Born: 30 June 1562, Malahide, County Dublin
Entered; 10 May 1595, Tournai, Belgium - Belgicae Province (BELG)
Ordained: 04 June 1594, Pont-à-Mousson, France - pre Entry
Died: 02 August 1599, Cassel, Flanders, France - Belgicae Province (BELG)

Studied Humanities at Dublin and Pont-à-Mousson, and studied Philosophy and Doctor of Arts (Docteur in ès Arts) at Louvain
1597 Was MA Age 34 (Docteur in ès Arts)
1599 Died in Belgian Camp at Bois-le-Duc ('s-Hertogenbosch) on 02 August 1599 or at Cassel on 04 August 1599

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
Son of William, a nobleman and Maria Birmingham.
Studied Grammar for some years in Ireland, then a year of Humanities, one of Rhetoric and three of Philosophy at Pont-à-Mousson, graduating MA 1590 there, and Ordained 04 June 1594, having studied four years at Louvain, where he took scholastic lectures. he was received into the Society by BELG Provincial George Duras.
He was a military Chaplain “Preacher and Ghostly Father” to the Irish soldiers of Sir William Stanley, and died from the effects of hard work.
Very devout to Our Blessed Lady of Montaigu (Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel) at Scherpenheuvel-Zichem, and his sick soldiers going in procession to that shrine were often cured.
Henry Fitzsimon, in a letter from Ireland 07 September 1599, begs for reinforcement of missioners, and particularly names Walter Talbot in first place. (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
“Miracles lately wrought by the intercession of Our Blessed Lady of Montaigu near Sichem in Brabant” trans to English by Fr Robert Chambers, Confessor of the English Religious Dames in Brussels, printed at Brussels 1606 (a copy is at St Beuno’s)
“The Curate and Eschevins of Sichem, affirm assuredly, that in the year 1598, at what time the Irish of the Regiment of Sir William Stanley, Colonel, were lodged there, were wont to use no pther physic or remedy for their diseases, but to make their prayers at the foresaid place of Montague, amongst whom very many were healed in such sort, that Father Walter Talbot, an Irish Priest, one of the Society of Jesus (who at that time was their Preacher and Ghostly Father) was wont oftentimes to say with great admiration, that the place was in a very singular manner chosen by God to advance there his Mother’s honour, for which cause he was moved to go thither, sometimes devoutly in procession, accompanied by the sayd irish, and the townsmen of Sichem, whereof he wrote to Father Thomas Salines, who was the Superior of the Fathers of the Society, which attended upon the Catholic King’s army in the Low Countries.” (Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Lord William Talbot Malahide and Mary née Bermingham ( daughter of Peter, Chief Justice of Ireland)
Early education was in Ireland and then a classical education was made at Pont-à-Mousson with the Jesuits, later graduating MA after Philosophy studies there. he went on to study Theology there also and was Ordained there 04 June 1594 before a year later Ent 10 May 1595 Tournai
After First Vows he was sent as a Military Chaplain to Brussels. He had been approved for the Irish mission but died 2 August, 1599, at the military camp in Flanders where he was stationed 02 August 1599
At the time of his early death he was “preacher and ghostly father” to Colonel Sir William Stanley's Irish troops. During his brief period as chaplain he promoted amongst the Irish soldiers devotion to Our Lady at her shrine of Montaigu near Scherpenheuvel-Zichem (Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel)
Before his death he had been requested by Henry Fitzsimon, Irish Mission Superior, and approved to go to Ireland, but he died before that could happen.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Walter Talbot 1562-1599
Walter Talbot, the fourth son of William Talbot of Malahide, a family which was to give many sons to the Society, including the famous Peter Talbot, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin.

Walter was born on June 30th 1562 and received his higher education on the continent. Having taken his Master’s degree, he was ordained by special indult of Cardinal Allen in 1592. He became a Jesuit at Tournai in 1595, the same year as that of Dominic Collins.

He was appointed Chaplain to the Spanish Army in Flanders. There he laboured not only with Irish troops, but also those of other nations. His influence with the soldiers was supreme, and many heretics were reconciled to the Church by his efforts. He attributed his influence to his own great devotion to Our Lady of Montaigu, a famous shrine near the town of Sichem in the Brabant. He was accustomed to perform penitential pilgrimages to the shrine accompanied by the soldiers and the townsfolk of Sichem. Regardless of his health, he spent two days hearing confessions in the rain. He neglected to change his clothes and died of a fever on August 13th 1599 at Cassel, having been 4 years in the Society.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 52 : Easter 1988

Portrait from the Past : Walter Talbot : 1562-1599

Edmund Hogan

When next you visit Malahide Castle in County Dublin, spare a thought for the Talbot family who lived there for so many centuries. Eight of the Malahide Talbots became Jesuits. Here are a few notes on the least famous of them.

When Walter Talbot entered the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Tournay in 1595, he wrote down this account of himself: “I, Walter Talbot, was born at Dublin on June 30, 1562, my father was William Talbot, Esquire, who is still alive; my mother was Mary Bermingham, who is deceased in the Lord. I have studied Grammar in Ireland. In the school of the Society at Pont-à Mousson I have studied Humanities for one year, Rhetoric for one year, Philosophy for three years, and I took the degrees of Master and Doctor in the month of August. 1590. I have received tonsure and minor orders from the Bishop of Metz, and the Orders of subdeacon and deacon from John de Stryan, Bishop of Middleburg, in virtue of an Apostolic Indult granted to Cardinal Allen. I have studied Theology during four years and a half at Louvain, where I attended lectures in the College of the Society. I enter the House of Probation at Tournay, this day. May 10, 1595”... (Liber Novitiorum Tornac, S.J.)

Sir Bernard Burke's Peerage enables us to identify Walter Talbot as the fourth son of William Talbot of Malahide, who married Mary daughter of Peter Bermingham, Lord Chief-Justice of Ireland, and who possessed the lordships of Malahide, Garristown, Louth, Ashe, and Castlering with the courts and royalties attached thereto, together with estates in the counties of Waterford and Kilkenny. Walter was the first of eight members of this family who entered the Society, amongst whom his father's three grand-nephews, John, Peter and Gilbert, all Jesuits, were brothers of the Duke of Tirconnell.

In 1597, Walter became chaplain to an Irish regiment, which was in the service of the King of Spain and was stationed in Belguim of his missionary labours the Brussels Annual Letters relate:

There are Irish soldiers in the camp, and some English mixed with soldiers of various nationalities. In the year 1597, more than twenty of them were brought to the true foild, and very many have ben aggregated to the Sodality of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The musketeers marched in military array, and, to the wonder and admiration of many spectators, laid their banners at the feet of their chaplain to show their great reverence for his person and functions. Most of these soldiers abstained even from white-breads during Lent; many ate nothing but black-bread on Wednesdays and Fridays; they went barefoot to visit holy places, and in a spirit of austerity inflicted such corporal punishment on themselves as to fill with horror those who beheld their works of penance.

