’s resurrection death, from being final and immediately destructive has become fruitful and triumphant, has become the beginning of something magnificent rather than the end of everything. Though Joe has died he still lives on, in the thoughts of those who knew and loved him, and he lives on, we confidently believe, in our Father’s house, experiencing now the truth of those lovely words of St Augustine: You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
Joe was a private person. He seldom if ever spoke about himself. Which of us knew what his likes and dislikes were? More remarkably he never spoke unkindly about others. I never remember him ever speaking disparagingly about another. He never complained. With a family background like his and proficiency in the Irish language, another might have baulked at being assigned to Hong Kong. But not Joe. This is what God was asking of him; there was nothing more to be said. Joe was a man of many parts. Though most of his time was given to education, he was called on to fill many and varied roles. Because of his good judgement and attention to detail he was asked to supervise the construction of both Wah Yan Colleges as well as the Adam Shall student hostel on the campus of the Chinese University. For a time he was in charge of a Caritas social service centre. He was bursar for the communities where he was stationed. And when the Jesuits took on the running of the Pun U Association primary school, it was he who was called on to be its principal and then its supervisor. The Provincial who assigned him to this new venture gave as the reason for his choice: Joe seems to succeed in whatever he undertakes.
His was a life without frills. His hobbies were few: he was a lover of nature and delighted in treks up and down the hills and dales of the New Territories. He also played the recorder. Living in the room next to his I can vouch for this. He had a phenomenal, computer-like memory which remained with him until the end. He took the trouble to remember the name of every boy in Pun U school. The boys’ names were written in a little book which he carried around with. For him to make this effort to know the names of his students was a mark of his respect for them.
This morning we are a guard of honour escorting Joe home to meet his Lord, to that presence where each of us will one day just as surely go. We are outriders accompanying him on his final journey. As Joe comes before his judge his good life will speak eloquently for him, not only his service to the community at large but also, as the poet puts it, that best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. These have not been forgotten, they have been indelibly recorded in the book of life. Now, there is a special difficulty in speaking on the occasion of the death of someone esteemed and admired, that in recalling their virtues we may deprive them of the prayers they need for their soul’s repose.
As we hand Joe over to the mercy and compassion of his Saviour and ours, we bid him a fond good-bye, conscious that we are saying au revoir and not farewell. As we salute him with pride and affection, we turn to God in prayer for ourselves who are left behind: that the Lord may support us, all the day long, till the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then in his mercy may he give us too a safe lodging, a holy rest and peace at the last.
Fr John Russell SJ

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/memorial-mass-for-joe-mallin-sj/

Memorial Mass for Joe Mallin SJ
President Michael D. Higgins was among the dignitaries at the Memorial Mass for Irish Jesuit missionary Fr Joseph Mallin SJ at Gardiner Street Church on 21 April, 2018. Fr Mallin’s funeral was previously held in Hong Kong where he had lived and worked for the last 70 years.
The service was a celebration of his remarkable life, which had both historical and spiritual significance and offered his family, friends and fellow Jesuits the opportunity to mark his passing in his home town.
The packed congregation in St Francis Xavier Church also included the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mícheál Mac Donncha, the Taoiseach’s aide-de-camp Commandant Caroline Burke, Councillor Cormac Devlin, Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD and Senator Mark Daly, who were in attendance due to Fr Mallin’s stature as the last surviving child of an executed 1916 leader and as a Freeman of Dublin.
A book of condolence was signed by mourners as they entered the church. The book sat on a table against a backdrop of photographs of Fr Joseph’s parents. The portrait of his father Michael Mallin sits beside a photo of his mother Agnes who is captured sitting with her five small children Séamas, Seosamh, Séan, Maura, and Úna at Maura’s baptism in 1916 – the year her husband was executed.
Fr Joseph’s cousin, Fr Ray Warren OMI, was the main celebrant at the Mass and delivered a heartfelt homily in which he said that his cousin was a man who was ‘blessed indeed with understanding, wisdom, and knowledge’ and noted his ‘encyclopaedic memory’.
The Mass was a bilingual celebration in honour of Fr Joseph’s lifelong love of the Irish language and of course his heritage. It was also an event in which both his biological and Jesuit family came together. Fr Gerry Clarke SJ, the Gardiner Street parish priest welcomed the congregation and was joined on the altar by many other Jesuits including Ashley Evans SJ, James Hurley SJ and the Provincial, Leonard Moloney SJ. John Guiney SJ, Director of the Jesuit Missions Office, accompanied the President, Michael D. Higgins throughout the ceremony.
Fr Joseph’s niece, Una Ni Challanáin, did the first reading and his cousin, Fr Ray Warren OMI, read the Gospel on ‘The Beatitudes’. Other members of the Mallin-Hickey family read prayers of the faithful and sang at the event.
An offertory procession that presented symbols of Fr Joseph’s life were presented at the altar during Mass. The items chosen were a flag, a flute, and his rosary beads and also his pen and glasses. Fr Joseph didn’t return home very often from the time his mission in Hong Kong began but he was a prolific letter-writer who corresponded with many people in Ireland and around the world. A letter to his nephew arrived in Ireland five days after his death and added a poignant touch to the collection.
Seán Tapley is a nephew of Fr Mallin’s who corresponded with him right up until his death and worked closely with him on the document that revealed new evidence about his father Michael Mallin’s court martial and execution. He gave a moving eulogy which gave tribute to Fr Mallin’s legacy of education and pastoral work in Hong Kong, and his love of his adopted home. He also noted that in spite of the many letters that Fr Mallin wrote, he was essentially ‘a thoughtful man with a droll sense of humour’ who was economical with words.
The Jesuit tribute to the deceased missionary was delivered by Fr Leonard Moloney SJ, the current Provincial of the Society of Jesus. In it he emphasised Fr Mallin’s dedication to his mission in Hong Kong, and his reputation for never speaking ill of anybody over his long life (see the full speech below).
After the ceremony, the congregation stayed for refreshments and conversation in Gardiner Street Jesuit community, to celebrate the life and achievements of this remarkable man.
Photo: Accompanying the President are John K. Guiney SJ and Yanira Romero of Irish Jesuit Missions.

Reflection by Irish Jesuit Provincial Leonard Moloney SJ
In the second last letter to his wife Agnes, written literally on the back of an envelope, Commandant Mallin, Joe’s father, wrote, “All is lost, my love to all my children. No matter what my fate I have done my duty to my beloved Ireland, to you, and to my darling children.”
Joe’s father was one of those Irish men with a deep Catholic faith and a sense of sacrifice, who were prepared to give their lives for what ‘was right and just’, as Joe himself has said.
Ireland has that tradition of self-sacrifice for the good of others, and it’s also expressed in another vein – that of our missionary tradition. We have the monks of old like St Columcille, St Columbanus and St Gall who left their native land to spread the good news of Christ and his vision of justice and peace.
When Fr Joe became a Jesuit, he joined an order whose early founders, like Francis Xavier, began the European missionary journey to the East. Indeed, Francis wanted to go to China but died on the island of Shangchuan, in sight of the mainland.
So like the early Jesuit Fathers, Fr Joe become a part of the Jesuit tradition of mission, going where the need is greatest, obeying orders! And following in the sacrificial tradition of his own Father, (and Irish missionaries) he gave his life – over 70 years of it – working for and with the people of China and Hong Kong.
As he said in an interview a short while ago, the men and women of the Rising, like his father “had a vision of what was right and just, and they wanted to do what they could to build a better Ireland free from poverty and oppression.”
That too was Fr Joe’s motivation as a missionary and as a Jesuit. In the words of Pedro Arrupe, a former Fr General of the Jesuits and himself a European missionary to Asia, Jesuits are men called to live ‘a faith that does justice.’
And that was the faith that Joe lived out, teaching those he was sent to, and in the best missionary tradition, allowing them to teach him. In that same interview, he quoted a Chinese saying that summed up what life was about: “It’s not about ‘ourselves alone’, (now there’s a resonant phrase!) “it’s about what the Chinese call ‘sharing with others’.”
Joe certainly shared his long life with others, be it as teacher, construction supervisor, bursar, headmaster, or director of a social services centre. He found himself in those various roles because, “of his sound judgement and attention to detail” to quote his fellow Jesuits in China.
That word attention is key. For as 20th century mystic Simone Weil points out, “Taken to its highest degree, attention is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love”. And what else would you call it when someone takes the trouble to remember the name of every boy in his school, as Father Joe did.
The Jesuits in his community also attest to his goodness – ‘He never complained’, fellow Jesuit community member Fr Joe Russell tells us. And in fact, as Fr Ray has pointed out, Fr Joe was a great communicator, and he was very careful with words.
This is something that Pope Francis singles out for attention in his recent apostolic letter Gaudete et Exultate. He tells us that resisting the temptation to gossip or engage in back biting is a holy thing.
And Fr Russell also adds, “Remarkably, he never spoke unkindly about others. I never remember him ever speaking disparagingly about another”. 104 years and never an unkind word about another person – remarkable indeed!
In that letter on the envelope that Commandant Mallin wrote to Joe’s mother he started by saying, “All is lost”. He ended by qualifying that statement saying, “All is lost, Agnes, except honor and courage”.
Those qualities were certainly not lost in his son whom we remember today. Fr Joe Mallin, a man of courage and honour, a good and holy Jesuit.

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/jesuitica-rebel-stock/

JESUITICA: Rebel stock
A curious bond links the first scholastic of the restored Irish Mission with the oldest Jesuit in our Chinese mission: both lost their fathers to execution by the British. Bartholomew Esmonde returned from his studies in Sicily in 1814 to join the staff of the new college of Clongowes. Some ten years earlier his father, Dr John Esmonde of Sallins, Kildare, had been publicly hanged on O’Connell Bridge in Dublin for his part in the 1798 rebellion. William Aylmer of Kilcock, whose Jesuit brother founded Belvedere, was convicted of treason for the same reason, but escaped execution. Michael Mallin, a leader in the 1916 rising, called his family to Kilmainham Gaol on the eve of his execution, and prayed that his little son Joseph would be a priest. 94-year-old Joseph SJ, pictured here on the steps of Kilmainham Gaol, is still ministering in Hong Kong. Despite stereotypes, many Jesuits are of rebel stock.

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions : https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/242-fr-joe-mallin-sj-a-life-of-service and https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/587-fr-joe-mallin-sj-a-life-of-service-2

FR. JOE MALLIN SJ - A LIFE OF SERVICE
The last eighty years have seen momentous changes and Fr. Joe Mallin SJ has been a witness to many, during his years of service in China. Clearly a life of service to others was not unknown in his own family - his brother Sean entered the Society a few years before him and his father was Commandant Michael Mallin, executed by the British for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916.
Fr. Mallin was only two and a half years old and therefore has no memories of his father but was very moved by an article about him written in 1917 by an American Jesuit. Fr. Mallin remembers his mother as a wise woman, who tried to let them experience as normal a family life as possible. At the time of his execution she had four children and was expecting their fifth. In a final letter to her, her husband wrote "to pray for all the souls who fell in this fight, Irish and English".

Eucharistic Congress 1932
Shortly before he entered the Irish Jesuit Novitiate, in September 1932, Joe was an active participant in the Eucharistic Congress, remembering the huge crowds in Phoenix Park, the relief that the weather held, and the excellent marshalling by General O'Duffy, Garda Commissioner. Joe had been in contact with the Jesuits whilst at St Enda's Rathfarnham and met Fr. Ernest Mackey at Knockbeg College.

China
On the ship out to Hong Kong the Catholic cargo supervisor died and Fr. Joe was asked to conduct the burial service at sea. It was a very moving experience he remembers and the captain was most helpful. Fr. Mallin arrived in Guangzhou (Canton) in early September 1948. But in May 1949, the Jesuits had to leave the city for Hong Kong due to the advance of the Chinese Communist army. Hong Kong in the late 1940s was not in good shape due to the Japanese occupation and the Allied bombing but it recovered very quickly.
Fr. Mallin didn't have much time to explore his new home but got to work straight away. He had to take over the top floor of the Paris Foreign Mission Society house which had kindly been handed over to the Jesuits. Joe had no difficulty adapting to the new life and culture. He pitched in head first into dealing with all kinds of people – architects, builders and suppliers, cooks and cleaners. He supervised several construction or building conversion jobs and had to arrange for the temporary accommodation of many Jesuits expelled from Mainland China after the Communist takeover.
An incident he recalls clearly was when a phone call came one night, very late, from the Queen Mary Hospital asking for a priest to come to attend a dying patient. He went down to the street and stopped a taxi. The taxi driver got him to the hospital very quickly. When he thanked him, the driver replied "I am a Muslim, and my father told me that if a Catholic mission priest ever stopped me in the middle of the night to go to a hospital I should drive like the wind because it was very important."

Few words, but many loving actions
He had a very varied apostolic life, successfully doing the job of minister in the community, Mission Bursar, Director of a Social Centre, secondary teacher, Headmaster of Pun Yu Primary School in Hong Kong, Principal of Ricci College in Macao, among other things. He was known as a man of few words, but of many loving actions.

National Museum Dublin
Fr. Mallin played the flute, which had belonged to his father. Indeed his father had played it in Liberty Hall in the Workers' Orchestra on the eve of the 1916 Rising. The flute and his father's watch are now in the National Museum in Dublin.
When asked if he regretted anything about leaving Ireland, he said that he would like to have had some more time working as a priest in Ireland. He said that he also missed the rain! Fr. Joe Mallin has been a Jesuit for over 80 years and will celebrate his 100th birthday next September! He is viewed with almost incredulous amazement for all he does at his age. He is deeply respected by all those who know him.

https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/460-fr-joseph-mallin-sj-looking-back-2016-1916

FR JOSEPH MALLIN SJ: LOOKING BACK 2016-1916
Fr Joseph Mallin SJ received the freedom of the city (https://www.thejournal.ie/joseph- mallin-freedom-of-dublin-hong-kong-2671842-Mar2016/) award from the Lord Mayor of Dublin Críona Ní Dhálaigh who flew to Hong Kong to meet him on the 21st March. An Irish concert was enjoyed by all, including Fr Mallin's visiting niece Una, and the two conversed "as Gaeilge" all evening. The award was a tribute to his life’s service through his ministry to the people of Hong Kong and Macau and in recognition of his status as the child of Commandant Michael Mallin, one of the executed leaders of the Irish 1916 Easter Rising.

Oldest Irish Jesuit missionary priest
Joe Mallin was born in 1913. At age 102 (https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/416-happy- 102nd-birthday-to-fr-joe-mallin-sj), he is the oldest Irish Jesuit missionary priest, living in Hong Kong.
His father Michael Mallin commanded the fighting at St Stephen’s Green on Easter (https://jesuitmissions.ie/news/459-celebrating-easter-2016) Monday 1916 with Countess Markievicz as his deputy. The Commandant paid the ultimate price for his part in the Irish Easter Rising and was shot in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin on May 8th, 1916.
The night before his father’s execution, Joseph was taken to Kilmainham Gaol by his mother, then pregnant with their fifth child, to say goodbye. He was only two and a half years old and does not remember the occasion. Michael Mallin wrote to his little boy in the last letter to his family: “Joseph, my little man, be a priest if you can.”
Portrait of Michael Mallin by David Rooney from 1916 Portraits and Lives(Royal Irish Academy)
Fr Mallin often played the flute that his father used in the Workers’ Orchestra, in Liberty Hall, Dublin on the eve of the 1916 Rising. The flute and his father’s watch are now in the National Museum in Dublin.

The ultimate price
In a greeting on Fr Mallin’s 100th birthday, Senator Mark Daly wrote:
“As a nation we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the sacrifice made by many men and women through the generations.
“The price paid by your father in laying down his life, the price paid by your mother who lost her husband, the price paid by you and your siblings who grew up without their father is a debt un- repayable by any nation.
“The proclamation whose ideals they tried to fulfill contains concepts that are both timeless and universal. Those aims are as relevant to people struggling for rights all over the world today as much as they were for the people of Ireland in 1916.”

https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/588-‘fīor-eireannach-gan-dabht’

‘FĪOR EIREANNACH GAN DABHT’
Joe Mallin SJ, son of Commdt. Michael Mallin, who was executed for his role in the Easter Rising, died
peacefully and fittingly, on Easter Sunday morning, 1 April 2018, in Hong Kong. He was 104 years old.
He was born in 1914, just two years before his father was executed by firing squad, leaving a wife and five small children. One of Fr Joseph’s brothers, Seán, also became a Jesuit priest, and his sister Úna entered the Loreto order in 1925. She was sent to a convent in Spain, where she spent the rest of her life. Commdt. Mallin would have been proud of his children. In his last letter he wrote: : “Úna, my little one, be a nun; Joseph, my little man, be a priest if you can ...” Fr Joe joined the Jesuits, and in 1948 he went to Hong Kong and China (https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/587-fr-joe-mallin-sj-a-life-of- service-2) as part of the Irish Jesuit mission to China. He spent over 70 years of his life there.
According to Fr Alfred Deignan, another Irish Jesuit missionary there, this mission was a new challenge to the Irish Province (https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/543-90th-anniversary-of-the-arrival-of-the- jesuits-in-hong-kong), “and a new experience for the Jesuits who went there to work among poor people speaking a different language, the Cantonese dialect, with different food, customs and weather, often very hot and humid.” Fr Joe taught in a a Jesuit-run secondary school and was still holding teaching duties there when he returned to Ireland in 2006 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 2006.
Fr. Joseph, a freeman of Dublin, received an invitation from the Taoiseach’s Office to attend the 90th commemoration, as the child of Commandant Michael Mallin, who was chief-of-staff of the Irish Citizen’s Army and commander of the St. Stephen’s Green garrison during the Easter Rising. Commdt. Mallin was executed in the Stonebreakers’ Yard, Kilmainham Gaol, along with the other leaders of the revolt, and buried in Arbour Hill.
His visit at that time attracted a great deal of media attention. The late Gerald Barry interviewed him for the Easter Sunday edition of ‘This Week’ (RTE 1, 1.00pm), and he also spoke to Joe Little for RTE News and to a Sky News correspondent. “I will attend the parade on Easter Sunday, as the Government was good enough to invite me, but what I am most looking forward to is being able to go to the grave of my father in Arbour Hill, with the other families of those executed, for a ceremony in early May,” he said.
In a moving statement on his death, Fr Joe’s family in Ireland said, “Fr. Joseph Mallin SJ was the last direct living link with that period of our history... He served for more than 70 years as a missionary and educator in mainland China and Hong Kong... and like most teachers, he often talked with pride of the pupils educated at that college, many of whom went on to become leaders in their various walks of life.”
They also spoke of the kind of man Fr Joseph was to them, singling out his humility and spirituality. “He had a deeply held Christian faith and love for his fellow man and woman. His was a practical faith with a strong base in social justice and equality; not unlike his father who as a trade union activist fought for social justice and workers’ rights and who gave his young life for such a cause.”
They spoke also of his communication skills – “Fr. Joseph was... a prolific letter writer, just like his father, and he wrote letters to his family members on a regular basis and also to many other correspondents, never failing to respond to a letter when anyone wrote to him, be it a young school child from Donegal or an academic historian from the University, they would receive a thoughtful reply.” And of his love of the Irish language – “His command of the Irish language, written and oral, was unbelievable considering he was out of the country since 1948. He wrote to family members and others as Gaeilge – always, san sean-cló, in the old Irish script, and he was delighted to speak Irish to anybody from Ireland who visited him, Fīor Eireannach gan dabht. He had numerous friends in Ireland and around the world. He kept in contact with them all and whenever he was home in Ireland he would make sure to visit them. (Read their full statement below).
The funeral Mass for Fr Joe will take place at 10am on Saturday, 14 April, at St Ignatius Chapel, Wah Yan College Kowloon.The burial will take place after the Mass at St. Michael’s Cemetery, Happy Valley, Hong Kong. The Mass will be presided by the Bishop of Hong Kong.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Statement from the Mallin/Hickey Family on the death of Fr Joe
It is with great personal sadness that we learned from Hong Kong this Easter morning of the death of Fr. Joseph Mallin SJ, and just as we were about to commemorate the 102nd anniversary of the Easter Rising. We always knew this day was near but it came as a shock all the same to know that Fr. Joseph is gone to his heavenly reward. What a poignant day to complete his earthly life. And what a good and long life in the service of God it was and he lived it well. May he rest in peace. We will miss him. Solas na bhflaitheas dó agus ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
Joseph Michael Mallin was born in September 1913. He was the youngest son of Agnes Hickey and Michael Mallin. His mother was the daughter of Joseph Hickey, a Fenian man who was deported from Ireland for 11 years for his part in the Fenian Rising of 1867, and the granddaughter of John Francis Nugent a United Irishman, a printer & publisher from Cookstown Co. Tyrone. Agnes was born in Liverpool in 1870 during the deportation. Joseph was just a young boy when his father, Michael Mallin, Commandant and Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Citizen Army was executed at Kilmainham Gaol in 1916.
Fr. Joseph Mallin SJ was the last direct living link with that period of our history. His siblings, brothers Séamus and Fr. Seán, sisters Sr. Agnes, a Nun with the Loreto Community in Seville, Spain, and Maura Phillips have all predeceased him.
He served for more than 70 years as a missionary and educator in mainland China and Hong Kong with the Jesuit community there. He was ordained in 1946 and two years later was sent to the Jesuit Mission in China. He worked tirelessly for the people there. He loved that community and they loved him and it is there where he will be laid to rest. With others he played a significant part in the ongoing development of education and progress of Wah Yan School and college in Hong Kong and Kowloon. He managed Wah Yan College for a number of years and, like most teachers, he often talked with pride of the pupils educated at that college, many of whom went on to become leaders in their various walks of life.
Fr. Joseph was a very spiritual and humble man. He had a deeply held Christian faith and love for his fellow man and woman. His was a practical faith with a strong base in social justice and equality; not unlike his father who as a trade union activist fought for social justice and workers’ rights and who gave his young life for such a cause.
Fr. Joseph lived to be 104. He was given more time than most on this earth and he used that time wisely. His parents, Michael and Agnes Mallin would be very proud of their son’s achievements and the way he lived his life.
Fr. Joseph was a great communicator all his life, a prolific letter writer, just like his father. He was an inveterate letter-writer and he wrote letters to his family members on a regular basis and also to many other correspondents, never failing to respond to a letter when anyone wrote to him, be it a young school child from Donegal or an academic historian from the University, they would receive a thoughtful reply. His command of the Irish language, written and oral, was unbelievable considering he was out of the country since 1948. He wrote to family members and others as Gaeilge – always, san sean-cló, in the old Irish script, and he was delighted to speak Irish to anybody from Ireland who visited him, Fīor Eireannach gan dabht. He had numerous friends in Ireland and around the world. He kept in contact with them all and whenever he was home in Ireland he would make sure to visit them.
Fr. Joseph Mallin SJ was proud to be honoured with the Freedom of the City of Dublin during the 1916 Centenary Commemorations. An honour presented for his service to education and his family’s connection to the Easter 1916 Rising and the struggle for Irish Independence.
One of his last official acts was his major historical contribution to the memory of his father, Commandant Michael Mallin. This historical document was published last year and it presents new insights and facts about the record of his father’s court martial. This document is now available in the archives of Kilmainham Gaol Museum and the National Library of Ireland. It was Fr. Joseph’s wish that historians would be cognisant of this work.

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
His father was a martyr for Irish Independance. He was born in 1913. His father was shot in 1916 for his part in the insurrection against the British, and so his father was considered a martyr.After his father’s death his family were cared for, he was sent to a special Irish Primary School and then to a Jesuit one.

He joined the Society in 1932, was Ordained in 1946 and came to Hong Kong in 1948, going to Guangzhou for language studies until he was forced to leave in 1949.

He was highly respected among Jesuits as a holy man of charity and practical work. The Jesuits in Hong Kong owe much to him in maming the buildings on Cheung Chau typhoon proof (Typhoon Mary had killd 30 people there in 1930)
He was in charge of building Wah Yan College Hong Kong 1954-1955.
He was also in charge of the School Chapel at Wah Yan Kowloon and the extension over the avenue in 1969. He was also responsible for the construction of the Adam Schall Residence at the The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
He spent four years in Macau, one as teacher and three as Proncipal, until he was recalled to Hong Kong to be Principal of the Pun U Wah Yan Primary School when the Society took over the management of that school. He later became Supervisor there.
He was sent back to Macau to work at the Jesuit school there, and was recalled to Hong Kong as Supervisor of the Primary School again, He knew the teachers there so swell and they all loved him. He was interested in people and kind.
According to Mr Wallace Yu, and alumnus of Wah Yan Hong Kong, he is keen to point out that Joe Mallin was “Headmaster” rather than “Principal” at Pun U, and that the Wah Yan was only added later in 1971 between his two periods at Pun U he was in Macau at Collegio Ricci.

Note from Séamus Doris Entry
He was good friends with Harry Naylor, Joe Mallin and Dan Fitzpatrick.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - St Enda’s Rathfarnham student

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948
Frs. Casey G., Grogan and Sullivan leave England for Hong Kong on 2nd July on the ‘Canton’. On the following day Fr. Kevin O'Dwyer hopes to sail with Fr. Albert Cooney from San Francisco on the ‘General Gordon’ for the same destination.
The following will be going to Hong Kong in August : Frs. Joseph Mallin and Merritt, Messrs. James Kelly, McGaley, Michael McLoughlin and Geoffrey Murphy.

Born: 09 February 1933, 83 Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin
Entered: 22 October 1955, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 15 August 1966, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 26 July 2010, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

by 1959 at Rome, Italy - Sec to President of CC. M.M.

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/versatile-jim-2/

Versatile Jim
With the death of Brother Jim Sutton last week, the Irish Jesuits lost a quiet man of multiple talents. Born in Glasnevin, and schooled by the Christian Brothers in Scoil Mhuire,
Marino, he was bright enough to win a scholarship into the ESB. Having trained as an electrician he entered the Society at 22. That was his most familiar role in the Province: he wired, rewired, fixed and constructed and maintained plant in most of our houses, leaving a precious legacy behind him. His other talents were less well known. He ran with Donore Harriers, played brilliant hurling with St Vincent’s Club, and could bring a party to life with his banjo. In this last year he pulled himself back from a life-threatening sickness to brighten the surrounds of Cherryfield with its brilliant flower beds. He is remembered with great affection.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 143 : Autumn 2010

Obituary

Br Jim Sutton (1926-2009)

9th February 1933: Born in Co. Dublin
Early education in Scoil Mhuire, Marino; Ringsend Technical College;
ESB apprentice; Qualified electrician.
22nd October 1955: Entered the Society at Emo
12th January 1958: First Vows at Emo
1958 - 1959: Curia Rome - Secretary
1959 - 1970: Milltown Park Community - Electrician, Plant maintenance
1965 - 1966: Tullabeg - Tertianship
15th August 1966: Final Vows
1970 - 1983: Manresa House - Electrician, Plant maintenance
1983 - 1997: Gonzaga Community - Consultant Electrician and Painter (Province Communities and Apostolates)
1997 - 2010: Gonzaga Community - Assisting the sick and elderly
14th October 2009: Admitted to Cherryfield Lodge
26th July 2010: Died in Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Myles O'Reilly writes:
It was very striking when Jim Sutton died how much he was grieved for, not only by family and friends but by the Cherryfield staff itself. A bright, intelligent, cheerful man, sparkling with life, was gone out of their lives. They had witnessed the ordeal he went through the previous 6 months with one doctor insisting that he continue to be plied with heavy doses of antibiotics to keep his knees from becoming re-infected again; and the other, his heart specialist, equally adamant that his heart and body could sustain no more antibiotics. He was between a rock and a hard place and it was only a matter of time before one would prevail over the other. During those months he was a defiant figure and a comic sight to see in a wheel chair, being pushed by Brendan Hyland and Tom-Tom around the grounds of Cherryfield, giving the orders and they digging holes and planting flowers where he wanted them planted according to his master plan! They grew the flowers from seed in Gonzaga garden and transferred them to Cherryfield when the time was right. When you go into Cherryfield grounds now, you cannot but be struck by the beauty of the flowers which are a tribute to Jim's dream garden.

Jim was born in Gardiner St., but early in his childhood his parents moved to Donnycarney, where he and his 3 elder sisters were raised. He went to Colaiste Scoil Mhuire Marino and Ringsend Tech. In his growing up years he played the banjo and sang with the “Black and White Minstrel Show” a group founded by his uncle. He loved the GAA and played in goal with the St Vincent's hurling team. He was a passionate follower of the Dublin footballers all his life and blamed their demise in recent years to their picking too many players from south of the Liffey! His father was a foreman in the docks, which gave rise to Jim wanting to be a tug-boat pilot guiding ships up the Liffey from the sea. Providentially he did not get the job on health grounds, and came to be one of two who was picked out by ESB from Ringsend Tech to become ESB apprentice electricians. This exposed him to doing a retreat in Rathfarnham Castle which in turn led to his wanting to become a Jesuit brother. He finished his training as an electrician and joined the Jesuits in 1955.

He finished his novitiate late due to a stint in hospital from a hurling injury to his knee which he acquired in the novitiate. After novitiate he was sent to Rome to be a secretary to some sodality - without any Italian, and without having ever put a page in a typewriter! A few American Jesuits there kept him sane for two difficult years. From there he was sent back to Milltown Park to be plant manager and electrician. Over the eleven years he spent there, he and Jimmy Lavin must have painted every corridor and room in the house as well as doing all the necessary electrical work. You could often hear them laughing in their practical world at us students living in our intellectual world of books scurrying to classes, puffing ourselves up with knowledge - but most of us could hardly change a plug! Next Jim was sent to Manresa for 3 years and developed the role of being electrician and painter for the whole province. This meant buying a car and hiring some lay people to do the job with him. He continued in this work throughout his Gonzaga years up to 1997 until he was forced to retire from his bad knees and other health complications.

All through all those years, Jim developed a great love of nature. He could name every tree, flower and bird. Mary Oliver's short poem said it all. “Be Attentive, Be astonished, And tell of it”. He loved to grow flowers from seed and beautify the grounds of Gonzaga and Cherryfield from the full grown flowers.

Through Br Peter Doyle, he got a great interest in fishing. Br Brendan Hyland tells a story how he and Jim went for a weekend to somewhere in the ring of Kerry to fish. They armed themselves with all the latest fishing tackle and lovely new rods, and lay them carefully out on the rocks with their packed lunches to take stock of where to first cast their rods. All of a sudden a big wave came in, swept over them and took all their gear off out to sea. Brendan shocked, looked at Jim for his reaction to their dilemma. To his surprise Jim just sat down and broke his sides laughing! He was never far from seeing the funny side of things.

Jim was inclined to quickly like or dislike people. One person he intensely disliked was Senator Norris. He and Br Hyland took a weekend off once and stayed in a B & B. To his horror, Senator Norris was staying there too. But Senator Norris's charming, witty and intelligent conversation won him over! It showed up another side to Jim; he loved a good intelligent conversation, loved people who were well informed and well-read, which he tended to be himself. Those who spent time with him outside the Society tell me that he never missed daily mass, liked to say the rosary in the car and loved to stop and pray in little well-kept country churches.

Jim loved a good joke. Even in his last 5 years, when life was just one operation after another, he kept his humour and his zest for life. Up to 4 days before he died, he was still planning how to improve the garden in Cherryfield. Most of his last 4 days were spent in a semi coma. There was one brief moment where he came out of the coma. He was awakened by the voice of Linda, the cook from Gonzaga. He opened his eyes and with a big smile gave Linda and Mary McGreer and others who were there a big hug. After that he never regained consciousness and died peacefully 2 days later. May he rest in peace.

