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Born: 20 June 1896, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 31 August 1914, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly - Hiberniae Province (HIB) for Sicilian Province (SIC)
Ordained: 31 July 1928, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1932, Chiesa del Gesù, Rome Italy
Died: 22 May 1958, Milltown Park

Father (William) was a Civil Servant and with his mother now live at Dunardagh, Newtownpark Avenue, Blackrock, County Dublin

Edlest of three boys and he has two sisters.

Early education at Our Lady’s Bower, Athlone, and at local day school and with a private tutor, at 11.5 years of age he went to Clongowes Wood College SJ (1908-1916)

Studied for MA in Economics at UCD

by 1927 at Innsbruck Austria (ASR-HUN) studying
by 1932 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying
1930-1931 at Haus Sentmaring, Münster, Germany
by 1933 at Vanves, Paris, France (FRA) studying

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Coyne, Edward Joseph
by Anne Dolan

Coyne, Edward Joseph (1896–1958), Jesuit priest, was born 20 June 1896 in Dublin, eldest of five children of William P. Coyne (qv), head of the statistical section of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and Agnes Mary Coyne (née Martin). Educated at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, from 1908, he joined the Society of Jesus at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore (1914). After an academically distinguished student career at UCD, he taught for three years at Belvedere College, Dublin, during which time he published a series of articles in the Irish Monthly under the name ‘N. Umis’. He studied theology (1926–8) at the Franz Ferdinand university, Innsbruck, returning to Ireland for his ordination (1928) and to begin an MA in economics at UCD. On completing his religious training at Münster, Westphalia, he divided his time between the Gregorian University in Rome, the Action Populaire, and the Sorbonne, Paris. A term at the International Labour Office, Geneva, marked the first practical application of his special studies in sociology and economics. In 1933 he was appointed professor of ethics at St Stanislaus College, a position he held until becoming (1938) professor of moral theology and lecturer in sociology at Milltown Park, Dublin. Although he remained at Milltown Park for the rest of his life, he played a prominent part in the development of Irish social and economic thought. The driving force behind the 1936 social order summer school at Clongowes and the foundation of the Catholic Workers' College (1948), he was selected by Michael Tierney (qv) to organise UCD's extramural courses in 1949.

Editor of Studies and a regular contributor to Irish Monthly, he also placed his knowledge at the disposal of several individuals, institutions, and organisations. As a member of the Jesuit committee assembled in 1936 to contribute to the drafting of the new constitution, he corresponded regularly with Eamon de Valera (qv) and had a significant influence on the document submitted. In 1939 he was appointed by the government to the commission on vocational organisation and was the main author of its report (1943), which was highly critical of the anonymity and inefficiency of the Irish civil service. Despite later government appointments to the Irish Sea Fisheries Association (1948) and the commissions on population (1949) and emigration (1954), he was always prepared to question government decisions, querying the report of the banking commission (1938), the wisdom of plans by the minister for social welfare, William Norton (qv) to unify social insurance schemes (1949), and the morality of the ‘mother and child’ scheme (1951). Serving on several public boards and industrial committees, including the Joint Industrial Council for the Rosary Bead Industry (1939), the Central Savings Committee (1942), the Law Clerk's Joint Labour Committee (1947), the Creameries Joint Labour Committee (1947), and the National Joint Industrial Council for the Hotel and Catering Trades (1957), he worked closely with both employers and workers. He also took an active role in the cooperative movement, becoming president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (1943). A staunch supporter of John M. Hayes (qv) and Muintir na Tire, he was a frequent speaker at the organisation's ‘rural weeks'. He died 22 May 1958 at St. Vincent's nursing home, Dublin, after a lengthy illness, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. Among the many mourners was his brother Thomas J. Coyne (qv), secretary of the Department of Justice (1949–61). His papers are held at the Irish Jesuit Archives.

Ir. Times, Ir. Independent, Ir. Press, 23 May 1958; Clongownian, June 1959, 6–11; J. H. Whyte, Church and state in modern Ireland 1923–1979 (1984), 88, 180, 259; J. Anthony Gaughan, Alfred O'Rahilly I: academic (1986), 95–6, 186–90; Seán Faughnan, ‘The Jesuits and the drafting of the Irish constitution of 1937’, IHS, xxvi (1988–9), 79–102; J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: politics and society (1989), 274–5; Louis McRedmond, To the greater glory: a history of the Irish Jesuits (1991), 277, 285–7; Dermot Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican (1995), 324–5; Dermot Keogh & Andrew J. Mc Carthy, The making of the Irish constitution (2007), 58, 95, 98–100

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948

Frs. Counihan and Edward Coyne are acting as members of a Commission set up by the Government Department of Social Welfare, at the end of March, to examine Emigration and other Population Problems. The former is still working on the Commission on Youth Unemployment, while Fr. Coyne, who served on the Commission on Vocational Organisation appointed in 1939, and whose Report was published five years later, is at present Deputy Chairman of the Central Savings Committee, Chairman of the Joint Industrial Council for Beads Industry, Chairman of the Joint Labour Committee for Solicitors, Member of the Joint Labour Committee for the Creamery Industry, Member of the Council of the Statistical Society.

Irish Province News 33rd Year No 4 1958

Obituary :

Fr Edward J Coyne (1896-1958)