Albert Dürer had seen Irish soldiers in the Low Countries, and he drew a sketch of five of them which is preserved at Vienna. They are fine, powerfully-built and formidable-looking fellows, armed with the long sword and the galloglass axe, clad in a mantle of Irish rug. and wearing the Irish glib and moustache which it was forbidden to wear at home under pain of forfeiture, not only of the moustache and glib, but even of the head. The great artist wrote over his drawing, “Here go the war-men of Ireland”.

Here went, then, the war-men of Ireland who knew how to fight, not only against the enemies of the Spanish King, but also learned under the lead of Father Talbot how to wage war on the devil, the world, and the flesh. Their penitential works remind us of the words of Blessed Edmund Campion:

The Irish, when virtuously bred up or reformed, are such mirrors of holiness and austerity, that all other nations retain but a show or shadow of devotion in comparison to
them; as for abstinence or fasting, which these days make so dangerous, this is to them a familiar kind of chastisement. (History of Ireland, Ed. 1809, p.19. )

In 1598, Father Talbot was stationed with the Irish at Sichem, as we learn from a book entitled, Miracles lately wrought by the intercession of the Glorious Virgin Marie at Montaigu, near unto Sichem in Brabant. A copy of this tract is in St Beuno's College Library, St Asaph. At page 35 we read:

The Curate and Eschevins of Sichem affirm assuredly that in the year 1598, at what time the Irish of the regiment of Sir William Stanley, Colonel, were lodged there, were wont to use no other physic or remedy for their diseases, but to make their prayers at the foresaid place of Montaigu, amongst whom very many were healed in such sort that Father Walter Talbot, an Irish priest, one of the Society of Jesus (who at that time was their preacher and ghostly Father), was wont oftentimes to say with great admiration, that the place was in a very singular manner chosen by God to advance there His Mother's honour, for which cause he was moved to go thither, sometimes devoutly in procession, accompanied by the sayd Irish, and the townsmen of Sichem, whereof he wrote to Father Thomas Salines, who was the Superior of the Fathers of the Society, which attended upon the Catholic King's army in the Low Countries. (H. Foley's Collectanea, SJ, article “Talbot, Walter”)

The Annual Letters of Louvain of 1602 supply some further details relating to the piety of these irish soldiers who were in winter-quarters at Sichem:

Father Walter Talbot, one of our military chaplains, had often experienced a peculiar feeling of consolation while praying at the shrine of Our Lady of Montaigu. He was consequently moved to send his soldiers thither often, and especially the sick; and he had the comfort of seeing them come back perfectly cured after a pilgrimage to that holy chapel, which is situated on a rugged hill at a distance of one or two miles. Filled with reverence at the sanctity of the spot, he informed the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of the facts he had witnessed, and told them that it was evidently a place chosen for manifesting devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and that it would become the most celebrated resort of all Belgium. His words, which were looked on by the peasants as an oracle, were verified, as an immense number of miracles were performed there, many of which we have witnessed with our own eyes.

All these manifestations of piety must have filled the hearts of Father Talbot and his soldiers with gratitude and consolation; but they also brought on him an overwhelming amount of labour under which he soon succumbed. The Annual Letters of Belgium tell us that

among the camp missioners of Belgium three Jesuits went to the glory of Heaven in the year 1599. The first was Father Walter Talbot, an Irishman, who was thirty-eight years old, and had been four years in the Society. In the camp he reconciled to the Church many men, chiefly of his own nation; many also were those of other countries, whom he brought back to the paths of salvation. He gave high hopes of success in this kind of apostolic work, and he was resolved to persevere in it as long as he had life. But, regardless of his health, he spent two days hearing the confessions of the soldiers, while he was drenched with wet; he thus contracted a violent fever, of which he died at Cassel on August 4, 1599.

There were no railways, no steamers in those days, and English ships were on the sea to intercept all correspondence between the Continent and Ireland; and so the news of his death did not reach Dublin for a month, or perhaps months, after its occurrence. His fellow-citizen and brother Jesuit, Henry FitzSimon, wrote to Father General a month afterwards: :I beg of your Paternity to give us some labourers for this vineyard, and I think Father Walter Talbot should be sent to me at once, if it be pleasing to your Paternity”. Father FitzSimon, who had been acquainted with him at Dublin and in Belgium, knew something of his virtue, learning, tact, ardent Zeal, and other qualities, which eminently fitted him for the difficult and dangerous mission of Ireland; and he was most anxious to secure his services for his afflicted countrymen at home. But God willed otherwise, and took him to receive the reward of his labours. It is not unlikely that Father FitzSimon was reminded of him by the fact that the day before he wrote his letter, Walter's brother, John, was knighted on the field of battle by the Lord Deputy for distinguished service against the Irish at a time when, as FitzSimon writes, the Irish were everywhere triumphant, and the splendid English army of the Earl of Essex had been almost annihilated.

Born: 1583, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 24 October 1601, Tournai, Belgium - Belgicae Province (BELG)
Ordained: 18 October 1609, Louvain, Belgium
Final Vows: 22 January 1617
Died: 13 September 1644, University of Graz, Graz, Austria - Austriacae Province (ASR)

Son of Thomas and his 1st wife Mary née Walsh. Youngest Brother of Walter and Michael. Half Brother of Luke and Thomas. 1st Cousin of Ambrose and Luke OFM