Born: 1584, Ossory, County Kilkenny
Entered: 18 December 1603, Évora, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1612/3, Évora, Portugal
Died: 13 March 1642, Galway Residence, Galway City, County Galway

Alias Duigin

1606 Student at Évora and called “John Baptist Doulgar”
1614-19 Teaching Arts at Irish Seminary in Lisbon
Was Rector of Irish College at Lisbon
1626 Was in Ireland
1634 Reading Theology at Lisbon
“Often accompanied Dr Kirwan on his visitation of the Tuam Diocese. He was 20 years Superior of the Galway Residence”.
“So profound his learning, piety and judgement, his opinions and decisions were at all times considered as oracles of the best of the people (Lynch on Life of Dr Kirwan)”
Known to have forfeited his estates at Cloncoise Castle a slab of which is now in gardens of Mundrehid House, Co Laois

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Nephew of Peter Lombard, Archbishop of Armagh
He was Professor of Belles Lettres, Philosophy and Theology - his learning, prudence and piety are extolled by Dr Lynch.
1620-1642 He was a zealous Missioner in Connaught and Rector of Galway Residence (cf Foley’s Collectanea)
1607-1642 On Irish Mission. He was reported by the Mission Superior to have been “distinguished for the example of religious life, and for laborious industry during the many years he cultivated the vineyard” (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
(cf “Pii Antistitis Icon, or Life of Bishop Kirwan)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied at the Irish College Lisbon before Ent 18 December 1603 Évora
After First Vows he completed Philosophy studies, did a short Regency and then studied at Évora where he was Ordained there 1612/1613
1613 Sent to Lisbon to teach Philosophy
1619-1622 Rector of Irish College Lisbon succeeding Cornelius Carrick, but was keen to be sent on the Irish Mission
1622 Sent to Ireland and to the Galway Residence.
1630-1641 Superior of Galway Residence for eleven years and died there 13 March 1642
In 1625 - three years after his return to Ireland - trouble broke out at the Irish College Lisbon because of the appointment of a Portuguese Rector to replace William McGrath. The Portuguese Provincial appealed to Fr General to have Fr Duggin returned and there is much correspondence between them in the succeeding four years. Fr Duggin in the end was not sent back because he was too valuable in Galway.
A great friend of Bishop Francis Kirwan of Killala, whom he accompanied on his first visitation of his Diocese
The Mission Superior Robert Nugent paid tribute in his notification of death to the General “ for his exemplary religious life and indefatigable labours in this vineyard for many years”

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DUIGUIN, JOHN BAPTIST. From F. Robert Nugent’s letter, dated Ireland, 24th of April, 1642, I collect that his friend had died on the preceding 13th of March, religiosae vitae exemplo et multorum annorum exantlatis in hac vinea laboribits insignis.

Born: 14 August 1926, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 12 November 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1957, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1961, Chiesa del Gesù, Rome, Italy
Died: 22 September 2023, St Paul’s, Hospital, Hong Kong - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Part of the Ricci Hall, Hong Kong community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to HK 03 December 1966

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

Son of Matthew Russell and Angela Coyne. Studied at UCD.
Ordained at Milltown Park.

1943-1945 St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1945-1948 Rathfarnham Castle - Studying
1948-1951 St Stanislaus College Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1951-1954 Hong Kong - studying language
1954-1958 Milltown Park - studying Theology
1958-1959 Rathfarnham Castle - Tertianship
1959-1962 Bellarmino, Rome - studying Theology
1962-1964 Regional Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong - teaching Theology
1964-1967 Curia, Rome - Assistant to Procurator General
1967-1968 Milltown Park - teaching Theology
1968-1969 Xavier House, Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Rector and Nopvice Master
1969-1972 Wah Yan Kowloon, Hong Kong - Rector
15/02/1972-02/04/1978 VICE-PROVINCIAL
1978-1984 Ricci Hall, Hong Kong
1984-1990 Provincial’s Residence, Ricci Hall, Hong Kong
1990-199 Wah Yan Hong Kong

https://jesuit.ie/news/remembering-father-john-russell-sj/

Remembering Father John Russell SJ

Jesuit Brother Father John Russell who spent over 50 years in Hong Kong died peacefully on Friday 22 September at St Paul’s Hospital, Hong Kong. He was 97 years old.

Fr. Russell was born in Dublin, Ireland on 24 August 1926. He entered the Society at Emo, Co. Laois, on 12 November 1943 and was ordained to the priesthood on 31 July. 1957 in Milltown Park, Dublin. He took final vows on 2 February 1961 at the church of the Gesù, Rome. It was there that he also did his doctorate in Canon Law, and lectured for a time at the Jesuit Gregorian University in the capital. He also spent a number of years as assistant procurator for the Jesuit general curia there.

Over half of his long life was spent on mission with the Jesuits in Hong Kong, as Thomas Morrissey SJ points out in his book Jesuits in Hong Kong, South China, and Beyond. He began as a teacher in the seminary there and in 1968 he returned from Rome to Hong Kong as a novice master for a short while. In 1969 he was appointed rector of Wah Yan College, Kowloon. He was only 45 years old when he was appointed Provincial in Hong Kong, on 15 February 1972, the Chinese New Year.

A fond companion: Go well, Fr Russell SJ
(From Irish Jesuits International)

In an interview with us back in 2017, Fr Russell spoke fondly of another appointment in Hong Kong, this time managing the Catholic Centre in a commercial building in the city. It had a few floors dedicated to the Centre that included a chapel. He met all kinds of people there—some wanting comfort and consolation and some just wanting a comfortable place to sit and reflect.

As well as being a friend and companion to those who needed it, a lively highlight to John’s life was working as Warden to 120 students at Ricci Hall. It is a hostel for students attending Hong Kong University. Fr Russell enjoyed ministering to the noisy, lively young students – for 12 years they kept him young and vital: he often turned a blind eye to their antics!

Before retirement, Fr Russell worked with the Curia in Hong Kong in the marriage annulment section but remained a constant companion and a listening ear to those who needed it.

John’s only surviving family member in Ireland (Dublin) is his brother Matthew with whom both the Hong Kong Jesuits and our own John K Guiney (IJI) have been in contact in recent weeks. All priests of the Chinese Province will celebrate Mass for the intention of Fr. Russell’s eternal rest.

Go well, Father John. Rest in Peace.

Born: 23 March 1939, Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1956, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 25 June 1970, Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1978, Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
Died: 04 October 2022, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Clongowes Wood College SJ community at the time of death

FSS
Born : 23rd March 1939 Dublin City
Raised : Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin
Early Education at CBC Monkstown, Dublin
7th September 1956 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1958 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1958-1961 Rathfarnham - Studying Science at UCD
1961-1962 Vals-près-le-Puy, France - Studying Philosophy at Séminaire des Missions
1962-1964 Chantilly. France - Studying Philosophy at Séminaire Missionaire
1964-1966 Crescent College SJ, Limerick : Regency : Teacher
1966-1967 Belvedere College SJ - Regency : Teacher; Studying H Dip in Education at UCD
1967-1971 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
25th June 1970 Ordained at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
1971-1973 St Ignatius College, Enfield - Studying Education at Institute of Education, University of London
1973-1974 Belvedere College SJ - Assistant Headmaster; Teacher; Province Task Force on Education
1974-1982 Gonzaga College SJ - Headmaster (from Oct 1974); Teacher
1977 Tullabeg - Tertianship
2nd February 1978 Final Vows at Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin
1982-1992 Crescent College Comprehensive SJ, Dooradoyle - Headmaster; Teacher; Director of Pastoral Care
1992-1993 Paris, France - Sabbatical at Communauté St Louis de Gonzague
1993-1995 Loyola House - Delegate for Young Adults; Youth Director; National Ecclesiastical Assistant for CLC
1995-2005 Clongowes Wood College SJ- Rector; National Ecclesiastical Assistant for CLC; Chaplain Lower Line
2000 Headmaster; Pastoral Care Director; Teacher; Moderator of Academy; ARLB Centenary Record
2004 Cleveland, OH, USA - Sabbatical at Sabbatical at St Ignatius High School
2005-2006 Crescent Church, Limerick - Superior; Project Team at Sacred Heart Church; Pastoral Delegate; Young Adult Delegate
2006-2010 Crescent College Comprehensive SJ, Dooradoyle - Director of Spirituality Centre, Limerick; Ministry to Parents at Crescent College; Bursar
2010-2022 Clongowes Wood College SJ- Spiritual Director (Lower Line); Assists in Peoples’ Church; Directs Liturgical Music
2013 Assists in People’s Church
2016 Prays for the Church and Society at Cherryfield Lodge

◆ The Clongownian, 2004

Father Dermot Murray SJ : Headmaster 2000-2004

Fr Dermot Murray SJ has a rare distinction amongst his Jesuit colleagues - that of being Headmaster in three different schools. He was Headmaster in Gonzaga 1974-1982, in the Crescent College Comprehensive, Limerick 1982-1992, and in Clongowes 2000-2004. He was appointed initially in Clongowes as Rector in 1995, probably thinking that his days of serving as Headmaster were over. When Fr Bruce Bradley SJ went on a well-earned sabbatical year in 2000, the Provincial asked Dermot to step in as acting Headmaster for the academic year 2000-2001. Following Bruce's appointment to the office of Cardinal Desmond Connell, Dermot was appointed as Headmaster in Clongowes until his retirement in 2004.

The first time I ever came across Dermot was in 1978 when the late Vinny Murray and I were coaching a Junior Cup Team together. Dermot was coaching the Gonzaga team. As was his wont at the time, he expressed some opinions from the touchline about the referee (Vinny) and the fairness of some of his decisions. Those of us who remember Vinny know that he rarely lost his temper about anything but he was really quite incensed on this particular day. Suffice it to say that I was surprised by the ensuing verbal engagement. Some years later, when I had the honour of refereeing a junior match between Clongowes and the Crescent College, I discovered that Dermot had lost none of his directness when it came to advising young referees about how to do their job. (He did decline the offer to take the whistle and finish the job himself...).

I had just been appointed as Assistant Headmaster in May 2000 shortly before the announcement of his appointment as acting Headmaster was made. I had enjoyed working with Bruce during the previous months in my capacity as acting Assistant Headmaster and had found him very supportive, encouraging, and easy to deal with. What would it be like working with Dermot? I could not say that I knew him well at that time and I was apprehensive about the news initially. However, I soon learned that he was an excellent leader who made sound decisions. Being naturally inquisitive and a good listener, he learned about every detail of school-life quickly.

As I got to know him over the four years, I realised what a very complex person Dermot is. He always acts out of his faith and deep spiritual beliefs. He lives his Christianity by trying to be fair and just, caring to those who work with him and for him. He is a very human human being with a great understanding of human frailties and suffering. He accepts people as they are, warts and all; when one made a mistake, there were no recriminations, “Acknowledge the mistake, let's see if we can correct it and move on” seemed to be his motto.

He brought to Clongowes a great wealth of experience to deal with the many issues and a number of crises, large and small. Throughout it all there was a steady, firm hand, a dispenser of wise council, a man capable of being objective and detached when needed.

Dermot leaves Clongowes with a fine record of achievement. He built and maintained good relations with all staffs. I think especially of the two years of industrial relations difficulties with the ASTI when he managed to keep the College open and functioning, and ensured that good humour and good relations remained. He won genuine affection from those lucky enough to have got to know him well. He steered the College through some difficult times such as those following the illness of the Bursar, Tom Farrelly, and the shock following Eamonn Donoghue's death.

Early on, Dermot set out his aims to build a community of growth, service and faith. In the school he will probably be best remembered by the boys for establishing both Morning Prayer and school assemblies as a central feature of College life. He also introduced school assemblies, which are used to recognise achievements of all kinds by all members of the community. He brought a new perspective to bear on much of the life of the school through the assemblies by acknowledging achievements other than rugby and by raising the profile of such achievements in the College. He oversaw the change from a Board of Governors to a Board of Management, the setting up of a Parents' Council, the establishment of a new position of Director of Finance, the recruitment of a Director of Development and the revamping of the Development Office (now the Foundation Office), the drawing up of the Master Plan, the preparation for the launch of “Clongowes Towards 2020”. Many of these decisions made in the years under Dermot's direction will have far-reaching and beneficial effects on the life of the College.

However, I think that Dermot will be mainly very fondly remembered for his many kindnesses to us all; for his friendship, for his good humour for his decisiveness and sound decision making. Dermot was a good leader and a fair employer and we thank him sincerely for it. Personally, I have much to thank him for: for his friendship and his many kindnesses to me, for what I have learnt from him about my role and about life. I was lucky to have such a mentor in my early years in this position.

For his retirement, Dermot has chosen to spend the year mostly in another Jesuit school in Cleveland, Ohio to study pastoral care systems and perhaps to offer some advice on rugby refereeing...! We all hope that he enjoys his well-earned retirement, when he eventually when gets it! He leaves with our sincere gratitude and good wishes. We hope he has a wonderful retirement and the good health to enjoy it. We hope to see him back in Clongowes frequently.

Dermot: to paraphrase Shakespeare, you have done Clongowes some service and they know it.

Interfuse No 139 : Easter 2009

ANONYMOUS CLERICS

Dermot Murray

Some time ago, one of my Jesuit friends told me that he had to go to a pharmacist to get some medicine. As he had been at a liturgical function, he was still wearing his priestly collar. After serving him, the pharmacist said, You know, Father, you are the first priest I have seen for years.

This set me thinking. One of my lines of thought went like this: any product needs publicity before it will sell. In general, the better the publicity, the better the sales. Thus, for example, many people at least in this area will wear the Munster jersey or the Munster scarf or the Munster hat not just for the matches, but for ordinary wear around the town. In this way, a sense of communal solidarity is built up and the support of the Munster team builds up to an extraordinary degree. This support leads to a desire on the part of the players to play to the limits of their ability, not just for victory but also to repay their supporters for such wonderful support. In addition, every young man and many young women want to have the opportunity to be members of the team.

For a few weeks now, I have looked to see a priest in the streets of Limerick. I looked in vain. In a recent visit to Dublin, I wandered around the city for a couple of hours. Again I looked to see a priest wandering around in the streets of our capital city; again, I looked in vain. Even in Veritas, a bookshop in which one used to see priests and religious wandering around looking at the books on offer, there wasn't a priest or a nun to be seen.

I know one reason for this is the diminishing numbers of priests and religious. Perhaps a second reason might be a fear that, because of the child abuse issue and the negative publicity that appeared to attach itself to every priest, cleric and religious, they might receive a very unpleasant and unacceptable greeting if they wore their clerical clothes or religious habit. A third reason might be a reluctance to being approached by people for money and not knowing how to deal appropriately with the people involved. I pondered on all these issues as I went up by the Luas to Heuston, my Munster rugby tie carefully displayed.

For myself, a fourth reason for not wearing my clerical collar is that it can limit my freedom in what I say, where I go, what I do. For example, I find it hard to go into a pub in the evening time wearing my clerics. Indeed, sometimes I find it difficult to go down town in the evening time in my clerical garb. Even on a train I sometimes feel that I might be under siege. Yet it has to be said that, when I do go down town in my clerics, mostly in the morning or afternoon, I find that more people greet me than do when I am not wearing clerics. Of course, this might not be true in Dublin particularly if the issue of clerical abuse raises its ugly head again as it did some weeks ago. All in all, I say to myself, it might be more prudent not to wear one's clerics. So I keep displaying my Munster tie. But then, of course, one has to ask the question is prudence the determining value in this situation?

Another reason is that wearing clerical garb does separate one from the laity. The clothes one wears often put the person into a particular category. This applies not just to clerical garb but also to uniforms and to other external signs that one often sees around city and county - Gardai, ambulance crews, fire fighters and others. In Limerick on the day of a Heineken Cup match - or indeed in Cardiff or other cities - a Munster jersey distinguishes Munster supporters from supporters of other teams. The same applies to school sporting competitions in the various codes. And, of course, wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday does tell people something about ourselves, even if it is only for one day.

In the light of some of the reflections above, I decided that I would wear my clerics during Lent and I did - most of the time. Did I find it constraining? Yes, at times I did. Did I feel nervous now and again? Yes, I did. Did I have the impression sometimes that I was viewed as different, as somebody to be avoided? Yes, at times, I did. Did I sometimes get the feeling that these impressions were coming from my unease rather than the reality of the situation? Yes I did. Was I unhappy with my decision to wear my clerics during Lent? No, I wasn't. Nevertheless, it was with some relief that I left them aside at least for the time being. I have worn them since for a week at a time. It remains awkward - perhaps only in my own consciousness.

I wrote this essay while living in the Jesuit Community attached to a large High School in the United States and took the opportunity to discuss the matter in the community. The overall view was expressed as follows: “We wear our clerics when working in the school to show that we are different perhaps not in the quality of our teaching, or the expertise of our counselling, or the enthusiasm for our various athletic programmes. But we are different because we are Jesuits living in community together”.

It is worth noting that there has been a strong interest in vocations in this school for the past number of years – not just from present pupils nor even immediate past-pupils, but past pupils who have completed their College courses or other courses and who, during the last year in school had been invited to discuss, both individually and as a group, the possibility of such a vocation. Where interest was shown, this was followed up on a regular and supportive basis by the Province coordinator of vocations, a brother who, incidentally, attended the recent General Congregation at Fr. General's invitation.

I am well aware that many of us might say that it is by the work we do that we preach the Word of God. We have some very inspirational examples of such people in our Province. It may well be that those who do such work - and indeed the many who are not well known but who work very hard in their own apostolates - might be well known and in many cases loved through their work as individuals. But perhaps they are not well known, each as a Jesuit who lives in a Jesuit community. And, looking at those congregations who are attracting vocations, it seems that one motivation about their aspirants is the desire for a visible community element in their lives.

So, thinking about all this, talking to some of my friends about it and praying a bit as well, I wondered whether, as a Province, we should not look again at the way we present ourselves in public and in our ministries. It might not be comfortable; it certainly would not be popular. But it might help us to discern our way forward if our Province is to continue to exist. Of course, it would be simplistic indeed to suppose that wearing clerical dress would resolve the many problems that lead to a lack of vocations. But it may also be simplistic to suppose that not wearing clerical dress enables us to share the Word of God in a more effective way.

We the Jesuits in Ireland have been rightly criticised for the paucity of vocations to Jesuit life in our Province. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that people never see us. Even in a Jesuit school, Jesuits who form part of the teaching body or the administration of the institution, might not be known as Jesuits. And even if they are known as Jesuits, it may well be that this has no real meaning for the pupils for, after all, individual Jesuits, including myself, appear to live the exact same life-style as the lay-teachers. They teach, they wear the same clothes, they drive the same cars. They might even drink in the same pubs.

My question then is this: Is it time to affirm more publicly that we are different in some ways? Not better, no, but different and able to explain that difference with simplicity as Jesuits living in community. Could it be time for debate, time for discernment ?

Born: 27 April 1933, Bantry, Co Cork
Raised: Bantry, Co Cork; Youghal, Co Cork; Carrick-ob-Shannon, Co Leitrim; Killarney, Co Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1955, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 10 July 1968, Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 30 December 2022, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Milltown Park Community at the time of death

    Born :  27th April 1933     Bantry, Co Cork
    Raised :    Bantry, Co Cork; Youghal, Co Cork; Carrick-ob-Shannon, Co Leitrim; Killarney, Co Kerry
        Early Education at Presentation College, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim; St. Brendan's Killarney, Co Kerry; College of Commerce, Rathmines, Dublin; UCD

7th September 1955 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1957 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1957-1959 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1959-1962 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1962-1964 Mungret College SJ - Regency : Teacher
1964-1965 Clongowes Wood College SJ : Regency : Teacher; Studying CWC Cert in Education
1965-1969 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
10th July 1968 Ordained at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
1969-1970 St Asaph, Wales, UK - Tertianship at St Bueno’s
1970-1986 Belvedere College SJ - Junior School Prefect of Studies (1970 - 1978); Teacher; St Stanislaus Boys Club
1978 Senior School Assistant Prefect of Studies (1978 - 1986)
2nd February 1981 Final Vows at Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
1986-1987 Milford Ohio, USA; Regis College Toronto, ON Canada; Guelph, ON Canada - Sabbatical
1987-1988 Manresa - Directing Spiritual Exercises
1988-1997 Peter Faber, Belfast - Directs Spiritual Exercises; Bursar
1990 Minister; Librarian
1994 CLC Church Assistant; Bursar
1997-2018 Manresa - Directs Spiritual Exercises; Co-ordinates Directors of Spiritual Exercises
2001 Mini-Sabbatical (Sep 2001 - Feb 2002)
2003 Directs Spiritual Exercises; Co-ordinates Directors of Spiritual Exercises; Cares for Fabric of Retreat House
2018-2022 Milltown – Pastoral Ministry
2019 Community Spiritual Father
2020 Writer; Assists in Community
2021 Prays for Chruch and Society at Cherryfield Lodge

Born: 21 August 1934, The Ward, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1957, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1967, Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
Final vows: 15 August 1974, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 07 December 2023, Blackrock Clinic, Dublin

Part of the Manresa Community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ZAM 1974; ZAM to HIB 1982

    Born :  21st August 1934        Dublin
    Raised :    The Ward, Co Dublin
        Early Education at St Mary’s College, Dundalk, UCD & Clonliffe College

7th September 1957 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1959 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1959-1961 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1961-1962 Monze, Zambia - Regency : Studying language at Chivuna Station
1962-1964 Chisekesi, Zambia - Regency : Teacher at Canisius College, Chikuni
1964-1968 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
28th July 1967 Ordained at Milltown Park Chapel, Dublin
1968-1969 Manchester, UK - Studying Pedagogy of language at St Bede’s College
1969-1972 Chisekesi, Zambia - Teacher; Spiritual Father at Canisius College, Chikuni
1972-1973 Clarkston, MI, USA - Tertianship at Colombiere College
1973-1976 Chisekesi, Zambia - Teacher at Canisius College, Chikuni
15th August 1974 Final Vows at Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
1974 Transcribed to Zambian Province [ZAM] (15/08/1974)
1978-1985 Tullabeg - Assistant Director of Spiritual Exercises
1979 Director “Religion in Ireland Project”
1982 Transcribed to Irish Province [HIB] (26/03/1982)
1985-2023 Manresa House - Assistant Director of Spiritual Exercises; Ecclesiastical Assistant for CLC
1989 Librarian; Spiritual Exercises Team; Writer
2018 Writer; Directs Spiritual Exercises

https://jesuit.ie/news/helping-people-find-god/

Fr. Peter Hannan SJ died peacefully on 7 December 2023 at the Blackrock Clinic in the company of family members and Fr Willie Reynolds, superior of Manresa. His funeral mass took place at St Francis Xavier’s, Gardiner Street on Monday 11 December at 11.00 am.

Peter was born on 21 August 1934 in Dublin. On 7 September 1957, he entered the Society of Jesus at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois, and took his first vows on 8 September 1959.
From 1961 to 1964 he spent time in Zambia studying and working in the area of education ministry and Catechesis .

On 28 July 1967 Peter was ordained at Milltown Park chapel, Dublin, and on 15 August 1974 he took his final Vows at Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia. In 1978 he returned to Ireland, and was Assistant Director of Spiritual Exercises and the Director of “Religion in Ireland Project” in Tullabeg. In 1985 he was made Assistant Director of Spiritual Exercises and Ecclesiastical Assistant for CLC in Manresa House, Clontarf, Dublin where he remained until 2023.

Always gentle, courteous, gracious

Willie Reynolds SJ was the chief celebrant at the funeral Mass. Peter’s cousin Father John Hannan SM gave the homily. Father John said his cousin was “always gentle, courteous, gracious, and deeply interested in one’s ‘story.”

He noted that when Peter came back to Ireland in 1977 he began his life’s major work in the study of the nature and purpose of the spiritual life. Father John said that this was “all facilitated by his beloved Jesuit Order, one of whose admirable characteristics is to allow its members to develop their potential in the pursuit of excellence.”

Peter published nine books between 1993 and 2007. One of his best known was Follow Your Dream : Restoring Lost Intimacy and The Search for Something More : A Journey to Human Fulfilment.

According to John, Peter loved being a ‘companion’ in a person’s search for a more profound relationship with God. “He relished the search for the divine, seeking to understand his own and others’ life stories through prayer, the use of the Scriptures, and Ignatian know-how. Being a spiritual guide was very important to him. Peter was there to encourage the other and enable them to open new pathways that might set them alight in their own search of a deeper relationship with God.”

In concluding his homily Fr John asked that people never forget “Peter’s example of fervor, fidelity to his Jesuit vocation, and the spiritual heritage which he leaves behind. These are the the virtues that I understand Peter to have most exemplified”

After the Mass, Peter was laid to rest in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.

https://jesuit.ie/blog/gardening-with-peter/

Tears flowed freely when I heard the news that my 89-year-old friend Peter Hannan SJ was taken to intensive care, and I felt deeply sad when one of his friends told me he had died. I was lucky to have known this wonderful gardener and spiritual teacher during the later stage of his life. I became friends with him after responding to an invitation to help out in the grounds of Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality. As we gardened, we easily slipped into deep conversation and I appreciated Peter’s gentle smile, contemplative wisdom and robust strength. Here I suggest three ways in which Peter showed me how to love:

Listen to inner knowledge: Peter had an academic background especially during the first half of his life, but he later realised that it was inner or experiential knowledge that truly satisfied the soul. He invited me to grow in this personal wisdom through paying attention to the glimpses of love in my day, intuitively naming what they say to me, savouring their truth and goodness, and learning to believe and own this love for myself.

Share unfinished works: As a writer, Peter generously shared his notes with me which included growth in personal wisdom, insights into faith and spirituality, and bringing scripture to life through imagination and feelings. I felt moved to share some of my own writings with him such as an unpublished poem that expressed my vulnerabilities. He received it with great sensitivity, as if holding something sacred, and tentatively shared his thoughts with me.

Create beauty everywhere: Peter believed in a garden full of colourful flowers and leaves. He showed me how to take care of the little things, e.g., nurturing potted plants in their early days as well as the bigger things, e.g., moving compost and digging up the roots of unwanted shrubs. He taught me the value of time when it was enough to leave an unfinished task for another day. He joyfully laboured in his garden every day, and like his writing, was a beautiful sight indeed.

Help us to be happy like you
(Peter Hannan SJ, 1934-2023)

Your sensitive smile, a sign of your master,
Your physical strength, a reminder of a great oak,
Your listening ear, nourishing like a river.

Rest sweetly, brother, rest sweetly, friend,
Keep us forever in your heavenly heart.

Warm us with your wholesome stories,
Guide us with your gardening hand.

We smile for you, for you are smiling at us,
Help us to be happy like you.

Amen

Born: 20 July 1932, Drumcondra, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 18 March 1965, Tokyo, Japan
Final Vows: 15 January 1978, Japan
Died: 04 January 2021, Loyola House, Tokyo - Japoniae Province (JPN)

Transcribed HIB to JPN, 15 August 1967

Born : 20th July 1932, Dublin
Raised : Drumcondra, Dublin
Early Education at Coláiste Mhuire, Dublin
7th September 1950 Entered Society at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
8th September 1952 First Vows at St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
1952-1955 Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin – 3rd level studies at University College Dublin
1955-1958 Berchmanskolleg, Pullach, Germany - Studying Philosophy
1958-1960 Eiko Gauken, Yokosuka-shi, Japan – Regency Studying Japanese language
1960-1962 Hiroshima Gaukin, Hiroshima-shi, Japan - Regency : Teaching
1962-1966 Iesus Kai Dhudoin, Nerima-ku, Tokyo, Japan - Studying Theology
18th March 1965 Ordained at Tokyo
1966-1967 Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin – Tertianship
1967 Transcribed to Japanese Province [JPN] (15/08/1967)
15th January 1978 Final Vows in Japan

◆ Obituary and Tribute
FR PATRICK DERMOT BRANGAN, SJ
July 20, 1932 ~ January 4, 2021

Perhaps because there are too many “Patricks” in Ireland (and because his father’s name was Patrick), he was always known by his middle name “Dermot,” frequently shortened to “Derm.” His mail address, however, was “branganpatrick,” and it might have been the influence of St Patrick, the great British missionary to Ireland, that prompted the Irishman Fr Dermot Brangan to bring Christ to another island country, Japan.

He was born in Dublin on July 20, 1932, the last of five siblings, and was baptised four days later. As a teenager, Dermot attended an Irish-language high school, where he acquired a great love and appreciation for Irish culture and traditions. Surely these enhanced that enjoyable Irish wit that he carried with him throughout his life.
On graduating from high school at the age of 18, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Emo on September 7, 1950. He was fortunate to have as his novice master Fr Donal O’Sullivan, a man known to be very wise and even “ahead of his times.” Three years of humanities (1952-55) at University College Dublin followed on his novitiate, and then he was sent to Pullach in Germany to study philosophy (1955-58). While there, he became proficient in the German language, which was to prove useful in his future community life among German Jesuits in Japan. In fact, someone mentioned that it might have been as a preparation for missionary work in Japan that he was sent to Germany for philosophy.
Having been accepted for missionary life in Japan, Dermot set out with a group of Irish Jesuits going to Hong Kong and fellow scholastic, Donal Doyle, who was also destined for Japan and would be a close companion for the duration of Dermot’s life and a valuable family contact on his demise. (Not even Donal Doyle could fill in the blanks about what drew Dermot to the Jesuits in the first place or why he took an interest in Japan.)

The missionary group traveled by train to Lourdes and then to Rome, where they met with Fr General Janssens at Villa Cavaletti and received Pope Pius XII’s blessing at Castel Gandolfo. They set sail from Naples, auspiciously enough on the feast of St Ignatius, July 31, 1958 and on a ship named “Asia.” Transferring to a smaller ship at Hong Kong, Dermot and Donal sailed on to Japan, stopping off overnight at Kōbe, unaware of the many years Dermot would eventually be spending in that port city. Their final port of call was Yokohama, where they were met by a Father from the language school in Yokosuka and were taken there for the usual two-year Jesuit language program.
After successfully adding Japanese to his familiarity with Irish and German, he was sent to Hiroshima in the summer of 1960 for the first stage of a long career teaching English to Japanese students. Hiroshima Gakuin had opened only four years earlier and was still struggling to set firm roots in the city that had rebuilt itself with surprising vigor from that fateful August day of 1945. While Dermot was teaching there, he was involved in an incident which threatened to leave a deep scar on the name of the school.
As a young scholastic not unfamiliar with mountain climbing, Dermot was asked to go along with the teacher in charge of a group of students on a trek into the mountains just after Christmas of 1961. Along the way the group got caught in an unexpectedly heavy snowstorm. Totally exhausted from plodding through the deep snow and with their destination stopover a mere 100 meters ahead of them, one of the students collapsed and died on the spot. The incident got newspaper coverage, and the young school was both saddened at the loss of a precious life and panicked over what might ensue. Public attention soon passed, but this tragic incident remained in Dermot’s heart as one traumatic downside of his two years of regency in Hiroshima.

The next step in his formation was four years of theology studies at the Jesuit Kamishakujii scholasticate in Tokyo (1962- 66), with ordination to the priesthood on March 18, 1965 at the hands of Cardinal Peter Doi in the newly erected Tokyo cathedral. Those were the days when the professors of theology were rapidly attempting to catch up with the spirit of Vatican II, some more successfully than others. It was also the time when Japan’s phenomenal post-war recovery startled the world with its flawless staging of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Immediately after theology, Fr Brangan returned to his native Ireland for tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle in Dublin under Fr Michael Connolly (September 1966 to July 1967). Returning to Japan after that, he began a 27-year career that took him in and out of three Jesuit high schools, mainly teaching English and always being available for consultation with students and teachers. He was a good listener, always trying to understand and help.
The first assignment was to Kōbe to teach English and introduction to Christianity for nine years at Rokkō High School (1967-76). Then there was a twelve-year presence in Hiroshima (1976-88), where he served for six years as Superior of the Jesuit community at Hiroshima Gakuin and Chair of the school’s Board of Trustees (1977-83). During that time, the school celebrated its 25th year with the building of a new classroom wing, not without all the troubles and tensions that normally accompany such a project.
On finishing his term as Superior and Trustee Chairperson, he was awarded a year’s sabbatical, which he spent in a rather unusual way. To quote a letter which he wrote to Fr Provincial Awamoto on February 7, 1983:

“I would like to live for three months at Fr Oshida’s place in Nagano ken. ... Life there is extremely simple, primitive in fact. So whether I can stand it for three months remains to be seen. I would like to live with the greatest simplicity possible in terms of material things and spend a lot of time in prayer and silence for three months.”
The same letter asking for permission to live with Dominican Fr Shigeto Oshida’s group in a simple house in the Nagano countryside also contains a very revealing note about how he would like to spend the rest of his life:

“I would like to say that I do not wish to spend the rest of my life in a school. Put simply, I would like to get out of schools around 55 and certainly before 60.” (He was 50 years old at the time.)

After the three months with Fr Oshida, Fr Brangan’s sabbatical took him to Ireland and a renewal course at St Beuno’s in Wales. Despite that plea in the letter already quoted, he was told to go back to Hiroshima Gakuin. His four remaining years in Hiroshima (1984-88) were spent commuting uphill to the school from the Kōgo Catholic Center. Another letter to Fr Awamoto, dated September 6, 1984 shows clearly what he felt at the time:

“After being out of schools for a year, the prospect of returning to the high school situation in Japan was painful and crushing. Being asked to return to Hiroshima Gakuin, where I had been Board Chairman just one year before, and start working again with the staff, some of whom I had had painful dealings with as Chairman, was a hard blow which exacerbated my negative feelings. ... I found my teaching assignment very taxing in terms of physical and psychic energy.”