I want to set down in some detail the record of Fr. Ned Coyne's life because I think that the Province would be the poorer were the memory of him to grow dim. I shall attempt no contrived portrait; in an artless narrative I run, less risk of distortion. Indeed in a bid to avoid being painted in, false colours, Fr. Ned played with the idea of writing his own obituary notice; in the week following his operation he succeeded in dictating several fragments, but realising later on that they were written in the exultant mood that followed his acceptance of his death-sentence, he insisted that I should destroy them.
Edward Joseph Coyne was born in Dublin on 20th June, 1896. He was the eldest son, of W. P. Coyne, Professor of Political Economy in the old University College and founder-member of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. To mention these positions indicates at once the influence of father on son. As that influence ran deep, I must say something more of his father whose name lives on in U.C.D. in the Coyne Memorial Prize. Though struck down by cancer at a comparatively early age, W.P. had already made his mark both as an economist and an administrator, Gifted with a clear head and tireless industry, he was not content to remain master of his own science but read widely outside his professional field of economic and social studies. One aspect of his interests.is best illustrated by recalling a favourite saying of his : “the old philosophy will come back to us through Dante”; another aspect by the mention of his special competence in the art and literature of the Renaissance. When I add that W.P. frail of physique, possessed unusual powers of head and heart, of incisive exposition and innate sympathy, it will be indeed clear that Ned was very much his father's son. Were he now looking over my shoulder as I write, he would be quick to remind me of what he owed also to his gentle, sensitive mother of whose bravery as a young widow bringing up five children. he was so proud.
After a short period at Our Lady's Bower, Athlone, Ned was kept at home to be educated privately from the age of seven to twelve on account of his frail health, Next came the decisive influence of six and a half years in Clongowes which he entered in 1908. He was second to none in his generous appreciation of all that Clongowes had given him. He belonged to the fortunate generation that knew Clongowes in her hey-day in the years before the centenary : Fr. Jimmy Daly and Fr. "Tim” Fegan were at the height of their powers and were supported by a team of brilliant masters. If I single out one, the then Mr. Boyd Barrett, I do so for two reasons: from him Ned derived lasting inspiration in class-room and in the Clongowes Social Study Club; to him Ned gave a life-time's gratitude expressed by constant letters all through the “misty” years. And when he came to die, a letter from his old master cheered him greatly on a hard spell of the road. Anyone who turns up the Clongownians of his time will see the role he played in every part of school life. Fond as he was of books, his school career is not merely a long list of exhibitions and gold medals; he played out-half and won his “cap” of which he was proud, he kept wicket, he was second-captain of his line, he was the first secretary of the Clongowes Social Study Club which Mr. Boyd Barrett founded. In these pages I can but skim the surface of his life, but however brief the treatment I must find room for some quotations from his Union Prize Essay on “The Necessity of Social Education for Irishmen”, published in the 1914 Clongownian :
“It is sheer folly and shameful conceit for anyone to think he can remedy Ireland's social disorders without social education. There are very few really active workers in Ireland today; but these few are of more value than three times their number of 'social adventurers. For they are trained in the school of experience to have a definite knowledge of what they know and what they do not know. There is no room for social amateurs; if we want to succeed, we must be specialists and experts....
What we plead for is that all the great Catholic colleges of Ireland should start at once some system of social education, If they did so, we should have fifty or sixty young sons of Ireland coming forth each year, full of energy and fire, ready to take their proper places in the great social movements of today. The young men are the hope of France,' said Pius X, and the young men are the hope of Ireland too. The suggestion made recently by a learned Jesuit of having University diplomas for social work is certainly a very good one. But I would wish to begin earlier. It is not every schoolboy who goes to the Universities; many enter business or do some other work. I would have these trained for social work; trained well, too, in those vital questions which are now so much discussed.
That august and venerable College to which I have the honour to belong has taken up the task of social education for her children. It is to be hoped that many will follow her example.

On 31st August, 1914, he began his noviceship in Tullabeg under Fr. Martin. Maher; eleven others entered with him that day and all stayed the course. After the noviceship they remained in Tullabeg for a year's Juniorate which Fr. Ned always regarded as one of the most rewarding years of his life : Fr. Charlie Mulcahy, Fr. W. Byrne and Mr. H. Johnston gave them of their best.
In U.C.D. Fr. Ned read history and economics for his degree, taking first place in both subjects. He was the inspiration of a lively English Society that included Fr. Paddy O'Connor, Violet Connolly, Kate O'Brien, and Gerard Murphy among its members, and was auditor of the Classical Society in succession to Leo McAuley (now Ambassador to the Holy See) who in turn had succeeded the present President of U.C.D.
Moving across to Milltown Park for philosophy Fr. Coyne managed to combine with it fruitful work on a first-class M.A. thesis on Ireland's Internal Transport System. Next came three successful years in Belvedere : his pupils and a series of articles under the thinly-veiled name of N. Umis in the Irish Monthly provide the best evidence for his zest for teaching. He made his theology in Innsbruck, returning home for ordination in 1928. On completing his theology in Innsbruck, he made his tertianship in Munster in Westphalia under Fr. Walter Sierp, He divided his biennium between Rome and Paris, studying in the Gregorianum under Fr. Vermeersch and later in the Sorbonne and at the Action Populaire. He also spent three months at this period in Geneva at the International Labour Office,
On returning to Ireland he was posted to Tullabeg to teach ethics and cosmology. Those who sat at his feet found in him a professor of outstanding clarity, who had, besides, a rare gift of stimulating interest. In November, 1936, he was transferred to Milltown Park. It was not long before his influence began to be felt in various spheres. In due course he was appointed to the Moral Chair and by that time he was more than fully occupied. He did signal service as a member of the Commission on Vocational Organisation, appointed by the Government in 1939 to report on the practability of developing functional or vocational organisation, in Ireland. Ten years later he was named a member of the Commission on Population,
In 1940 he was elected Vice-President and in 1943 President of the I.A.O.S. From his first association with the society be took an intense interest in the co-operative movement; he knew the movement from every angle, legal, economic and above all, idealistic. He astonished the members of the many societies he visited over the years by his complete grasp of the technical problems involved. Some years ago he delivered an address in London at the annual general meeting of the Agricultural Central Co-operative Association of England which created an extraordinarily favourable impression and resulted in invitations to address a number of English co-ops. Even before his active association with the I.A.O.S. he had already been early in the field supporting Fr. John Hayes in the founding and developing of Muintir na Tire at whose Rural Weeks he was a frequent speaker,
Besides his interest in rural affairs, Fr. Coyne was also closely in touch with industrial problems; he was chairman of the Law Clerks Joint Labour Committee, of the National Joint Industrial Council for the Hotel and Catering Trades, and of the Joint Industrial Council for the Rosary Bead Industry
In 1949, Dr. Michael Tierney, President of University College, Dublin, invited him to organise an extra-mural department. Thanks to the generous co-operation of the members of the staff of U.C.D. and of many graduates, and to the enthusiastic support of leaders and members of the trade unions, this department has proved very successful. Before undertaking the organisation of the extra-mural courses, he had already laid the foundations of the work now so well developed by Fr. Kent and his confrères in the Catholic Workers' College.
So much for the external story. Though he lectured widely with rare clarity and power and wrote convincingly from time to time in the periodical press, Fr. Coyne may well be best remembered for his outstanding gifts of personal sympathy and insight which enabled him to guide and encourage men and women from surprisingly varied walks of life. Few men can have meant so much to so many. All through his illness one constantly stumbled upon some new kindness he had done unknown to anyone but the recipient; and after his death the striking sincerity of the tributes paid to him on all sides was convincing evidence of his superb gift for friendship. One and all found in him understanding and help given without stint with a charm and a graciousness that reflected the charity of his Master, Christ.
Those who made his eight-day retreat or who were formed by him in the class-room will recall his insistent harping on the need of integrity of mind. It is only right that I should say how acutely conscious he was of his own extreme sensitivity that made him petulant by times, and of his shyness which made him. often hold himself aloof. Best proof of all of his clear-sightedness was the occasion when he was playfully boasting to Fr. Nerney of his docility. Taking his queue from Buffon's “Cet animal est très mechant”, Fr. Nerney, with Fr. Ned's help, composed this epitaph, feeling his way delicately, as if trying out chords on a piano : “Le biffle est un animal très docile : il se laisse conduire partout ou il veut aller”. Fr. Coyne, with a self-knowledge and a humility that deserves to be put on record, often quoted that verdict, smiling wryly and beating his breast. As I watched him in his last sickness that phrase often rang through my head. On first hearing that his condition was hopeless, he was lyrically happy in the knowledge that he was going home to God. But as the weeks dragged on he began to see that the way he was being led home was one which humanly speaking he was loath to choose. In that familiaritas cum Deo which he commended so earnestly in his retreats, he won the immense courage which buoyed him up in the long weeks of humiliating discomfort so galling to his sensitive nature; however much, humanly speaking, he shrank from it, by God's grace he gladly accepted and endured, proving himself indeed completely docile to God's Will. May his great soul rest in peace.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Edward Coyne 1896-1958
In the death of Fr Ned Coyne, the Province lost one of its most brilliant, active and charming personalities that it has been blessed with for many a long year.