Parents Thomas and Mary Walsh
Had studied Humanities in Ireland and at Douai, and Philosophy at Douai - MA
1609 At Maastricht FLAN-BEL teaching Poetry and Rhetoric
1611 At Louvain in 3rd year Theology
1617 Not in 1615 CAT but by 1617 in Belgium Age 33 Soc 15
1625 At Louvain with John Bollandus - a talent for teaching Latin, Scholastic and Moral Theology, Philosophy and also “conversandi”.
1630-1639 At St Clement College Prague. Professor of Theology and “Decanus”. President of “Casum Domesticorum et Congregationis Majoris” By 1632 is Chancellor of University, Consultor of the Provincial and rector. Has been teacher of Philosophy and Theology and has been Prefect of the Lowew and Higher Schools. Also a Confessor in the Church and Catechist. “Remarkable for his talent and judgement and experience in business and is proficient in letters. He has the talent to be Chancellor, Spiritual Father and Preside over Cases of Conscience”.
“A pity while Chancellor he didn’t gather gather round him some of the talented Waterford Jesuits”
In Waterford College there is a copy of “Lessius ad usum Petri Wadingi SJ Waterford”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Studied Humanities for seven years in Ireland and then at Douai graduating MA
Ent 24 October 1601 by FLAN Provincial Oliveraeus but began his Noviceship 28/11/1601 at Tournai (Tournay Diaries MSS, “Archives de l’État, Brussels n 1016, fol 418)
Professor of Theology at Louvain, Antwerp, Prague and Graz; Chancellor of two Universities at Prague; Writer; A very holy man;
Published a work “De Filii Dei Incarnatione opus” (cf de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ” for his works)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Thomas and his 1st wife Mary née Walsh. Youngest Brother of Walter and Michael. Half Brother of Luke and Thomas. 1st Cousin of Ambrose and Luke OFM
Had studied Classics in Ireland and Belgium graduating MA at Douai before Ent 24 October 1601 Tournai.
1603-1608 After First Vows in Liège, he revised some studies there and was sent on Regency to Maastricht (1604) teaching Poetry and Rhetoric.
1608-1612 He was sent to Louvain for Theology and was Ordained there 18 October 1609
1612-1621 Once he had finished his formation he was sent to Antwerp to teach Controversial Theology. For a time at Antwerp he was also Prefect of Studies.
1621-1629 Sent to teach Dogmatic Theology at Louvain - and graduated DD in 1626
1629-1631 He was transcribed from Flanders to Bohemia. His scholarly reputation had preceded him, and in addition to the Chair of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Prague he was honoured by being elected Chancellor.
1631-1641 On the occupation of Prague by the Lutherans, 1631, he fled with the clergy and nobles to Olmütz (Olomouc). His stay was short here, and thanks to the recovery of Prague by Wallenstein and he was back at his post in May 1632. Because of controversy between the Emperor and the Archbishop of Prague over the rights of the Jesuit controlled University, Father Wadding was withdrawn by the General from Prague in the Summer of 1641.
1641 Sent to University of Graz to teach Canon Law, and died there 13 September 1644
Many appeals were made to the General for his transfer to Ireland, even as late as 1641, but each appeal resulted in the General deciding that his gifts were more valuable in Europe.

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

Wadding, Peter (1583–1644), Jesuit priest, theologian, and chancellor of the University of Prague (1629–41), was born in July 1583 in Waterford, son of Thomas Wadding and Mary Wadding (née Walsh). On entering the Society of Jesus in 1601 he recorded that both of his parents were of the catholic nobility. Five of his brothers also became Jesuits, and his cousins included Fr Luke Wadding (qv), Archbishop Thomas Walsh (qv) of Cashel, and Bishop Nicholas French (qv) of Ferns. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that he chose a priestly career, and after initial schooling in Ireland he travelled to Douai (1587), where he studied classics and philosophy, graduating MA. On 24 October 1601 he entered the Jesuit noviciate at Tournai, aged 18. Further studies in philosophy, rhetoric, and theology followed, and in October 1609 he was ordained priest.

Completing his theological studies at Louvain, he seemed destined to return to Ireland. Hugh O'Neill (qv), the exiled earl of Tyrone, had tried to secure his services for the Irish mission but Wadding's superiors wished to keep him in the Low Countries. He therefore remained there, taught theology at Louvain, and was also a professor of philosophy at the Jesuit college in Utrecht from 1615. One of his students at Utrecht was John van Bolland, founder of the scholarly Bollandist movement in the Society of Jesus. Around 1616 Wadding took up the chair of moral theology at the Jesuit college in Antwerp. In 1620 he engaged in a series of private discussions with Simon Bischop or Episcopius, a leader of the Arminians, in the hope of converting him to catholicism. He later sent Bischop two letters (published after his death), one on the rule of the faith, the other on the worship of images. In June 1621 he chaired a public theological debate where the Irish Jesuit, Peter Darcy, defended his theses on grace and predestination.

In 1629 he succeeded Fr Adam Tanner, SJ, one of the most renowned Jesuit theologians of the period, as professor of theology and chancellor of the University of Prague. He was immediately drawn into the controversy surrounding the concord signed between the pope and Ferdinand II, the Contractus Salis. In 1629 he replied to the attacks on the papacy and the Society of Jesus in an anonymous pamphlet, Disceptatio placida. In 1630 he was appointed to the archiepiscopal consistorium and was declared consistorial theologian, the first Jesuit to be appointed to that position in Bohemia. He lived in Prague during the height of the thirty years war and, after the defeat of the catholic army at Breitenfeld (1631), was forced to flee to Olmutz (Olomouc) in Moravia, where he served briefly as chancellor of the university, returning to Prague in 1632. In 1633 he was appointed as a member of the third provincial congregation of the Jesuit province of Bohemia.

His period at Prague was somewhat overshadowed by a long-running controversy with the archbishop of the city, Count Ernest Adalbert von Harrach. Prague initially had two universities, the Jesuit University and the Carolina, the old university founded by Charles IV in 1345. These had been amalgamated in 1623 by Ferdinand II and were now known as the Carolo-Ferdinandea. Under Ferdinand's decree, it was stipulated that the rector of the Jesuit college should also be the chancellor of the combined universities. Archbishop von Harrach disputed this, maintaining that he should be chancellor, and the controversy dragged on for years. The noted pamphleteer Gaspar Schopp published an anonymous piece attacking the Jesuit fathers. In 1634 Wadding replied with his Brevis refutatio calumniarum quas Collegio Societatis Jesu Pragensi etc. In this publication he outlined the history of the controversy and condemned Schopp for his attack on the Jesuits. Schopp's work was condemned in Rome and burned by the public hangman in Madrid, and he was later expelled from Austrian and Roman soil. (The controversy over the combined colleges was not finally resolved until Ferdinand III took an active part in deciding the issue.)

Wadding later published a major theological work on the subject of the Incarnation, Tractatus de Incarnatione (Antwerp, 1634). In 1637 he preached the sermon at the funeral obsequies for Ferdinand II in the Metropolitan Church in Prague. He later presented Ferdinand III with an address of welcome, published as Oratio Pragae dicta in Ferdinandi III (1637).

In July 1641, with the controversy over the chancellorship of Prague still raging, he was ordered by his superiors to go to Gratz, where he taught canon law. He published his second theological work entitled De contractibus in 1644. He died in Gratz 13 September 1644. The letters that he had sent to Bischop were still extant, and were later published in Dutch as Twee brieven van den gelerden Peter Wading in sijn leven Jesuit tot Antwerpen (Amsterdam, 1649). Other works, which were published using a pseudonym, were Carmina varia et alia spectantia ad disciplinas humaniores and Tractatus aliquot contra haereticos. The universities at Prague and Gratz (in Styria, Austria) later commissioned portraits of him. There is a collection of his papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which includes over thirty manuscript treatises.