What, then, must have been his shock when in 1988 he was assigned to move to Taisei High School in Fukuoka, where teaching would be even more taxing than at the previous schools! However, great consolation was soon to come his way a year later. Beginning in April 1989, his teaching load at the school was lightened, and he was asked to serve as pastor of the local parish Jōsui-dōri, which had been entrusted to the Society. Even during his busy days in Hiroshima, his pastoral zeal had urged him to go to the Hiroshima Cathedral every weekend to help, mainly with hearing confessions. Now he was able to dedicate himself more fully to the work he mainly desired.
And he was good at it. Over the years serving in various posts of responsibility, he had learned how to get people to work together. The parishioners greatly appreciated his style of leadership. He remained at the Fukuoka parish until April 1992 (with a brief sabbatical interlude March to August 1991), then returned to the Taisei residence until 1994. By then he was 62 years old, well beyond the desire he had expressed to leave schoolwork “around 55 and certainly before 60.”
In 1994, Provincial Nicolás wrote to him, with profuse apologies, asking him to serve as secretary in the province offices, saying he had looked over the list of Jesuits “from top to bottom and up again to the top,” only to find that Fr Brangan was the only man for the job—but that he need work only in the morning and could have the rest of the day for pastoral work at St Ignatius Church!

But the moving around did not stop there. After two years in Tokyo (1994-96), he was sent back to Kōbe, this time as Superior of the Kōbe Community, which was comprised of both the high school and the parish Jesuits. He was to live in the parish during his six-year term as Superior (1996-2002) doing pastoral work in the parish and being named officially as associate pastor in 1998. Fr O’Malley was pastor, followed by Fr Sakurai. Being familiar with the Spiritual Exercises, Fr Brangan was often asked for retreats. His contacts with parishioners and former students also occasioned preparing couples for marriage and presiding at their wedding.

When his term in Kōbe was over, in 2002, Fr Renzo De Luca, Superior in Nagasaki, wanted someone to replace Fr Clarkson for pastoral work in the residence and retreat house, concomitantly serving as Minister of the small Jesuit community. After three years there, when he was now 73 years old, he was asked to return to Tokyo to live in SJ House and take over from Fr Barry as translator for the Japanese Bishops’ Conference. This he continued to do until 2009, when failing eyesight prevented him from continuing that work. He made a three-month visit to relatives in Ireland and Germany that year and another to Ireland and Vancouver, Canada in 2012.

He continued with regular pastoral work in St Ignatius and retreat work as occasions offered until, by the beginning of 2020, he showed signs of mental confusion, not being able to find his keys, or wandering into other people’s rooms looking for his things. He moved to Loyola House on January 24, 2020.

A year later, in the evening of New Year’s Day 2021, he collapsed in the chapel and was taken to a hospital, where he was found to have suffered from a left subcortical hemorrhage. There being no room for him there, he was transferred to another hospital the next morning, where he passed over to the Lord two days later, just before 10 a.m. on January 4, 2021. He was 88 years old and had been a Jesuit for 70 years. Due to the raging COVID-19 corona virus, a modest funeral was held in St Ignatius Church and live-streamed for simultaneous participation in Ireland, with Fr Doyle speaking.

In conclusion, though written 20 years ago for Fr Brangan’s golden jubilee in the Society, Fr General Kolvenbach’s encomium is still so fitting as to warrant its repetition here. Each of us can make these our own parting words to Fr Dermot Brangan:

“As I look back on your life, dear Father, I esteem the fine spirit of availability that you have shown so gently and so constantly. Your obvious love for the spiritual things in life has had and continues to have an uplifting effect on those in your care and on all those whom God places in your path. I thank God for your wisdom, your gentle graciousness, and your spirit of availability.”

By Robert Chiesa, SJ

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

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

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

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

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 117 : Special Issue November 2003

Obituary

Fr Perrcy Winder (1931-2003)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◆ The Clongownian, 2003

Obituary

Father Percy Winder SJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Born: 09 November 1866, Munny, County Wexford
Entered: 07 September 1897, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 29 July 1906, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1914, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 07 August 1950, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Older brother of Joseph Tomkin (ORE) - RIP 1936; Younger brother of Nicholas A Tomkin - RIP 1923; Cousin of Nicholas J Tomkin - RIP 1942

by 1899 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Younger brother of Nicholas A Tomkin - RIP 1923; Cousin of Nicholas J Tomkin - RIP 1942

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 25th Year No 4 1950
Obituary
Fr. James Tomkin (1866-1897-1950)

Father James Tomkin died in the forenoon of Monday, 7th August, 1950, after an illness of some months. He was in his eighty-fifth year and had been a Jesuit for fifty-three years. His vocation was a late one. Born at Munny, Carnew, Co. Wexford, he forsook farming at the age of twenty-six to study for the priesthood. Even his Jesuit training did not obliterate all traces of his former calling. To the end he retained the slow caution, the shrewdness mingled with simplicity, the occasional quaint turn of speech so characteristic of the Irish farmer. Secondary studies, first at Patrician College, Mountrath, and then at Mungret, cannot have been easy for him, Yet he pursued them with the same dogged perseverance and reasonable degree of success which were remarked in his later Jesuit philosophical and theological courses.
James Tomkin's novice-master from 1897 to 1899 was Father James Murphy, for whom ever afterwards he entertained an admiration amounting to hero-worship. Fr. Murphy, for his part, thought highly of the novice and nine years later, when dying as Rector of Tullabeg, is said to have (uncanonically) appointed Fr, Tomkin his successor. In Stonyhurst, whither F'r. Tomkin went for philosophy after his noticeship, he took part in cricket matches played by the Community against extern teams and earned something of a reputation as a bowler. A year's teaching in Clongowes followed Stonyhurst and then four years' theology in Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1906. It was here that Fr. Tomkin's friendship and reverence for Fr. John Sullivan began. He shared the same room on Villa as Fr. Sullivan and admired his companion's kindness and unselfish ways. The great pre-occupation of Fr. Tomkin's last years was to further the Cause of Beatification of his old friend. He gave evidence at the Tribunal in Gardiner Street and was tireless in spreading devotion to Fr. Sullivan and collecting evidence of possible miracles. In 1907 Fr. Tomkin went to Tullabeg as minister and socius to the master of novices, His kindness soon endeared him to the novices of that generation, while his sagacity as a consultant about vocation became something of a legend. After his tertianship in Tullabeg (1912-1913) he went to Mungret and remained there until 1919, being Moderator of the Apostolic School for most of that time. There followed a further period in Tullabeg (1919-1924) as operarius in the People's Church. In this position he became the trusted friend and spiritual counsellor of scores of young men who were fighting in Ireland's War of Independence and later in the Civil War. He was often sent-for to secret rendezvous in order to give absolution and spiritual consolation to those about to go into battle. The theme of his exhortations on such occasions was twofold : to avoid intoxicating drink, and not to run risk of death while in the state of sin. The succour he gave them in those dark days made Fr. Tomkin's name revered by veterans of the Troubled Times. They came in large numbers to his funeral and had to be dissuaded from firing a volley over his grave. This period in Tullabeg was followed by one in Clongowes as procurator (1924-1928) and a period in Galway as Operarius. In Galway he had charge of the Pioneers. This was a ministry very much to his liking. He was a lifelong advocate of total abstinence, having received his first pledge from the hands of Fr. James Cullen when the founder of the Pioneer's was still a secular priest. In addition to directing the Galway centre, Fr. Tomkin had printed a small pamphlet written by himself and intended to set forth unequivocally the obligations of Pioneers.
In 1937 Fr. Tomkin returned to Tullabeg, where he was destined to spend the remainder of his life. Never a hustler, he yet had a fund of quiet, tenacious energy, and a skill at enlisting the co-operation of suitable adjutants in his various enterprises. These qualities helped him in re-organising and re-vivifying the Men's Sodality at Tullabeg in accordance with Fr, General's and Fr, Provincial's wishes and instructions concerning sodalities. In many ways he was an ideal pastor for the rural congregation which frequents the People's Church. He understood country life and the country people. During his Sunday sermons, as he leaned back against the altar, joined his hands and fixed a steady eye on the congregation, there was profound silence and close attention. He seemed to have more fluency and coherence in his sermons than in his ordinary conversation and his occasional references to current political happenings were much appreciated. At this time he was greatly sought after as a conductor of nuns retreats and as their extraordinary confessor. I think it was his kindness and unhurried patience in the confessional which made him so successful in this ministry. A few years before his death he gave up all active apostolate and seemed to turn more and more to prayer and contemplation. He was a great admirer of St. John of the Cross, whose works he read slowly and meditatively and often quoted. Those who knew him at this time retain as their most abiding impression of him his immense kindness and deep humility. I have never known him say a harsh word to or about anyone. At table his attention to his neighbour's wants could become at times embarrassing. In recreation he came in for more than his share of banter and “leg-pulling”, but never did he display the slightest anger or ill-feeling. He would ward off the shafts with a chuckle or a hearty laugh, or take evasive action with those who sought to trap him into awkward admissions. He had an entertaining way of perpetrating malapropisms of a variety all his own, as when he seriously referred to the doings of disembowelled spirits or observed that there was a peculiar twang on the soup. Fr Tomkin's foibles (for, like all of us, he had his share) were of that happy kind which gave no reasonable cause for annoyance and much for entertainment. His care of his health was exquisite, showing itself in the multitude of ingenious devices and practices with which he strove to ward off the ills which threaten our mortal frame. He was a firm believer in ghosts and was quick to discern diabolical intervention in even the most ordinary happenings. But such little peculiarities are completely overshadowed by his sterling religious virtues, his vivid faith, his edifying observance of religious discipline, his amiable charity and meticulous poverty, above all by his prayer, which towards the close of his life appeared to be almost continuous. He made no secret of the fact that God had specially favoured him, though, like many another adept in the life of prayer, he could give no very coherent account of the divine visitation. Tullabeg will miss his tall, familiar figure, pacing up and down the Spiritual Meadow, well wrapped against the treacherous blasts, and absorbed not, I believe, in idle dreams or memories, but in communing with God and His Saints.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1951

Obituary

Father James Tomkin SJ

Father James Tomkin SJ an eminent spiritual director and Superior of the Apostolic School from 1913 to 1919, died at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore, on August 7th last after an illness of some months.

James Tomkin, born at Munny, Co. Wexford, in 1866, was already a practising farmier, and twenty-six years old when he first became conscious of his religious vocation. With the example of St Ignatius, however, to encourage him, he undertook at once secondary and university studies at the Patrician Brothers' School, Mountrath, and Mungret. He left an impression of unbending seriousness and deep maturity on his fellow students in the Lay-school at Mungret. On one occasion he had distinguished himself in a cricket match against the Past by scoring 71 runs. Quite unexcited, however, he retired to a clump of grass, and spent the time poring over Ueberweg's “History of Philosophy”, until it was time to take his place among the fielders. James was in his time Prefect of the Sodality, and played also on the Soccer XI. He obtained his BA degree in the Summer of 1897 (Mungret at that time prepared students for the examinations of the old Royal University). Having graduated successfully, James Tomkin, already thirty-one years old, entered the Jesuit Novitiate at St Stanislaus' College, Tullamore, after which he studied philosophy at Stonyhurst, taught for a year at Clongowes and then began theology at Milltown Park, Dublin, where he was ordained in 1906.

In 1912 Father Tomkin joined the staff of Mungret, succeeding Father Cahill, the following year, as Superior of the Apostolic School. Having held this responsible post till 1919, he went back again to the scenes of his noviceship; this time to take charge of the Public Church. During the years that followed (1919-24) he became the trusted friend and spiritual counsellor of many of the young men who were then fighting in Ireland's War of Independence and later in the Civil War. The help he gave them in those days made his name revered by veterans of the troubled times; they came in numbers to his funeral. From Tullabeg, Father Tomkin was changed to Clongowes, and from there to Galway. Finally, in 1937, he returned to Tullabeg, there to spend the remainder of his life. Once again he had charge of the Public Church with the direction of the Men's Sodality, and once again he established himself in the hearts of the people. At this time, also, he was widely sought after as a director of nuns' retreats and as their extraordinary confessor. A few years, however, before his death, being already in his eighties, he was forced to retire altogether from the active apostolate. He then devoted him self entirely to the life of prayer, and those who lived with him can testify abundantly to the simplicity and humility and evident holiness of all his ways. RIP

Born: 24 June 1789, Mountmellick, County Laois
Entered: 09 October 1821, Clongowes Wood College, Naas, County Kildare
Final Vows: 08 September 1837
Died: 18 May 1860, Clongowes Wood College, Naas, County Kildare

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Uncle of John Peston Jr, who lived most of his life at Tullabeg - RIP 1904

He was a shoemaker by trade, and appointed to this task in Clongowes, and remained at this job for more than forty years. With his care and diligence, he won the esteem of both Superiors and students. Even in his advancing years, he did not stint on hard work. He also taught many others the trade of shoemaking.
He died piously and peacefully in Clongowes 18 May 1860

Note from John Nelson Entry :
He took his Final Vows 02/02/1838 along with eleven others, being the first to whom Final Vows were given since the Restoration in Ireland. The others were : Philip Reilly of “Palermo fame”; Nowlan, Cleary, Mulligan, Michael Gallagher, Pexton Sr, Toole, Egan, Ginivan, Patrick Doyle and Plunkett.

Born: 12 June 1946, Ennis, County Clare
Entered: 07 September 1963, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 June 1975, Ennis, County Clare
Final Vows: 08 September 1980, Mukasa Seminary, Choma, Zambia
Died: 17 December 2007, St Vincent’s, Dublin - Zambia-Malawi Province (ZAM)

Part of the Xavier House Lusaka - Mazabuka community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 08 September 1980
◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Philip was my friend. Our life's correspondence could easily fit in your smallest pocket. Many here might have lost contact with him because of his pocket size communications. Many here too can say he was their friend. Certainly I know many a person in Zambia who would say emphatically: Philip was my friend.

T'is many a night in the early nineties that I sat in the sitting room of St Kizito's Pastoral Centre Monze with the two Clare men with whom I was privileged to live, for Philip was born in Ennis, Co Clare on 12 June 1946. Two genuinely saintly men. The elder statesman, John Counihan, would stand up promptly at eight pm and announce ‘All right boys, I'll leave you to it. It's time for me to retire’. And he'd toddle off to his room to the Greek New Testament and Tonga New Testament laid out side by side on his desk – no English – and he'd prepare his homily for the following day. Meanwhile myself and Philip would switch off the serious stuff and put on a videotape, in those days it was the special Late Late Show tribute to Sharon Shannon - another famous Clare woman.

The long drawn out notes of the accordion are the years of love and struggle, the years of pastoral planning, the years of walking with, that Phillip did from the time he first boarded the plane in Dublin for Zambia 'in August 1970 with Joe Hayes and Stan Farrell. He walked with care and love in his own humble, shy, unintrusive manner. First in Mumbwa in the late 70's where he had to learn ciNyanja and some Shona. Then in Monze, Maamba, St Mary's Monze and finally Nakambala Sugar Estate, Mazabuka. While he walked unobtrusively yet he could lay down the law with people in a most fruitful and containing way. And his shyness could disappear like a cloud in a sunburst when he would sit and read for you with enthusiasm some favorite poetry or throw out one of his humorous and acute observations of the human situation. Or offer his funny, sometimes painfully frank, comments on a person's foibles.

Philip was very honest with himself and had no ambitions to power. He had a really hard time with his inner self. I know some of 'the intense personal agonies he went through. He was low and depressed a lot of the time. And still he could ride the waves of the unconscious and throw humour and good sense to his fellow travellers. Even here in hospital, the last time I spoke with him from Sheffield on the phone, he displayed his wry humour. I asked him how he was managing with all the visitors while feeling so weak – knowing also that in his very introverted nature he likes to put a limit on seeing people. ‘Well’, he says, ‘I'll tell you, it's like in the old days in Ennis when Duffy's circus used to come to town. They used to have this little tent where we'd have to pay sixpence to get in. People would come, half out of guilt and half out of curiosity to see the cow with six legs’. Then he paused. ‘Since they put me in this wheel chair – I'm still counting my legs’. He found it enormously difficult to retain the energy to keep going in his parish work. But he was utterly faithful to it.

And now the darkness of the open door into some small African house is reflected on the blue water across the river where he has now gone. Maureen and Bill, his parents are there to meet him. Rufina Mwiinga and Jennifer Ndima and Norman MacDonald and many many others are there too. There is a blaze of light from the warmth and love flowing out and around and inside that distant house on the other side. Of which we know nothing, just nothing. Philip has climbed the mountain and seen nothing on the slopes. And now he's reached the top and... well, we can see nothing.

A family phoned me recently asking me to pray for her husband dying of cancer. Of course I said I would. But I was aware of my own very uncertain faith. ‘Oh,’ she said ‘I'm glad we have you on board, I'm really glad we have you on board’. I thought to myself, ‘I may be on board, I may be in the ship, but the question is, “Is the ship in the water?” And if it is, what sea exactly are we setting out to cross?' I felt a bit like Jonah. Throw me overboard. Death brings up all these unresolved questions in us.

Philip was a man of faith. I look at you now Philip in wonder and admiration. Thank you for your friendship. May you rest in peace.

Born: 16 October 1916, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 September 1935, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1948, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1951, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 30 May 1976, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin

Brother of Criodán O'Higgins - LEFT 19 March 1950

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 51st Year No 3 1976

Gardiner Street
We end on a sad note. Fr Pearse O’Higgins died on the morning of Sunday, 30th May. His death was a terrible shock for the community and indeed for everyone living in the parish and in the Pioneer circle. Pearse will be a real loss to us here, not only for the wonderful work he did but above all for the extraordinary support his presence meant in the community. May the Lord be good to him!

Obituary :

Fr Pearse O’Higgins (1935-1976)

Though I spent thirteen years of formation with Pearse, we did not share the same roof since we endured tertianship together in 1949-50. In the intervening years, on those occasions on which I met him, he seemed to be unchanged and unchangeable. Large, deep-voiced, welcoming, and always, always equitable: with his unending supply of funny stories and his acute memory for situations and events in Emo, Rathfarnham and Tullabeg, he was always good company. There was a great solidity about Pearse, a great durable sanity: a blending of deep spirituality, good humour and common sense. With his political and linguistic back ground, one might have expected Pearse to hold extreme positions on all sorts of questions, but he was so open to reality and so capable of an accepting awareness of many views that his attitudes were sympathetic and moderate.
My memories of Pearse on the playing-fields of Emo and Tullabeg are comic. He wasn’t a born athlete and I think he disliked football but he togged out just to be with us and to lumber around in search of the ball which never seemed to be where Pearse was. I was quite astonished when I learned that in recent years he had become quite a good golfer. Now that I come to think of it, I remember seeing himself and the braces-wearing Dr Corboy playing havoc on the links in Balbriggan!
Golf courses and football pitches are not, to be sure, the serious arenas of life, but personalities are often revealed on them, Pearse remained as unaffected by his success in golf as by his clumsiness at football: both revealed that in-built stabilising quality which, to my mind, was Pearse's greatest human attribute. Maybe memory, like the sundial, records only the sunny hours of my friends : be that as it may, I can never recall Pearse being down or touchy or in bad form: Pearse was always ... just the large-bodied, good-natured, humorous man of God.

Here, surely, was a man in whom there was no guile. Above all his many virtues he stood out as a man of principle, and nothing could cause him to swerve from the path he thought fit to take. He never acted hastily-in word and deed he was slow-moving, but always got there'.
With his natural power of mimicry, which was always good for a laugh but which never gave offence, and his wonderful gift as a raconteur, a gift he used unsparingly, he was delightful company, At recreation, to get him going, it was sufficient to throw out a phrase like “Do you remember such-and-such?”, and he was off at once entertaining all within earshot - and his range was extensive! Some of his recollections, told always with unerring accuracy and detail, I must have heard fifty times over, but they never failed to raise a laugh,
He was a man of deep faith and fervent but never ostentatious prayer. This, united with his perennial good humour, won admiration and respect from all wherever he went or worked. His passing is a sore loss to all who had the pleasure of his companionship. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam caomh!

◆ The Clongownian, 1976

Obituary

Father Pearse O’Higgins SJ

Just as we go to Press, we learned the sad news of Fr Pearse O'Higgins's sudden death in St Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street, on Sunday, May 20th - Union Day. Fr Pearse had spent a number of years teaching and doing church work both in the Crescent, Limerick, and in St Ignatius College, Galway, where he had been Rector for some six years, before coming to Clongowes in 1965 to join the teaching staff. Though he spent only a year with us, in that short time he endeared himself both to his confrères and pupils. He had a genius for getting to know people, and was interested in all they did and in all belonging to them - and he never seemed to forget a name or a face. He will be sadly missed by all, but especially by the Pioneers, for whom he did so much throughout his lifetime in Limerick, Galway and in Dublin. Ar dheis láimh Dé go raibh a anam

Born: 15 January 1915, Portroe, County Tipperary
Entered: 24 March 1935, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 15 August 1945, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 13 January 1977, Manresa, Dollymount, Dublin

Brother of Michael McShera - Ent 05/04/1931; LEFT 04/02/1943

◆ Irish Province News 52nd Year No 2 1977 & ◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1977

Manresa
Brother Tony McShera’s heart attack and death during the weekly prayer-meeting on Thursday 13th January was a great shock to our community. He had been at the retreat house door to welcome the participants in his usual hearty manner, and he had just spoken during the meeting itself when the Lord called him. He could not have died in a more appropriate setting, at prayer and in the midst of his friends.

Obituary :

Br Anthony McShera (1915-1977)

Born January 15th at Portroe, Co. Tipperary, he was educated at the Christian Brothers School, Sexton St, Limerick, to the end of his first year Inter. Certificate. He entered the Noviceship on March 24th 1935 and pronounced his First Vows on March 28th 1937.
1937-1954: Cook: Belvedere, where he pronounced his Final Vows on August 15th 1945.
1954-1969: Cook, Milltown Park.
1969-1977: Cook: Manresa House, Dollymount. Died: January 13th 1977.

The long “innings” which he had as cook in each house speaks its own praise, both as regards his work, and as regards the satisfaction he gave to his communities.

Father James Healy, now in Milltown Park, remembers him well. “Living with Brother ‘Mac’ in Milltown was a joy and a pleasure: the pleasure of eating well and the joy of knowing that his professional skill always provided plenty, wasted nothing and cost the minimum. As a scholastic I loved to watch him in the Servery, carrying and dis hing out vegetables for a Community of 80 or more; he had been up since 5.30; had given us porridge and dished out lovely hot bacon and eggs when the mob arrived in a rush for breakfast; he'd spent the whole morning preparing for this moment and for our dinner. He was proud to feed us, so quickly, so pleasantly. His joy was in our pleasure.
‘Mac’ had a wonderful way with the boys on the domestic staff. There was competition among them to get into the kitchen. Once there you served a strict apprenticeship, and you made a lifelong friend. Here was a master craftsman, respecting his tools and materials, rejoicing in his creations, expecting you to do likewise. Be clean. Be punctual. Be methodical. Learn your trade thoroughly. Join a union. I still meet Mac's protegés and they are all proud to be imitators of him, all extremely grateful to him for the formation he gave them.
Mac was still going strong when I returned to teach in Milltown. One year I noticed his room had been changed to a worse one. How come? The Minister had to change someone and knew that Mac would take it more charitably than the alternative victim.
He was never Tony to me not I Jim to him. Titles did not matter. We played golf together. Eugene Ward and Joe Conran invited Mac and myself to make a four for a golfing holiday in Newcastle, Co Down. It must have been one of the first mixed priest-brother villas. Somehow, Mac and I formed a new bond on that villa; the golf brig comes in a variety of species and ours seemed to be - opposed? - well, 'different from that of our companions. Of course the four of us were mad, fanatical. Only we laughed at different moments. Any Christian can share your sorrows. It takes a friend to smile together-– as we did, reminiscently, in later years when I occasionally met him in Manresa. The pleasures pass, the joy remains”.

Father J. C Kelly, S.J., of Milltown Park writes: “He told me, in his inimitable Limerick accent, that one day as a young fella’ he realised with blinding clarity that his vocation in life was to be a cook, He never wanted to do anything else. At the height of his powers in the late fifties in Belvedere, he was a superb cook: and his day began at five o'clock in the morning in the Dublin market buying fresh vegetables. He went to the market on his bike”.

His recreation was golf. Father Matt Meade recalls his dedication to his pastime of golf. Characteristically Brother McShera was wholehearted in his interest in his pastime, and keen to achieve and recall his successes on the Course - which were, indeed, very creditable, although far from rivalling his prowess at his real “vocation” inside the Society of Jesus: his excellence as a cook.

Born: 11 April 1917, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1935, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1948, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin
Died: 07 February 2005, Cherryfield Lodge Dublin

Part of the Manresa House, Dublin community at the time of death.

Younger brother of D Louis Meagher - RIP 1980
Cousin of John P Leonard - RIP 2006

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ : Admissions 1859-1948 - Born Ratoath, County Meath; St Finian’s Mullingar student

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 128 : Special Issue June 2006

Obituary

Patrick (Paddy) Meagher (1917-2005)

11th April 1917: Born in Dublin
Early education at the National School in Ratoath, Co. Meath and St. Finian's, Mullingar
7th September 1935: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1937: First Vows at Emo
1937 - 1940: Rathfarnham - Studied Classics at UCD
1940 - 1943: Tullabeg -Studied Philosophy
1943 - 1945: Mungret College, Limerick - Teacher (Regency)
1945 - 1949: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
28th July 1948: Ordained at Milltown Park
1949 - 1950: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1950 - 1953: Clongowes - Teacher
1953 - 1956: Mungret College - Teacher
1956 - 1960: Gonzaga College - Teacher; Minister, Assistant Prefect of Studies
1960 - 1968: Mungret College - Teacher, Sub-Minister
1968 - 1972: Loyola - Socius to Provincial
1972 - 1973: Rathfarnham -Studied catechetics at Mt. Oliver, Dundalk
1973 - 1974: Manresa House -Assistant Director; Directed Spiritual Exercises
1974 - 1975: Belvedere College - Teacher
1975 - 2005: Manresa House -
1975 - 1985: Assistant Director, Directed Spiritual Exercises
2nd February 1981: Final Vows at Manresa
1985 - 1992: Socius to Director of Novices
1992 - 1996: Directed Spiritual Exercises
1996 - 2001: Rector's Admonitor, Spiritual Director
2001 - 2004: Spiritual Director (SJ)
2004 - 2005: Assisted in the community
7th February 2005 Died at Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Fr Meagher visited Cherryfield Lodge many times over the years for respite care. He was admitted in May 2004. He had become weak with chronic chest and circulatory problems. He was treated with antibiotic therapy and pain relief. In the last two weeks his condition weakened further and he died peacefully but unexpectedly in Cherryfield Lodge.

Paul Andrews writes:
Paddy was born in Ratoath, Co. Meath, the fourth child and second boy in a family of six. Three of the four boys became priests, and one of the girls a nun. They were blow-ins, not native to Meath. Paddy's father was from Templemore, his mother the child of a Co. Offaly farmer who had given up farming and moved to near Mulhuddert when the absentee landlord put up the rent. So strong was the anti-landlord feeling that when the family moved away from Offaly, the neighbours came in and knocked down all the buildings, Perhaps it was from this maternal grandfather that Paddy inherited the core of steel that could surprise strangers to this mild little man.

He was closer to his father, admired by neighbours and family as a gentleman of gentlemen, of small stature (all the children inherited this) and incapable of saying a rough word. Mother had the better business head, and thought her husband unsuited to the job of a Ratoath merchant, running a general store and pub. Too little interest in money, she said. He'd have been better in the bank.

Paddy was delicate as a young boy. After National School he went as a boarder to St Finian's in Mullingar. He was small like his father, and never shone at games, though he played Gaelic and carried the mark of a stray hurley in a scar under his eye. He was a bright student, and St Finian's gave him a good foundation in Greek and Latin.

His brother Louis had gone to Belvedere while lodging in Huntstown with his grandmother. There he had come under the influence of Fr Ernest Mackey, the assertive promoter of vocations (perhaps one reason why older Irish Jesuits shudder when Fr General urges us to be aggressive in our search for vocations). Ernest would dine with the Meaghers every Christmas, and exerted such an influence, first on Louis, then on Paddy, that when Tom, two years younger and less academic than Paddy, went to the Holy Ghosts, the local lads used ask him, Would the Js not take you?

Paddy followed Louis's footsteps to Emo. The parents were supportive of their multiple vocations (Maureen had become a Loreto sister). They visited Emo, and when Paddy walked tlırough the parlour door in his Jesuit gown, his mother cried, Oh, a saint! as she rushed to embrace him. That would not have been Paddy's style. He was uneasy with sensible devotion, cool-headed yet with a personal warmth that drew people to him; but the opposite of charismatic.

He eschewed scenes of high emotion. In the tempestuous seventies, the Grubb Institute led a group session for several days in Tullabeg, and explored the emotional sensitivities of the sometimes unwilling participants. Towards the end Paddy exploded: For the first time in 25 years you have made me lose my temper. No, said the Australian leader, For the first time in 25 years we have given you permission to lose your temper. Paddy did not like it.

When we were looking for a photo of Paddy for his memorial card, we wondered: What age are we in heaven – with what sort of a face? God gives you your eyes but you gradually make your own mouth. Earlier photos show Paddy's lips as judicial and stern. As a teacher he had to compensate in gravity of personality for a slight physical presence; and compensate he did. He was respected and liked, a most effective teacher in Mungret, Clongowes and (as one of the earliest staff) Gonzaga. In the councils of staff and community his voice was calm and reasonable. When Cecil McGarry became Provincial, he looked for Paddy as his Socius because he was wise and respected, easy to get on with and of good judgment.

So he was at the Provincial's side through those tumultuous years. The job suited him in many ways. He was an easy companion and could exercise independent discretion when needs be. When a rather forward Jesuit rang Loyola looking for an appointment with the Provincial, Paddy gave him a time in late morning. The visitor asked: Does that include an invitation to lunch? No, said Paddy quietly.

It was heart trouble that forced him to give up the job of Socius with its daily quota of serious business. Physically he may not have been able for high stress. When John Guiney brought him from Loyola to St Vincent's A and B with angina, they put him to bed quickly. A priest appeared and then two doctors. Paddy promptly responded by getting a heart attack. Over the years he became a model of how to live with a wacky heart. In early 2003 we worried about his stomach aneurysm which could not be mended because the operation might kill him. On the last day of 2003 he was anointed. Three days later Mary Rickard said he was sinking. Seven days later he asked about prayers for the dying. But he bounced back.

Coming from Loyola to Manresa did not mean an abdication of intelligence. Both within the community and with the many people he helped here, you could trust him to use his head, always sage, humane, insightful. The sisters seeking the Lord in Manresa liked him because he reflected assurance, a known way of proceeding, and a calm judgment. Many still remember his pithy, succinct homilies.

He did not sit lightly to the sillier aspects of media culture, such as pop music, designer stubble, or phrases like: Go with the feeling. His sense of irony carried him through such inanities – and through the bandying of religious jargon - without becoming grumpy; he could be teased about them. There were other changes which he accepted but suffered, such as the reshaping of the Manresa community chapel: he would have liked fewer windows, more pictures, a crucifix and sanctuary lamp. He did not relish the sharing of reflections and experiences at concelebrated Mass. But he was there every day.

In Cherryfield people remarked on Paddy's clarity of mind and the tenacity with which he held on to life. When one of the brethren brought over blue and orange shirts from his room, Paddy thanked him for the blue but queried the orange: I thought I mentioned a beige shirt. Up to the day of his death he was bubbling with enquiries about the Province and life outside.

In 2004 he left this note to his Rector, to be opened when I die:

Paul, I would wish that the homily at my funeral Mass be short, i.e. three and a half to four minutes - no more. I was a small man, so there is no need to make me seem bigger than I am (was). Just ask the SJs and people to thank God for whatever good I may have done, and ask his pardon for all my shortcomings.
And end with Cardinal Newman's prayer: May he support us all the day long...
Thanking you for all your caring for me in my last years. Paddy.

Alas, some of these wishes were not met, because the Rector was away when Paddy died, and the touching letter lay hidden in his safe. But Dermot Mansfield's homily at the funeral did justice to Paddy in Dermot's own way, and the back of his mortuary card carries the Cardinal's prayer.

What we miss is the smiling or laughing Paddy. It is no accident that in his reading he reverted to PGWodehouse and a light-hearted view of life. He showed how to shuffle off responsibilities in this passing life, and face the beatific vision with a contented and hopeful heart.