Born in Dublin in 1896, he was educated at Clongowes, and after a brilliant course of studies, entered the Noviceship in Tullabeg in 1914.

His career in the formative years as a Jesuit fulfilled the promise of his schooldays, culminating after his Tertianship in his specialising in Social Science at Rome and Paris.

After some years as Professor of Philosophy in Tullabeg, he moved to Dublin, filling the chair of Moral Theology at Milltown Park.

In 1950 he was elected President of the IACS, and took an intense interest in the Co-operative Movement, acquiring a complete grasp of the technical problems involved. He was a wholehearted backer of Canon Hayes and the Muintir na Tire movement, was closely associated with various labour organisations, and ran the Department for Extramural Studies at University College Dublin. He also laid the foundations for our own Catholic Workers College. All this while Professor of Moral Theology at Milltown.

A full life, a rich life – a spiritual life – for in spite of the multifarious occupations Fr Ned always managed to keep close to God and to maintain that “integrity of mind” he so often harped on in his retreats.

He had a rare gift for friendship, and rarely to such a man life would be sweet. Yet when sentence of death was announced he took it gladly. His heroism in his last illness is sufficient testimony to the spirituality of his intensely active life and to his own integrity of mind.

He died on May 22nd 1958 aged 62 years.

◆ The Clongownian, 1959

Obituary

Father Edward J Coyne SJ

Edward Joseph Coyne was born in Dublin 20th June, 1896. He was the eldest son of W P Coyne, Professor of Political Economy in the old University College and founder member of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. To mention these positions indicates at once the influence of father on son. As that influence ran deep, I must say something more of his father whose name lives on in UCD in the Coyne Memorial Prize. Though struck down by cancer at a comparatively early age, W P had already made his mark both as an economist and an administrator. Gifted with a clear head and tireless industry, he was not content to remain master of his own science but read widely outside his professional field of economic and social studies. One aspect of his interests is best illustrated by a recalling favourite saying of his: “the old philosophy will come back to us through Dante”; another aspect by the mention of his special competence in the art and literature of the Renaissance. When I add that W P frail of physique, possessed unusual powers of head and heart, of incisive exposition and innate sympathy, it will be indeed clear that Ned was very much his father's son. Were he now looking over my shoulder as I write, he would be quick to remind me of what he owed also to his gentle, sensitive mother of whose bravery as a young widow bringing up le children he was so proud.

After a short period at Our Lady's Bower, Athlone, Ned was kept at home to be educated privately from the age of seven to twelve on account of his frail health. Next the the decisive influence of six and a half years in Clongowes which he entered in 1908. He was second to none in his generous appreciation of all that Clongowes had given him. He belonged to the fortunate generation that knew Clongowes in her hey-day in the years before the centenary: Father Jimmy Daly and Father “Tim” Fegan were at the height of their powers and were supported by a team of brilliant masters. If I single out one, the then Mr Boyd Barrett, I do so for two reasons: from him Ned derived lasting inspiration in classroom and in the Clongowes Social Study Club; to him Ned gave a life time's gratitude expressed by constant letters all through the “misty” years. And when he came to die, a letter from his old master cheered him greatly on a hard spell of the road.

Anyone who turns up the “Clongownians” of his time will see the role he played in every part of school life. Fond as he was of books, his school career is not merely a long list of exhibitions and gold medals; he played out half and won his “cap” of which he was proud, he kept wicket, he was second-captain of his Line, he was the first secretary of the Clongowes Social Study Club which Mr. Boyd Barrett founded. In these pages I can but skim the surface of his life, but however brief the treatment I must find room for some quotations from his Union Prize Essay on “The Necessity of Social Education for Irishmen”, published in the 1914 “Clongownian”:

It is sheer folly and shameful conceit for anyone to think he can remedy Ireland's social disorders without social education. There are very few really active workers in Ireland today; but these few are of more value than three times their number of “social adventurers”. For they are trained in the school of experience to have a definite knowledge of what they know and what they do not know. There is no room for social amateurs; if we want to succeed, we must be specialists and experts.....