Webb; Allibone; Edmund Hogan, SJ, Distinguished Irishmen of the sixteenth century (1894); id., ‘Worthies of Waterford and Tipperary: 2 – Father Peter Wadding', Waterford Arch. Soc. Jn., iii, 2 (1897), 183–201; Paul O'Dea, SJ, ‘Father Peter Wadding, SJ: chancellor of the University of Prague 1629–1641’, Studies, xxx (Sept. 1941), 337–48; Louis McRedmond, To the greater glory: a history of the Irish Jesuits (1991); information from Fergus O'Donoghue, SJ, Jesuit archives, Dublin

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WADDING, PETER, S.T.D. born in Waterford, A.D. 1580; at the age of 21 entered the Novitiate at Tournay. Several Universities were proud of numbering him amongst their Professors; but his prodigious learning was eclipsed by the splendour of his virtues. He died at Gratz on the 13th of September, 1644.
Under a borrowed name he published “Carmina Varia”, “Tractatus aliquot contra Hereticos”,
Under his own name he wrote a Latin Treatise to refute the Pamphlet entitled “Flagellum Jesuiticum” 4to. Nigrae, 1634, “Tractatus de Incarnatione”. 4to. Antwerp, 1636, pp. 656.
Also a Latin Oration at the inauguration of Ferdinand III at Prague, in 1636.
His Treatise, “De Contractibus”, 4to, was printed at Gratz, the year after his death

Born: 15 March 1875, Madras, India
Entered: 07 September 1892, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 26 July 1908, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1910, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 28 April 1957, Our Lady’s Hospice, Dublin

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

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1896 at Valkenburg, Netherlands (GER) studying
Came to Australia for Regency, 1898
by 1909 at Drongen Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Though born in India, Esmonde White was educated in Ireland. For regency he went to Riverview .There he stayed a relatively brief time, teaching and being assistant prefect of discipline, before departing in the autumn of 1901 for the same position at Xavier until 1905, when he returned to Ireland. From 1909 he was involved in the school ministry in Ireland.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 32nd Year No 3 1957
Obituary :
Fr Esmonde White (1875-1957)
Within a period of twelve months, Rathfarnham has lost four of its older men. Perhaps none of them has left so big a gap as “the quiet man”, Fr. White. Yet so it is; for, shrouded though he was in an almost fantastic silence, Fr. White was always there. Religious duties, meals, recreation, from none of these did he ever absent himself. He could be called bi-lingual inasmuch as his chief contribution to recreation was the statement, in Irish or English, “No doubt at all about it?” Perhaps he was on more familiar terms with the birds, whose calls, especially that of the cuckoo, he could faithfully reproduce. Certain it is that he never said an unkind word. No one who knew Fr. White would infer that this was merely the negative virtue of a very silent man. In the first place, it is certain that he had not always been so silent. In his student days at Valkenburg he had acquired so good a mastery of the language as to merit, in later years, the emphatic comment of a German Jesuit : “That man speaks German well”. Moreover his genial charity showed itself very positively in action, for he loved to see people happy. One who was with him in the colleges remarked: “He was always doing odd jobs for others and made so little compliment about them that, in Belvedere for example, if anyone wanted something in Woolworths, he had only to ask Fr. White, and off he went!”
Fr. White was born on 15th March, 1875 in Madras, India. Educated in Clongowes, he gained his place in the three-quarters on the Senior Cup team, played a useful game of Soccer, and bowled on the Cricket eleven. To the end of his life he bowled, left-arm, silently, at invisible wickets - one of his most characteristic gestures. He entered the Society at Tullabeg in 1892, studied philosophy at Valkenburg, and spent the seven following years in Australia, teaching at Xavier and at Riverview. He was ordained at Milltown Park in 1908, did his Tertianship at Tronchienues and spent the remainder of his long life in the class room. All told, he taught for thirty-eight years. He taught at the Crescent from 1910 to 1914, being Prefect of Studies for the two latter years, He was at Belvedere 1915-19, and again from 1923 to 1937, having been in the meantime Minister and Socius at Tullabeg and Prefect of Studies at Galway. Then after a year at Emo and two years at Rathfarnham, as Spiritual Father, he went back to Belvedere, 1941-47, as Sub-Minister. After one year at Milltown Park he came in 1948 to Rathfarnham, where he remained until his death.
With the drawbridge of his interior castle perpetually up, he seemed very happy within, as he tunefully hummed and whistled, to the edification of the brethren without. He loved Belvedere College and when, after a stay of two years in Rathfarnham, he saw his name again on the Belvedere status, he literally danced with joy, at the sober age of sixty-five! While Prefect of Studies in Belvedere Junior House, he combined gentleness with severity in such perfect measure that a past pupil recalls: “He hit very hard with the pandy bat but obviously felt every bit as miserable about it as the unfortunate victim!” The same pupil added, and none of us could deny the tribute: “He was one of Nature's gentlemen!” Those of us who lived with him would suggest that Grace played a bigger part than Nature in making Fr. White one of the kindest of men.
His last illness was short. Some six weeks after leaving Rathfarnham for the Nursing Home, his condition suddenly worsened and he died in the Hospice on 28th April, Before leaving Rathfarnham, he made an interrogation of unusual length: “Two questions are puzzling me”, he said to the indefatigable infirmarian. “First of all, who are you?” When Brother Keogh had identified himself, Fr. White went on: “Secondly, who am I?” With sincerity and truth we can all answer the second question : “One white man!” May he rest in peace!

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Esmonde White SJ 1875-1957
To those who lived in community with him, Fr Esmonde White seemed to be almost shrouded in an fantastic silence. He certainly was a perfect man, according to St James, for he never offended with the tongue, his remarks being confined to “No doubt at all about it”, said either in English or Irish.

Born in Madras, India, in 1975, he was educated at Clongowes, where he acquired a reputation as a left-hand bowler, whence, no doubt, he developed a gesture common with him to the end of his life, bowling left-handed at invisible wickets.

His life as a Jesuit was spent mainly in the Colleges and the classroom, a ministry of 40 years at least. He was mathematical in his observance, never absent from a duty, ever easy to oblige others, the quintessence of kindness, A model of motivated observance, close to God always, he yielded up his spotless soul to God on April 27th 1957. In the words of his obituary “He was a white man”.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1957

Obituary

Father Esmonde White SJ

Fr White was born on 15th March, 1875, in Madras, India. Educated in Clongowes, he gained his place as a three-quarter on the Senior Cup team, played a useful game of Soccer, and bowled on the cricket eleven. And anyone who knew him or was taught by him will know that to the very end of his life he was to be seen as he walked along, occasionally bowling, left-arm, an invisible ball at an invisible wicket.

He entered the Society of Jesus at Tullabeg in 1892, studied Philosophy at Valkenburg, and spent the seven following years in Australia. He was ordained at Milltown Park in 1908, He taught at the Crescent, Limerick, from 1910 to 1914, being Prefect of Studies for the two latter years. He was. at Belvedere 1915-1919, and again from 1923 to 1937, having been in the meantime Minister and Assistant to the Master of Novices at Tullabeg and Prefect of Studies at St Ignatius College, Galway, Then, after a year at Emo and two years at Rathfarnham as Spiritual Father, he went back to Belvedere from 1941–1947. From then until his death he was at Rathfarnham.