◆ The Clongownian, 2006

Obituary

Father Patrick Meagher SJ

Fr Patrick Meagher SJ who died at Cherryfield Lodge on 7th February 2005 at the age of 87, spent three years teaching in Clongowes from 1950-1953. Born in Dublin in 1917 he entered the Society at Emo where he took his first vows in 1935. He studied in Rathfarnham, Tullabeg and Milltown Park where he was ordained in 1948. As well as Clongowes, Fr Meagher taught in Mungret, Gonzaga and Belvedere College. He also served in Manresa House where he directed Spiritual Exercises and took his final vows in 1981. May he rest in peace.

Born: 18 February 1919, Bray, Co Wicklow & Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 16 September 1938, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1952, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1955, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 26 March 2019, Highfield Healthcare, Whitehall, Dublin

Part of the St Ignatius, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin community at the time of death.

Brother of Br Christopher J Laheen Ent 23/03/1940 - LEFT 24/04/1945

Early Education at Presentation College Bray, Co Wicklow; Belvedere College SJ

1940-1943 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1943-1946 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1946-1949 Belvedere College SJ - Regency : Teacher; Choir Master; Studying H Dip in Education at UCD (46-47)
1949-1953 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
1953-1954 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1954-1957 Mungret College SJ - Teacher; Liturgical Music; Librarian
1957-1962 Gonzaga College SJ - Teacher; Games Master; Subminister
1962-1985 Rathfarnham - Mission Staff; Giving Retreats
1981 Association Rathfarnham
1983 Promoter of Apostleship of Prayer; Writer
1985-2019 Leeson St - Mission Staff; Giving Missions and Directs Spiritual Exercises; Promoter of Apostleship of Prayer; Writer
2001 Council Member of Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and Ecclesiastical Master of Ceremonies
2014 Highfield Healthcare, Swords Road, Dublin 9

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

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

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 24th Year No 1 1949

LETTERS :

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

Irish Province News 24th Year No 3 1949

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

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

Obituary

Fr Edmund Kent (1915-1999)

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

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

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

May he rest in the peace of Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr Edmund Kent: born 1915, died November 1999

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

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

Transcribed HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

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

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

Ordained at Milltown Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Born: 29 October 1909, Foxford, County Mayo
Entered: 01 September 1928, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 13 May 1942, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1946, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 24 April 1974, Crescent College, Limerick

Older brother of Michael Erraught - RIP 1972

Early education at St Mary’s CBS Tralee, County Kerry

Tertianship at Rathfarnham

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 49th Year No 2 1974

Obituary :

Fr Joseph Erraught (1909-1974)

Although Fr Erraught had had a seizure in 1972 it was not generally known, apart from his own Community, that he had a heart complaint and the sad news of his sudden death was thus an accentuated grief. His brother, Fr Michael, though younger, predeceased him, again suddenly, in 1971, from a similar ailment and within a week of Fr Joe’s death the sole surviving member of that generation of the family, Mrs Bernard MacSweeney of Tralee, succumbed in the same way,
Fr Joe was born in Foxford, Co. Mayo, on 29th October 1909, but the family in his childhood moved to Tralee where Joe attended the Christian Brothers' schools, primary and secondary. He entered the novitiate at Tullabeg on 1st September 1928, one of twenty, among whom were Patrick Ó Brolcháin, Alphonsus O’Connell and Walter O’Connor, between the latter of whom and Joe there was knit a friendship that continued all through their studies and later years until, necessarily, Fr Walter's status to Zambia partly severed the companionship. They both entered into the humorous quizzing to which they were occasionally subjected as a comment on their partnership. Joe had a keen sense of humour and the baiting, eg about the confidential position he held in Fr Paddy Kenny's esteem in Milltown during his years in theology, generally evoked a hearty laugh enhanced by the merriment of his eyes. He lived strenuous days; his intelligence was keen and he was arduously industrious. He secured a distinguished degree at Rathfarnham and was retained a fourth year in the Juniorate during which he gained an MA in Irish.
1934-36: Tullabeg, now changed to a philosophate, and he completed the course in two years when he was assigned to Belvedere for Colleges. He was a very competent teacher with classes well in control; his alert, energetic manner marked him out as one to be respected, though kindly, and he won the esteem of pupils when life-long friendships were initiated.
1939: Milltown, theology; it might appear that dogmatic theology was his metier did he now show a like competence in other branches of the curriculum: if an opinion was sought among his contemporaries at Milltown there would probably be a consensus opting for him a specialisation in Canon Law but in fact it was not so decided when after ordination, 1942, and tertianship at Rathfarnham, 1943-44, the status appointed him to a post-graduate course at Maynooth. In 1947-48 he lectured on some of the subsidiary subjects at Milltown but work more congenial was allotted to him in the latter year when he joined the Rathfarnham community as assistant director of retreats.
This work which was, it may be said, to engross his interest and attention led to his appreciating the importance of pastoral psychology and, thorough - as was his character, he made himself familiar with the extensive literature concerned with that and kindred subjects. In a relatively short time he was regarded as an authority and was consulted frequently in contexts apart from his more routine commitments.
He was a ready speaker - a distinction and authority, as it were, emanated from him; he had amassed a store of knowledge always at command, During this period at Rathfarnham the direction of the Cinema Workers at Gardiner Street was under his care and possibly it was then that he conducted the Novena of Grace which was repeatedly alluded to in later years by a seasoned critic at Gardiner Street as the best he ever heard.
1953: Promoted to Mission and Retreat Staff with base at Emo Park; his activity was incessant.
1956: Rathfarnham again as Director of Retreats; during this time he was invited to co-operate with Dr J N Moore in the treatment of psychiatric patients at St Patrick’s Hospital. He had regular hours of attendance; among the patients and with the staff he won golden opinions to which the hospital authorities readily testified.
If it was with the desire to give him a more sedentary outlet that Fr. Joe was appointed to the Retreat House at Tullabeg in 1962 the desire was amply fulfilled; his assiduity in the confessional, his readiness to converse with and guide those who came, frequently from far distances, to consult him, his preparedness and variety in arranging retreat lectures, made Rahan well-nigh a place of pilgrimage,
The years from 1969 on at the Crescent Church, Limerick, were largely a repetition of the same apostolic work, save possibly with even wider horizons leading ultimately to the establishment of the Limerick Mental Welfare Association eighteen months ago, to which he was by universal choice elected Chairman.
When he expressed the desire - as noted among the Crescent items in this issue, that he be relieved of the office of Chairman, he must have realised that his energies were declining; the heart attack in 1972 attracted little notice but the strain thereafter must have been cumulative. He carried on, nevertheless.
What was Fr Joe’s attitude in his approach to God? He was loyal to the traditional pieties of the Society; he loved the “beauty of the Lord's house” and had a meticulous regard for the rubrics the result or more probably the cause of his being Master of Ceremonies in whatever house to which he was assigned through out his scholasticate.
On April 24th while transacting some bit of business down town in Limerick he collapsed; he was assisted immediately and conveyed to Barrington’s Hospital where on admission he was pronounced dead, At the obsequies at the Crescent Church, April 26th, concelebrated Mass was participated in by almost forty priests and there was a thronged assistance of the laity. The funeral later proceeded to Mungret for interment. RIP. Among the mourners was his sister, Mrs MacSweeney, and her family; she and they little calculating that she was to follow him so closely. We offer sincerest sympathy to Mr MacSweeney and family, the sole near relations. RIP

Irish Province News 55th Year No 4 1980

A tribute in memory of Fr. Joseph Erraught ( † 24th April 1974)

And now there is a question I must ask:
Is it with saddened cowardice that we mask
Acceptance of God's will in calling one
From us who needed him?... That dear, dear one
Whom we shall miss, whose listening ear was there
With kind advice--that Man of God, so rare , .,
Alone and lost we felt. No hand to hold
In friendship's clasp of understanding grip;
Unanchored in a sea, each one a ship
Tossed in the storms of life when he had gone .
Can we be blamed for that? And yet, no one
Was strong enough to say : 'It is God's will
That he no longer works on earth': but still,
We felt that final peace in work well done,
And pride in having shared with him the stone
He rolled away from inner tombs of thought
And so released us from ourselves, and sought
For us to find our peace again and know
That sunshine of God's ways melts deepest snow
Of troubles for us all.... My heart and head
Now tell me that he lives, no longer dead
And lost to us, for now he is with God.
That man who walked with Him on earth for good
And understanding of our minds, he lives
Again for us in every day and gives
The courage that we need to keep in sight
The aims of God as seen through gentle light
Of all he was and is, with every call
For help, when we reach out and touch a wall
Or have our backs to it in sorrow's tide
For now he lives forever by our side,
Frances Condell (ex-Mayor of Limerick)

Born: 20 April 1918, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1937, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1951, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1955, Loyola, Tai Lam Chung, Hong Kong
Died: 22 June 1993, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the Peter Faber community, Belfast, County Antrim at the time of death.

Transcribed : HIB to HK; 03/12/1966; MAC-HK to HIB 19/11/1991

Youngest brother of Bill - RIP 1983; Dan - RIP 2007

Great grandnephew of Daniel Murray, 1768-1852, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

Superior of the Irish Jesuit Mission to Hong Kong Mission: 21 June 1960-1965
Father General's Assistant for East Asia: 1966
Tertian Instructor, Tullabeg: 1978

Transcribed HIB to HK: 03 December 1966; MAC-HK to HIB: 19 November 1991

by 1956 at Ricci Hall Hong Kong - working
Mission Superior Hong Kong 21 June 1960
by 1966 at Rome, Italy (ROM) Assistant for East Asia
by 1977 at Regis, Toronto ONT, Canada (CAN S) Spiritual year
by 1978 Tertian Instructor

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :

Note from Daniel MacDonald Entry
At the Chapel of Ricci Hall, Catholic Hostel at the University of Hong Kong, a solemn Requiem Mass was offered last Thursday by Father Herbert Dargan, S.J. the present Warden of Ricci Hall, for the repose of the soul of one of his predecessors, Father Daniel McDonald, S.J., whose death occurred in Ireland on 14 May 1957.

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He was born into the family of a prominent Dublin doctor. Following his education at Clongowes he was a pre-medical student before joining the Society in 1937. His elder brother Bill was already a Jesuit who was for many years procurator of the Irish Province, and his younger brother Dan also became a Jesuit and was head of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association for many years. Yet another brother was a magistrate in Hong Kong.

He did his Regency at Belvedere College SJ and a HDip in Education, and then he was ordained at Milltown Park i 1951. After Tertianship he was assigned to Hong Kong. he began studying Chinese at Cheung Chau and was then appointed Warden at Rici Hall.. Later he was Rector of Wah Yan Hong Kong (1955-1957).
In 1960 he was appointed Mission Superior in Hong Kong (1960-1965).

He was appointed to the Board of Education which produced a white paper “Reorganization of Primary & Secondary Education”. He was Chair of the “Catholic Grant Schools Council”. He freed Fr John Collins for fulltime social work, set up “Concilium” with Frs Ted Collins, John Foley and Walter Hogan. he also set up CMAC in 1963. He sent Fr John F Jones for special training in Marriage Life. He also sent Fr John Russell to Rome for training in Canon Law. he was involved with rehabilitation of discharged prisoners and he visited prisons.
He was also involve din the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Housing Society, serving on four of its sub-committees.
He was also involved in religious broadcasting and began regular internal Jesuit communication with the “Hong Kong Newsletter”.

At his Golden Jubilee with Fr Séamus Doris, he was contrasted as being “mobile”, whereas Séamus, who had never missed a class in teaching (1954-1982) was said to be “stable”. He served in Rome as Fr General’s East Asian Assistant (1965-1975), was then Tertian Instructor in Tullabeg (1977-1986), and then went to Belfast to work as a spiritual director of priests

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 82 : September 1995
Obituary
Fr Herbert Dargan (1918-1993)

20th April 1918: Born, Dublin
Early Education: Clongowes Wood College, and pre-medical year at University College Dublin
7th Sept. 1937: Entered the Society at Emo.
1939-1942: Juniorate: Rathfarnham - UCD Degree
1942 - 1945: Tullabeg - studying Philosophy
1945 - 1947: Regency: Crescent College, Limerick
1947 - 1948: Regency: Belvedere College (H. Dip. Ed.)
1948 - 1952: Milltown Park - Studying Theology
31st July 1951; Ordained, Milltown Park
1952-1953: Tertianship
1953 - 1955: Cheung Chau - Studying Chinese language
1955 - 1957: Ricci Hall - Superior and Warden
1957 - 1960: Wah Yan College - Rector and Principal
1960 - 1965: Superior, Hong Kong Mission
1965 - 1976; Jesuit Curia, Rome, Regional Assistant for Eastern Asia
1976 - 1977; Sabbatical, Toronto Tullabeg:
1977 - 1986: Tertian Instructor (Superior: 1983-86)
1986 - 1987: Milltown Park - Giving the Spiritual Exercises
1987 - 1989: Manresa - Giving the Spiritual Exercises and Director of NCPI
1989 - 1993: Belfast - Giving the Spiritual Exercises
22nd June 1993: Died in Cherryfield Lodge.

It was in Herbert's last year in Belfast that I arrived there. As a member of the British Province I was soon made to feel at home in Brookvale and this was very much due to his presence. Herbert was first and foremost a member not of the Irish Province but of the world-wide Society of Jesus. It showed in the way that he welcomed Jesuits from any part of the world. His interests too were far from provincial.

During the cricket season he would ask to share my “Guardian”; he would be glued to the TV during the snooker matches, and loved to forecast the next shot. He was at his best when, with a glass of Bushmills in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth, he was telling stories about his friend and hero Pedro Arrupe or encouraging Paddy Doyle in his more extra-terrestrial flights of philosophic fancy.

My most vivid memory of him is at the British Province Assembly the Easter before his death, We invited him to Leeds knowing that it was probably the last time he would be able to visit his many British Province friends. He spoke about his life in Belfast and said that Brookvale was the happiest community he had lived in. He spoke straight from the heart of how the community members prayed with each other and tried to support each other in ministry. It was his best experience of community life. By the many who attended that meeting, his words will long be remembered.

Herbert Dargan was a very warm and loving person. The enlarged photograph that we have hanging in the community room at Brookvale captures something of the freedom and warmth of the man. It was a privilege for me to have lived with him in his last days.

Ron Darwen

Working with Herbert and with Paddy Doyle on his Armagh Priests Survey, I came to appreciate his enormous wisdom. He could listen attentively to a point of view and eventually, without ever claiming to speak from mere authority, he gave his opinion firmly and confidently but without arrogance. His long association with NCPI courses for priests had given him an insight into the lives of diocesan priests as well as a sympathy and understanding which they deeply appreciated.

Over a period of a year we visited nearly every priest in the 60 parishes of the diocese. We met regularly as a threesome and also with the sponsoring committee and it was Herbert who eventually wrote the section on the personal life of the priest. In the light of Pastores dabo vobis and subsequent Roman instructions, Herbert's understandings and insights can be seen to be prophetic. His was a demand for an incarnate spirituality based on a formation and support structure which were firmly based in reality.

All his life experience was drawn on - in Hong Kong and Malaysia, the Far East, Rome and as Tertian Instructor, This reflection went on to the very end.

He drove from Belfast to Milltown Park for the Province Assembly when he was clearly a dying man. The journey back had to be taken in easy stages, but it was a journey he wanted to make. He fulfilled his ambition

Senan Timoney

◆ The Clongownian, 1993
Obituary
Father Herbert Dargan SJ

Death is sad because it is a parting, and partings are painful. But Jesus Christ has promised us that death is only a temporary separation, and that it is the gateway to eternal life. He has told us that this life is a pilgrimage and we are only pilgrims passing through.

We are here this morning to pray for a pilgrim, my brother Herbert, and to ask the Lord in His mercy to grant him eternal happiness.

We are here also to thank God for Herbert and for the good he was able to do throughout his life. He had a very varied life. As a young priest he went overseas to work on the Irish Jesuit Mission in Hong Kong. The first two years he spent in a language school, learning Chinese, which is a very difficult language for us in this part of the world. The same sound has a different meaning if spoken on a high, medium or low pitch of tone. I remember Herbert telling me that one morning he said to his Chinese teacher that he wanted to get a haircut that afternoon. So the Chinese teacher told him what to say and patiently got him to repeat it over and over again, so that he would get it absolutely right. That afternoon he went along to a hairdressers, and in his best. Chinese asked for a haircut. The barber looked at him, puzzled, and replied: “Me no speak English”, Herbert felt like coming home on the next boat, but he soldiered on.

The Lord was very good to Herbert, and gave him several gifts, including a level head, an understanding heart and a creative mind.

It was, I suppose, largely due to these gifts that for most of his life he was asked to take on important posts of responsibility. He held the offices of Rector and Principal of Wah Yan College, a large secondary school for Chinese in Hong Kong. He was then made Superior of the Jesuit Mission in Hong Kong, and in 1965 he went as Assistant to our Fr General in Rome where he was based for the next eleven years, with responsibility for the Jesuit Provinces of East Asia and Australia.

On his return to Ireland he became Director of the Tertians. Every Jesuit priest does a third year noviceship after ordination - this is known as his Tertianship, and Herbert was director of the Tertians for nine years.

After that, his main work was giving retreats, and directing twelve-week courses, under the auspices of the National Council of Priests, courses for the pastoral and spiritual life of priests.

When our Jesuit house opened in Belfast in 1988, he was one of the small community. Life in Belfast can be very stressful but he told me that he liked it very much, not only because he was living in a very happy community but also because the bishops, priests and people of Belfast gave the Jesuits such a warm welcome. The Lord also gave Herbert a good sense of humour and an ability to fit in easily with others. He was well-liked and had many friends from all quarters of life.

The first indication of his serious illness occurred when, one Sunday while he was saying Mass for the prisoners in Crumlin Road gaol, he collapsed suddenly. Some days later he received a letter from the prisoners expressing concern about his illness and saying how much they liked him coming to them. He was very touched by this. The day before he died he told me that two good friends of his, Terry and Linda, were coming from the United States to see him, and he added: “I wonder will I be alive”. In fact Fr Paddy Doyle (his colleague in Belfast) phoned them the news of his death. Terry was not able to get away but Linda flew the distance of five thousand miles and arrived at this church just as this Mass was about to begin.

Herbert was a very spiritual person, and several priests and people have told me that he gave them great help with their prayer life, through his talks and spiritual guidance.
With his wide experience and common sense, and his readiness to give encouragement to others, he was in much demand as a counsellor, and many priests, nuns and lay people used to come to him. Fr Doyle tells me that people were constantly knocking at the door asking to see him.

When he was diagnosed as having a tumour, he accepted the news bravely and with resignation and continued to work for as long as he could. He remained cheerful to the end.

At the moment like this my thoughts naturally turn to my parents, and I feel 'I should say and I know that Herbert would endorse this, that our mother and father, especially as they went on in years, were very grateful to God that three of their six sons became Jesuit priests.

Daniel Dargan SJ (Funeral Homily)

Born: 24 January 1915, St Stephen's Green, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1933, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1946, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1951, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 21 September 2007, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Middle brother of Bill - RIP 1983; Herbert - RIP 1993

Great grandnephew of Daniel Murray, 1768-1852, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 134 : Christmas 2007
Obituary
Fr Daniel (Dan) Dargan (1915-2007)

24th January 1915: Born in Dublin
Early education at Christian Brothers, Patrick's Hill, Cork, Patrician Brothers, Mallow, and Clongowes Wood College
7th September 1933: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1935: First Vows at Emo
1935 - 1938: Rathfarnham - Studied Classics at UCD
1938 - 1941: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1941 - 1943: Belvedere - Teacher (Regency)
1943 - 1947: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1946: Ordained at Milltown Park
1947 - 1948: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1948 - 1983: St. Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street
2nd February 1951: Final Vows
1948 - 1957: Editor “Pioneer”; Assistant Director Pioneers 1957
1977: Director of Pioneers; Editor “Pioneer”
1977 - 1980: Assistant Director of Pioneers; Editor “Pioneer”; Assisted in Church
1980 - 1983: Superior; Director, SFX Social Service Centre
1983 - 1991: St. Ignatius, Galway -Parish Priest
1991 - 2003: Sacred Heart Church, Limerick -
1991 - 1992: Ministered in Church
1992 - 1994: Minister; Ministered in Church; House Staff; Director of Pioneers' Society
1994 - 2000: Superior, Prefect of the Church; House Staff; Director of “Pioneers” Society
2000 - 2003: Prefect of the Church; House Staff; Director of “Pioneers” Society, Director Sodality BVM & St. Joseph; Promoter of Missions; President of Cecilian Musical Society; House Consultor
2003 - 2007: Cherryfield Lodge - Praying for Church and Society
21st September 2007: Died at Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin.

Homily preached by Barney McGuckian at the Funeral Mass in Gardiner Street, September 24, 2007
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). These are the words of a man who discovered the identity of Jesus with practically his last breath. They are still appropriate today as we take our leave of Fr Dan Dargan, a man who spent the greater part of ninety years trying to plumb the depths of the mystery that is Jesus, nearly seventy-five of them in the Society of Jesus and thirty-five of them in the community here at St Francis Xavier's. These words are among the Last Seven that loomed so large in the devotion of the people here in the Church during Dan's early years here. He himself must have preached on them on a number of occasions and learned from the edifying attitude and example of the Good Thief. Fr Donal O'Sullivan, novice master of some of us here, (neither the very old nor the very young), used to say that we were all most appropriately represented on Calvary: by two thieves, a good one and a bad one, but both thieves all the same! All of us try to rob God of the glory that is His.

The Good Thief has the distinction of being the only person in the New Testament who addresses Jesus simply as Jesus, without further qualification. Others added titles such as the Christ, Son of David, Master, Rabbi, Teacher, Lord. He simply calls him Jesus or, more probably, Joshua which in his native language literally means "God saves". At this stage all that matter is salvation. The other qualifications are superfluous. As a Jesuit, Dan would have known the importance the founder attached to the very name Jesus. Indeed Ignatius was prepared to abandon the whole project to found an order if he was not permitted to use the very name Jesus.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. This request came at the conclusion of an altercation between two of the condemned men about the identity of the third. One was so incensed at the obtuseness of the other that he rounded on him: “Have you no fear of God at all?” He is astonished that even at this late stage, with death staring him in the face, the other man has not even the beginnings of wisdom that comes from a healthy fear of God.

He himself is obviously sorry for his own past life and would love, if possible, to undo it, even at this late stage. He decides to go for it. In a great act of faith he takes the chance that the inscription over the head of Jesus really means what it says: “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews”. He simply asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his Kingdom.

The reply must have astonished him as much as it does us. “Indeed, I promise you. This day you will be with me in Paradise”. He pulled off the biggest job of his life when he was already on death row. All he did was to make a good confession and say his prayers, which is all any of us have to do if we want to join him in Paradise.

Dan did not wait to the end of his long life to do this. Dan was born into a privileged situation in the best sense of the word. He came from a happy Catholic family with a long tradition of service to the Church and the Irish people. An intensely private person he did not wear his heart on his sleeve but you just knew it was in the right place. He once confided to me that after his father died his mother told him that they had never had a row during the whole course of their married life. I think this must have had a profoundly formative effect on himself. He was a man of peace who tried to spread it wherever he found himself.

An industrious man, I always thought his signature tune should have been “Perpetua mobile”. It used to introduce Joe Linnane's “Question Time” on Radio Éireann on a Sunday night many moons ago. Perhaps that was the Dargan in him. In a John Bowman programme a few years ago I learned that William Dargan, his illustrious ancestor, builder of so many of the railways of the country at one stage employed something of the order of 140,000 workers. The ecumenical dimension of the family's contribution is evidenced by the fact that even within the last two decades large bridges in both Belfast and Dublin have been named after Dargan. Queen Elizabeth II came over to open one of them. Two of that great man's uncles were hanged in Wexford during the '98 rising.

No Jesuit could lay more claim to a funeral here in St. Francis Xavier's than Dan. His great grand uncle, Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin, offered the first Mass here in the Church 175 years ago this year. He himself gave the best years of his life to all the apostolic activity of the house, especially the Pioneer Association, the Pioneer Club and the Pioneer magazine. He was first editor of the magazine, which is still thriving in spite of the changes in society. It will celebrate its 60th birthday in January coming.

He was beloved of the staff in the office, more like an elder brother than a boss. It is wonderful to see two of his secretaries here with us today, Geraldine White (then Murtagh) and Maureen Manning.

In an interview with an internal Jesuit periodical (Interfuse #124) a couple of years ago he confided that he still holds the Clongowes record for the largest score ever run up at cricket, that he played schools tennis at Interprovincial level, and made the First Rugby Fifteen. It was while a student at Clongowes that his decision to enter the Jesuits matured and he followed his elder brother Bill, and later was followed by his younger brother, Herbert. At Clongowes he was privileged to know Fr. John Sullivan whose funeral took place in the college during his final year before going to the novitiate. It was appropriate that his mortal remains for the last two nights in the Sacred Heart Chapel besides those of the great Servant of God.

I first met Dan in August, 1955, when he was on holidays in the Glens of Antrim with Fr Kieran Hanley. They came to see around our family farm, where my father and his brothers had gained a reputation for advanced methods in pig breeding. I was deputed to show these two Jesuits around. I recognised Fr Dan from photos in the Pioneer magazine. It was obvious that the farmer was Kieran Hanley, and that Dan was only there to make up the numbers. When Kieran was dying I brought this up: “I don't think Dan had much interest in the pigs that day”. Kieran pulled himself up in the bed and said, “Absolutely none whatsoever”. But it was typical of Dan to fit himself into whatever situation he found himself in.

I was privileged later to work for a number of years as his Assistant before succeeding him as Central Director of the Pioneers. In that role he was totally at the beck and call of everyone. He drove to parishes, schools, colleges and halls all over the country, never sparing himself. He had not a fanatical bone in his body. He understood the Pioneer Association as an expression of devotion to the Sacred Heart. It would never have entered his head that there was anything evil about wine. But he did realize that if not used wisely and well it can lead to endless heartbreak and sorrow. He was convinced that the Pioneer way of prayer and consecrated abstinence could make a significant contribution to the quality of life of the whole community.

He invested a great deal of time and energy into the Pioneer Club on Mountjoy Square, especially the musicals. He survived the occasional storms in that particular tea-cup. I remember one of his wry comments. “It's extraordinary how the closer people get to the stage the more unreasonable they become”.

Dan appeared always to be in good health, although I learned from one of his Jesuit colleagues, the late Pearse O'Higgins, that as a young Jesuit he became seriously ill. His life was in danger. As a last resort his father, who had the reputation of being a brilliant diagnostician, agreed to examine his son, He came to the right conclusion, prescribed accurately, and his son lived to be 92.

During his declining years Dan was a model patient. He was always in good humour, kept himself alert with the Irish Times crossword every morning, and kept up his reading to the end, both serious and light. He confessed that he had read all Jeffrey Archers novels. I am prepared to forgive him this.

The response of Jesus to the Good Thief was unambiguous. “Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise”. The first Joshua led the Chosen People into a Promised Land. We pray that today Jesus, the true Joshua take his friend Dan to the definitive Promised Land to be with Him in joy and happiness forever. As one of those who, with his brothers Bill and Herbert, have instructed many in virtue, surely he will be among those whom the Prophet Daniel tells us will shine as bright as stars for all eternity.

◆ The Clongownian, 2007

Obituary

Father Daniel Dargan SJ

Dan was born into a privileged situation in the best sense of the word. He came from a happy Catholic family with a long tradition of service to the Church and the Irish people. An intensely private person he did not wear his heart on his sleeve but you just knew it was in the right place. He once confided to me that after his father died his mother told him that they had never had a row during the whole course of their married life. I think this must have had a profoundly formative effect on Dan. He was a man of peace who tried to spread it wherever he found himself
His early education began with the Christian Brothers in Cork and the Presentation Brothers in Mallow. His five years at Clongowes (1928-1933) saw a period of great transformation with the “New Building” changing the physical face of the College in 1929. In an interview with an internal Jesuit periodical a couple of years ago he confided that he still holds the Clongowes record for the largest score ever run up at Cricket, that he played schools tennis at Interprovincial level and made the First Rugby Fifteen. It was while a student at Clongowes that his decision to enter the Jesuits matured and he followed his elder brother Bill and later was followed by his younger brother, Herbert, At Clongowes he was privileged to know the saintly Fr John Sullivan, whose funeral took place in the college during his final year before Dan left to enter the Society of Jesus, to begin a long and richly filled life continuing his Family's tradition of service to the Church and the Irish people”.

He began his period of formation with a BA In Classics at UCD, followed by Philosophy in Tullabeg (the former St Stanislaus College boarding school which amalgamated with Clongowes in 1886). He spent two years in regency in Belvedere before going on to Milltown Park, Dublin, for Theology. He was ordained there on St Ignatius Day 1946. Then began his long association with St Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner Street, for 35 years, most of them spent as Editor and later Director of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. He was first Editor of the magazine which is still thriving in spite of the changes in society and which will celebrate its 60th birthday early 2008. He was beloved of the staff in the office, more like an elder brother than a boss.
In that role he was at the beck and call of everyone. He drove to parishes, schools, colleges and halls all over the country, never sparing himself. He had not a fanatical bone in his body. He understood the Pioneer Association as an expression of devotion to the Sacred Heart. It would never have entered his head that there was anything evil about wine. But he did realize that if not used wisely and well it can lead to endless heartbreak and sorrow. He was convinced that the Pioneer way of prayer and consecrated abstinence could make a significant contribution to the quality of life of the whole community. He also invested a great deal of time and energy in the Pioneer Club on Mountjoy Square, especially the musicals.

After three years as Superior of the Community and Director of the Social Service Centre and at an age (68) when many of his contemporaries in the world were well retired, Dan started out on 20 years of parish ministry, serving first the Jesuit Church in Galway and then the Crescent in Limerick, where, at the age of 88 he was still Prefect of the Church, Director of the Pioneers, Director of the Sodality of Our Lady and St Joseph, Promoter of Missions and President of the Cecilian Musical Society!

An industrious man an understatement!), Dan's signature tune could have been “Perpetua mobile”. Perhaps that was the Dargan in him. In a John Bowman programme a few years ago we learned that William Dargan, his illustrious ancestor, builder of so many of the railways of the country at one stage employed something in the order of 140,000 workers. The ecumenical dimension of the family's contribution is evidenced by the fact chat even within the last two decades large bridges in both Belfast and Dublin have been named after Dargan. Queen Elizabeth II came over to open one of them. Two of that great man's uncles were hanged in Wexford during the ‘98 rising

With his brothers Bill and Herbert, Dan has ensured that that his family's long tradition of service to the Church and Ireland will long be remembered and, with them, he himself will surely occupy a privileged place when that service is recorded in our country's history.

Dan appeared to always be in good health although as a young Jesuit he became seriously ill and his life was in danger. As a last resort his father, who had the reputation of being a brilliant diagnostician, agreed to examine his son. He came to the right conclusion, prescribed accurately and, in 2003, in sight of his 90th birthday, Dan joined the Jesuit Community in Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin, where his final mission was “to pray for the Church and the Society” he had loved and served so well, During his declining years he was a model patient. He was always in good humour, kept himself alert with the “Irish Times” crossword every morning and kept up his reading to the end, both serious and light. He confessed that he had read all Jeffrey Archer's novels.
Dan's great grand uncle, Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin had offered the first Mass in the Church of St Francis Xavier in 1832, and so it was doubly fitting that, as the autumnal leaves began co turn, Dan's Jesuit Companions should gather with younger generations of the Dargan Family to bid him adieu at his Requiem Mass and to celebrate a richly filled and fruitful life in sight of his century. May he rest in peace.

BMcG

Born: 09 August 1915, Clonskeagh, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1933, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 30 July 1947, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1951, Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Died: 27 February 2003, Canossa Hospital Hong Kong - Sinensis Province (CHN)

part of the Ricci Hall, Hong Kong community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966; HK to CHN : 1992

Middle brother of John (RIP 1997) and Des RIP (1996)

by 1939 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
After a short illness, Father Edward Collins, SJ, went peacefully to the Lord in Canossa Hospital (Caritas) on Thursday evening, 27 February 2003.

He was born into a very devout Catholic family in Dublin, Ireland, on 9 August 1915. At the age of 18 he followed his elder brother, John, into the Society of Jesus; another brother, Desmond later followed their example.

After first vows, he studied for a B.Sc. in maths and physics and complete his philosophical studies, then taught for three years before beginning a four-year course in theology. He was ordained a priest on 30 July 1947.