What we plead for is that all the great Catholic colleges of Ireland should start at once some system of social education. If they did so, we should have fifty or sixty young sons of Ireland coming forth each year, full of energy and fire, ready to take their proper places in the great social movements of today. The young men are the hope of France, said Pius X, and the young men are the hope of Ireland too. The suggestion made recently by a learned Jesuit of having University diplomas for social work is certainly a very good one. But I would wish to begin earlier. It is not every schoolboy who goes to the Universities; many enter business or do some other work. I would have these trained for social work; trained well, too, in those vital questions which are now so much discussed....

The august and venerable College to which I have the honour to belong has taken up the task of social education for her children. It is to be hoped that many
will follow her example....”

When you link up those lines written in 1914 with the work he did in the last decade of his life, you see immediately how his life was all of a piece, how indeed the boy was “father of the man”.

On 31st August, 1914, he began his noviceship in Tullabeg under Father Martin Maher; eleven others entered with him that day and all stayed the course. After the noviceship they remained in Tullabeg for a year's Juniorate which Father Ned always regarded as one of the most rewarding years of his life: Father Charlie Mulcahy, Father W Byrne and Mr H Johnston gave them of their best.

In UCD Father Ned read history and economics for his degree, taking first place in both subjects. He was the inspiration of a lively English Society that included Father Paddy O'Connor, Violet Connolly, Kate O'Brien and Gerard Murphy among its members, and was auditor of the Classical Society in succession to Leo McAuley (now Ambassador to the Holy See) who in turn had succeeded the present President of UCD.

Moving across to Milltown Park for philosophy Father Coyne managed to combine with it fruitful work on a first-class MA thesis on “Ireland's Internal Transport System”. Next came three successful years in Belvedere: his pupils and a series of articles under the thinly-veiled name of “N Umis” in the “Irish Monthly” provide the best evidence for his zest for teaching. He made his theology in Innsbruck, returning home for ordination in 1928. On completing his theology in Innsbruck, he made his tertianship in Münster in Westphalia under Father Walter Sierp. He divided his biennium between Rome and Paris, studying in the Gregorium under Father Vermeersch and later in the Sorbonne and at the Action Populaire. He also spent three months at this period in Geneva at the International Labour Office.

On returning to Ireland he was posted to Tullabeg to teach ethics and cosmology. Those who sat at his feet found in him a professor of outstanding clarity, who had, besides, a rare gift of stimulating interest. In November, 1936, he was transferred to: Milltown Park. It was not long before his influence began to be felt in various spheres. In due course he was appointed to the Moral Chair and by that time he was more than fully occupied. He did signal service as a member of the “Commission on Vocational Organisation”, appointed by the Government in 1939 to report on the practability of developing functional or vocational organisation in Ireland. Ten years later he was named a member of the “Commission on Population”.

Father Coyne was also closely in touch with industrial problems; he was chairman of the “Law Clerks Joint Labour Committee”, of the “National Joint Industrial Council for the Hotel and Catering Trades”, and of the “Joint Industrial Council for the Rosary Bead Industry”. After his death messages of sympathy were received from many trade unions, amongst others: The National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association, Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, Workers' Union of Ireland, Congress of Irish Unions, The Irish Union of Distributive Workers and Clerks, Post Office Workers' Union, National Executive of the Irish Post Office Engineering Union, The Provisional United Trade Union Organisation, Marine Port and General Workers' Union, and the Irish Bookbinders' Union.

So much for the external story. Though he lectured widely with rare clarity and power and wrote convincingly from time to time in the periodical press, Father Coyne may well be best remembered for his outstanding gifts of personal sympathy and insight which enabled him to guide and encourage men and women from surprisingly varied walks of life. Few men can have meant so much to so many. All through his illness one constantly stumbled upon some new kindness he had done unknown to anyone but the recipient; and after his death the striking sincertity of the tributes paid to him on all sides was convincing evidence of his superb gift for friendship. One and all found in him understanding and help given without stint with a charm and a graciousness that reflected the charity of his Master, Christ.

RBS

-oOo-

Ned was one who liked to count his blessings. Among these, his grateful nature valued especially the happy home of his childhood and the last pre-war years at Clongowes. He loved Clongowes. He often spoke of the security and confidence and hopes these years had held. It is true that the latter half of his school life saw the most bitter economic struggle Ireland has known since the Land League and the re-birth in controversy and schism of the policy of physical force as a political weapon. He was not unaware of these things, but their implications were not clear enough to daunt a fighting spirit and, as we shall see, they rather stimulated than oppressed him. He was never an angry young man and like most of his tragic generation of young men, he foresaw in his schooldays little of wbat has since happened.

He was at Clongowes from 1908 to 1914 - the full six years and each year with its victories and its successes seemed to be prelude to the fitting end, the happy sunshine of the Centenary Celebration. On his death bed, Ned could recall details of those June days of carnival and triumph. Less than two months later the first of all world wars had begun, but that lay in an unguessed-at future.

Ned also liked to believe that he belonged to a remarkable generation of Clongowes boys. He had as classmates and rivals for the Imperatorship of Rhetoric (successful rivals, be it said) such men as John Gilligan and Louis Carroll, both destined to bear back bright to the Coiner the mark of the mint, and many others not less gifted were his class mates: Father Hugo Kerr and Father Arthur Little, as well as Mr Justice Sheil and Mr Alban O'Kelly.

Of course it was not only among his classmates that he had friends and companions. To one of these, destined to the most dis tinguished future of all that group, he spoke on his death-bed of his pride and privilege in having rubbed shoulders on gallery, class room and playing-field all unawares with so many fine men in the making. Yet it is not too much to say that of all that galaxy, his star shone even then with a unique lustre.

He had, literally, all the qualities of the ideal schoolboy. His physique was graceful, if slight, his looks bright and cheerful. If he was certainly no Hercules, he had quite remarkable gifts as an athlete. He won the Backs cap for Rugby, playing on a side that included future internationals. He kept wicket and goal for Cricket and Soccer elevens. His skill matched his courage and his dash, but all the time one was conscious that he played games, so to speak, with his left hand. An intimate school friend, who sat beside him in the refectory, could not recall his ever talking about games and was not surprised when after Ned's death he mentioned his outstanding prowess to a niece, to be met with the reply: “But was Father Ned good at games?” It was no pose on his part to get a companion to stand by the Soccer goal-posts when he was “keeping” in a big match and when play drifted up-field to read for their discussion bits of the poets. He was then in love with Thompson, Browning and Belloc.