He loved Belvedere and when after a stay at Rathfarnham, he once again was changed to Belvedere we are told that he literally danced for joy, and that at the very sober age of sixty-five! He was Prefect of Studies in the Preparatory School for a period and for all his perpetually good humour knew well how to wield his sceptre of office. His most outstanding characteristic was his fantastic power of silence; he wasted no words. But it was a good-humoured silence, which missed little enough of what was going on and certain it is that his thoughts were always kindly since he never said an unkind word. Those of us who lived with him would suggest that Grace played a bigger part than Nature in making Fr White one of the kindest of men.

◆ The Clongownian, 1957

Obituary

Father Esmonde White SJ

Father Esmonde White was born in Madras, India, eighty-two years ago. Having left Clongowes, he joined the Novitiate at Tullabeg in 1892. He studied philosophy at Valkenburg in Holland and was then sent to the Australian Mission where he was Prefect and Master for six years, first in Kew College, Melbourne, and then at Riverview, Sydney.

He returned to Ireland in 1905 and completed his theological studies at Milltown Park, Dublin, where he was ordained in 1908. He also studied at Tronchiennes, Belgium. He was Master and Prefect of Studies at the Sacred Heart College, Limerick, from 1910 to 1914, and at Belvedere College, Dublin, from 1915 until 1919, when he was appointed Minister and Assistant Master of Novices at Tullabeg.

He was later in charge of studies at St Ignatius' College, Galway. In 1923 he returned to Belvedere, and remained there until 1937, when he was transferred to Rathfarnham Castle. May he rest in peace.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father Esmonde White (1875-1957)

Born at Madras, India and educated at Clongowes, entered the Society in 1892. He pursued his higher studies in Valkenburg, Milltown Park and Belgium. He was ordained in 1908. Father White was a member of the Crescent community from 1909 to 1914 during which time he was prefect of studies. Most of his teaching career was spent at Belvedere College.

Born: 28 January 1845, Königssteele (Steele), Westfalen, Germany
Entered: 28 September 1862, Friedrichsburg Germany - Germaniae Inferioris Province (GER I)
Ordained: 1877
Final Vows: 02 February 1879
Died 31 October 1937, Marienhospital, Aachen, Germany - Germaniae Inferioris Province (GER I)

part of the Valkenburg, Netherlands community at the time of death

Came to HIB to teach at Tullabeg 1877-1889

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 13th Year No 1 1938
Father Charles Wisthoff :
A few members of the Irish Province are still alive who remember Father Wisthoff and the excellent work he did in Ireland from 1877 to 1888. They will be glad to hear that on the 28th of last September he celebrated the 75th anniversary of his entrance into the Society.
Unfortunately the celebration had to take place in the hospital at Aachen, where he could get the care necessary for his age. Still his joy and gratitude were so great that he forgot the age. It was his greatest pleasure to go to the Altar as an act of thanksgiving. On the previous day he frequently held up his hands and sang a Gloria in Excelsis.
The Ordinary of Aachen had given leave for Mass to be celebrated in his room, so the Sisters had decorated a large room, and there our Fathers assembled in the early morning. During the Mass the Sisters sang beautifully. After the Holy Sacrifice, all, both Ours and the Nuns, gathered round the bed of the jubilarian. Rev Father Superior congratulated him in the name of the Society, and a theologian in the name of Valkenburg, to which House Father Wisthoff belonged. Very Rev. Father Assistant had written his congratulations, and Very Rev Father General had sent to the Jubilarian 75 Masses. The old man of 93 expressed his gratitude and then gave his blessing to all present.
Meantime the Nuns had prepared a table in the background, the bed was moved over to it, and Father Wisthoff and his guests celebrated the jubilee. He was very lively and cheerful, relating many anecdotes full of joke and humour.
In the course of the morning, a Father came from St, Ignatius College with special congratulations, and about midday a messenger brought a telegram from His Eminence, the Cardinal Secretary of State, announcing the special blessing of the Holy Father.

Since the above was written, the sad news has come of Father Wisthoff's death at Valkenburg. He was born on 28th January, 1845, entered the Society 28th September, 1862 , died 3Ist October 1937. RIP

◆ The Clongownian, 1920

The Laying Down of the Higher Line Cricket Ground

An Account by Father Karl Wisthoff SJ

Father H Fegan Higher Line Prefect at Clongowes after the Amalgamation, found it desirable to enlarge the cricket field. As there were no men amongst the labourers at Clongowes who could carry out this work, he summoned from Tullabeg the famous Brian Spollen,

Before the Amalgamation there were only a few plots laid out for matches, the rest of the lawn having a rough surface. That part of the lawn where the old elm stands* was higher than the rest, its elevation being indicated by the grass bank that surrounds the elm. The higher ground extended about eight or ten yards towards the middle of the lawn sloping down to it along the entire length of the field.

Work was commenced near the tree. From there towards the middle and down to the end of the present cricket ground, the sods were cut in sizes of one to two feet. They were then raised and carted to the grass-land outside the cricket ground. This done, the soil was taken out and heaped before the pile of sods. When the bed of gravel was thus laid bare it was picked loose and wheeled to the lower ground. When at last the two portions had been made level, fresh earth was spread evenly over the newly made gravel bed. The sods were next laid down; well-sifted earth was spread over them and harrowed backwards and forwards to get the earth well into the divisions between the sods, facilitating thereby their knitting into one unbroken surface.
As soon as the grounds were dry, Fr. Fegan saw to the rolling and cutting of the grass. To his ceaseless care it is due that the grounds improved every day, and were in tip-top order when the first eleven of the amalgamated Colleges came to play their first outmatch.

C Wisthoff SJ

*The elm referred to stood near the track between the Third Line Cricket pitch (as it is now) and the Third Line Rugby posts. The green box in which the gamekeepers keep their gear is practically on the site of the old tree. There was a mound about three leet high around the elm; but · this mound was removed when the tree was blown down in the great storm of 1903.

-oOo-

“The Boss”

by Jack Meldon

It is a long span since I said good-bye in the wooden gallery to Fr Wisthoff when starting for the Summer holidays from Tullabeg in 1886. The last conversation I had with him was about the new Cricket ground which he expected, and I agreed, would produce the best wicket in the British Isles.

He had helped me to organise a holiday cricket team styled “Tullabeg and Clongowes United” (note precedence of Tullabeg). I was to obtain fixtures with Co Westmeath CC at Mullingar en route, Phoeix CC, Leinster CC, and Dublin University Long Vacation CC; and we played all these Clubs in Dublin during the following week.