In 1949, he was sent to Hong Kong where he joined his elder brother John. After two years studying Cantonese, he was assigned to teach moral theology in the Regional Seminary, where he remained until 1964. Father Collins took two years during that time to obtain a doctorate in Rome.

In 1964, the Regional Seminary closed its doors and the building was handed over to the diocese of Hong Kong. Father Collins then devoted much of his time to setting up the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (CMAC), which was finally gazetted in 1967. At the same time he acted as defender of the marriage bond in the Diocesan Tribunal and became embroiled in the controversy about the legalisation of abortion in Hong Kong.

By 1971, he was back in the chair of moral theology, first in Dalat, Vietnam (1971-1973) and then in the Holy Spirit Seminary in Aberdeen, Hong Kong (1973-1981). He did not confine himself to forming the consciences of seminarians in the classroom. He also made himself available to give retreats and spiritual direction. His friendly manner ensured that he was much sought after as a confessor.

For years he was the spiritual guide of the Catholic doctors’ guild and the Catholic nurses guild. He spent the years from 1986 to 1992 as the master of novices and then as a full-time director of retreats in Xavier Retreat House, Cheung Chau.

Apart from teaching and spirituality, Father Collins took a keen interest in helping the marginalised in Hong Kong. He followed the example of his brother John, who had set up credit unions and fought for the rights of the disabled. The two brothers made a great contribution to giving Hong Kong a human face. Father Collins requested that a photo of his brother be put in his coffin with him.

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He was born into an ardent Catholic family in Dublin. He followed his older brother John into the Society, and a younger brother Des joined later.

After his Novitiate he studies at UCD, graduating with a BSc in Mathematics and Physics. He then studied Philosophy, and Theology.

He came to Hong Kong where he studied Cantonese and later taught Moral Theology at the Regional Seminary in Aberdeen until 1964. He then went to Rome to study for a Doctorate.
When he returned to Hong Kong he was devoted to setting up the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (HKCMAC) and helping the marginalised in Hong Kong. In this he was following in the footsteps of his older brother John who had set up credit unions, and fought for the rights of the disabled.

According to Freddie Deignan, Ted founded CMAC and was a Member of the Hong Kong Social Service.
In 1969 he took care of the lepers in Hong Kong and wrote many articles on moral questions.

He was a great defender of the marriage bond, and he also served as Spiritual Advisor to the Catholic Doctor’s and Nurses Guilds.

Note from Herbert Dargan Entry
He freed Fr John Collins for full-time social work, set up “Concilium” with Frs Ted Collins, John Foley and Walter Hogan. he also set up CMAC in 1963. He sent Fr John F Jones for special training in Marriage Life. He also sent Fr John Russell to Rome for training in Canon Law. he was involved with rehabilitation of discharged prisoners and he visited prisons.

Note from Paddy Finneran Entry
Ted Collins was with him in Limerick

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 117 : Special Issue November 2003

Obituary

Fr Edward (Ted) Collins (1915-2003) : China Province

Born, Dublin 9 Aug 1915.
Entered Emo, 7th September 1933.
Ordained in Milltown, 20th July 1947.
Joined the Hong Kong Mission, 1950,
Died in Hong Kong, 27th Feb 2003

Harry Naylor writes:

A month previously, Ted had been at a meeting of Spiritual Directors, dressed neatly and colourfully as usual, but with the obvious forgetfulness for which he was well known. A week earlier, he had been hearing confessions at the Catholic Centre as he had done for many years. The Monday before he died, he was at the priests' Day of Recollection.

The day before his operation, Fr Bemard Tohill SDB went to ask his advice and heard him say that he was second oldest Jesuit in Hongkong, after Joe Mallin.

Ted was taken to the Canossa Hospital on Wednesday 26th February for an operation because of a blockage in his intestines but, because of his heart condition, he declined to undergo it. He died at 9 pm in the hospital with Freddie Deignan (Delegate for Hongkong), Robert Ng, Seán Coghlan and Eaodain Hui (a longtime CLC member who had kept vigil by his bedside).

It was a mild dry evening on Monday 3rd March, when the Vigil Liturgy began at 8pm in a small room which could only seat fifty at the North Point Funeral Parlour. Fr Paul Chan conducted the service and spoke of Fr Ted as a real friend to many and a soulfriend to many more. The large crowd present was a clear indication of this. There were up to two hundred people in the corridor, bathed in the Buddhist sutra chants and sounds of cymbals and drums coming from an adjacent room. It was only with the singing of a hymn and later, when Paul Chan led the Glorious Mysteries, that all could participate in a loud voice.

The chief mourners were Freddie Deignan, Sean Coghlan and Sean Ó Cearbhalláin, with about a dozen other Jesuits, including Jimmy Hurley, Ciaran Kane, William Lo, Tom McIntyre, Joe Mallin, Harold Naylor, John Russell, Joe Shields, Simon Wong, There were also six other priests and a Protestant pastor friend, Hans Lutz. Among the Sisters were 6 Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception (MIC), 5 Little Sisters of the Poor, 3 Little Sisters of Jesus, 4 Columban Sisters. There were also lay people from the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council, Caritas HK, from the chapels of our two Jesuit schools and our retreat house. Fr Ted had worked with all these congregations and had spent his final years with the Little Sisters of the Poor, first as chaplain and later as a resident of their home.

On the day of the funeral there was a light drizzle and strong gusts of wind. The funeral Mass was held at the spacious Christ the King Chapel at St Paul's Hospital (Sisters of St Paul de Chartres) in Causeway Bay. The chapel was packed. It was a diocesan and not just a Jesuit funeral. The chief celebrant was Bishop Joseph Zen of Hongkong. Concelebrating in the sanctuary were Auxiliary Bishop John Tong with Msgr Eugene Nuget, Freddie Deignan, Ciaran Kane, Thomas Leung, Anthony Tam and Robert Ng and, in the body of the church, a large number of priests including Jesuits, diocesan priests from the cathedral, the seminary and parishes (17), Dominicans (3), Maryknoll (5), PIME (7) and Salesians (6) - about 60 altogether.

Also in the body of the church were some 300 mourners including representatives from the religious congregations (Little Sisters of the Poor, Canossians, Good Shepherd Sisters, St. Paul de Chartres, Irish Columbans and others). The laity were represented by the Catholic Women's League, the Focolare Movement, prayer groups as well as many elderly people whom Fr Ted had served. The liturgy was entirely in Cantonese.

Fr.Robert Ng spoke in Cantonese of Ted's seventy years as a Jesuit, 50 of which had been spent in were in Hong Kong and 30 teaching moral theology in seminaries. Robert spoke of Ted as being all things to all: poor and rich, Chinese and foreign, sick and healthy. He was a counsellor and an apostolic priest. Often on pilgrimages, he was recently in Shanghai and asked where he would like to make his next pilgrimage, to which he replied, “Eternal Life”.

Freddie Deignan spoke of him as one who loved his own family members, two of whom are still alive in Ireland, along with many nephews and nieces. With a group of dedicated Catholic doctors and nurses, Ted had set up the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council much to the delight of Bishop Bianchi of Hongkong. He made a significant contribution to the Church in Hong Kong and its society for more than fifty years. His life was one of hope in Eternal Life. There was a time to mourn as we do now, but also a time to die.

Ted was laid to rest in the Catholic cemetery in Happy Valley together with those Jesuits who had gone before him.

Arriving in Hongkong in 1950, Ted taught at the South China Regional Seminary and then went to Rome in 1959 for a doctorate in moral theology. On his return Bishop Bianchi asked him to help Catholics after the controversial encyclical Humane Vitae of 1968. Ted remained a loyal member of the CMAC till his death. He was most esteemed as a spiritual counsellor and had dedicated his life to spiritual direction.

After the Regional Seminary became the Hong Kong diocesan seminary, Ted continued to teach there while also being involved in other ministries, such as giving retreats. He also spent two years teaching moral theology at the major seminary in Dalat, South Vietnam. On his return to Hong Kong he became very interested in the plight of the Vietnamese “boat people”, thousands of whom had fled to Hongkong in the 1970s and after.

In later years, he spent a number of years at Xavier Retreat House on Cheung Chau Island but had to leave it in 1992 as a heart condition made the steep climb to the house difficult for him. He then became chaplain to St. Mary's Home for the Aged in Aberdeen, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, until 2000, when he himself became a resident, while still attached to the Ricci Hall community.

Ted was always deeply interested in the evangelisation of China and made spiritual direction his priority. He was also, for many years, a member of the Jesuit Faith and Justice Group and, like his older brother John, very committed to social justice.

Born: 02 April 1911, Geashill, Walsh Island, County Offaly
Entered: 03 September 1930, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 06 January 1945, Sydney, Australia
Final Vows: 02 February 1948, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong
Died: 20 January 1957, Mater Hospital, Vulture Street, South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Part of the Manresa, Toowong, Brisbane, Australia and Wah Yan, Hong Kong communities at the time of death

Older brother of Denis Carroll - RIP 1992

by 1939 at Loyola Hong Kong - studying

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
He was one of twelve children, eight of whom entered Religion, and a brother of his Denis also became a Jesuit and worked in Zambia (RIP 1992).
His early education was at Mungret College, and he was one of 32 Novices who entered St Mary’s, Emo in 1930.
1932-1935 After First Vows he went to Rathfarnham Castle Dublin, and studied at University College Dublin, where he graduated BA in English and History.
1935-1938 He was sent to St Stanislaus College Tullabeg for Philosophy
1938-1941 He was went for Regency to Hong Kong, including language school at Cheung Chau and teaching at Wah Yan College Hong Kong. he found the Cantonese dialect very difficult, and yet while there he also edited the Wah Yan College Annual “The Star”.
1941-1945 As it was impossible to return to Europe for Theology, he and three other Scholastics were sent to Australia for these studies. he enjoyed his time there and the Australian Jesuits found him pleasant company. While waiting for Theology to began he taught for a bit at St Ignatius College Riverview.
1946-1947 He went to Ireland and Rathfarnham Castle to make Tertianship
1947-1956 He returned to Hong Kong and Wah Yan, where he was assistant Prefect of Studies, and went back to editing “The Star”. he was appointed Vice-Rector in 1951, and Rector a year later in 1952, and was also prefect of Studies. He managed all these tasks very efficiently, even though he was never of robust health. One of his achievements also was the planning of the new Wah Yan College, on Queen’s Road East. By 1955 he was no longer capable of heavy work, and in 1956 underwent a serious operation for intestinal cancer, he suffered many months of pain after this, and he bore it with great fortitude.
1956 By June of this year he had recovered sufficiently to fly to Brisbane for a period of convalescence. By November his condition had worsened, and he required another operation, but died in January 1957

His death at the Mater Hospital Brisbane at an early age, deprived the Hong Kong Mission of a most esteemed and valuable member. He had a deep interest in educational matters, and his thorough understanding of the Hong Kong educational system had established him as a very well informed representative and spokesman of Catholic Schools in Hong Long and their dealings with the government there.

He was a tall man, with a stately and almost stiff bearing and a habitual serious expression. He was a spiritual man and an observant religious, good at English literature and the craft of elaborate lettering of manuscripts, and the poignant epigram. He was meticulous, some would say excessive in the preparation of his classes. he was a hard worker and efficient administrator, strict on himself and a stern judge of those who did not measure up to his own high standards. At time he could appear to be stiff and unbending, but he had a good sense of humour and was able to laugh at himself. Towards his students he was uniformly kind though reserved, and this, combined with his unceasing devotion to duty, made them esteem him highly.

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Death of Fr. John Carroll, S.J.
Former Rector of Wah Yan College

News has been received of the death of Rev. John Carroll, S.J., who was Rector of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, from 1951-1956. It took place in Brisbane, Australia, where he had gone for convalescence after a serious operation at the beginning of last year.

Fr. Carroll, who was forty-six years of age, was born in Leix, in Ireland. He was educated at Mungret College, Limerick, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1930. he continued his studies in the National University of Ireland, where he took the B.A. degree and Higher Diploma of Education.

He came to Hong Kong in 1938, and after two years of Chinese studies was assigned to Wah Yan College, where he taught literature and history and was editor of the college magazine “The Star.” He then went to Australia to study theology, and was ordained by Archbishop (now Cardinal) Gilroy in 1945. At the close of the war he went to Europe and then returned to Hong Kong in 1947.

All the succeeding years were spent in Wah Yan College. After a period of teaching he was appointed Prefect of Studies in 1949, and then Rector. He supervised the building of the new college in Queen’s Road, East, and presided at its inauguration in September, 1955. A few months later his health broke down and he bore a long illness with great fortitude.

Fr. Carroll’s death is a considerable loss to education in Hong Kong. He had conspicuous literary and artistic ability, but the interests of his later years were wholly directed to education. He kept himself well informed on educational developments in many countries and his only regret at his loss of health was that he was unable to put into practice the many plans that he had in mind for the development of the school. He was a member of the Grant Schools Council and of the Board of Control of the Hong Kong School Certificate Examination Syndicate. He was also a member of the Court of the Hong Kong University.
Sunday Examiner, Hong Kong - 25 January 1957

Requiem Mass for Former Wah Yan College Rector

Large Numbers of priests, religious and lay people including some eight hundred pupils and Old Boys of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, attended the Solemn Requiem Mass last Wednesday at St. Margaret’s Church, Happy Valley, for the repose of the soul of Father John Carroll, S.J., former Rector of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong.

His Lordship Bishop Lawrence Bianchi presided at the Mass and gave the Absolution. The present rector of Wah Yan College, Father Cyril Barrett, S.J., was the celebrant. He was assisted by Father Charles Daly, S.J., and Father Kevin O’Dwyer, S.J.

Father Carroll who died on January 20 in Brisbane, Australia, was Rector of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, from 1951 to 1956 when he went to Brisbane for convalescence after a serious operation earlier that year. He was 46 years of age and was born in Leix, Ireland, Educated at Mungret College, Limerick, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1930.
Sunday Examiner, Hong Kong - 1 February 1957

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He came from a large family in Geashill, Walsh Island, County Offaly, 8 of whom entered religious life.
His early education was at Mungret Cllege SJ before he joined the Society of Jesus in 1930.

1938 He was sent to Hong Kong
1941 he was sent to Canisius College Pymble Australia during the war for Theology, and was Ordained there in 1945.
1946 He returned to Ireland to make Tertianship

By September 1955 his dream of the construction of the new Wah Yan College was completed. His health was poor and so he died in 1957.
He was the “architect” on the Wah Yan College, Queen’s Road East campus, Prefect of Studies and then Rector of Wah Yan Hong Kong. Schoolwork was his life, and he gave his classes not mere instruction, but affection and respect. he prepared his classes with as much care as if he had to face a group of post-graduate university students. Although ruthless on himself, it pained him to be hard on students.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 21st Year No 1 1946

Frs. John Carroll, Kevin O'Dwyer and Cyril Peyton, of the Hong Kong Mission, who completed their theology at Pymble recently, left, Sydney on December 9th on the Aquitania for England via the Cape. They hope to be home by the end of January. They are accompanied by Fr. Vincent Conway, an old Mungret boy, member of the Vice Province. All four will make their tertianship in Rathfarnham next autumn.

Fr. John Carroll, on the Aquitania, 13-12-45 :
“We left Sydney on time, at 8 am, on Monday 10th, and expect to be in England by the middle of January. Rumour says Southampton about January 12th. We are travelling as a military transport with some 200 civilian passengers. The total number of persons is said to be 4,700. It is therefore far from being a pleasure cruise, but the food is good and the ship so far is riding beautifully. There is a nice altar specially reserved for Catholics in a curtained recess in the library, and we have the place to ourselves from 6.45 to 7.45. The official chaplain, Church of England, claims the half hour from 8 to 8.30. There are two other priests on board, one of them Fr. Frank Bouchier who was at Mungret with me”.

Irish Province News 32nd Year No 2 1957
Obituary :
Fr John Carroll (1911-1957)
The death of Fr, John Carroll in the Mater Hospital, Brisbane, Australia on the 20th. January last, at the early age of 46, deprived the Hong Kong Mission of one of its most esteemed and valuable members. For Fr. Carroll by his deep interest in educational matters, and his thorough understanding of the Hong Kong educational system, had established himself as the best informed representative and spokesman of the Catholic schools in Hong Kong in all their dealings with the Government. The numerous messages of sympathy which the Superior of Missions (Fr. Harris) received after his death from the principals of the Catholic schools bore eloquent testimony to how deeply they appreciated his advice and assistance, and regretted his untimely death.
Fr. John Carroll was born on the 2nd April, 1911 in Walsh Island, Geashill, Offaly. He was one of twelve children, eight of whom entered religion. He was educated at Mungret College, Limerick, from which he entered the Society on the 3rd September, 1930, being one of the thirty-two first-year novices who began their life in the Society in Emo Park the year that house was established as the Novitiate. In September, 1932, Fr. Carroll went to Rathfarnham Castle for his Juniorate studies, and in 1935 obtained his B.A. degree in English and History. During the following three years, he studied Philosophy in Tullabeg, and in 1938 was assigned to the Hong Kong Mission, where he arrived in the autumn of that year, and proceeded to the Language school, Loyola, Taai Lam Chung, For two years he applied himself most diligently and conscientiously to the study of the language, but in his case, it was very much like watering the dry stick. He had no special gift for languages, especially for Cantonese, and it was with no little relief that in 1940 he passed on to Wah Yan College, then situated in Robinson Road. It was soon clear that teaching and college work generally, were his true vocation in the Society, and though he spent only one year as a scholastic at this work, he proved an excellent teacher from the very beginning. Another task with which he was entrusted that year, and which he found most congenial as it gave scope for his artistic gifts was the production of the College annual, The Star. As it was impossible in July, 1941 to return to Ireland for Theology owing to the war, Fr. Carroll went with three other scholastics to the theologate of the Australian Vice-Province (as it was then) at Pymble, Sydney. His four years there were very happy ones. In later years, he often spoke of them with lively pleasure. His stay in Australia left him with pleasant memories not only of the great kindness which he received from his Australian brethren of the Society, but also of the reunion with many of his brothers and sisters who were already living there. As the scholastic year in Australia does not begin until February, Fr. Carroll spent several months before he began Theology teaching in St. Ignatius College, Riverview. He was ordained priest on 6th January, 1945, an appropriate date for a member of such a large missionary family.
In 1946 he went to Ireland for Tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle, and the following year, 1947, he returned by plane to Hong Kong and by September, he was back at his teaching post in Wah Yan College, Hong Kong. In rapid succession, he was appointed Assistant Prefect of Studies, Prefect of Studies, Vice-Rector, and finally Rector of the school in 1952. All these tasks he carried out capably and efficiently, in spite of health which was never very robust. His great achievement during his term as Rector, was the planning and building of the new Wah Yan College on Queen's Road East. When that great task was completed, in September, 1955, and Fr. Carroll had the happiness of seeing his dream become a reality, his term of life was drawing to a close, though it was not fully realised then, In the final months of 1955, he was not capable of any heavy work, and in January, 1956 underwent a grave operation for cancer of the intestines. Many months of pain, discomfort, and suffering followed, which he bore with great serenity and fortitude. By June, 1956, he had recovered sufficiently to be able to travel by plane to Brisbane, Australia for convalescence. He was most hospitably welcomed there by the Jesuit community, and it was hoped that during his stay with them, he could help in the parish work. However he grew worse in November, and had to enter the Mater Hospital, where his sister is a nun. Another operation in December brought no relief and after several weeks of intense suffering, he died on 20th January, 1957, a fortnight after the twelfth anniversary of his ordination.
Fr. Carroll was a deeply spiritual man, and a most observant religious, His onerous duties as Prefect of Studies, or Rector of Wah Yan College were never permitted to make any inroads on the time assigned to spiritual duties which he performed most faithfully. He had a very deep love of the Society, and consequently was visibly hurt whenever a word or action on the part of another fell short of the ideals which he felt every Jesuit should live up to. As a Rector he insisted on a high standard of observance, and this taken together with his natural shyness, made him appear stiff and unbending. He had, however, a highly developed sense of humour, and was always ready to laugh at himself. Towards the boys he was uniformly kind though reserved, and it was these qualities, coupled with his unceasing devotion to duty which made them esteem him so highly. It was when he became seriously ill, that the extent of that esteem appeared most, and his death was mourned by both past and present students as that of a true friend. In St. Margaret's Church, within sight of the beautiful school for which he laboured so much and in the presence of the Bishop and a large number of the clergy of the city, and nearly a thousand of our boys, Catholic and pagan, a Solemn Requiem Mass was offered for his soul.
To his brother, Fr. Denis Carroll, Rector of Chikuni College, we offer deepest sympathy. May Fr. John rest in peace.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Carroll SJ 1911-1957
Fr John Carroll was one of twelve children, eight of whom entered religion. Born at Geashill in 1911, he was educated at Mungret whence he entered the Society in 1930.

To his great delight, he was assigned to our Chinese Mission in 1938. Owing to the outbreak of the World War, he did his Theology in Australia, and often referred to these years as the happiest of his life. After his tertianship he was appointed Rector of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, in 1852. During his term of office the new Wah Yan on Queen’s Road was built.

In January 1956 he was operated on for cancer, and he went back to Australia to recuperate. However, his health further deteriorated and he died on January 20th 1957.

Fr John was a deeply religious man, one of those Jesuits of whom you could say that he never lost the fervour of the noviceship. He never allowed pressure of business or occupation to interfere with his observance of his religious duties. To the casual observer he would have appeared somewhat rigid and austere, but that was because being of a very high ideal himself, he expected th same of others. Nevertheless, like a true religious man, he could, when necessary, make allowances, and his sense of humour and his contribution to community recreation betrayed and understanding as well as an exacting spirit.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1957

Obituary

Father John Carroll SJ

THE death took place in Brisbane Australia on January 20th last of Fr John Carroll. He was born on April 2nd 1911 at Walsh Island Geashill, Offaly, and came to Mungret in 1927. From here he entered the Society of Jesus in 1930. He did his studies at Rathfarnham and Tullabeg, and in 1938 was assigned to the Hong Kong mission where he arrived the folowing Autumn. He studied the language for two years and then went on to Wah Yan College where he found the work more congenial. Here he was editor of the College Annual “The Star”. In 1941 as it was impossible to return to Ireland he went to Australia for Theology where he was ordained in 1945. In 1946 he came to Ireland for Tertianship, and the following year returned to Wah Yan College.

Here in rapid succession he became Prefect of Studies, Vice-Rector, and finally Rector in 1952. His great achievement during his rectorship was the planning and building of the new Wah Yan College at Queens Rd East. Fr John was, however, now a very sick man, and in 1956 underwent an operation for cancer of the intestines. By June 1956 he had recovered sufficiently to go to Australia to recuperate, Here however, he grew progressively worse. Another operation brought no relief, and after weeks of intense suffering died on January 20th.

Fr Carroll was a deeply spiritual man and a most observant religious. He had however, a highly developed sense of humour. Towards boys he was uniformly kind though reserved, and it was these qualities together with a great devotion to duty which made them esteem him so much. His death was mourned by both present and past students as that of a true friend. To his family and to his brother Fr. Denis we offer our deep sympathy. RIP

Born: 30 November 1904, Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin
Entered: 31 August 1922, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1933, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1941, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Died: 03 August 1978, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway

Older brother of Patrick Byrne - RIP 1968

by 1935 at Aberdeen, Hong Kong - working
Father Provincial of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, 15 August 1947-30 July 1953.
Mission Superior, Hong Kong, 09 May 1957
Father General's English Assistant (Substitute), at Rome Italy (ROM) 1962

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Death of Father Thomas Byrne, S.J.
R.I.P.

Father Thomas Byrne, Superior of the Hong Kong Jesuits from 1957 to 1960, died in Ireland on 3 August 1978, aged 73.
Father Byrne was born in Ireland in 1904. He joined the Jesuits in 1922 and was ordained priest in 1933. In 1934, the Irish Jesuit Province lent him to Hong Kong, where he taught Philosophy (1934-1936) and Dogmatic Theology (1936-1939) at the Regional Seminary, Aberdeen. He returned to Ireland in 1939 to complete his Jesuit training.

After a period as Master of Novices, he was appointed provincial Superior of the Irish Jesuit Province.
He returned to Hong Kong as Superior of the Hong Kong Jesuits in 1957. In 1960, he was summoned to Rome to be Assistant to the Jesuit Superior General (1960-1963). In his last years he was assistant priest at St. Ignatius Church, Galway, Ireland.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 11 August 1978

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
Educated at O’Connell’s School Dublin, he Entered the Society in 1922 at Tullabeg. He obtained a BSc and MSc and then did Philosophy at Milltown Park. He then went straight from Philosophy to Theology
In 1936 he was sent to the Regional Seminary at Aberdeen as Professor of Dogmatic Theology.
In 1939 he returned to Ireland to make Tertianship and was then sent to Tullabeg to teach Philosophy.
In 1945 he was appointed Master of Novices
In 1947 he was appointed Provincial of the Irish Province
In 1957 he was appointed Superior of the Hong Kong Mission

During his term as Provincial (1947-1953) he sent many Jesuits to Hong Kong, and then in 1951 he started the Irish Jesuit Mission to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). He also saw the needs in Singapore and Malaysia and sent Jesuits to work there - like Kevin O’Dwyer, who built St Ignatius Church in Singapore; Patrick McGovern who built St Francis Xavier Church in Petaling Jaya, and also Liam Egan, Gerard (Geoffrey?) Murphy and Tom Fitzgerald. He opened the Novitiate in Cheung Chau in 1958, starting with 10 Novices.

In 1960 he was brought the Roman Curia as the English Assistancy Assistant to Father General, and held this role until 1965.
In 1965 he returned to Ireland and teaching Theology at Milltown Park.

He was an intellectual. His social contribution in public committees included the housing Authorities and Discharged Prisoners Society.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 53rd Year No 4 1978

Galway
The death of Fr Thomas Byrne on August 3 came as a great shock. He became unwell after dinner on August 2. When the doctor saw him, he ordered him into hospital immediately. His heart condition worsened that evening, and he died on the morning of August 3, R.I.P. The funeral Mass was on August 5. Dr Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway, presided. The Provincial, Fr Patrick Doyle, the Rector and Parish Priest, Fr Robert McGoran, and Fr Bernard Murray, were the chief concelebrants. Very many members of the Province travelled to Galway to pay their last respects to Fr Byrne.
Herewith is a tribute by Fr McGoran to Fr Byrne in the September issue of the Parish Newsletter
“Hardly had we recovered from the sense of loss at the death of Fr Jack Kerr, when God took to himself a second member of our Parish team, Fr Tommy Byrne. Although Fr Byrne had had a rather severe operation last February, he appeared to be holding his own in recent months - although everyone noticed that he had slowed down a great deal. However, for a week or two before his death he was visibly failing; yet he remained faithful to his parish duties right up to the eve of his death.
During his eight years here in Galway, Fr Tommy endeared himself to all the parishioners, and many felt his death as the loss of a close friend, and one who felt for them in their cares and difficulties. He was untiring in his visitation of families and utterly devoted in ministering to the sick and the aged. He took a keen personal interest in the families entrusted to this care and had a very special way with children. He was a kindly and encouraging man and seemed able to forget his own ailments in his solicitude for other people”.

Another tribute is paid by Fr Desmond O'Loghlen in the July/August issue of the Jesuits in Zambia News. Sincere thanks to him for it.
“Fr Thomas Byrne did not spend long in Africa, only three months. Nevertheless the occasion of his death calls for grateful remembrance of his lasting contribution of the Jesuit Mission effort in Zambia, To this end we may make use of a report on the Chikuni Mission written in 1967 for the Sociological Survey of the Society. (It should be borne in mind that at that time the Lusaka Mission and the Chikuni Mission had not yet amalgamated to form the Vice Province, but were still separate, attached to the Polish and Irish Provinces respectively).
Fr Thomas Byrne Irish Provincial at the time) arrived to visit Northern Rhodesia (as it then was) in April 1952. He spent about three weeks in Africa, met the Apostolic Administrator (Very Rev Adam Kozlowiecki SJ) and the Regional Superior (Very Rev Marian Folta SJ) and saw all the Irish Jesuits in the country. Fr Byrne was the Provincial, who, in 1950, had taken the generous step of Officially pledging the Irish Province to help the Mission. On his initiative nine new members, (eight priests and one brother) joined the Mission in 1950, and eight more in 1951 (five priests, two scholastics, and one brother) and others followed yearly. From this visit of Fr. Provincial, in consultation with the Apostolic Administrator and the Regional Superior, emerged the main lines of development followed by the Irish Jesuits for the next ten years, through the establishment of the Chikuni Mission in 1956 up to the establishment of the Diocese of Monze in 1962.
Plans were made to continue the pastoral and educational work already built up around Chikuni by Frs Moreau, Zabdyr, Prokoph, and others. Three new stations had been already started at Chivuna, Kasiya, and Fumbo. Plans were also made for pastoral coverage of Mazabuka, Monze, Choma, Kalomo, with an eventual westward thrust to Namwala. Provision was made for Irish Jesuits to work in Lusaka.
Fr Byrne again visited the Mission in 1963, now as Assistant of the English Assistancy, and took deep interest and evident satisfaction in the progress of the work, which owed so much to his earlier initiative. At this time he explored views about the possible union in one Province of the Jesuit Missions in Zambia and Rhodesia. However, this project was halted by the declaration of UDI to the south of us, and subsequent developments.
In December 1969, when the Zambia Vice-Province was established, Fr Thomas Byrne was an honored guest at an informal gathering in Dublin to mark the occasion. We can trust, now that he is in Heaven, his interest and his benign influence will continue to benefit the work in Zambia. May he rest in peace”.

Obituary :

Fr Thomas Byrne (1904-1978)

On August 3rd Father Tom Byrne died at Galway, where for nearly eight years he had been engaged on Parish work. This period in Galway was the peaceful, retired conclusion to an exceptionally active, varied and front-line work as a Jesuit.
Father Tom Byrne was born at Dun Laoire on November 30th 1904. He entered Tullabeg as a novice on August 31st 1922. Having pronounced his First Vows on September 1st 1924 at Tullabeg, he passed through the rest of the scholasticate training in Ireland: from Rathfarnham he studied Science at UCD (1924-1927); 1927 to 1934 were spent studying Philosophy and Theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained priest on July 31st 1933. He completed his Tertianship at Rathfarnham: 1939-1940.
From the end of his Tertianship in 1940 to his commencement of parish work in Galway in 1970, Father Tom Byrne was a “specialist” in one form or another. He was Lecturer in Sacred Scripture and Dogma in the Regional Seminary, Hong Kong: 1934-1939. He lectured in Philosophy in Tullabeg 1941-1945; 1953-1957. He was Master of Novices in Emo for two years (1945-1947). He was Provincial in Gardiner Street from 1947 to 1953: and it was by his enterprise and decision that the “mission” in what is now part of the Vice-Province of Zambia was begun by the opening of the Irish Mission at Chikuni: eight priests and one brother reached Chikuni from Ireland in August 1950. They began at once to work in the Mission Church at Chikuni, to open “mission stations” further afield, and to staff Canisius College which rapidly developed to become a splendid Secondary School. For many years after our arrival at Chikuni there was only one other Secondary school in “Northern Rhodesia” (now Zambia): the Government Secondary school Munali in Lusaka.
Father Byrne visited us within a few years of 1950 and continued generously to send brothers, scholastics and priests, so that Ireland's commitment in what is now the Vice-Province of Zambia developed rapidly.
After his second period as Lecturer in Tullabeg - after being Provincial - (1953-1957), Father Tom Byrne went to be Superior in the Hong Kong Mission. He remained in this Office until 1960 when he went to Rome for five years as English Assistant, substituting for Father J Swain who was Vicar General (1960-1965).
Father Tom Byrne was Prefect of Studies and Spiritual Father in Milltown Park from 1965 to 1968. There followed two years in Tullabeg as Spiritual Director of the Sisters there (1968 to 1970). In 1970 he moved to take up the parish work in Galway which occupied the last eight years of his work-filled life.

One of his many admirers - Father Harold Naylor, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, writes:
“As a philosopher in Tullabeg I remember being impressed by the vigour of the religious observance of ‘Tommy’ who was then professing Psychology. He was the first at Morning Oblation at 6 am. I met him again in 1977 in Galway and found the same man I had always known, with alert mind and zealous heart. Assistant to the Parish Priest in St Ignatius, he was always ready to hear confessions and take calls at the door to help people. I noticed something else which is not common in Jesuits of over forty - he had great hope in the future of the Church and of the Society. He had well assimilated the thrust of the Second Vatican Council, and made his own the content of the last two General Congregations. He was at home in the new Church, and the modern Society and had no nostalgia for the past. He could appropriate to himself our new life style and see every advantage in it. I sometimes wondered if this was not partly due to what he taught on obedience of the intellect, and to a real self abnegation, seeing the Will of God in everything and having the real spirit of Ignatian indifference ...”
See also the special tributes included in the contributions from Galway, tributes from Galway and Zambia.