He comes back to the eye of memory with a book always under his arm, but it would be a mistake to think of him as a book-worm, still less as an academic pot-hunter. He collected each year his exhibitions, often duplicate ones, his medals in English and History and all the highest Clongowes honours except the Palles Medal. Religious Knowledge twice, the first time from Poetry year, the Prize Essay, the Debate. He was an honours mathematician and first-rank Grecian. At the University, in First Arts, he was to take six subjects and be first in four and second in two, and in Clongowes his range was much wider than the class-room demanded. Literature, history, religion, even the unlikely by-paths of aesthetics or the infant science of psychology were as likely to be topics of his talk as school gossip or current events. But he was never anything of a prig. Already he had at his command a prompt and sharp sword of repartee. And it must be admitted that he had a temper. He did not lose it often; it only came when provoked or even justified, but it was frightening, quite devastating and sometimes ferocious. This quality, I think, disappeared completely and at once in the Jesuit, and the older man was ashamed even of the occasional sharpness of his tongue. That was to be expected, for even as a boy, thc formation of his character was Ned's conscious aim and his integrity (a word he loved) was already remarkable. He was not only twice Line Captain but a Sodality Prefect, and from his Third Line days he and all his friends took it for granted that he would be a Jesuit.

The boy is father to the priest and perhaps it is in view of the work of his mature years that two elements of his schooldays seem especially memorable. Among the boys his was certainly the inspiration in a quite new development, the birth, as we might call it, of a social conscience, In holidays he gave a good deal of his time to practical work, especially in the first of all Boys Clubs in Dublin, that run by another Old Clongownian, Dr. Lombard Murphy, At school he was secretary and leader of the newly-founded Social Study Club. During the Centenary Celebration the club showed its paces and its secretary read a paper at a special meeting. The subject was of his own choosing: The Patriotism of Social Work. He was in future years to address many distinguished gather ings, but, as one of his friends liked to remind him, none more so than this one. The cardinal, seven bishops, the national leaders in politics, law and medicine came, perhaps to hear his father's son, but certainly to hear as balanced, as lucid and as noble an appeal as any schoolboy could be expected to make. It was characteristically his own thought and had not even been read by any of his friends in the Community.

If one incident in his Clongowes career lives in the memory of those who were with him it must surely be a night when the Higher Line Debate met under the flaring gas-jets of the Higher Line Gallery. The motion asked for support for the Irish Volunteers and the boys were to hear both Tom and Laurence Kettle make worthy speeches; but surely the night's honours fell to a boy. In lucid, simple speech, such as he was to use on hundreds of platforms to audiences learned and unlearned, he developed his theme. But then, throwing down his few notes, he said slowly: “I have appealed to your heads; I would rather trust your hearts”. In a couple of minutes he had voiced for us all just those aspirations to which the country was awakening, a passionate love of Ireland and a passionate love of liberty.

Yes, the social worker, the speaker - he perhaps came to eschew oratory but never lost his power to move - were already there, and there too was the third quality in the man we have lost. It is impossible to express his gift for friendship, his cult of it, and perhaps still less all he has meant to so many friends. But those who knew him best in Clongowes do not think of the athlete, the wit, the orator, the scholar or even the leader, but of their friend-for ever.

Two men were probably responsible for directing the varied and outstanding talents of young Edward Coyne into the field of social and economic studies. He was a son of William P Coyne, Professor of Political Economy in the old University College, Dublin. When his father died, the young schoolboy came under the influence of Father Thomas Finlay SJ, himself an experienced economist and later Professor of National Economics at University College, Dublin, Two such men could not fail to inspire the talented boy towards that branch of knowledge in which each had attained such eminence. His interest in Ireland's social and economic problems were further stimulated by individual masters and school companions. Both he and they took a lively interest in the Dublin labour troubles of 1912-13. In his final year at Clongowes, 1913-14, he was among the founder-members of the Clongowes Social Study Club, a society which gave the boys of those years the opportunity to learn and discuss some of the grave social problems of the day. The Dublin members of the club sacrificed a goodly portion of their Christmas and Easter holidays to visit boys' clubs, night shelters, hospitals and the homes of the poor and destitute. This study and experience gave the young Edward Coyne much food for thought. In “The Clongownian” of 1914 we find him setting down his thoughts in an essay on “The Necessity of Social Education” which won for him the Clongowes Union Silver Medal. This essay reveals a mature understanding of the gravity of the social problems of those days. His own studies and experiences had already convinced him that education had an important and necessary role to play in solving such problems. Moreover, he asserted then that the social teaching of the Church was, as Pope Pius XII was later to say, “the only teaching capable of remedying the widespread evils existing in social life”. A lifetime of study and experience only served to convince him of the correctness and wisdom of his schoolboy convictions.

He entered the Noviceship of the Society of Jesus, as has been said, in September, 1914. Of the nineteen years that followed, six were devoted to special studies in sociology and economics at first in Ireland and later in Rome, Paris and Geneva. He returned to Ireland in 1933 and from then until his untimely death in 1958 he placed his knowledge of the social sciences at the disposal of countless individuals, clerical and lay, government commissions, public boards, trade unions, industrial committees and Co-Operative societies. No person or group was unimportant in his eyes and he availed of every opportunity-private con sultations, public lectures and discussions and lucid articles in “Irish Monthly” and “Studies” - to relate the social teaching of the Church to the problems of the times. His was a busy life, a life spent in the service of his fellowmen, a life modelled on that of his divine Master, Who came into our world not to be served but to serve.

His studies led him to realise the impor tance of agriculture in Irish economic and social life. From the start, he supported the late Canon Hayes in developing Muintir na Tire. And, following in the footsteps of his boyhood guide and friend, the late Father Thomas Finlay SJ, he took a keen interest in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, of which he was president from 1943 until his death. He came to know this co-operative movement from every angle-legal, economic and above all, idealistic. In so far as the many calls on his time would allow, he visited and spoke to the members of co-operative societies in many parts of Ireland. At the same time he was not unmindful of the needs and problems of Irish industry. He served for many years on Joint Industrial Councils and other bodies connected with industrial life. Businessmen and trade union officials frequently consulted him about their many problems and all found in him a wise counsellor and sympathetic friend.