It was the first time the two Colleges had combined in anything, and I mention it as a curious coincidence that Fr Wisthoff and I who engineered this first amalgamation were, perhaps, the two people in the world to whom the real amalgamation, a few weeks later, came as the greatest trial and disappointment.

I am looking at the photograph of the team hanging on my study wall as I write. One or two are missing from the group, but the names of the full team were - Hugh Kennedy, Jack Maunsell, Alfred Kelly, Peter Carthy, Joe Gaffney, Bob Cruise, Dan Molony, and myself (Tullabeg); Finn Meldon, Peter Touhy, D Fitzpatrick, Julius Ferguson (Clongowes).

To say that the new cricket ground at Tullabeg was the Boss's hobby does not describe the situation - he was wrapped-up in it. He spent every moment of his leisure time at it, and one could tell at once by his mien if Brian Spollen, the one-eyed donkey man, had been “playing the ass” and mixing up the levels, as he was apt to do after a pay day carouse in the Rahan village “pub”.

But the earnestness and determination of “The Boss” was such that no failure or opposition could prevent him making a thorough success of what he had set out to do, and certainly no other sobriquet could have so aptly described the famous Tullabeg Prefect.

A German! yes, I believe he was, but a snow white one - I can answer for that, and I am confident that those who knew himn and had intimate dealings with him, and those who were, so to speak, on his staff in the Higher Line at Tullabeg, will endorse this to a man.

My reading of him came to be - that in dealing with you as a boy he took nothing for granted. He possessed himself (by hook or crook, I admit) of your inmost character; but having once satisfied himself that you were on the square and loyal to him and to the school, he trusted you blindly from that moment, and nothing and nobody thereafter could shake his faith in your honesty of purpose.

He was his own intelligence officer - he required no other; and while you were on trial, or, worse still, under suspicion, he was an awkward customer.

My first acquaintance with him was on the evening of my first day at Tullabeg. I was fourteen years old, and had just been transferred from Beaumont without being personally consulted, by an arrangement between Fr Delany and my father, after four years at Beaumont, during the last term of which I had won the presentation bat for the Lower Line batting average at cricket.

Judge of my chagrin when I found myseli placed in the Third Line at Tullabeg, I was somewhat crest-fallen (very good for me, doubtless), felt like shooting Fr Delany, whom I had never seen, and being very black inside, I probably looked the part as I stood at the door of the Third Line playroom. Then I became conscious of being focussed by a pair of enormous round spectacles blazing out of the dust in the gallery twenty yards I away. The owner of the specs was tall elderly, spare, and very distinguished looking. Many of my readers will remember those wonderful specs through which the Boss could transfix one victim out of a group at the end of a cricket pitch. It was useless to pretend you did not notice: of no avail to stoop and tie your shoelace, use your handkerchief, or suddenly remember you mislaid something and walk round a corner out of sight. No! When eventually you looked up again you would find yourself “set” by the same orbs at about the same distance - your inmost soul being read like a book and the message a definite as if formulated in the words, “Young man! you are thinking treason. Beware you have me to deal with”.

I was in reckless humour that evening and stuck it out for what seemed an age, when at last the inquisitor turned his back and appeared to be interested in something at the other end of the gallery. I turned for information to a boy standing near. He was very small, and yet seemed to know everyone and to be liked by all. He was not a new boy, on the contrary, he gave one the idea of having been always there - part of the establishment in fact. It is hard to be certain at this length of time, but I am nearly sure the boy was Paddy Rath. “Who is that gent?” I asked. “Hsh ! that's the Boss, he'll see you”, said he. “Well, he's no gent to stare at a new boy like that. But how can he see me anyway - his back is turned?” I inquired. “Ah! God help you”, muttered my informant through the side of his mouth, without turning his face towards me, as he retired into the playroom. At that moment the wonderful specs man spun round suddenly, and in a loud, foreign accent, for everyone in the gallery to hear, said, “When a boy comes here from another school he will be expected to observe the customs of the place, and to behave in a proper and respectful manner, and no other attitude will be accepted. Let this be understood”. I shrivelled up and the episode ended. Many a time in future years have I seen absolute proof that those marvellous specs were equally efficient as mirrors, periscopes, or X-Ray machines. I may mention that next day my bat with the silver shield engraved, “Beaumont College, Lower Line batting average”, was carelessly (?) left lying about by me, and being spotted by Paddy Rath or someone in charge of the games, I was promptly “shunted” out of the Third Line into the Lower Line.
If Fr. Wisthoff was a King among Prefects, Fr Henry Lynch was a Prince. He was Second Line Prefect, and I could write plenty, if I had the space, about happenings during that year, during which I never regretted for a moment having migrated from Beaumont.

I did not come much into contact with Fr Wisthoff until the following year, though he seemed interested in me; and more than once, if he noticed me with a trailing boot lace or a crooked tie he said, half jestingly, “Is that how they dress at Beaumont College?”

It was next year when I was in the Higher Line as a “Lower Line Up” that the real war between me and the “Boss” commenced. My greatest friend at Tullabeg (he is to this day) was a six foot dunce named Edward Magawly Banon, who lived about eight miles from Tullabeg at Broughall Castle, an ancient edifice with walls eight feet thick, built in the far back ages, with slits for windows, and ghosts and ivy and legends to match. He was dark and mysterious, not a flier at games, hopeless at lessons, but hard to beat over a country, a conjurer with a fishing rod, knowledgeable with a gun, and better versed in the language of nature than most game keepers. These things fascinated me, and we became fast friends.

He went by the name of Abb Banon, and was generally alluded to as “The Abb”, having obtained the nickname on one occasion when in communicative mood he had informed the assembled multitude that he and his forefathers, in unbroken line, had lived in Broughall Castle since the time of Noah or some such period, whereupon the wit of the party christened him “The Aboriginal”, which had been conveniently shortened to “The Abb”. The masters never seemed to expect any work from him, and not fancying himself at games, he was generally to be seen on the playground surrounded by an admiring crowd drawing “some poor" gom” or propounding some original theory and producing tears of laughter in which “The Abb” himself never joined. Owing to his love of secrecy and mystery he would stop in the middle of a sentence if the “Boss” happened to pass by, and would not continue until he was out of earshot.

Nothing was so calculated to raise suspicion and exasperate Fr Wisthoff as this, and soon he plainly showed Edward Banon that he had no use for him, and was fully persuaded that both he and I (for we were inseparable) were plotting against his authority. We, on the other hand, considered ourselves within our rights, ill-used, and unfairly blamed, and altogether we had a thin time of it, as any “Lower Line Up” boy would be likely to have who claimed any rights or tried to ignore Fr Wisthoff.