Irish Province News 54th Year No 1 1979

Galway

Fr Thomas Byrne RIP
We are greatly indebted to an unnamed contributor to the Hong kong Vice-Province Letter/August, 1978, for the following account of Fr Thomas Byrne's life. Sincere thanks to him. The account arrived too late for inclusion in the October issue of the Province News,
Fr Thomas Byrne, Superior of the Hong Kong Mission from 1957 to 1960, died on 3rd August, after a few hours of illness, aged 73. The following account of his life has been contributed by one who knew him well.
Though he is a major figure in the history of the Hong Kong Jesuits, Fr Thomas Byrne spent in all only eight years here. For information about his pre-Jesuit years, his forty-five Jesuit years in Ireland, and his three years in Rome, I have had to rely on vague memories and hearsay. Much must be left vague, and some details may be inaccurate. .
He was born on 30th November 1904, and was educated at O’Connell’s School, Dublin. In 1922, he entered the novitiate at Tullabeg, where he had as contempararies R Harris, C Daly, and G Casey. As a junior, he did a brilliant BSc. He later - during his philosophy at Milltown Park, I think tried for a travelling studentship (in Philosophy?), but was beaten, to the surprise of many, by the Clonliffe student who, as Fr. Boyland, was to leave the Dublin Archdiocese to become a Carthusian.
Mr. Tommy Byrne, already destined for a professorial chair, did no “colleges”, and went straight from philosophy to theology. He came, I think, to regret this gap in his formation, especially when appointment as a major superior made him responsible for the well being of many schools.
He was ordained priest on St Ignatius Day, 1933. In 1934, the Regional Seminary, Aberdeen, found itself critically short of staff. The Irish Provincial, Fr L Kieran, lent Fr Byrne to Hong Kong, on the understanding that, when the Seminary could spare him, he should return to Ireland to do his tertianship and then settle down there as a professor, probably of philosophy. He came to Hong Kong, by ship of course, with Fr H Craig and two scholastics, F Cronin and T Sheridan, and for his first two years taught philosophy in the Seminary.
Since he had not come as a permanent member of the Mission, it was taken for granted that he should not even attempt to learn Cantonese - another gap in his formation that he was to regret in later years.
In 1936, he became professor of dogmatic theology in the Seminary. It was in that year that I first met him. I still feel gratitude for the warmth of the welcome he gave me on my arrival in Hong Kong. By then he had developed to the full his aptitude for giving lengthy analysis of any subject that might turn up - the state of the world, the calling of a bridge-hand, St Jerome’s outlook on bishops, or his own outlook on his duties as minister. This may suggest that he had turned into a bore. The suggestion is false. He was interested in your views as well as in his own, and he was unaffectedly delighted when you knocked him off his perch. This made all the difference.
He went to Ireland for tertianship in 1939, making no secret of his wish to return to Hong Kong if possible. However, when his tertianship ended, the course of World War II had made immediate return impossible. After tertianship, Fr Byrne went to Tullabeg to teach philosophy. In 1945 he was appointed Master of Novices.
He was appointed Provincial of the Irish Province in 1947. By then the world was beginning to settle down after the confusion and frustration of war and its aftermath. The time called for initiative, and Fr Byrne was ready to initiate. In the course of his provincialate the Manresa Retreat house and the Workers' College (now the College of Industrial Relations) were opened, and the Irish Province accepted a new mission in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Not since the legendary days of Fr Sturzo had any Irish Provincial added so much to the work of the province.
I myself left Ireland soon after Fr Byrne's appointment. I therefore know little about his administration or his dealings with individuals. I do remember an aged fountain of ideas. Fr R Devane,
saying rather sadly: “At last there is a Provincial who will listen to me; but I am too old now". There are rumours that scholastics were put off by Fr Byrne's highly characteristic habit of gazing into the middle distance and musing on the nature of things or giving gnomic advice. Presumably they felt inhibited from knocking him off his perch - unfortunate but inevitable.!
At the end of his term as Provincial, Fr Byrne returned to Tullabeg, and seemed likely to spend the rest of his days there. Then in 1957, to the surprise of the most highly skilled forecasters, he was appointed Superior of the Hong Kong Mission. He returned with delight; an eighteen-year-old dream had come true.
Neither Hong Kong nor Singapore was in great need of initiative. In Hong Kong, the two new Wah Yans had been built shortly before, and it would have been difficult to find staff for new works. In Singapore, the plans laid in the earlier 50s were moving towards fulfilment. In Malaysia, however, things were still tentative. The cancellation of a government invitation to undertake a major work faced the Superior with the decision: to go forward or to retreat. Fr Byrne decided to go forward. Perhaps nothing in his superiorship interested him more deeply than the problems of Petaling Jaya. A grasp of the geography of Kuala Lumpur and its environs became necessary for anyone who wanted to understand his conversation.
In Hong King, Fr Byrne’s main task was to encourage the work that was being done by individuals and institutions. For himself, he took up the work of public committees - the Housing Societry, the Discharged Prisoners Aid Society and so on. In Ricci Hall, where he lived, he quickly made many friends among the students. Equally quickly he made himself a welcome guest in all Jesuit houses. When he had to act as Superior he was unmistakably the Superior. At other times, like a famour duke, “he never remembered his rank unless you forgot it”. In spite of recurring bad health - stomach trouble and phlebitis - he enjoyed life, and he wished others to enjoy life. The brilliant frivolity of Fr J B Wood’s speech of farewell at the end of Fr Byrne’s Superiorship was a tribute to the friendliness and personal equality that he had made characteristic of his period of authority here.
He was Superior for only three years. In 1960 he was summoned to Rome as Substitute Assistant for the English Assistancy. Of what happened at that high level I know nothing except that Fr Byrne seemed to enjoy it.
He returned to Ireland after the 31st General Congregation, but his interest in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia never waned, as returning visitors from these parts will testify.
He spent his last years as curate in St. Ignatius' Church, Galway, and it was there that I last met him. He was unchanged - full of interest in the Vice-Province and better informed about it than I was - ready to speculate about the state of the world and of all things in it, and full of philosophical interest in the future of the Jesuit parish in Galway,
No hint had been received here that his health was failing. The news of his death came as a shock, and to many it meant, not “a former Superior has died”, but “a cherished friend is dead”.

Born: 04 December 1912, Dundrum, Dublin
Entered: 03 September 1930, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1945, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1948, St Ignatius, Leeson Street, Dublin
Died: 21 July 1999, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

Part of the St Ignatius, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin community at the time of death.

Uncle of Fergal Brennan - Ent 1959

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 105 : Special Edition 2000
Obituary
Fr Máirtín Ó Braonáin (1912-1999) : translation by Brian Grogan SJ
Martin's health began to decline in 1996 and he spent periods of time in Cherryfield, returning to Leeson Street as often as he could. Later, for health reasons, he remained permanently in Cherryfield. In the last couple of weeks his strength was fading and he died peacefully on Wednesday July 21st, 1999 in Cherryfield.

4th Dec. 1912: Born in Dublin.
Early education in Dundrum National School and CBS Synge Street
3rd Sept. 1930: Entered the Society at Emo.
4th Sept. 1932: First vows at Emo.
1932 - 1936: Rathfarnham- Arts Degree at UCD
1936 - 1939: Tullabeg- Philosophy studies.
1939 - 1942: Milltown- Science Degree at UCD
1942 - 1946: Milltown- Theology studies.
31st July 1945: Ordained priest at Milltown Park.
1947 - 1951: Leeson Street- Doctorate studies in Botany at UCD.
2nd Feb. 1948: Final Vows at Leeson Street.
1951 - 1981: Lecturer in Botany in UCD.
1981 - 1993: Lecturer Emeritus in Biology, writing and assisting in Sallynoggin parish.
1993 - 1996: Lecturer Emeritus in Biology, working in the Irish language apostolate and writing.
1997 - 1999: Moved to Cherryfield Lodge, praying for the Church and the Society.

Fr Proinnsias Ó Fionnagáin writes...

I remember the first time, in September 1932, when I met Máirtín as he arrived in Rathfarnham from Emo, Co Laois. The new scholastics were being welcomed and Máirtín responded to me in Irish. I am sure his companions knew the language but Máirtín was the only one willing to speak it spontaneously.
In the weeks that followed we had little opportunity to chat because I was weighed down with study for my BA exams. I did not see Máirtín again for six years, when we encountered one another in August 1938 in Milltown Park. I had completed regency in the colleges and about to begin theology, but there was a different agenda for Máirtín.

Máirtín did well in Rathfarnham but you would get little news of him in the Province News. However in Tullabeg, our House of Philosophy, we find that Máirtín had completed his studies with exceptional merit. At that time, Fr H. Schmitz, a German Jesuit, had come to Tullabeg to replace Fr Eddie Coyne, and tradition tells that Máirtín did so well in his classes that Fr Schmitz recommended that he be sent on for special studies in Botany. Whether this is true or false Mairtin spent four years, 1938-1942, in UCD studying for a degree in Botany and Zoology. Unsurprisingly this diligent student emerged with first honours and highest merit. Eventually Mairtin began theology (1942-46) and was overjoyed to be ordained a priest on St Ignatius’ Day, 31 July 1945; but his spiritual formation was not completed until summer 1947.

He then took up residence in St Ignatius House, Leeson St—his address till the end of his life. Again, more study followed for his doctorate, but in between we find him teaching Botany as assistant to the professor in UCD, and lecturing in science and religion to students in Earlsfort Terrace. In July 1952 he was awarded his doctorate.

What shall we relate of Dr Mairtin’s life-style in UCD from 1952? Certainly he was a conscientious lecturer who was never satisfied with his current level of knowledge. He was always studying, strengthening and deepening his knowledge in order to achieve excellence in what he taught. Almost every year in vacation time, he participated in learned conferences whether at home or internationally, especially in France, Germany and the US.

He gave many public lectures between 1952-70, on topics such as ‘Adam and Anthropology’, ‘The Catholic Student and the Problems of Evolution’ etc. From 1961 he gave lectures on the philosophy of the French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in UCD, Maynooth, Galway and Cork. Some of these were published both in Irish and English. It is clear that over these years Mairtin was ceaselessly at work, not only in fulfilling his obligations as professor in the University, and in writing and lecturing. But there is more to the story! He never forgot his first love, the Irish language. No sooner had he completed his formation than he became a member of Cumann na Sagart and was later unanimously elected as its president. It gave him great joy to attend when the annual prize of the Cumann was bestowed on young people who had fostered "Glór na nGael" (The Irish Language). Frequently he travelled as Irish-speaking chaplain to Lourdes. I lived with him in Leeson St from 1961-74 and I often noticed Máirtín’s pleasure when someone spoke in Irish to him. As for myself I would break in on a conversation to ask if he could recall a verse from Tadhg Gaelach or Raifteri. Immediately he would respond with three or four of the required verses!

Maírtín retired from lecturing in October 1980 but he wasn’t seeking ‘ease with dignity’ although he had well earned the right to take life more easily. Soon he was made assistant priest in Sallynoggin, and was elected to membership of the Boards of Management for Irish-speaking schools in Rathcoole and Clondalkin. And he continued to work for our native language until his health no longer allowed him to continue his duties.

When I returned home from France in October 1981 I was delighted to see Máirtín again. He visited me in Gardiner St to discuss the history of the Jesuits in Ireland. I gathered that Mairtin had joined the Jesuits with a deep knowledge of the history of Ireland, learned from the Christian Brothers: now he was deepening his knowledge of the history of the Jesuits in Ireland. He was an independent thinker in regard to the history of Ireland. In his view, the Wild Geese should have stayed in Ireland after the Treaty of Limerick instead of going abroad to fight the battles of the kings of Europe: they could have engaged in guerrilla warfare with the English and their friends at home in Ireland!

God gave Máirtin a long span of life, and surely he was ready when the final notice to surrender came. Let us pray that he may soon experience the vision of the Holy Trinity, under the mantle of Mary our Glorious Mother. He died on July 21, 1999.

Good Jesus our Lord, give him eternal rest.

Proinsias O Fionnagáin, SJ
Translation Brian Grogan SJ

Born: 09 August 1865, Rosenallis, Co Laois
Entered: 03 November 1883, Milltown Park, Dublin/Loyola House, Dromore, County Down
Ordained: 30 July 1899, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1902
Died: 05 September 1934, St Vincent’s Hospital

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

Early education at St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg

Chaplain in the First World War.

by 1894 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1901 at Sartirana, Merate, Como, Italy (VEN) making Tertianship
by 1917 Military Chaplain : 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers, France
by 1918 Military Chaplain : 7th Leinster Regiment, BEF France
by 1919 Military Chaplain : Chaplain to the Forces, Schveningen, Netherlands

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Note from Nicholas Walsh Entry :
He died in the end room of Bannon’s corridor, and the Provincial William Delaney and Minister Joseph Wrafter were with him at the end.”

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/blog/damien-burke/a-sparrow-to-fall/

A sparrow to fall
Damien Burke
A BBC Northern Ireland documentary, Voices 16 – Somme (BBC 1 NI on Wednesday 29th June,
9pm) explores the events of 1916 through the testimony of the people who witnessed it and their families. Documentary makers and relatives of Jesuit chaplain Willie Doyle were shown his letters, postcards and personal possessions kept here at the Irish Jesuit Archives. In the 1920s, Alfred O’Rahilly used some of these letters in his biography of Fr Willie Doyle SJ. Afterwards they were given to Willie’s brother, Charles, and were stored for safekeeping in the basement of St Francis Xavier’s church, Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin in 1949. In 2011, they were accessioned into the archives.
Fr Willie Doyle SJ was one of ten Irish Jesuits who served as chaplains at the battle of the Somme (1 July- 18 November 1916): seven with the British forces; three with the Australian. Their letters, diaries and photographs witness their presence to the horror of war.

Fr Joseph Wrafter SJ, 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers (06 July 1916):
It is a very terrible thing where a show is on & no one I know wants any more of it than he has seen if he has been in it at all. But of course all have to see it through & the men are really splendid...Between killed & wounded we lost in that period quite a fourth of our Battalions & the Leinsters nearly as many. But they did good work & the enemy got a good deal more than they gave. It is dreadful to see the way the poor fellows are broken & mangled sometimes out of all recognition.

https://www.jesuit.ie/blog/damien-burke/jesuits-and-the-influenza-1918-19/

Jesuits and the influenza, 1918-19
Damien Burke
The influenza pandemic that raged worldwide in 1918-19 (misnamed the Spanish flu, as during the First World War, neutral Spain reported on the influenza) killed approximately 100 million people.

The influenza was widely referenced by Irish Jesuit chaplains in the First World War. And Fr Joseph Wrafter SJ writing in December 1918: “the influenza is raging here and all over Holland as everywhere”.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 9th Year No 4 1934
Obituary :
Father Joseph Wrafter

Father Wrafter died at St. Vincent's Hospital on Wednesday 5th September, 1934. For a considerable time he had been in very poor health, even before he left Clongowes in 1932, he had suffered a good deal. He was an invalid for nearly the two years he spent in Gardiner St., yet, with his usual courage, he did very fully all the work he was allowed to do. At last he was compelled to go to St. Vincent’s, where for some three weeks before his death he was very often quite unconscious.
In next number, we shall give a short sketch of his life in the Society.

Irish Province News 10th Year No 1 1935
Father Joseph Wrafter Continued
Father Wrafter was born near Rosenallis in Leix on the 9th August, 1865. He went with his two elder brothers, William and Thomas, to Tullabeg in 1877, where he remained until

1885. On November 3rd of that year he entered the Novitiate which was then at Milltown Park, but was transferred the following year to Dromore, Co. Down. He next spent a year
      as a Junior in Milltown, and had just begun his Philosophy there, when in November, 1886, the year of the amalgamation (Tullabeg and Clongowes) he was sent to Clongowes. He was Third Line and Gallery Prefect there for three years, and from 1889 to 1891 had charge of the Large Study. In the former of these years he utilised his great histrionic powers in getting up “The Tempest” which was an unqualified success. In 1891 he was appointed Higher Line Prefect although he had not yet done his Philosophy, and was the youngest man on the prefectorial staff. But his strength of character and sense of justice made up for these drawbacks. In 1893, after seven years' work as a scholastic in Clongowes, he went to Louvain for Philosophy, and in 1896 to Milltown Park for Theology, joining the Long Course.
      In the early summer of 1899 he went down to Clongowes to stay for about a month, in order to take the place of Father Fegan who had left to undergo a serious operation. However Father Wrafter remained in Clongowes the following year as Prefect of the Small Study, and next year saw him a Tertian in the Province of Venice.
      From 1900 to 1903 he was stationed in University College St, Stephen's Green, as Minister. After a year on the Mission Staff, with headquarters at the Crescent, Limerick, he renewed
      his connection With Clongowes, this time as Minister, remaining there until 1908, when he went to Gardiner St. and, in addition to the ordinary work, got charge of the Police Sodality. The next year he was appointed Minister and held that position until 1942, with the exception of a break of three years (1916-1919), when he was Military Chaplain in France and Holland. While at the front he distinguished himself by his great coolness and bravery. He was awarded the MC, but an officer who himself won the V.C., said that “every day, Father Wrafter did things that deserved the VC”.
      In 1924 he became Minister in Leeson St., and had charge of University Hall. Next year he again took up work in Clongowes as Minister and held the position for ten years. It was during these years that the new building was erected in Clongowes, in which Father Wrafter took a very great interest. 1934 saw him once more in Gardiner St, but incapable of much active work. However, as long as he possibly could, he said Mass and attended to his Confessional to which he had always been most devoted.
      He celebrated his Golden jubilee in the Society in November 1933, but did not long survive the event. The malady to which he had long been subject - phlebitis - had poisoned his system and after some weeks in hospital he died on 5th September 1934.
      The most remarkable thing about Father Wrafter's life in the Society was his long term of office as Minister in all twenty six years, thirteen in Clongowes, ten in Gardiner Stand ten in the University. He possessed in a high degree the qualities required for that office. He was a fine organiser quickly saw what was wanted, and then had the power to descend to details. He was extremely just and patient and was moreover the very soul of generosity, loving to see and to make others happy. To the poor also he was very kind. Many of the beggars and tramps who came to Clongowes made it a point to ask for Father Wrafter, they almost seemed to be personal friends of his so familiarly did he chat with them.
      What struck one most in Father Wrafter was his strong will and his great sense of duty Whatever he took in hand he saw through, and whatever was his duty would be done thoroughly. During his last few years as Minister in Clongowes he suffered from phlebitis which caused his legs to become very much swollen and painful, but unless absolutely forbidden by the doctor, he was sure to go down to the refectory to preside at the boys' meals. He was indefatigable in his care of and kindness to the sick, frequently visiting them in the infirmary during the night. This did not prevent him from being the first to rise in the morning. He always said the 6 o'clock Mass. Indeed it was wonderful how he contrived to do with so little sleep. In his last illness this strength of character was most noticeable, for though he suffered very much he never complained, but always made as little as possible of his sufferings. The nurses who attended him marvelled, and were much edified at his patience and resignation.
      How much his kindness and help to so many were appreciated was shown by the number of people, many of them in humble circumstances who called at the hospital to enquire for him during his last illness. R.I.P

◆ The Clongownian, 1935

Obituary
Father Joseph Wrafter SJ

There is something of the lacrimae rerum in the ending of the notice in last year's “Clongownian” of Father Wrafter's Golden Jubilee as a Jesuit, The words were, ad multos annos. That was in June, and the 5th of September brought the sad news that he was dead, So the words must now change to ad annos aeternos.

Fifty years, of which twenty were in and for Clongowes. How true it is to say for : Clongowes. Though he never forgot his old school Tullabeg, yet it had for his practical mind been merged in the sister College.

Loyalty seems, to one who knew him well, to have been the note of his character. Of the three loyalties, Loyalty to the Jesuit Order, Loyalty to Clongowes, Loyalty to his friends, the first two naturally became one, fused into one, the second becoming the practical expression of the former.

There is hardly a corner in the House where one who knows will fail to find traces of his watchful care. Under him the Infirmary became the highly efficient department it is. The great Well was a matter of real need, not merely of convenience. The College Grounds and the Garden were a concern of his, run with an eye to efficiency as well as to beauty, as if they had been his only care. As to the New Building : it had been a thought of his for thirty years in plan, and one need not say that the interest never flagged. Perhaps a practically minded Old Clongownian would say that the 'Boys' Refectory is the spot most associated with his genial presence and ceaseless care. One such, not of the immediate Past, said to me the other day: “The two men who resumed Clongowes life for us fellows were Father Wrafter and Father John Sullivan”. It sounds strange at first hearing, but on reflection one is more and more convinced of its truth. They were very unlike in what was obvious, but very like in what most caught the House : they both loved the boys.

His friends were legion and they were very true, for they knew by experience how unfalteringly they could rely on his interest and honest advice, One felt, said one of them, that you could tell him anything and be sure of his sympathy. This was strikingly true during the last year of his life, when he was a constant sufferer. He would drag himself to the parlour to see a friend, they never suspecting at what cost.

The elements were so mixed in him that he remained human and strong. It is easy to find a man in which one or the other predominates. The result is poor. In Father Wrafter they worked to a unity that won love in the best sense of the word.

To his sister, Mrs. Murray, we offer our sincerest sympathy. We use the words in the strictest sense, knowing how united the brother and sister were. On her yearly visit to him one saw renewed the finale of George Eliot's great novel Now many of us will join with her in murmuring :

But for the touch of a vanish'd hand
And the sound of a voice that is stilled.

-oOo-

Father “Joey” Wrafter : A Memory

It must be well over half a century ago that I, a small boy, first met “Joey” Wrafter, when I found myself a Third Liner at Clongowes. After such a long time it is not perhaps, surprising that the order in which events occurred has become rather mixed, and I must confess that I don't remember what exact position he held when first found myself an inmate of the school. I rather think that Father (then Mr) Gleeson was Third Line Prefect. My memories of Mr Wrafter are very clear, indeed, as they should be, for no small boy had ever a better kinder friend than I found in him. He indeed kind to all boys. It was part and parcel of his make-up, and as a result was liked and trusted by them.

Looking back over the fifty odd years, I recognise that this was the salient point of his character; kindness, understanding and sympathy with all boys, and in particular, with small boys. I never knew him to be hard or ungenerous to one of them, not was he prone to punish where punishment could be avoided,

Naturally, some of us knew him better than others, and were looked on by him as special friends. I am very proud to think that I could count myself as one of this group. Amongst others of this group I remember Geoff Esmond, Jim Clarke and Dominic Kelly, to mention only a few. Those who remember Father Wrafter in after years will, I am sure, wish to get some idea what he was like as a young man. Well, he was very slim and upright, handsome of face in an aquiline way, with the cheeriest of smiles. He was always very trim and neat, had small and well-made hands and feet, and was very graceful in all his movements. He was a delightfully light and fast runner, and kept himself extremely fit. He, at that time, could not have weighed more than about 10 stone.

Can you think of a fencer standing slim, butt muscular, head up, with a keen, clear cut face ready for a bout with the foils? Well, that is exactly the picture I get when I look back and remember Joey Wrafter in the late 80's and early 90's of last century.

Though not posing as a great book man, he was keen-witted, a good talker, and in some things exceptionally clever.

Though he played football and cricket, he did not seem to be very interested in games, but during my time at Clongowes he proved himself a master of the art of producing plays. This was his hobby, and he took the keenest delight in staging all sort of shows from farces and pantomime to Shakespeare.

I took part in most of the plays produced by him during my time, and remember amongst many others a farce called “Bombastes Furioso”, also a pantomime, “Alladin”, in which I starred as the Widow Twanky, and Shakespeare's “Tempest”, in which I took the part of Trinculo.

Well the years move on and we with there. Father Wrafter has left us, but I for one can say with truth that the memory of him and his great goodness and kindness to one small boy lives on and will not be forgotten till I also go the way we all must go, and not even then I hope.

When I was a boy at Clongowes “Joey” Wrafter was one of the very best. RIP

JGG

-oOo-

Father Wrafter as Army Chaplain

In November of 1915, the 8th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, with the other units of the 6th (Irish) Division, after a year's training at Kilworth, were awaiting orders at Blackburn for the move to France. A few days before the unit entrained, an orderly informed me that the Colonel, known amongst his friends as “Mike”, wanted to see me urgently in the mess.

“Read this wire”, said he, as I entered. Mike was one of the hard-living, hard swearing type of old soldiers. “They are sending us a priest. What the blazes shall I do with him? Should I offer him a drink when he comes?”

When I came again to the mess, a few hours later, I found the Colonel and priest swopping yarns over the fire and a whiskey and soda. And so began a strange friendship which lasted without end between “Mike”, a Protestant, if he had any religion at all, with no control over his language even before a priest-and Father Wrafter, a devout Jesuit with much knowledge of the world and great understanding. Years after, when Mike knew his end was coming and the Protestant clergyman was announced, - his only words were : “Tell him to go to the devil, the only person I want near me is Father Wrafter”.

Practically all the men in the regiment were Catholics, and when the unit arrived at the front, Father Wrafter's worth was soon recognised. His influence amongst them was on a par with the Colonel's, and more than once Mike asked the Padre to give the men a good talk at Mass about something that they should have done or something they should not have done and did. The effect was excellent.

For the four battalions in the Brigade there were two Catholic chaplains, and Father Wrafter looked after the welfare of the 7th Leinsters as well as the 8th Munsters. Of the two battalions, one was usually in the front line and one in reserve trenches, or in billets behind. In this way it often fell to the Padre to do three or four tours : in succession with the regiments in the front line, where his splendid help was most needed. On one occasion he spent a month on end in the front trenches. Yet, during these days of static warfare, I never knew him to miss saying daily Mass, sometimes in an open trench with a box as his altar, sometimes in a little dugout, where there was room only for himself and his servant, one Thunder, known in the regiment as “Lightning”, on account of his extreme slowness of movement.

For two years Father Wrafter served with the 8th Munsters in France. He was a well-known figure in the Irish Division ; there were few officers from the General downwards who did not know him personally. In the line he worked day and night attending the sick and wounded and burying the dead. Woe betide the Colonel if the Padre was not informed immediately any casualties occurred; and it was wonderful what confidence he gave the men, who knew he could be there as soon as anything happened. When it came to going over the top, Father Wrafter was always somewhere near the front line, even when the Colonel cursed him for leaving battalion headquarters. He was then a man fifty and portly, leading what was for him a strange life, yet he took the knocks and the kicks with a smile which was good see and did no end of good in the regiment.

On one occasion, in 1916, when the Brigade was in reserve at Les Mines, the Germans sent over gas at night and the masks of the men in the front. trenches proved ineffective against it. The casualties were heavy the Germans had followed up the gas by a night attack-and next night the Munsters were sent up to the front line on relief, The trenches were a veritable shambles. Corpses, with their bodies and faces distorted in their death agony, were piled in the trenches and littered the ground near them. For four nights, from dusk to dawn (the MS has from dawn to dusk) the Padre worked with his men, burying the dead as best he could. More often than not, shell holes formed the ready-made graves. A mournful sight it was this burial gang working under fire by the pale light of the moon.

Yet, nothing daunted the chaplain's spirits, and he was ready to crack a joke with all and sundry. Just before this gas attack, the General came to inspect the 8th Munsters, He stepped out of his car opposite the quarter-guard and questioned the sentry about his duties. The sentry, well coached, repeated them all, ending with the usual, “in the event of any unusual occurrence report to the guard commander”. “And what would you call an unusual occurrence, my man?” asked the General. “Well, sur, if I saw the sintry box markin' time”. A cloud collected on the General's brow; then he looked at the Padre and moved on quickly.

In 1917, Father Wrafter won the Military Cross, a reward he richly deserved, though he himself was the last to acknowledge this, His rectitude was such that the things he did seemed to him to be nothing but his ordinary duty. His real reward was the way that the men of his regiment maintained and practised their religion--the number of men who approached the altar rails, when the battalion had an opportunity of attending Mass behind the lines, surprised the local inhabitants.

In late 1917, the 6th Irish Division was reorganised and the 8th Munsters, or what was left of them after two years' fighting, were drafted to another battalion of the regiment. Father Wrafter was then offered an appointment as Senior Chaplain at one of the bases in France - a “soft job”, - with two assistants. This offer he stoutly refused to accept and continued to serve as regimental Chaplain to the Munsters until the end of the War. Later he went to Holland, as Chaplain to a prisoners of war camp. In November of 1917 I sailed for India and temporarily lost touch with him.

Next time I met him was in 1924 as his guest at Clongowes, where he was then Minister. The Jesuit robe had taken the place of the military uniform, which was the only garb the men of the 8th Munsters had seen him in, but the man was unchanged. He was the same strong, genial Padre, whose courage and cheerfulness had been an inspiration to all who had met him during the terrible years of the War.

JO'B.

-oOo-
1929-32 - “The Minister”

It was not till Father Wrafter had left us for Gardiner Street that we fully realised what a place he had won for himself in the life of the boys here. It is not an easy thing to win that place and it is harder still to keep it, but of him both were true. When you were well, you felt how much you depended on him for the creature comforts of the Refectory. When you were ill, his genial visits in the Infirmary were things to look forward to.

He was in truth a hard man to replace, so that his visit of a few days on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee had a quality unlike that of the coming of anyone else, The boys loved to gather round him and one could notice how newcomers to whom he was a stranger looked with envy at such gay gatherings.

One could notice too, how the older trades men about the College seemed as glad to meet him as we did.

The writer of these notes well remembers his first official contact with Father Wrafter. It was my first night at Clongowes and having got from my Line Prefect to “follow the crowd”, I found myself in the Refectory for tea, an extremely subdued unit in an extremely boisterous throng. Suddenly a bell went and in the midst of a profound silence a massive figure rose with infinite dignity to say Grace. This said, he sank down again slowly and gazed with the broadest of smiles all round the Refectory. After a few moments he came down from the box and began a triumphal procession through the Refectory, pausing at each table to shake hands with the “old boys” and to discover among the “new” the son or nephew or young brother of old friends,

Afterwards when the days had grown to weeks and weeks to months, an extremely insignificant member of Rudiments decided to go for his first sleep (having, I am afraid, very little the matter with him). I well recall the mingled hope and fear with which I awaited my turn. At last it came and the climb up the three steps seemed endless, to be confronted with the huge figure of the Minister. One quick glance to assure himself that it was nothing very serious and then he learnt back good-humouredly to listen to my plea of a headache. A few seconds of doubt and uncertainty and then my name went down in the notebook and I go off with the world a much brighter place. One of the most characteristic things about him was the tolerance with which he would listen to the malingerers at the foot of the steps as they arranged their complaints and yet would hear them afterwards in the best humoured manner possible. Suddenly he would come down from the box and make his way to the Infirmary with the Third Liners whom he had refused clinging to the wings of his gown and clustering round him - looking for all the world like some great liner surrounded by her tugs. But there was one thing about him that lays bare his character better than twenty pages of “The Clongownian” : if ever he had occasion to send anyone “up” for any misdeed in the Refectory or outside it, the offender had only to ask for a sleep that night and he was sure to get it.

Kindliness was, to my mind, the outstanding trait that made him universally beloved here among us.

P Meenan

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father Joseph Wrafter (1865-1934)

Born at Rosenalis, Leix, and educated at Tullabeg College, entered the Society in 1883. He pursued his higher studies at Louvain and Milltown Park where he was ordained in 1899. His association with the Crescent was short, 1903-04 when he was a member of the mission staff. With the exception of the period of the first world war. Father Wrafter's life was spent between Dublin and Clongowes. He was a member of the church staff, Gardiner St at the time of his death.

Born: 31 May 1935, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1953, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 10 July 1968, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1975, St Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street
Died: 22 February 2011, St Mary Star of the Sea, Key West, Florida, USA

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

Nephew of Eugene - RIP 1976

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1971 at USF San Francisco, USA (CAL) studying
by 1972 at St Michael’s Bronx NY, USA (NEB) studying

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/seamus-ward-rip/

Seamus Ward RIP
Seamus Ward SJ passed away in Florida yesterday, 22 February. He was staying at St. Mary, Star of The Sea Church, Florida. Earlier, he had had a fall away from the house on 18th February and broken his femur. He was badly shaken and was hospitalised. The doctors advised that he was unlikely to recover. He needed a breathing machine. Fr Conall O’Cuinn, Rector of Milltown Park, and Eoghan, a nephew of Seamus, travelled to the USA on Tuesday 22nd and were met at the airport and taken straight to the hospital. They were waiting for them before removing the breathing machine. There was time for prayers and singing Ag Criost an Siol and Soul of My Saviour. Seamus died very quietly and peacefully about 15 minutes later. May he rest in Christ’s Peace!