But despite his varied interests and activities, he did not lose sight of the subject of education as a basis for social reform and economic progress, a subject which had held his attention since his days at Clongowes. In the mid-thirties, we find him taking a prominent part in the Clongowes Social Summer School. A little later he is collaborat ing with Dublin Legionaries of Mary in organising social study groups in the City of Dublin. Towards the end of the second world war, we find him in the company of the late Father Joseph Canavan SJ and Father Thomas Counihan SJ, planning for a more permanent educational institution for social studies. This led to his founding the Catholic Workers' College in 1948. Today, as it enters on its second decade, the college, which he founded, is staffed by seven Jesuit priests and two Jesuit Brothers who are assisted by the voluntary labours of twenty-four lay lecturers; there are over one thousand students on its rolls; and it is housed in specially designed, modern buildings. It will remain for future as a lasting monument to his wisdom and courage. Nor is this the only legacy he bequeathed to his fellow countrymen in the field of social education. In 1949, at the request of Dr Michael Tierney, President of University College, Dublin, he organised the University College Extra-Mural Courses in Social and Economic Studies and in the Liberal Arts. These courses later spread to the towns of Leinster. He personally super vised this work and found time to visit the provincial centres and encourage both teachers and students alike. He was Director of this important work until he died.

As one who was privileged to work with him in the later years of his life, the writer of these lines can testify that all this varied activity was possible only because he was prepared to work from early morning until late at night all the year round. He was a worker, but he was much more. He was, first and last, a religious man, a man of prayer who brought to all his activities a deep spirit of Christian idealism. He saw his daily work, not merely as a service to his countrymen, but as his way of serving God. His lively faith and deep insight into the true meaning of life, personal and social, inspired all his activities and enabled him to “keep going” when many a more robust man would have cried “enough”. Considerate for others, he did not spare himself where work was concerned. In his case, as in the case of his divine Master, it is a question of where one man has sown, others have reaped, Those who carry on the work he started, are ever mindful of the debt they owe him. Father Edward Coyne has passed to his eternal reward but his memory and ideals live on in the minds and hearts of countless men and women. May his great soul rest in peace.

EK

Born: 28 April 1889, Dunmore, County Galway
Entered: 07 September 1906, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 15 August 1922, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1926, Chiesa del Gesù, Rome, Italy
Died: 17 March 1978, Milltown Park, Dublin - Zambiae Province (ZAM)

Transcribed : HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

Father was an Inspector of National Schools under the National Education Board for Ireland and currently lives in Waterford.

Eldest of four brothers and five sisters.

Uncle of Jimmy McPolin - RIP 2005 and John Russell (CHN) - RIP 2023

Early education at Tralee and then at the Seminary there. Then he went to St Patrick’s College Cavan. Then he moved to Christian Brothers College Cork and Clongowes Wood College SJ
Studied for an MA in Classics at UCD and awarded a Studentship in 1912-1913

by 1914 at Innsbruck Austria (ASR-HUN) studying
by 1919 at Nowy Sącz Collège, Poland (GALI) studying
by 1925 at Baexem, Limburg, Netherlands (GER I) making Tertianship
by 1927 at Rome Italy (ROM) Socius English Assistant (Substitute English Assistant)
by 1966 at Loyola Lusaka (POL Mi) Diocesan Archivist

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Fr John Coyne was born in Dromore, Co Galway, Ireland on 28th April 1889, where both his father and mother were teachers. Within a couple of years, his father became an inspector of schools and as a young inspector he was kept on the move: after a period in Dublin he was posted to Tralee, then to Cavan and then on to Cork in 1902. After three years with the Christian Brothers in Cork, John came to Clongowes in 1905.

He entered the Society in Tullabeg on the 7th September 1906. After vows, he attended the university taking a classics degree, also taking an M.A. in 1912. He won a traveling scholarship and was posted to Innsbruck in Austria. Later he moved to Vienna as the First World War had broken out. Then he went on to Poland for a year to Nowy Sacz to prepare for his final philosophical examination. Returning to Ireland, he completed his studies and was ordained priest on 15 August 1922.

Assigned to Rome after tertianship, he became substitute secretary to the English Assistant from 1925 to 1929. Fr Wladimir Ledochowski, the General of the Jesuits, told him that he had learned as much in the Curia as he was likely to learn and that he was sending him back to Ireland to become rector of Belvedere College in Dublin.

He was master of novices from 1931 to 1934. One of his novices said of him later, "I think it would not be unfair to describe Fr John as a Christian stoic rather than as a Christian humanist".

Then came a long period of 24 years (1935 to 1959) as socius to the provincial, not just to one Provincial but to four of them – Frs L Kieran, J R Mac Mahon, T Byrne and L O’Grady (who for reasons of health and temperament 'left Province decisions rest far too much on his socius, Fr John'). He worked for a few years in Gardiner Street Church after being socius.

In 1964 at the age of 75, he accepted an invitation of the Polish Archbishop Kozlowiecki of Lusaka to come and set the diocesan archives in order. Though his provincial suggested a stay of six months, Fr John spent about 8 years in Zambia.

Returning to Ireland, he spent a lot of time translating works of German into English. He was prevailed upon to write his memoirs. 'Memoirs of a Jesuit priest 1906 to 1977: Grafted on the Olive Tree’. He died a year after this on 17 March 1978 in Dublin.

Of Fr Coyne’s time in Zambia, Fr Max Prokoph writes:
‘In spite of his age, he tried to make himself useful in every way possible. For a man who had a finger in every pie in his home province for so many years, it was quite remarkable that he never tried to interfere in the province of his adoption, but spent his time in all sorts of projects for which a younger person would neither have the time nor the inclination. Having put the archives of the Lusaka Archdiocese in order and separated what belonged to the newly erected diocese of Monze (1962). He got down to gathering material for a history of the mission in the days of the Zambesi Mission. Since there was only one full-time priest available for the parish of St Ignatius (Fr Des 0’Loghlen) he gave a hand wherever he could, in the confessional, extra Masses, keeping the parish registers and not least by regular systematic parish visiting, house by house, as far as he could get on foot, perhaps the most systematic visiting the neighbourhood ever had. Quite a few were brought back to the church’.