Curiously enough this dark, self-contained trait in “The Abb's” character, which got him into such trouble at school was, he has told me, one of the things which helped him to success afterwards as a mining expert and consulting engineer. He is now a millionaire with offices in New York and Chicago, and goes by the name of “Silent Mike” in the financial world. But “The Abb” would require an article to himself and I am supposed to be writing about “The Boss”. He gave neither of us any peace - stormed at us in public and private, refused to sell us sweets, etc., in the shop, and boycotted us generally.

I can't quite remember how it came about or who proposed it, but during next Summer holidays "The Abb" and I got it well into our heads that we were not playing the garne and that it was our duty to capitulate. It is was a hard thing, but being two of us made it casier. We wrote a joint letter to Fr Wisthoff and also called and left cards on him at Gardiner Street.

We did not much relish going back after the holidays. I suppose we did not quite know how our request for an armistice would be received and we funked “reparations”.

The day came. I had just deposited my small things in my partition in the dormitory and returned to the gallery when the “Boss” called me into the shop. Now for it, thought I. I stood before him while he tapped his enormous snuff-box, opened it, balanced a half inch pyramid of snuff - the colour and consistency of damp peat and as strong as gelignite - on his thumb, whence it was received into his right nostril without wasting a grain (he was the cleanest and most fascinating snuff taker I have ever seen). At last, he put out his hand, took mine in his and said,

“Jack Meldon, is it peace or war?”
“Peace, Father”.
“You will be loyal?”
“Yes, Father”.
“You are this year to be Captain of the Higher Line ....”

I suppose he saw my eyes glisten. The reaction was nearly being too much for me. “Go”, said he, “and tell Edward Banon to come to me”. I staggered out of the shop with my heart in my mouth, and a box of Callard & Bowser's Nougat in the hand which had held his.

“The Abb” had his interview, and when he came out his pimply old face was shiny with perspiration, and his mouth was so dry I had to give him a cube of nougat before he could tell me that he and I had been appointed gamekeepers. This was a topping post under the “Boss's” régime, as we had not to clear out of the playroom into the gallery at the end of play hours as the others had, nor had we to go to the library unless we liked. We had the giving out of all the games and the arranging of who was to play billiards and handball. The boxing gloves, foils and single sticks could not be used unless we were actually present and in charge. The patronage belonging to the Attorney-Generalship was nothing to what was attached to a Tullabeg “gamekeeper”.

Gerald Kelly and Tom Considine were appointed “shopkeepers”, while Denis Kane, Tom Considine and I were “net makers”, another much sought after post reflecting the economic genius of the “Boss”. The “net makers” were privileged to sit in the shop breathing the mixed aroma of Callard and Bowser, Cadbury, Jacob, oranges, apples, tar-twine and machine oil, and spent their play hours on wet days making cricket nets for the school. It may seem rather a mixed blessing, but we loved it. And when Brian Spollen had been behaving himself, and the sods on the new ground were knitting satisfactorily, we often had a little feast to help us along. We were a happy family and the time passed merrily. “The Boss” shed his reserve to a great extent behind the closed doors of the shop, and nothing was too good for us once we had passed into his confidence.

"The Abb” was changed to the partition next mine in the dormitory, and we were allowed to keep our pipes and tobacco in our boxes there. Smoking was only allowed to the XI, including umpires, markers, etc., on evenings of “out match” days, but I had many a cigar given me by the “Boss” and smoked it in his room while we discussed important affairs of state.

Clongownians of that date will be surprised to note that “The Boss”, who never took any chances, always appointed the Captain of the House himself, instead of the appointment by ballot as at Clongowes.

Considering he was a foreigner to our games Fr Wisthoff was wonderful at mastering them and at knowing how they should be played. He started us playing Association Football or “Grass” as it was called in contradistinction to “Gravel”, the ordinary school game. How he got it into his head, I dont know, but he thought it would improve the dribbling game if played with a thin leather ball of nearly two feet diameter and as light as a feather, instead of the standard ball. He did not often do a really foolish thing, but when he produced this balloon which cost fabulous moneys we felt inclined to explode. We knew better, however, and really it was a good game, though of course it was not quite “Soccer”.

Some of the “gravel” devotees whose metier was bombarding high goalposts with shots from a distance saw no merit in “grass”. Harry O'Brien and “Coddie” Lyne (what extraordinary names boys do get) were two of these, and when the ball came to Harry and he was tackled for possession by the charging “Codfish”, Harry would take a flying kick in the hopes of “outing” him with the impact, and the delicate leather would go off sailing on the wind and bouncing over the sharp gravel, every bounce adding to the “Boss's” agony as he called out, “Ach, Hahrie! Hahrie! You should dreeble, dreeble - do not kick! You break the ball ! It is not made for kicking!”

Of course, being Captain, I saw a great deal of Fr Wisthoff, as he consulted me about many things. He sometimes gave his Captain rather difficult positions to cope with, but as he always backed him up loyally and held the tiller himself in stormy weather, everything | seemed plain sailing, and we were a very happy Higher Line during that last year at dear old Tullabeg.

The more we saw of the “Boss” the greater our admiration for him grew, and it seems to me, looking back now, that the tone which he moulded and fostered was the right tone, and if there were any of the Higher Line of 1885-1886, who did not “make good” in after life it was not the fault of “The Boss”.

-oOo-

Father Wisthoff is at present stationed at St. Ignatius College, Valkenburg, Holland, where he is Procurator of the House. He is as active and as keen as ever, is always ready to talk of Tullabeg and Clongowes, has not forgotten the slang he picked up in Ireland, and asserts frequently that the happiest days of his life were spent at Tullabeg and Clongowes. To the Irish Jesuits studying in Valkenburg, he invariably extends a hearty welcome; and they all have kindly recollections of the many services he has done them. He remembers, individually, the boys over whom he ruled, and even their nicknames are fresh in his memory.

In the sporting papers of 1886, the matches played by the united Tullabeg and Clongowes team, alluded to at the opening of Mr Meldon's article, are described with relish. “Blindly but aptly”,' writes the sporting journalist (why “blindly”?), the rival houses were “united” in their first match-that against Phoenix, and what was the result? The boys thought they had a holiday, but it was the “Premiers” who enjoyed it. ..... Phoenix put on two slow bowlers, the very ablest move that could be made against a school team who probably never saw a slow bowler before; and the best of the joke was that they had a man at deep long-on, where all the hits should have been made, who could not hold a catch if it was thrown from a yard's distance. He, however, was there, and served his purpose by in timidating the batsman from lashing out..... Touhy and J A Meldon made a long stand, and no wonder ! Balls were pitched up full to leg, and hit away, the most amusing feature being that Meldon was missed twice by his father, uncle or brother of that ilk, who played for Phoenix. This match was lost by an innings and 53 runs.