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/burying-seamie-2/

Burying Seamie
There was something astonishing about the obsequies of Fr Seamus Ward, whose death was reported in the last AMDG Express. Within the Irish Province he had a low profile,
partly because of his wretched health. He had taught in Bolton Street DIT, and served the Jesuit Refugee Service in Africa. Fr Tom Layden wrote of his “pioneering spirit, inquiring mind and independence of outlook”: a kind man, with an attitude of welcome and encouragement for those around him. He worked out of weakness, a real pastoral asset with which people could identify. His two funerals, one in Florida where he served a parish, the other in Gonzaga chapel, were memorable events, crowded with his kith and kin and friends who loved him and grieved deeply. In death as in life Seamus could spring a surprise.

◆ Interfuse No 145 : Summer 2011 & ◆ The Clongownian, 2011

Obituary

Fr Séamus (Seamie) Ward (1935-2011)

31st May 1935: Born in Dublin
Early education at Clongowes Wood College
7th Sept. 1953: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1955: First Vows at Emo
1955 - 1958: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1958 - 1961: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1961 - 1964: Belvedere College - Teacher
1964 - 1968: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
10th July 1968: Ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin
1968 - 1969: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1969 - 1970: Rathfarnham - Chaplain in DIT Bolton Street
1970 - 1972: Fordham, USA-Studied Sociology; Assisted in Holy Family Parish, NY
1972 - 1974: Rathfarnham - Chaplain in DIT Bolton Street
1974 - 1978: John Austin House - Chaplain in DIT Bolton Street
2nd February 1975: Final Vows
1978 - 1979: Campion House - Chaplain in DIT
1979 - 1982: Rathfarnham - Curate in Wicklow parish
1982 - 1985: Dolphin's Barn - Parish Curate
1985 - 1986: Clongowes - Sabbatical year
1986 - 1988: Clongowes - Assistant Librarian
1988 - 1989: Ethiopia - Jesuit Refugee Service
1989 - 1991: Belvedere College - Refugee work: Cairo, JRS Rome and Ethiopia
1991 - 1992: Working with refugees in Sierra Leone and Somalila
1992 - 1994: Working with refugees in Mali
1994 - 2005: Belvedere College - Pastoral care of refugees.
2005 - 2011: Milltown Park - Parish Chaplaincy, USA
22nd February 2011: Died in Florida USA

Fr Seamus was at St. Mary, Star of The Sea Church, Florida. He had a fall away from the house on 18th February and broke his femur. He was badly shaken and was hospitalised. The doctors advised that he was unlikely to recover. He needed a breathing machine. Fr Conall O Cuinn, Rector of Milltown Park, and a nephew of Seamus’, Eoghan, travelled to the USA on Tuesday 22nd and were met at the airport and taken straight to the hospital. They were waiting for them before removing the breathing machine. There was time for prayers and singing Ag Críost an Siol and Soul of My Saviour. Seamus died very quietly and peacefully about 15 minutes later. May he rest in the Peace of Christ.

Obituary by Brendan Duddy and Noel Barber
Seamie Ward was one of 8 children. He had 5 brothers and 2 sisters who were at the heart of his life. He had a marvellous relationship with his siblings and with their children. I got to know him during our time in UCD. When I arrived in Rathfarnham, he took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. The regime was tight and he found the rules of the house somewhat oppressive but he did not take them too seriously. We all felt that we did not have enough time for study; most of us accepted this state of affairs but he did not. He would put his umbrella over his bedside lamp and read through Troilus and Cressida into the night. Serious would have been his fate had he been caught. While others dutifully made off on bikes on special free days, he usually had other ideas, bringing me on one occasion to the Shelbourne Hotel where his father awaited us and ordered toast in a magnificent silver bowl and coffee laced with brandy.

In days when it was presumed that one had to avoid any reading of material that was not 'wholesome', he had the nerve to borrow Joyce's Ulysses in the ritual brown paper bag which the kind librarian passed surreptitiously under the counter, On more regular lines he introduced me to O'Casey's plays and to Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. He took a good degree in English, enjoyed the literary delights that were on offer and ignored what was not to his taste. There was an iconoclastic side to him which to some looked as if he saw all authority as authoritarian. There was a shyness which he concealed with a brusqueness that could be disconcerting but he was true gold as a friend. Philosophy in Tullabeg followed where the isolated life did not entirely suit him and literature rather than philosophy captured his interest but doing what was necessary he got through without much effort albeit with little joy but used his time to indulge his literary tastes and to make many excursions, licit and illicit. I then went to Zambia and he to Belvedere where an observer noted that he showed remarkable administrative talents as an assistant to the Prefect of Studies, the formidable Jack Leonard, whose approval and fulsome praise he won. He proved to be a severe disciplinarian and an exacting task master who exercised his authority with a firm hand. However, he won the admiration of the pupils if not their lasting affection. It was noticeable that a number of middle aged men turned up to his funeral – his former pupils from his Belvedere days; they remembered him with something approaching reverence.

His years in Theology were not entirely happy and a contemporary of his considered that his attitude towards authority hardened and he ended up asking to have his ordination postponed to the end of his fourth year. Following his Tertianship in 1968-69 he spent one year in the Dublin Institute of Theology, Bolton Street, before going to Fordham where he took an MA in Sociology. He then returned to Bolton Street where he remained until 1979. I worked with him there and once again he was my mentor and guide. He introduced me to all sorts of people: porters, sweepers, electricians, cooks, his friends in Sean Mc Dermot Street where I became life-long friends with his friends. With these people he was Newman's Perfect Gentleman at ease with all and generous with his time and energy to a fault. He took particular care of foreign students helping them to find their feet. He then spent 3 years (1979-82) as a curate in Wicklow. There he was wonderful with the children, the old folks and with pre-marriage couples. For recreation he took to the joys of sailing, most often with his brother. He moved to Dolphin's Barn in 1982 where he had three not very happy years. He became somewhat restless and spent a few years in Clongowes during which he was unfocused and dispirited.

Then he opened up a new life for himself with the Jesuit Refugee Service from 1988 to 1994. He served in Cairo, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Mali. A person who knew him well in his JRS days commented on his remarkable ability to live in the most austere circumstances, and to accept the hardship and isolation of his assignments without complaint, his great love and devotion to the poor and the weak and the excessive physical demands he made on himself. On the other hand it was noted that for one of his ability and sterling work he lacked self-confidence to a surprising degree and showed that below the surface there could be strong anger which would occasionally flare.

In 1994 he returned to live in Belvedere as a sick man in the grip of severe emphysema but he found a modus vivendi. To avoid the wet, cold Irish winter he began to do supply parish work in California and then Florida where he flourished as he did in Wicklow years before. He devoted himself to the poor and the weak; he gave of his time and people took the chance to pour out their hearts to him and he listened, gave sound advice and became the wise old man.

In the midst of his successful apostolate, he had a fall, went into hospital where, because of his underlying condition, an operation was out of the question. Inevitably he took a bad turn and died quietly and peacefully. As a Jesuit, he was not prominent and was never well known in the Province but despite his difficult middle years and the poor health of his later years he achieved a great deal at the frontiers.

Born: 21 August 1919, 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: 13 January 1984, Crescent College, Dooradoyle, Limerick

Younger Brother of Peter Troddyn - RIP 1982

◆ Irish Province News 59th Year No 2 1984 & ◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1984

Obituary
Fr Billy Troddyn (1919-1929-1984)

After a long and painful illness Fr Billy Troddyn died peacefully on 13th January. The large number of past pupils and friends who came to see him while he was ill, and the thronged church at his Requiem Mass testified to the affection and esteem he had earned during the many years he had spent in devoted teaching - first in Mungret, then in the Crescent (O'Connell street), and finally in Dooradoyle.
This scribe lived with him for thirty- three years, and witnessed his total and selfless dedication to his classes in spite of much ill-health and a wretched appetite, for he suffered from a stomach ulcer for many years, continually dosing himself with painkillers in order to keep going where others would have taken to bed in self pity; teaching full hours, training teams, visiting the poor and the bereaved, and maintaining a lively interest in his past-pupils. This uncompromising determination in face of suffering may have had something to do with his North of Ireland origins.
His outlook was certainly nationalist and conservative: he was deeply disturbed by changes in the Church; departures from the priesthood, especially from the Society, which he loved - distressed him a lot; he was less than enthusiastic about non-clerical dress; was reluctant to concelebrate; did not altogether care for prayer-groups and community meetings; and had very radical solutions for muggers, as also for itinerants and their wandering marauding horses.
These latter irritated him intensely by their depredations into lawns and gardens, as he was ever a keen gardener and cultivated many varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees. He also had a keen interest in ornithology and was elected President of the North Munster Branch of the Irish Wildbird Conservancy association. Paradoxically, he was also an enthusiastic fowler; though in his later years as his interest in shooting waned, he sold his gun and bought a Flymo grass mower instead, as his love of gardening grew. Apart from this latter, his only concession to relaxation was his annual fishing holiday in Waterville, which he keenly looked forward to and enjoyed, and where he built up many close friendships over the years.
An enduring picture of Billy remains: an emaciated figure huddled in a wheel chair, supervising the transfer of two thousand daffodils from Mungret to Dooradoyle - in pouring rain. Right up to the end he was busy as ever: being wheeled to class; making telephone calls; receiving friends; dictating letters, as though determined that no segment of his life should be unproductive. May his incredible dedication be ever a stimulus to us who mourn him.

Born: 23 May 1916, Rathgar, Dublin
Entered: 30 September 1933, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 19 October 1947, Clonliffe College, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1951, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 27 November 1982, University Hall, Hatch Street Lower, Dublin

Older Brother of Billy Trodden - RIP 1984

by 1939 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying

◆ Irish Province News 58th Year No 2 1983 & ◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1984

Obituary

Fr Peter M Troddyn (1916-1933-1982)

Peter was born in Dublin on 23rd May. 1916. He was the eldest of six children, five boys and one girl. His father, a civil servant, was a native of Maghera in Derry; his mother, née Walsh, was from near Ballina in Mayo. All Peter's uncles, his mother's brothers, were boys at Clongowes in the early years of this century. His initial schooling was under the direction of a Miss Haynes, a devout Church of Ireland teacher, and her two Catholic assistants. This little school was about one hundred yards from Peter's home in Rathgar. There he met, for the first time, one who was to be a fellow-Jesuit and life long friend, the late Fr Dick Ingram.
For a few years after leaving Miss Haynes's Academy Peter continued his education under the Irish Christian Brothers in their schools in Synge street, then a penny tram-ride from his home. In the autumn of 1929 his parents made a decision which was to affect his whole life. Peter and his two brothers, Billy and Gerald, entered Belvedere College.
Athair Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire writes of Peter as a boy at Belvedere:
“While he did not play games, he was a faithful member of the Cycling Club and an enthusiastic, talented photographer. He was active, too, in the Debating Society and in An Cumann Gaelach, of which he was a founding member. One memory of him is abiding: from his arrival in the school, he was an inveterate “asker of questions”. In this the child was father of the man; to the end Peter's keen intellectual curiosity was a noted characteristic: Over the years I myself have frequently witnessed his struggles with abstruse mathematical, Theological and even historical problems. He was all his life a seeker and searcher for truth.
In February 1933, Peter's father died. This proved to be a turning point in Peter's life. It was decided that he should sit for the Civil Service Examinations for Junior Executive Grade and at the same time complete his Leaving Certificate Course at Belvedere. Shortly after his , 17th birthday he passed both examinations with honours. However, during the Summer months which followed, he made up his mind to become a Jesuit and he entered our Novitiate at St Mary's, Emo, on 30th September 1933. He was one of seven Belvederians to do so in that year.
His noviceship came to an end on 1st October, 1935, when he made his first vows. He spent the three following years in the Juniorate at Rathfarnham Castle. He graduated from the National University, receiving his BA (Hons) in Maths/Maths Physics. He was one of three to do so in 1938; the late Fr Dick Ingram and Fr Ted Collins of Hong Kong made up that distinguished trio.
While in the judgement of his contemporaries he would have benefited from further studies at the University, it was decided that he should start his philosophy course at the French House in Jersey. Here he spent one golden year, a year he often spoke of with affectionate appreciation. Everything appealed to him, the stimulating lectures of the Professors, the congenial company of the French scholastics, the climate, the diet and the all-round liberating régime. Here too, was kindled his love for France and things French. In later years he would return to France to carry on, for over twenty years, a hidden apostolate in a Paris suburb.
The outbreak of the Second World War on 3rd September, 1939, brought about the recall of Peter and his four fellow Irish Scholastics to Tullabeg. Philosophy as an academic discipline appealed to him and he excelled in it. And, as in the he played a full and useful part in all the activities of his fellow philosophers', games apart.
For two years, from 1941, he taught mathematics in Belvedere, edited the Belvederian and presided over the Senior Debating Society. He also obtained his Higher Diploma in Education. Then he spent one year at the Crescent teaching and prefecting and refereeing rugby matches for the very young boys! In addition, he was in charge of the new school hall, where his practical knowledge of electricity was a decided asset! In both Colleges he won the hearts of many a youth by his patience and his kindly interest in their boyish affairs.
He arrived in Milltown Park in Autumn of 1944 to commence his studies. Here his health began to deteriorate. He was rushed to hospital and underwent major surgery on 29th July, the eve of the Ordination Day 1947. He recovered slowly and was ordained privately at Clonliffe College by the late Archbishop John C. McQuaid on 19th October, 1947. He offered his first Mass in the Convent Chapel attached to Our Lady's Hospice, Harold's Cross.
But illness dogged him. He was unable to complete his Theology and retired to do light work in 35, Lower Leeson Street, and to Clongowes in the summer term of 1949. In the autumn of . that year he began his Tertianship. This final year of formation proved a trial for him, but he persevered until ill health forced him to retire once more, this time to Milltown Park where he took his final examinations successfully just before Christmas 1950.
Fr Peter arrived as a member of the Community attached to St Francis Xavier's church, Gardiner Street, in January 1951. On 15th August of that year Peter, he made his final profession. During the next eleven years Peter held posts of varying importance. He was for a time Assistant to the Province Treasurer, he preached frequently in the Church and during the Novena of Grace and always to appreciative audiences. Fr Daniel Shields takes up the story: “I was in the St Francis Xavier Community during the years when Fr Peter was in charge of the building of the present St Francis Xavier Hall. He was faced with many problems, not least, the financial problem, How was he to raise the large sums required to meet not only the building costs, but also the cost of installing modern theatre and stage equipment, seating, etc. Fr Peter with the expertise of a Rothschild banker came to the rescue. He devised a system of weekly “draws” which were so attractive and so widely supported, that the money so raised financed the entire undertaking. When the Hall was completed, Fr Peter recruited a group of voluntary helpers. These included skilled carpenters, painters, engineers, light and or sound experts and even a tailor! Fr Peter became the friend and Father of each. They came to him with all their problems, not least their religious problems. It is unbelievable the trouble he took in finding real solutions to a wide variety of such problems.
Fr Peter then turned is attention to providing accommodation for the members of the Pioneer Club, who had formerly been housed in the original Fr Cullen's Pioneer Hall in Sherrard street. He purchased a fine Georgian house on the East side of Mountjoy Square and had the entire building renovated, decorated and equipped to a high standard, The proceeds of his Weekly Draws' helped to finance this project also. The St Francis Xavier Hall and the Pioneer Club - Fr Cullen House - stand today }s monuments to Peter's financial genius, to his foresight and above all to his loyalty to his fellow co-operators and friends.
An tAthair Proinsias 0 Fionnagáin re- calls another activity of Peter's which, as has been mentioned, started in 1951: 'He undertook annually pastoral work at Gonesse, a parish north of Paris. There he won the trust and the approval of the Curé who invited him back year after year down to 1969. For two years he continued his summer pilgrimage, first at Milly-la-Forêt and then in Brittany, whither the Curé, for reasons of health, had retired. For the next three years, Fr Peter was too occupied with editorial problems to undertake any trips abroad. During his own time in France, Fr Frank met some of Peter's former fellow philosophers from his Jersey days. They all spoke of his gifts of mind and heart.
On the Status, 1962, Fr Peter found himself transferred to Clongowes as a teacher of Maths. He was then in his forty-seventh year, had been out of the classroom for seventeen years and was in very indifferent health. It proved to be a mistake. After two years it was my pleasure to welcome him as a member of the Jesuit team then manning the young College of Industrial Relations. He stayed with us until the Spring of 1966 when at the request of his old friend, Fr R Burke-Savage, he joined the Leeson Street Community as “Collaborator in Studies”. Incidentally, his religious Superior was none other than his erst- while companion at Miss Haynes's Academy forty years before - the late Fr Dick Ingram.
An tAthair Proinsias resumes: On his appointment in 1967 to the editorship of Studies - it might have been thought that he had neither sufficient experience nor. qualifications for that important position. His Provincial, Fr Brendan Barry, how ever, judged him to be eminently qualified and how splendidly justified was Fr Barry's judgement!
Peter proved to be an editor to the manor born. His was a fastidious sense of good English. The Autumn issue of Studies, 1968, left no doubt as to the accuracy of his judgement concerning the changes taking place in Ireland in the euphoria of the prosperous 'sixties. “Post-Primary education, now and in the future - A Symposium” - proved a brilliant success. Over 5,000 copies of this issue were sold. On this occasion Fr Peter showed himself to be a peritus among the periti.
For six more years, Studies under Peter's editorship maintained the highest standards of readable scholarship. In deed, the very excellence of succeeding issues concealed the nagging financial problems and worries and the wretched health that continued to affect the conscientious Editor. He continued the unequal struggle until the Spring of 1974, when he felt obliged to lay down his pen and vacate the Editor's chair.
His association with University Hall and with its students, which had begun in the Spring of 1966, now continued, Fr Jack Brennan writes: ‘Peter was happy in the Hall ... Surprisingly, perhaps, in such a private person, he enjoyed time spent with the students. He was extremely patient in listening to them. His advice was sure and often took pragmatic turns that sprang from his wide knowledge of fields in which they were concerned. His tolerance was of a high degree, and, occasionally he would inter cede in a caring way on behalf of a student who was in 'hot water'. For him the faults or failings of another were never the whole story. His sense of loyalty - often involving a considerable amount of work on his part - towards the students as well as towards his family being able to share some of his good and friends was striking. Confidentiality was also a key quality of his.
One very close to him all his life writes: “A thing that always struck me about Peter was his kindness to the domestic staff in the Houses in which he lived. I used to notice this whenever I came to visit him. They would speak of him very appreciatively and tell me about the many good turns he did them”. Fr Shields concurs with this: “The staff of St Francis Xavier's Hall looked on Peter as their friend. And when he left the Hall, they were lonely and upset, Meeting me, they would say, ‘Father, when is Fr Troddyn coming back?’" Such touching appreciation needs no comment. Nor did this characteristic escape Fr Jack Brennan's observation; “The domestic staff at the Hall held Fr Peter in high regard; they were glad to be able to attend to his simple wants with real affection”
There is one virtue which this very private person could not conceal from those few who knew him intimately. Peter was a genuinely humble man - a man who, with St Paul “in labours, in knowledge, in long suffering, in sweetness, in the Holy Spirit, in charity unfeigned, in the word of truth", showed himself a true Minister of God'. He had to carry the cross of poor health for most of his working life with the humiliations, misunderstandings and frustrations attached to it. His judgements and opinions did not always receive the consideration they deserved. Apart from St Francis Xavier's Hall and Fr Cullen House, his plans and dreams were seldom actualised. These apparent “failures' provided him with opportunities for the practice of humility and consequent self effacement. He was always more ready to blame himself than to question the wisdom of others.
Some final thoughts occur to me. Personal friendships meant a great deal to him, not for what he himself could get abut for the joy he felt at being able to share some of his good his advice or practical knowledge with someone, however lowly, in need. This must have helped him to a more correct appreciation of God's gifts to him self and of his duty as a Christian to help other members of the Body of Christ.
From his many serious illnesses, Peter grew in self knowledge and also in awareness of the care which the sick and convalescent needed. He demanded high standards of care for anyone ill and showed his concern and displeasure if he thought that those who were sick were neglected in even the smallest way. His genuine concern was shown clearly in daily visits, in all weathers, for three and a-half years until her death, to an aged aunt in Our Lady's Hospice. The staff and other patients admired his faithful kindness and concern for her welfare.
If I or other contributors to this obituary have said very little about Peter the Jesuit, it is because we have no reason to stress what was obvious to us all. As has been well said: “Peter was a Jesuit in the authentic lgnatian mould”. Ever an avid reader, he kept in touch with “Jesuitica” and like so many of his generation found it difficult to accept some manifestations of the new “pluralism”.
May the good Lord, who is gentle and lowly in heart, welcome Peter into the new home prepared with exquisite care for all who love and serve his heavenly Father.
Edmond Kent SJ

Born: 01 May 1927, Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 07 September 1945, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1959, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1963, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 13 February 2013, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

Part of the Peter Faber, Brookvale Avenue, Belfast, County Antrim community at the time of death.

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/fr-senan-timoney-rip/

Fr Senan Timoney RIP
Fr Senan Timoney died unexpectedly and quietly on Ash Wednesday. At the age of 85 he could look back on a life in four provinces, having quartered his years neatly between Galway, Limerick, Dublin and the North.
As he had covered Ireland in his residences, he covered many of the Province’s houses and ministries with distinction: formation (Minister of Juniors, Director of Tertians), teaching (of Irish, Maths, French, sociology, religion, rowing), headmastering in Mungret, administering (Rector, Socius to Provincial), spiritual direction, pastoral and retreat work, keeping the accounts for Brian Lennon’s chip shop in Portadown, and accompanying the brethren through it all, a good companion and sought after in every house.
He was a formidable golfer, neat and accurate, with a trim figure which in the last years was wasted to the point of emaciation. On Ash Wednesday five years ago they diagnosed the blood condition which required regular transfusions. He moved from Belfast to Cherryfield, where the staff remember his engagement with life, always interested, ready to talk about the TV programmes he had watched, alert to the sick and the suffering, welcoming his countless friends.
He consciously kept death – and any talk of death – at bay. In the end his family and several Jesuits were round him He was given the ashes, and was alert practically up to the moment when the Lord took him. May God be good to him.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 151 : Spring 2013

Obituary

Fr Senan Timoney (1927-2013)

1 May 1927: Born in Galway.
Early education in National School and St. Ignatius, Galway
7 September 1945: Entered Society at Emo
8 September 1947: First Vows at Emo
1947 - 1950: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD
1943 - 1946: Tullabeg - studied Philosophy
1953 - 1956: St. Ignatius College, Galway - Regency
1956 - 1960: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31 July 1959: Ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin
1960 - 1961: Rathfarnham: Tertianship
1961 - 1962: St. Ignatius College, Galway - Teacher; H. Dip. In Ed,
1962 - 1963: Emo - Socius to Novice Director; Minister
2 February 1963: Final Vows
1963 - 1967: Rathfarnham - Minister of Juniors
1967 - 1974: Mungret College
1967 - 1968: Prefect of Studies
1968 - 1969: Rector; Prefect of Studies
1969 - 1971: Rector
1971 - 1974: Headmaster
1974 - 1983: Crescent College, Dooradoyle – Vice-Superior; Teacher
1981 - 1987: Province Consultor
1983 - 1988: Loyola House:
1983 - 1987: Executive Socius; Superior
1987 - 1988: Sabbatical
1988 - 1992: Portadown - Superior
1992 - 1994: Manresa:
1992 - 1993: Directs Spiritual Exercises; Assistant to Director
1993 - 1994: Rector

1994-2013: Belfast
1994 - 1998: Superior: Tertian Director (1995: 1997-1998); Directed Spiritual Exercises; Spiritual Director; Pastoral Facilitator; Assistant Vicar for Religious in Diocese
1998 - 2000: Superior; Chair JINI; Directed Spiritual Exercises; Spiritual Director; Pastoral Facilitator, Assistant Vicar for Religious in Diocese
1999 - 2007: Province Consultor
2000 - 2003: Minister; Superior's Admonitor; Spiritual Director (SJ); Treasurer
2003 - 2007: Directed Spiritual Exercises; Pastoral Facilitator; Assistant Vicar for Religious in Diocese
2008 - 2011: Spiritual Director
2011 - 2013: Resident in Cherryfield Lodge

Senan died on Ash Wednesday morning. Around him were Caitriona, his niece, Mary Rickard, the Province Health Delegate and Liam O'Connell, Socius to the Provincial. Liam had said in succession prayers for the sick, for the dying and for the dead. Before he did that, Liam took the ashes and marked Senan's forehead with the sign of the cross. So ended Senan's earthly life; nearly 86 years since his birth in Galway and nearly 68 years since his joining the Society of Jesus in Emo, in September 1945.

Senan could look back on a life in four provinces, having quartered his years neatly between Galway, Limerick, Dublin and the North, As he had covered Ireland in his residences, he had covered many of the Province's houses and ministries with distinction: formation (Minister of Juniors, Director of Tertians), teaching (of Irish, Maths, French, sociology, religion, rowing), headmastering, administering (Rector, Socius to Provincial), spiritual direction and retreat work, keeping the accounts for Brian Lennon's chip shop in Portadown, and accompanying the brethren through it all, a good companion and sought after in every house, including his final assignment in Cherryfield. As a friend remarked: There wasn't a mean bone in his body.

Always trim, he was a formidable golfer, neat and accurate. Back in the forties such an omni-competent scholastic would have been marked out for the missions, especially Hong Kong. But in Senan's first year of noviciate the Lord sent him an unexplained fever, had him isolated briefly in Cork Street, and planted in Fr Tommy Byrne, the Novice-Master (Senan belonged to the year of Whole-Byrne novices), the illusion that here was a delicate young man who would not be able for the missions. This was Ireland's gain: Senan was never sick again until a heart attack in 1999 and red-corpuscle trouble ten years later, which necessitated the infusion of two units of blood every fortnight.

What, you may wonder, could raise the temperature of a man as equable and calm as Senan? He had known the Jesuits as a boy, had learned Mass-serving from Fr John Hyde, had seen the mainly Jesuit staff of Coláiste lognáid at close quarters, so he did not expect to be surprised when he joined up and went to Emo. But surprised he was, you might almost say appalled, by one feature of noviciate life. What was that? The discipline and chain? No. The isolation? No. The long hours of prayer? No. It was the silence that bugged him. People were not allowed to talk. “I could not get over it. It was unreal and made no sense to me”.

Senan had this gift of articulating what should have been obvious but was accepted as traditional. As Minister of Juniors in 1963 ("an awful job, like a ganger") he was baffled to find the fathers in Rathfarnham Castle herded into the large parlour at 1.45 after lunch, and tied there in stiff conversation till a nod from the Rector at 2.15. Senan made a move: “Let us go free at two oclock." The benign Fergal McGrath was appalled at the suggestion of such a break from tradition.

Freedom was an important value for a man so often burdened with administrative jobs. When he took over from Paddy Doyle as co instructor of tertians with Ron Darwen, Senan would not accept candidates who were assigned unwillingly to tertianship; they must want to come. His cordial relations with lay teachers were clouded by their union's (ASTI) refusal to admit Religious on the grounds that they would all vote the same way as their superior dictated. “We are not like that”, insisted Senan. “We can and do differ from one another while remaining friends”. And it was a feature of the Crescent Comprehensive where Senan taught for nine years, that Jesuits would, in good, amicable spirit, take opposing sides on issues of policy, to the astonishment of new teachers. He was active in staff meetings which would be held without the presence of the Headmaster, and would brief delegates to convey their motions to the Headmaster or the Board of Management.

One revealing episode showed the difficulty of maintaining this freedom. When Senan was secretary of the Catholic Headmasters' Association, ASTI were threatening to strike over a promise that the Government had made and reneged on. A meeting of the CHA voted to come out in sympathy with ASTI, and Senan passed this reassuring news back to his lay colleagues in Mungret. But no statement emerged from CHA, and Senan smelt a rat. He gathered the requisite ten signatures for calling an extraordinary general meeting, and demanded from the Chairman, his friend Sean Hughes, why no statement had been published. Sean admitted that after the CHA meeting and vote, he had consulted John Charles McQuaid, then Archbishop of Dublin, on the matter and was persuaded by JC to back off from a public pronouncement. The whole business smelled of the secretive and coercive character of the Irish church at its worst.

It would be wrong to picture Senan as a flag-waving revolutionary. Rather he used the existing structures intelligently to make his point without stirring up animosity. In Tullabeg, while enjoying the community life, he valued the stage shows as a way of voicing the frustrations of the brethren. In Crescent he supported the meetings of the staff to improve the school in dialogue with the Headmaster and the Board. In the CHA he used the mechanism of an extraordinary meeting to drag secretive machinations into daylight.

One of the most stressful periods of his life came from being vowed to secrecy. In November 1971, Senan and Paddy Cusack, then Headmaster and Rector of Mungret, were asked to meet in Nenagh for Sunday lunch with the Provincial, Cecil McGarry. Cecil came straight to the point: he was going to close Mungret. Then he stood the pair a good lunch (appropriate for people condemned to execution), and vowed them to secrecy about the plan. For four months Senan woke heavy-hearted to face this cloud, unable to discuss it with anyone. He had to make irrational decisions about the future: he watched the installation of new showers, knowing that in two years' time there would be nobody to use them. He cancelled the entrance exam for the following year for some invented reason. One day in March 1972, the Provincial summoned the staff at 2 p.m., and the school at 2.15, with the news of the planned closure. Despite the heavy hearts, the last two years of Mungret were good years, and those who graduated from the school then have remained exceptionally loyal to their friends and their old teachers. One striking example of this: among the crowds at Senan's funeral was a man whom he had expelled from Mungret. “Best thing ever happened to me. I preferred horses to Homer and was at the races when I should have been in class. Senan and my parents saw that schooling did not suit me. I've done fine without it”.

Senan remembered his next nine years, teaching in Crescent Comprehensive, with particular happiness. With four other teachers (of English, history, geography and science) he experimented in team teaching of first year classes. The team would focus on Lough Gur for three months, then on Ancient Limerick, then on the Burren and Aran Islands, taking the pupils through the history, geography, folklore, music and attractions of each topic. They were delighted to find pupils in turn taking their own families on guided tours of the places they had been immersed in.

After those productive years in education, it was a revelation to move north, first to Portadown, then to Belfast, though he had some of the North in his blood - his father was from Fermanagh. They were troubled years, the Good Friday Agreement still a long way off. When Senan went to Portadown, he found an open house, with neighbours popping in at all times of the day and night, chuffed that the Jesuits considered Churchill Park worth investing in. There were informal visits from staff of the Dublin Department of Foreign Affairs, anxious to suss out from the Jesuits how things were moving. He was appalled at the mistaken policy of sending in British army troops to police the North - they were trained to fight, not to keep the peace. He was impressed by the impact made there by Wee Paddy (Doyle), uhwhom he followed later to Belfast and as Instructor of Tertians.

That tertianship is still an unwritten piece of Province history, Senan was happy with the location of the tertians in small communities, in Derry, Coleraine, Belfast, and a meeting point in Maghera. A large tertianship house, with its own cook and institutional character, can foster dependence. But these tertians, living with two or three others, managing their own budget and diet, working things out for themselves, had a more realistic preparation for the probable shape of their future life as Jesuits.

So much for where Senan lived and what he did. A harder question: what made him the remarkable man he was? Here is Alan McGuckian's reflection:
I did the Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life with Senan a few years ago. I remember when we came to the meditation on the incarnation he said with great seriousness; this changes everything. Our faith that the eternal word of God became flesh in Jesus makes everything different, makes everything new.

Those who have known him over the years remember a certain quality of inner freshness and dynamism. Part of that was a gift of nature. Much of it, I maintain, came from his fascination and engagement with Jesus.