Fr Michael Moloney writes:
‘Fr Coyne took a very keen interest in what Jesuits had done in Zambia since the coming of Frs Moreau and Torrend for whom he had a deep admiration. Admiration for people who did "great things for Christ" was a permanent attitude of his. His standard for a Jesuit was that he should be "a saint, a scholar and a gentleman" and he clearly tried to exemplify that in his own life. He was a kindly man yet at the same time a puzzle to many. Many wondered what "the real John Coyne was like" because externally he seemed to be set in a conventional spiritual mould and to be rather formal in much of his behaviour, so much so that one cannot escape the conclusion that he was a man with a conflict between his personality traits and what he considered Jesuit spirituality demanded of him. In Zambia he was faithful to his afternoon stroll during which he would meet people and through which he made some friends whose hospitality he was pleased to accept".

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 6th Year No 1 1931
Brussels Congress :
Fr. Rector (John Coyne) and Fr. J. O'Meara (Louvain) represented the College at the First International Congress of Catholic Secondary Education, held at Brussels July 28 . August 2. Fr, O'Meara read a paper on State Aid in Irish Secondary Education. Our Irish Jesuit Colleges were well represented in the Exhibition organised by Fr. Corcoran S. J.

Irish Province News 34th Year No 4 1959

GENERAL
On 17th June Very Reverend Fr. General appointed Fr. Brendan Barry as Socius to Fr. Provincial in succession to Father John Coyne. Thus came to an end a term of office which had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century. This surely must be an easy record. Many members of the Province had known no other Socius and some of the younger generation might not have been able to name any of Fr. Coyne's predecessors. Provincials might come and go but Fr. Coyne remained, an abiding element in a changing world. In all, he worked under four Provincials; Fr. Kieran, during whose period of office he became Socius (22nd February, 1935), Fr. J. R. MacMahon, Fr. T. Byrne and Fr. M. O’Grady. On more than one occasion he deputised as Vice-Provincial. He had come to be regarded as an almost indispensable appendage of government, and then in June the appointment of a new Fr. Socius came as a reminder that even Socii are, after all, subject to the law of mutability.
At the celebration of his golden jubilee in 1956, Fr. Coyne said that his career in the Society had been a series of false starts and changes of direction. But these seemingly false starts, his interrupted classical studies, his years as Substitute to the English Assistant, as Rector of Belvedere and as Master of Novices were preparing him for what was to be the great work of his life. These experiences gave him an understanding of the day-to-day business of the government of the Society and of individual houses, and, of course, his impeccable Latin prose and mastery of curial style. At the same jubilee celebrations the Provincial for the time being and two former Provincials paid tribute to his skill in the dispatch of business, his loyalty, generosity and other personal qualities. To these the Province may add: his courtesy, tact, sympathy and good sense. The timid or diffident who considered a personal interview with Fr. Provincial too formidable found in Fr. Coyne the perfect intermediary. To all who had permissions to ask or MSS. for censorship or other small business to transact he was always approachable and gracious. The province takes this opportunity of thanking him and of expressing its admiration, Not to say amazement, at the cheerfulness with which year after year he went about the infinity of his important but monotonous tasks. It also extends a warm welcome to Fr. Barry in his new work.

Irish Province News 53rd Year No 3 1978

Obituary :

Fr John Coyne (1889-1978)