When describing the match against Trinity, the sporting journalist becomes epic in his indignation. “When a man comes up to you and enquires in a menacing manner whether your opinion of his ability to give you a black eye coincides with his or not, you naturally assume that the wish to do so, on his part, was father to the thought, and then the paternity of the wish exercises your ingenuity. It is almost impossible nowadays to omit a man's name from the list of scorers when he has made “duck”, or fail to praise his bowling when he has been hit all over the field, without being subject to bodily ill usage. Every Pressman in Dublin complains of the same thing, and surely, while it would please us extremely that every batsman should make a hundred runs, and every bowler take ten wickets at a minimum cost, we feel just as free to mention their failures when they are un fortunate.

After this vigorous prelude, the writer goes on: It is unnecessary to say much of the University match, as the Trinitarians had a wretched team, and altogether the affair was a regular farce. Play ceased before six o'clock on each day, because the natives wanted to attend “commons”' an apology which we certainly never heard of before. That the United team would have won the match but for this inexcusable procedure, we have not the slightest doubt; still, they have only themselves to blame for acquiescing in such an arrangement. The match against Leinster
was drawn.

◆ The Clongownian, 1938

Obituary

Father Karl Wisthoff SJ

On the evening of the feast of Christ the King, Father Wisthoff died in the Marien Hospital in Aachen, at the age of nearly 93 years. Some souvenirs of his life will surely interest the many friends he won in Ireland during his years as Prefect at Tuliabeg and Clongowes. He was born near Essen on the 28th of January, 1845 - before the Famine. His father was the founder of the famous Sheeler glass-foundry, He liked to tell of how his father brought him, when thirteen, to Feldkirch College, in Austria; it was still the days of posting. Turn-pikes barred the entrances into the then umerous small German States, and for the journey to Feldkirch one needed a ministerial passport in large Folio!

Father Wisthoff entered the Society of Jesus in 1862, and spent the usual years of study in Mūnster, Maria Laach, Feldkirch, Ditton Hall, and Portico. The first thirty years of his work as priest was mostly devoted to education, and always “abroad”. They began with ten years as Prefect in Tullabeg, one in Clongowes, then came three years in North America and then fifteen in South America.

The last thirty years of his life were spent at Valkenburg, in Holland, where he was busied with the financial administration of the great philosophical and theological Seminary of the German Jesuits, until his 80th year. The last decade he was in charge of the Library and Archives. It is a remarkable proof of the strength and activity of mind and body in this old priest of between 80 and 90, that in the last ten years of his life, he wrote out up to 80,000 index-cards for the catalogue in a clear, legible hand an enormous service to all users of the Archives.

A tiny personal memory perhaps : One autumn evening I found him gazing at the wild vine on the side of the house, richly coloured in the gold of the sunset. “There's God with His paint brush”, said Father Wisthoff to me suddenly, his eyes lighting up with mischief. That was the real Father Wisthoff, the charm that won him so many friends,

To the happiest days of his later life belonged the celebration of the both anniversary of his ordination as priest, in 1936, and, a month before his death, the 75th anniversary of his entrance into the Society of Jesus. Among the many congratulations were letters from former pupils in Ireland and America; one of these, from Chile, only arrived after his death. For it was shortly after his last feast-day that he was called to his High Priest, Jesus Christ, Who for sixty years had come to him at the altar.

A last word from a memorial card : “Remarked for his kindness and delicacy in dealings with others, for breadth of mind in plan and execution, to which were joined strength of will and a tireless eagerness for work, with the best of good sense and good humour, Father Wisthoff was constantly winning new friends all his long life long”.

Paul Bolkovac SJ

-oOo-

Father Wisthoff : “The Boss”

by J Meldon

I was grieved to hear from Father Bolkovac SJ, Valkenburg, that Father Wisthoff's long life on earth had come to an end.

Edward Magawly Banon had written from Florida, and I from England, timing our letters to arrive in Valkenburg on the day he was to celebrate his Jubilee last year and informing him that we intended travelling to Valkenburg this summer specially to visit him. We had both corresponded with him at intervals since the closing of Tullabeg, as a school, 52 years ago (1886). He reigned there as Higher Line Prefect, and we had served him as Higher Line “Games Keepers” - an envied post under the Boss's régime. I mention this as I think it is a tribute to his gifts that two of his boys held himn in such affectionate veneration though so far apart for over half a century.

I never actually knew the origin of Father Wisthoff's soubriquet, “The Boss”. It certainly was apt. He was a Dictator in his own area - sometimes, I believe, a little out side it!

My reading of him came to be that in dealing with you as a boy, he took nothing for granted. He was his own Intelligence Officer, requiring no other, and when you were on trial or, worse still, under suspicion, he was an awkward customer: He possessed himself of your utmost character, but having once satisfied himself that you were on the square and loyal to him and to the School, he trusted you blindly from that moment, and nothing and nobody thereafter could shake his faith in your honesty of purpose.

Besides the post of Games Keeper, I held the much sought after appointment of “Net Maker”, an industry reflecting the economic genius of Father Wisthoff. The other favoured ones were Gerald Hart-Kelly, Denis Kane and Tom Considine. On wet days the Net Makers were '”privileged” to sit in the shop, breathing the mixed aroma of Nougat chocolate, oranges, apples, tar twine, and machine oil. We manufactured all the Cricket and Tennis nets for the School under the technical instruction of “The Boss”.

This may appear a somewhat mixed blessing!, but we loved it - a proof of the magnetism of the famous Prefect - and often we had a little feast to help us along. “The Boss” shed his reserve almost completely behind the closed doors of the Shop, and nothing being too good for us, once we had passed into his confidence, we were a happy family, and time passed merrily.

The more we saw of Father Wisthoff the greater our veneration for him grew, and I love to think back on those happy days, though of course there is always a tinge of loneliness when one hears of another dear friend passing on. RIP

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: Cashel, County Tipperary
Died: 30 June 1665, Netherlands - Fl Belgicae province (FLAN)

◆ Catalogus Defuncti 1641-1740 has Nicolaus (de) Jonghe RIP 30 June 1665 Hollandia (HS48 107v F1 Belg)

◆ CATSJ I-Y has
In the list of “Promoti in Artibus” at Louvain University” I find “Nicholas O'Younghe of Cashel”

Born: 05 November 1839, Betra, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Entered: 22 October 1857, Baden-Würtemberg, Germany - Germaniae Province (GER)
Ordained: 1872
Final vows: 15 August 1876
Died: 12 March 1911, Valkenburg, Netherlands - Germaniae Province (GER)

Came to HIB to teach at Clongowes 1877 - 1885

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959

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

Father Athanasius Zimmerman (1839-1911)

A refugee from one of the German Provinces of the Society during the Kuturkampf, was a member of the Crescent community from 1879 to 1882. He was a remarkable linguist and able to speak English without any trace of a foreign accent. During his years at the Crescent, he was in charge of the highest class presenting French and German for the London University examinations.