Senan's capacity to form relationships was extraordinary. They could be lifelong friendships that were transformative for people – or very short term encounters. In recent years he spent a lot of time around hospitals. He wouldn't be five minutes on a ward when he knew the names of all the nurses and the porters and the cleaners, where they were from and how many children they had and that their brother's mother in law was the sister of the Bishop of Elphin. (I made that up, but you know what I mean.) He loved to get the news about people because he was genuinely interested in them.
Caitriona said to me that one thing she remembered most vividly was that Senan was open and welcoming to everybody. He didn't distinguish between high and low, rich and poor, virtuous and unvirtuous. He took people as he found them. I think that is a gift of grace more than nature. Though it should be said that there were certain kinds of mean-spirited behaviour that he would describe as “lousy behaviour”. Individuals, specified or unspecified, who were guilty of such behaviour, would be termed “lousers”. To be designated as a “louser” was definitely not a good thing!

Senan clung to life with incredible tenacity - but, let it be said, with great patience and dignity. As I watched this I often asked “why?” What was it, I wondered, that he still had to do? What did he still have to learn? What did Senan still have to do? There is one thing that he did in these final months of suffering that means a lot to me personally and I will share it with you.

Over the past 20 years Senan had become a Belfast man. He was the son of an Ulsterman, so returning to the North was really a coming home to his roots. In Belfast he was utterly committed to the life of the community, and worked closely with people in all the churches. He was very committed to the life of the diocese of Down and Connor. There is now a new initiative of pastoral renewal in Down and Connor called The Living Church project, which I myself have the privilege to be involved in. Senan became so excited about the Living Church that he told me very solemnly one day more than a year ago that he had decided that he would offer up whatever he had to suffer for the Living Church. He announced this at a mass he celebrated when he came back for a one-day visit to Belfast.

Those of us who have watched him slowly decline in recent months know that the gradual, irreversible loss of control which was always fought so resolutely had to be a great suffering. One day a few weeks ago when I visited him in St Vincent's, Senan as always wanted to know the news. “How is everyone in Belfast? What about the work?” I told him that the Living Church project was moving forward slowly but surely. "Ah", he said, "I have had a fair bit of pain lately. When I was experiencing a lot of pain, I said to myself, “I know what that is for?” The only time he ever mentioned pain - and that without a trace of self-pity – was to say that he was offering it up, turning it to good use. That goes some way towards answering my question, “what did he still have to do?”

Perhaps that is why he shied away from any talk of death even in the last months, when his body was wasted to the point of emaciation. He came back from death's door so often that the devoted staff in Cherryfield called him Lazarus. He did not know the ground plan of the heavenly mansions, so he did not want to waste energy speculating about them. Instead he remained engaged in life, in his friends, in all the news, to the very end. He would have been delighted to go to the Lord with the ashes still fresh on his forehead. And happy that his prayer was answered: May I be alive when I die. His fellow-Jesuits feel a huge sense of loss for a man who was so central to our corporate life, and such a dearly loved companion.

Interfuse No 152 : Summer 2013

HOW TO FACE DEATH

Dr John Holien

3.3.2013: letter from Dr John Holien and the team in St Vincent's Hospital who looked after Senan Timoney during his last weeks of life; it was addressed to Senan's niece Mrs Hussey

Dear Mrs Hussey,
Firstly let me apologise for the long delay in writing to you to express my sincerest condolences to you and all the family and the Jesuit community on Senan's death. The team and I had become extremely fond of Fr Senan during his time with us, and the dignity, fortitude and patience he displayed right to the end was amazing - he was remarkably brave, determined and single-minded as he battled away, and these no doubt were traits he'd displayed all his life.

The team and I were aware just how hard the last few months had been for you and the members of his community as you all tried to come to terms with what had happened to Fr Senan. Having not had the pleasure of knowing him before he fell ill, I can only imagine what sort of man he was- the glimpses we had in Vincents made us realise we were caring for a person of enormous intellect, a man who'd dedicated his life to the betterment of others, a selfless man who was much loved by all who knew him. We were always struck by how determined he was even when the odds were against him, how hard he worked and never questioned or complained about what happened to him. He seemed to have this amazing gracefulness to just accept it, offer it up and get on with it, like a true Jesuit in every sense.

I can't tell you how sad we are to lose him - people come and go in Vincent's all the time, but Fr Senan was very special to us and we were devastated we could not make him better. The last few weeks in particular were so difficult as the amazing progress he'd made initially began to fade. I'm so sorry his final few days were not spent where we wanted them to be – at home amongst family and friends, reading the Irish Times and talking rugby.

I hope in the weeks and months ahead you can remember him as the man he was before his illness. It was an enormous privilege for us to have looked after him, I'm just so sorry we couldn't do more. I really mean it when I say Fr Senan made a lasting impression on us all, and I'm sure you have many wonderful memories of a very wonderful man to look back on.

With sincerest sympathies,

John Holien and team

Born: 20 March 1914, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 12 September 1931, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1945, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 03 April 1983, Loyola, Eglinton Road, Dublin
Died: 23 October 1996, Glengara Nursing, Glenageary, County Dublin

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

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

https://www.dib.ie/biography/sweetman-michael-a8409

Born: 01 November 1919, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1939, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1956, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 26 May 2000, Mater Hospital Dublin

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

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Studied 1st year Engineering at UCD before entry

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 105 : Special Edition 2000

Obituary
Fr Gerard (Gerry) Spillane (1919-2000)
1st. Nov. 1919: Born in Dublin
1931 - 1938 Christian Brothers' O' Connell Schools, Dublin - Leaving and Matric.
1938 - 1939: UCD for a half-year, studying Engineering.
7th Sept. 1939: Entered the Society at Emo.
8th Sept. 1941: First Vows at Emo.
1941 - 1944: Rathfarnham-studying Arts at UCD.
1944 - 1947: Tullabeg- studying Philosophy.
1947 - 1950: Clongowes- Teacher; Prefect; Clongowes Certificate in Education.
1950 - 1954: Milltown Park- Theology
31st July 1953: Ordained at Milltown Park.
1954 - 1955: Tertianship at Rathfarnham.
1955 - 1962: Clongowes- Teacher, Higher Line Prefect
1962 - 2000: Belvedere- Teacher; Games; Vice-Rector. Since 1988 he has served as Health Prefect; Chaplain St. Monica's Nursing Home; Sacristan; Guestmaster.

From March 1999, Fr. Spillane's health was in decline. He was admitted to the Mater Hospital and was diagnosed to be suffering from cancer in July of that year. Since then, he spent several periods receiving special nursing care in Cherryfield Lodge, after which he would be well enough to return to Belvedere. He was again admitted to Cherryfield Lodge in March, but was not confined to bed and until shortly before his death he was able to go for walks around the grounds. He died peacefully on 26th May 2000 at the age of 80.

Joe Dargan writes ...
Behind the simple facts of the Curriculum Vitae given above there was a life of faithful commitment and service which was the heart and soul of Gerry. He touched the lives of many people who valued his support and judgement and recognised that his influence on their lives was deep and personal. Fr Gerry was above all else a Religious and Priest. His life was centred on the Eucharist. Through it he became an act of worship of God. The witness of his life spoke volumes. The quiet impact he made on people was shown by the numbers and variety of people who attended his funeral.

As a teacher in Clongowes and Belvedere he dedicated himself to the hidden, constant and grinding work of the classroom as well as forming boys according to the values of Jesus Christ. When his close friend, Fr. Tom Scully, died in 1968 at the age of 46 Gerry became chaplain and mentor of the Catholic Housing Aid Society which provides accommodation for the aged poor as well as newly weds. At the time of his death another flat complex was near completion.

In 1988 Gerry retired from teaching. He became Chaplain to St. Monica's Nursing Home. His care of the sick and dying was unstinting. He would sit for hours with a dying patient, just being present offering support and prayer. At his death the patients of St. Monica's asked that the funeral from Gardiner Street to Glasnevin cemetery would pass and stop at St. Monica's.

Gerry is greatly missed by the members of the Belvedere Community. His was a constant presence and made everyone feel welcome. One of his late colleagues wrote this letter to the community at the time of his death.

"I regret that I cannot attend the funeral of Fr. Gerry Spillane this morning. Gerry is in my prayers. I send my sincere condolences to his family and the community. Gerry was already an established and hugely respected member of the staff of Belvedere when I arrived in 1965. I well remember that he made me feel very welcome and was kind and helpful to me as I settled in to life in Belvedere. We struck up a nice bond of friendship as we chatted on the corridor. I was struck from our first meeting by his transparent decency. I never heard him raise his voice to any boy - nor did I ever hear him speak badly of any boy. He had a great respect for our students and they had huge respect for him.

I was always aware of his love for all sports. He seemed to believe that the real value of sport was in contributing to the good of the team, rather than seeking personal glory. I feel that Gerry was very much at home in Belvedere. He knew Belvedere and its community very well and was most generous in giving his time and energy for their good.

I believe that Gerry lived his vocation fully every day of his life. I feel privileged to have known him as friend and colleague over 30 years. Please convey my deepest sympathies to his family and members of the community.

Sincerely,
John Brown."

May he rest in the Peace of Christ,

Joseph Dargan SJ

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 2000
Obituary
Father Gerry Spillane SJ
Gerry Spillane was born on 1 November 1919, one of three brothers, a north Dubliner, from the district around Drumcondra and Glasnevin which - as he liked to point out - produced so many Jesuits around those years, mostly, like himself, pupils of the Christian Brothers at O'Connell's (for whom he always retained great regard). He had in a high degree the virtues typical of his background: straightforwardness, conscientiousness, great human decency and loyalty to the traditional values he had inherited at home and in school.

Having started an engineering degree at UCD, he soon abandoned it to follow what he had come to recognize as his true vocation and he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Emo, Co Laois, in September 1939, in lean times just as the Second World War was breaking out. He was a few months short of his 20th birthday.

He followed an entirely traditional course of Jesuit formation, mostly during the war-years and their aftermath; after Emo, juniorate in Rathfarnham Castle, while studying for the BA at UCD, philosophy in Tullabeg, Co Offaly, three years as a teacher and prefect in Clongowes and then theology in Milltown Park. Following ordination on 31 July 1953 by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, there was a fourth year of theology, and finally tertianship back in Rathfarnham.

He had hoped to go on the newly-opened Irish Jesuit mission to Zambia (known in those pre-independence days as Northern Rhodesia) but was sent instead to teach in Clongowes. It was not a posting which greatly appealed to him. Quite apart from the thwarting of his missionary desires, boarding school life in the early fifties was austere and relations between pupils and staff were formal and relatively remote.

Within a year, Gerry was appointed Higher Line Prefect, which meant that, in place of teaching, he was responsible for the discipline and good order of the school as a whole and of the most senior pupils - the Higher Line - in particular. His sense of duty and his scrupulous anxiety to ensure the highest standards of behaviour in the school probably had the effect of concealing his enormous humanity from those in his charge (his formation had partly concealed it even from himself) and only the more perceptive among them descried it.

1962 marked a watershed in his life: it was the year he was transferred to Belvedere, in the wide-ranging “reshuffle” of Jesuit assignments made at that time by the American Jesuit plenipotentiary sent by Father General to visit the Irish Province. This change brought him back to his north Dublin roots and set him to tasks which were more congenial than the role of Higher Line Prefect, faithfully though he had discharged that office. He was to spend his remaining thirty-eight years in the college - until 1988 as a member of the staff, thereafter, until his health failed, as chaplain to a nearby nursing home.

Gerry taught mathematics and his specialty was the “matric” class at the top of the school. His teaching had all the hallmarks of the man himself: solid, faithful, meticulously and painstakingly prepared. In the first years, he also taught religion. But 1962 was another, deeper watershed, not only for him but for priests of his generation and the church they served. In October of that year the Second Vatican Council began. It was to transform the landscape and seemed to render the theological studies Gerry had undertaken with such careful fidelity suddenly irrelevant. Like others, he lost confidence and found it difficult to master the new insights so prodigally unleashed in those years. After a short time, he stopped teaching religion and never gave a retreat again.

He had come to Belvedere as replacement for Tom O'Callaghan, sent to Limerick the year Gerry arrived. He inherited not only Tom's classes but also his teams and, for the next nineteen years, his name became synonymous with Junior Cup rugby in the college. Tom - regarded by Tony O'Reilly as the best coach he ever had anywhere - had ended a long sequence of semi-final near-misses through the fifties by winning in 1960 and 1961 and had failed only narrowly to make it three-in-a-row with a talented team the following year. Gerry Spillane, with less natural flair, was to maintain Belvedere's high standards at this level throughout his long term in charge.

But he was dogged by every kind of misfortune in the Cup itself and, despite reaching five finals, he never succeeded in winning the trophy. One year, there was the loss of key players through freak injuries between a drawn match and a delayed replay against Blackrock (delayed, as he would explain to you, against his will); defeat through a last-minute try and touchline conversion at the hands of Pres Bray another year; a comeback from 3-14 down to 13-14 against Blackrock finally thwarted in the closing minutes, with 'Rock on the ropes, by the referee's failure to play advantage, a third year. “What do you have to do?” he wondered aloud on the night of his last final in 1979, when Conor Hickey's team had lost by only a single score - once again to Blackrock. It was hard to find an answer.

Gerry's own tension and nervousness on big match days was apt to communicate itself to his young teams and may have played a part in their undoing. But there is no doubt that he made a huge contribution to the welfare of the game in Belvedere and he did much to develop the school's rugby talent in his time. What he lacked in flair he made up for by dogged, methodical study of the game, which helped to make him the perceptive coach he was.

It was typical of him that he looked after equipment - balls, pumps and the rest - with scrupulous care, preferring to keep them in his own room rather than entrust them to anyone else. There was no waste, no needless damage or loss, no lavish expenditure of any kind. That was how he conducted his entire life. (Instances of venality among the clergy and the abuse of the Mass-card system by some of them was one of his well known conversational whipping-boys). His whole approach was somehow epitomized in the vision of him on so many winter afternoons setting off on his bicycle at the end of a full day's class (he didn't drive), already middle-aged, three or four rugby balls laced together and hung from the handle-bars, for another carefully prepared practice in Jones's Road.

He expected of his players the same high standards of application and attention to detail he set for himself and he helped to pass on these standards to his successors.

His preparatory work in the earlier years must surely be given some of the credit for the memorable Senior Cup successes of 1968, 1971 and 1972, under Gerry Brangan, Paddy Lavery and Jim Moran. Needless to say, he would never claim such credit for himself - he shunned the limelight and took a dim view of coaches who were less self-effacing, whether colleagues at schools level or those on the national stage. There were certain bêtes noires in particular, but they cannot be named here!

After his retirement from coaching in 1981 - he was by then 62 and had been fit enough to referee until shortly before - he retained a close interest in the school's fortunes. Whatever rueful reflections it may have inspired in him, he greatly rejoiced at the ending of the long drought in 1994 and the two further Junior Cup successes of the nineties. He may be forgiven if he found the victories over Blackrock, at whose hands he had so often tasted bitter disappointment, especially sweet.

He had much better fortune as a coach on the athletics track and his sprinters, hurdlers and relay teams won several Leinster and All-Ireland championships over the years. Even here, there were, of course, occasional disasters', as he would have said himself - his sprinters misplaced by a negligent judge on the tape, recalcitrant parents, long meetings in the parlour, to little avail, and so on. Gerry had a certain expectation that reality would disappoint him and, although he loved to win, he probably found losing fitted better into his view of the world.

He also had success coaching cricket in Belvedere, somewhat to the surprise of those who had known his apparent disapproval of it in Clongowes. One of his junior teams famously ran up such a big score (a currently very prominent Jesuit playing a starring role) that his opponents refused to bat and conceded the game in high dudgeon. Gerry's hyper-caution in this instance was punished by - horror of horrors - having the incident reported in the newspapers. This he would certainly have regarded as “Disastrous in the extreme”! He had been a gifted tennis player in his youth, but he didn't talk about that. He was somewhat less private about his support for Manchester United, whom he followed loyally, if at times a little despairingly, until the good times came at last - happily he lived long enough to see them reach their present heights, even though he would have found adjustment to such a flood of good fortune quite hard to cope with.

When he retired from teaching in 1988 - by then he was beginning to find classes harder to control (and the milder sobriquet “sausage” for troublesome boys was giving way with growing frequency to somewhat harsher terms) - he suffered a minor crisis. For someone so unstintingly devoted to duty and so averse to relaxation or self indulgence of any kind, not working seemed close to not being. He was a life-long Pioneer and he didn't smoke. He wasn't a reader and he lacked cultural interests. Well-intentioned (or occasionally mildly mischievous) efforts by colleagues in the community to remedy such defects by luring him to a concert or a play were apt to founder on Gerry's imperviousness to the delights of coloratura cadenzas or what he regarded as the unintelligible, unfunny fantasies of the stage and screen. He found holidays a penance and was glad of an excuse not to take them. An invitation to join some of the community on a picnic outing to the Dublin mountains one St Stephen's Day was met by the puzzled - and, of course, unanswerable - enquiry, “What's the purpose?” Loyalty made him accept occasional invitations to class reunions of former pupils of both Clongowes and Belvedere - so many of whom had, at worst, sneaking respect for him, while many more felt genuine affection - but it was against the grain and, having made a brief appearance, he would be gone.

With such a temperament, reinforced by the rigidities of his training in the thirties and forties, retirement from the work he had been doing all his life was very difficult. But with time and care the crisis passed. In due course, and with real success, he undertook chaplaincy to the nursing home run by the Irish Sisters of Charity, St Monica's, across Mountjoy Square in Belvedere Place. Although he had spent so much of his life in the classroom, Gerry had always been very much a priest. His pastoral instincts expressed themselves in his care for his family, in his work with Fr Scully Flats (Tom Scully had been his colleague in the Belvedere community), and in many other ways, most of them known only to himself and those for whom he worked. His recent, harrowing experience of personal weakness helped to bring some of his deep humanity more visibly to the surface. He greatly admired the dedication of the Sisters and his gentleness and compassion and zeal as a priest found a new outlet in his ministry to the sick and dying old ladies in his care in St Monica's.

His significance in the Jesuit community grew steadily over the last fifteen or twenty years of his life. He had lived through the changes in community brought about by the Council and survived them. His official role for much of the last period of his life was that of guestmaster (or, as he half-jokingly preferred to insist, eschewing the appearance of self-importance through use of the official title, “distributor of rooms”) and he was a warmly welcoming presence for the many visiting Jesuits, from Ireland and abroad, who came each year to stay in Belvedere.

But his profile in the house far transcended any formal function - he was also, at different times, vice-rector, prefect of health, and sacristan. His warmth and capacity for humour, his lack of self-regard, the simplicity of his personal life, his courtesy and graciousness, his obvious rectitude and integrity, all these and something else, a certain enduring youthfulness of spirit, despite being old-fashioned in so many ways, something irreducible which was just “Spillane”, gave him unique stature and he became, for far more reasons than the length of time he had spent there, 'father of the house, loved and respected, the very heart of his community.

Cautious and conservative by instinct and training as he was (he never, for example, wore anything but clerical black), he genuinely enjoyed being teased and taken for what he emphatically was not. The sheer absurdity of having it suggested to him that he was a crypto-charismatic, a “banner man” who, beneath the sober surface, was really into “raising and praising”, greatly tickled his fancy and no one saw the ludicrousness of it more keenly than himself. Some of the things that made us - and him - laugh most were stories he told about himself, usually with a hint of the absurd lurking not far away, Thus, he took pleasure in recounting how he had responded to an earnest American lady who, on learning that he was in Belvedere, asked him expectantly how the Jesuits now viewed their famous past pupil, James Joyce (of whom Gerry would, on principle as well as by disinclination, almost certainly have read not a single line): “As a bowsy!”

He enjoyed telling us, too, of the times when he had been mistaken for the then Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Henry McAdoo, to whom he bore more than a passing resemblance. One lady, who had insisted that, despite his denials, he must be Dr McAdoo, had forced him to walk away from the bus-stop where he was standing and seek alternative means of transport. Someone else had taken him for 'the Abbot of Mellifont and he had had to flee then too! Another topic we liked to draw him out on was the terse one - or two - line letters he had written in his time in response to parents whom he regarded as unduly interfering or presuming to tell him how to train - or, much worse, pick - his rugby teams. Such Spillane rebuttals would have invited no further dialogue on the recipient's part and he richly enjoyed our detailed analysis of the merits of his literary style!

In July 1999, when he was nearly 80, after being in obvious decline for some months, he was admitted to the Mater Hospital and diagnosed as having cancer. The progress of the disease was quite slow and, after periods of convalescence in Cherryfield Lodge, the Jesuit nursing home beside Milltown Park, he was able to return to Belvedere. His lack of energy distressed him and - consistent with the gentle pessimism which was part of his make-up - he could always find some reason for a measure of frustration, some minor “disaster” to lament. But the prevailing note was of patient resignation in the face of illness and the mystery of life and death, great gratitude for what the nursing staff in the Mater or Cherryfield Lodge were doing for him, and deep, characteristically undemonstrative faith.

In March of the present year, Gerry returned to Cherryfield, where he died on 26 May, halfway through his 81st year, predeceased by his brothers. May that slightly taut smile, worn so often in life, relax now in joy and surprise as he beholds the unclouded glory of God.

◆ The Clongownian, 2000
Obituary
Father Gerard Spillane SJ

Fr Spillane was teacher and Third Line Prefect for three years 1947-50, while preparing for the priesthood. Later, he returned to teach and then become Higher Line Prefect in 1955,
remaining until 1962. He was to spend the rest of his life in Belvedere College and died, aged 80, on 26 May 200. The following is a slightly edited extract from the obituary which recently appeared in “The Belvederian”.

Following ordination, Fr Gerry Spillane had hoped to go on the newly-opened Irish Jesuit mission to Zambia (known in those pre-independence days as Northern Rhodesia) but was sent instead to teach in Clongowes. It was not a posting which greatly appealed to him. Quite apart from the thwarting of his missionary desires, boarding school life in the early fifties was austere and relations between pupils and staff were formal and relatively remote.

Within a year, he was appointed Higher Line Prefect, which meant that, in place of teaching, he was responsible for the discipline and good order of the school as a whole and of the most senior pupils - the Higher Line - in particular. His sense of duty and his scrupulous anxiety to ensure the highest standards of behaviour in the school probably had the effect of concealing his enormous humanity from those in his charge (his formation had partly concealed it even from himself) and only the more perceptive among them descried it.

1962 marked a watershed in his life: it was the year he was transferred to Belvedere, in the wide-ranging reshuffle of Jesuit assignments made at that time by the American Jesuit plenipotentiary sent by Father General to visit the Irish Province. This change brought him back to his north Dublin roots and set him to tasks which were more congenial than the role of Higher Line Prefect, faithfully though he had discharged that office. He was to spend his remaining thirty-eight years in the college - until 1988 as a member of the staff, thereafter, until his health failed, as chaplain to a nearby nursing home.

Born: 28 June 1875, George (O’Connell) Street, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 13 August 1892, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 26 July 1908, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1912, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Died: 24 July 1937, Dublin City, County Dublin

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

by 1896 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
Came to Australia for Regency 1898

Not in Catalogue index 1893, 1894

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Ernest Spillane entered the Society at Tullabeg in August 1892, and undertook regency at Xavier College, 1898-05, where he was a teacher and prefect.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 12th Year No 4 1937
Obituary :
Father Ernest Spillane

On July 24th, 1937, at a Private Nursing Home in Dublin, Father Ernest Spillane died after a short illness. Though all his life he had to contend with ill health and though for his last few years he had to suffer the pangs of “Colitis” in addition, yet when he came to Dublin for treatment, no one expected the serious turn that was soon to come, and that was finally to cause his death. He was fully conscious up to the end, and he edified all around him by his patient endurance of his sufferings, by the fervour of his prayers and by his submission to the Will of God.

Father Spillane was born in Limerick on June 28th, 1875, was educated at the Sacred Heart College, the Crescent, and entered the Society at Tullabeg on August 13th, 1892. Having taken his vows in 1894, he came to Milltown Park for his juniorate, and in 1895 was sent to Jersey, where he studied Philosophy for three years. He did his College teaching in Kew, Melbourne, and in 1905 returned to Milltown Park to study Theology. Having been ordained in 1908, and having during the following year completed his Theology, he went to Tullabeg for his Tertianship. But the strain of the years of study had told on his health and not until 1914, after a period at Petworth, was he able to resume work. Then we find him at Mungret College for twelve years, with one year's interruption, in 1921, when he was Minister at Belvedere.
At Mungret he was Master, Sub-Minister and Minister for two periods of three years each. From 1925 to his death he was connected with the Noviceship, first in Tullabeg as Minister, and finally in Emo, where for seven years he was Spiritual Father and Confessor of the Novices.
What manner of man was Father Spillane? First of all he was a most saintly Religious, a source of edification to all who had the privilege of living with him. When his conscience dictated a course of action nothing could deflect him from carrying it into effect. This, perhaps. at times game him the appearance of rigidity when “coping”, as his word was, with practical matters. He himself was guided by principles of honour and justice, and perhaps it was demanding too much of human nature to expect others to be always so directed. Yet, he was always gentle and courteous with a certain dry sense of humour, and, it may be added, a taste for Metaphysics. One who knew him well summed him up by saying “Father Spillane was a model Religious, a man of honour, always a gentleman.” And that was a fitting estimate of his character and qualities. May he rest in peace!

◆ Mungret Annual, 1938

Obituary

Father Ernest Spillane SJ

Many old Mungret men will hear with regret of the death of Father Ernest Spillane SJ, which took place in a Dublin nursing home on July 24th, 1937.

Father Spillane first came to Mungret in 1912. For the next six years he was engaged chiefly in teaching French to the Senior boys, and in 1918 he was appointed Minister, a position which he held for three years. In 1921 he was transferred to Belvedere College, Dublin, but was back again with us as Minister in 1922. He held that position till 1925, when he was called away for other important work.

During his years in Mungret, but especially during the time when he was Minister, Father Spilane endeared himself to boys and community alike. He was a kindly man, and though in very poor health, he was always bright and cheerful. To the sick in particular he was most attentive, and boys in the Infirmary looked forward to his daily visits, eager to suggest answers to conundrums which he had given them, or to resume an argument on some question raised by him. Their hopes of scoring a point, however, were always quickly dashed to the ground, for Father Spillane had a very acute mind and was an adept in subtle argument.

But, perhaps, what the boys appreciated above all was the Minister's justice. He was a man with a great sense of honour and justice, and all were sure of a fair hearing and a just decision.
It is impossible, in this short notice, to touch on Father Spillane's many virtues, but we cannot omit to mention his holiness. He was a remarkably prayerful man, and one felt that God was never far from his thoughts. An atmosphere of prayer seemed to surround him as he paced backwards and forwards on the walk by the garden, reading his Office or reciting his Rosary - a very familiar sight indeed during those years.

Well, he is gone from us forever-gone, as no one who knew him can doubt, to the God Whom he served so well.

To his brother and sisters who survive him we offer our deep sympathy, for they have lost a saintly brother on earth. But we rejoice with them also at the passing away of one of whom it can surely be said : “He did not receive his life in vain”. May he rest in peace.

JAD

Born: 01 July 1918, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1940, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Sacred Heart Church SJ, Limerick
Died: 03 June 1991, Mater Hospital, Dublin

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

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Insurance clerk before entry

Born: 25 March 1931, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February1966, Chiesa del Gesù, Rome, Italy
Died: 03 April 2005, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966; HK to CHN : 1992

by 1957 at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency studying language
by 1965 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Father Bernard Joseph Shields S.J.
R.I.P.

Father Joseph Shields of the Society of Jesus, died in his sleep on 3 April 2005, he was 74.

Father Shields was born on 25 March 1931 in Dublin, Ireland and was a much-loved volunteer staff member of the Sunday Examiner. He will be sorely missed. He was ordained a priest on 31 July 1962 in Dublin.

There will be a Requiem Mass to be celebrated by Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun at Christ the King Chapel, Causeway Bay, on 16 April at 10am with vigil prayers on the previous evening at the Hong Kong Funeral parlor, North Point. The Jesuit community will welcome visitors from 5:30pm. He will be buried at St. Michael’s Catholic Cemetery, Happy Valley.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 10 April 2005

Mourning a quiet Jesuit

“I first met ‘Father Joe’, as we fondly called him, in the early 1980s at Holy Spirit College,” reminisced Chan Sui-jeung. “I was looking for research materials on Judaism and he directed me to Matteo Ricci’s dairy, a copy of which was in the college library.” Chan said that their common interest in classics and Chinese history led them into the first of many long conversations.

Chan related that he next came into contact with the Irish-born Jesuit, Father Bernard J. Shields, about 10 years later at the office of the Sunday Examiner. Father Joe did the proofreading and I came as a volunteer,” said Chan. “Office space was at a premium. At times we even shared the same desk!” He said that the always thorough and meticulous “gentle priest with the unusual turn of phrase” was a great asset to the editorial staff, especially when the chase was on for the “right turn of phrase.”

Chan said their quiet moments together produced stories about Father Joe’s student days under the late Father Edward Collins SJ, how he had assisted in sorting Father Turner’s manuscript on Tang Dynasty poetry and his three or so years in Taiwan at the Fu Jen University, where he had met distinguished Jesuit scholars like Father Fang Chi Yung and Father Simon Chin. Chan also noted that he learned to complement his Cantonese language skills with a “quite acceptable Putonghua.”

His long-time friend pointed out a little known fact about Father Joe. “He was a considerable authority on history and the works of Giuseppe Castiglione. When one of the animal heads of the Yang Ming Garden in Beijing went on sale in Hong Kong, it was Father Shields who informed the auctioneer that their historical write up was inaccurate.”

Born on 25 March 1931, he attended Christian Brothers and Jesuit schools in Ireland and joined the society in 1948, taking first vows in 1950. Three years at University College Dublin gave him a first class honours degree in Latin, Greek and ancient history. He came to Hong Kong in 1956 and returned home for theology studies and later ordination in Milltown, Dublin, on the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, 31 July 1962. He then studied Sacred Scripture in Rome and returned to Hong Kong in 1973. He taught at the diocesan seminary in Aberdeen, the Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Anglican Theological Seminary.

He was also a mentor in Hebrew at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and took students to visit the synagogue in the Mid-Levels on more than one occasion. Chan said,

“I had plans to introduce him to the well-stocked library at the Jewish Community Centre.”

He recalls him as humble, soft-spoken with a gentle smile, popular and loved. Shy and retiring by nature, Father Shields nevertheless stood up and spoke boldly when interviewed on television while participating in a street rally in Hong Kong, on 11 April last year, in defence of his much loved brother and sister Catholics on the mainland.

Chan has fond memories of wine, beers and cheese in the newspaper office at the end of a hard day, when the then editor, Maryknoll Father John Casey, would jokingly accuse Father Shields of being “un-Irish” for taking “water only” during the sacred office ritual.

Father Bernard Joseph Shields died in his sleep on Sunday, 3 April. His three sisters came from Ireland to attend his funeral, celebrated by Bishops Joseph Zen Ze-kiun and John Tong Hon with some 35 priests, at Christ the King Chapel, Causeway Bay, on 16 April. Approximately 400 people came to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. Fellow Jesuits, Fathers Robert Ng and John Russell paid tribute to him at the Mass. He was buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery in Happy Valley.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 24 April 2005

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He was born in Dublin in 1931 and educated at Belvedere College SJ. His father was Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, bequeathing to his son a love of scholarship and books.

He joined the Society in 1948 and followed the usual course of studies, including a Degree in Classical Latin and Greek, and he was sent to Hong Kong for Regency in 1956.

He wanted to master Cantonese spending two years at Cheung Chau and was then sent to Wah Yan College Hong Kong, teaching for a year before returning to Ireland for Theology at Milltown Park, and he was Ordained by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in 1962. He then made Tertianship, and after that was sent to Rome for a Doctorate in Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

The intention was that he would remain in Rome to teach, but then he was invited by the Chinese Provincial Frank Borkhardt to teach instead at the Theology Faculty of Fujen Catholic University in Taiwan. To prepare for this he undertook Mandarin studies at the Jesuit language school of Hsinchu for 18 months.

1973 He returned to Hong Kong teaching Scripture at the Regional Seminary at Aberdeen, and he also became its librarian for many years. On return he was also briefly Master of Novices in Cheung Chau.
1977 He was invited to teach Theology at Chung Chi College where he taught New Testament Greek and Studies.

Over his time in Hong Kong he also taught at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Shatin, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, SKH Ming Hua Anglican Theological College.

He also served as Socius to the Regional Secretary for Macau-Hong Kong, William Lo (1991-1996).

Light-hearted and willing to help in any way he could, he also proof-read the Sunday Examiner, as well as normal priestly ministries, such as the Adam Shcall residence once a month.

He was scholarly and keen on accurate information. He was also modest and well mannered, eschewing argument or controversy, preferring to be a conciliator, seeking understanding and peace.

He was especially dedicated to the Church’s Mission in China and its people.