Father John Coyne was born in Dunmore, Co. Galway on 28 April 1889 where both his father and mother were teaching. Within a couple of years his father became an inspector of schools, and as a young inspector he was kept on the move: after a brief spell in Dublin he was posted to Tralee, then Cavan and then in 1902 to Cork. After three years with the Christian Brothers on Patrick’s Hill, John came to Clongowes in 1905. He used to say that he felt the first feeble stirrings of vocation while in St Patrick’s College, Cavan, but that the call was peremptory one night in his cubicle in Clongowes when he felt “visited” by an overpowering grace of God: “a wave of deep peace and brightest light flooded my soul to its deepest”.
Two aspects of his youth will surprise those of us who came to know him only after his curial training in Rome: his mother whose parents were English found her favourite reading in John Mitchell's “Jail Journal”; secondly one of the greatest disappointments of his youth was in losing the Junior Munster Final, in which he played as a forward, to Presentation College when at the last moment a sturdy Presentation full-back dropped a goal from half-way which soared between the posts. That he took exhibitions, medals and prizes in his stride is what one expects; his father used to con a chapter of St Luke’s Greek with him every Sunday.
Though only one year in Clongowes he was much in luck to find among his masters four scholastics: Tim Corcoran, Charlie Mulcahy, Patrick Connolly and William O’Keeffe. Among his classmates in that year’s Rhetoric were Paddy McGilligan, Tom Arkins, Tom O'Malley and J B O'Connell, later to become an authority on matters liturgical. Paddy McGilliagan beat him by 25 marks for a medal in Latin.
When he decided to offer himself to the Society the then Provincial, Father John S Conmee, began his chat in this way: “Well John, what makes you want to join the ‘crafties’: that is how Dublin priest speak of us?” Later Father Conmee visited I Rhetoric during Latin class, and John was asked to construe “O fons Bandusiae”.
In the following September eight novices turned up in Tullabeg: among them Hugh Kelly from Westport, John Deevy from Waterford, Henry Johnson from Belfast, Michael Meeney from Limerick, Denis Nerney and John from Cork. In Tullabeg for a year and a half Father James Murphy was his novice master: John liked to tell how Father Murphy, like an Old Testament Prophet, summoned all his novices round his bed, recalling for the last time the great principles of Ignatian spirituality by which his novices were to live. Father Murphy died on 28th March 1908, and his Socius, Fr Tighe took over until Father Michael Browne was appointed in August,
After his first vows on 8 September 1908, he and his fellows moved to another table and wore their birettas. For his first two years he was coached by Fr John Keane and Mr Dan Finn in Tullabeg, going to Dublin only to sit for the Royal University exams. In his third year 86 St Stephen's Green had become the Dublin College of the new National University, so the Juniors moved up to Milltown. His Greek Professor was Father Henry Browne and for Latin Paddy Semple.
He took his MA In 1912: his thesis dealt with Hellenism as a force in Eastern life and thought; he spent most of this year in Trinity Library as facilities in 86 were understandably limited. He spent the Christmas term teaching English and Latin in Belvedere, but early in the new year Father T V Nolan, recently appointed Provincial, sent him back to Milltown to prepare himself for the travelling studentship in Classics coming up in the following September.
John won the studentship and was posted to Innsbruck. By a stroke of luck he met on the Holyhead boat the extern examiner for his thesis and his oral, Professor J S Reid, a notable Ciceronian scholar; generously the Professor gave him a letter of introduction to Professor Rudolf von Scala in Innsbruck, chief expert on Polybius, the Greek historian of Rome. Scala gave him a warm welcome, the run of his library and welcome to his lectures. With disappointment on John’s part he suggested as the subject of his Bodenpreise (Ground Rents). As sources for his thesis in Innsbruck were thin, John moved to Munich after Christmas where there was a flourishing centre for the study of papyri under the direction of an Austrian named Wenger. Occasionally Wenger invited small groups to his home for a beer evening where his wife proved a charming hostess. Here he used to meet from time to time Hermann Grisar, then the authority on Luther, and Peter Lippart.
Summer vacation drew him back to Innsbruck; fortunately he had a fortnight's villa before the war broke out. The Jesuits undertook care of the wounded, beginning to trickle back from the Serbian front. With a crash course from a Viennese doctor, they took over a large building to serve as a hospital. In May 1915 British subjects had to get out of Innsbruck as Italy had entered the war and was planning to force the Brenner Pass. Three Irish Jesuits Fr Tim Halpin, recently ordained, John and Dan Finn made their way to Vienna.
John was drafted to Kalksburg, where he spent three years as a spare tyre: “parratus ad omnia” as he loved to quote to us, novices. One year on returning from Christmas holidays Prince Liechtenstein brought the mumps with him; spreading through the school rapidly some 150 boys were affected. As the Brothers had all been called to the colours, John spent from January to May as a nurse: more serious were one case of scarlatina, one of typhoid, and the most critically ill of all was the Archduke Godfrey of Salsburg down with serious pneumonia. Trying enough as the nursing with its broken nights was, John preferred it to being gallery prefect, sitting in a glass box, regulating traffic, ringing bells or covering a sick or weary prefect’s beat. Sanctions were difficult: no corporal punishment to deter slackers or offenders-only detention or, for the younger boys, putting them in the booby corner. One Pole, called the Black Prince because of his dark features, had been recalled from an English public school and found Kalksburg considerably more to his liking,
His next move was to Poland to finish his philosophy at Nowy Sacz (now Sardac), a town two hours journey south of Cracow. His main task was to prepare for his “de universa”, and in keeping with Jesuit custom, to learn the language of the house of studies in which he lived: this time a Slav language.
On returning from Poland he taught in Clongowes for the year 1919-20, and liked to tell that one of his boys later broke his gavel in a vain attempt to stem Kruschev’s eloquence at UNO in New York - and subsequently became the first Catholic Chancellor of Trinity.
In the Autumn of 1920 he went to Milltown for theology: by a war-time privilege he was ordained at the end of his second year on 15 August 1922. After two more years in theology he went to Exaten in eastern Holland to do his tertianship in a German community (1924-5).
On the status of 1925 he was assigned to study Scripture in Rome but at the last moment he was asked to fill a gap by becoming substitute secretary to the English Assistant, Fr Joseph Welsby, previously Tertian instructor in Tullabeg. For his first year and a half he lived in the German College while the new curia on the Borgo Santo Spirito was being built. He quickly learned the “stylus Curiae” and after three years Fr Wladimir Ledochowski, the General, told him that he had learned as much in the Curia as he was likely to learn and that he was sending him back to Ireland to become Rector of Belvedere.
Fr Martin Maher, a long-time novice master, was beginning to fail and John was appointed to replace him in the Spring of 1931. The present writer entered the noviceship the following September; we were the only group to have him alone for our master. He was a dedicated Ledochowski man, as indeed was his then Provincial, Fr Larry Kieran, whose contact with Fr General was 99% epistolatry. Fr John had an outstanding devotion to Our Lord, at times over emotional in its expression; eager to tell us that we had not real Ignatian indifference unless we kept one foot in the air; insistent on the 'magis' of the Exercises which meant his novices must be grounded in “agere contra”, and, at least, have a desire to live in the third degree. I think it would not be unfair to describe him as a Christian stoic rather than as a Christian humanist. His war-time experiences had taken a great deal out of him and one sensed the strain. Many of us found it difficult to feel relaxed in our regular visits to him: we waited for an opening as he gazed out the window at Dairy hill and played rather nervously with a paper knife. He found “priming the pump” difficult.
Not that he was inhuman but he didn't believe in showing that side to his novices. He did to his Provincial when he wrote to say that, for days on end, apart from the Community, all he ever saw was the postman and, occasionally, a stray dog. A few months break from Emo towards the end of 1933 didn't help to reduce the tension under which he was living; he was simple and humble enough to ask his Provincial to accept his resignation.
If his first three appointments were each three years long, his next one was to last almost twenty-five years: February 1935 until mid June 1959. Over that span he served as Socius to four Provincials. I think he would like to be described as “idus Achates”; but a Socius in the Society is much more than a secretary; ex officio he is one of the four Province consultors. In Fr Kieran’s reign both he and his Socius were too like-minded. Though Fr Kieran met Fr Ledochowski only once in the General Congregation of 1938, from his appointment as Provincial in 1931 he was an all-out Ledochowski man: “actio in distans non repugnat”. His successor in the difficult war years, Fr John R MacMahon, knew his own mind as did his successor Fr Tommy Byrne who founded three houses and took on commitments in Northern Rhodesia - the Zambia of today. Father Louis O’Grady, for reasons of health and temperament, left Province decisions rest far too much on his Socius, Father John.
On retiring from his unselfish devotion to a typewriter for twenty five years, from letters and forms to Rome, from Collecting informations for fitness for Hong Kong or Zambia, for suitability for ordinations, and for government, and, perhaps, most tedious of all, bringing out the annual “Catalogus”, he was posted to Gardiner Street as operarius. Even as Socius pastoral work appealed to him: for years he guided two praesidia of the Legion of Mary, his first experience of it being in Rome when an ecumenical praesidium was formed in the mid-twenties: it didn't last long as the non-Catholics couldn't stomach the rigidity of the Handbook. He struck up a real friendship with Paddy Reynolds, Lord Wicklow's astute partner in Clonmore and Reynolds. Though Paddy had a heart of gold, in language he’d outdo any trooper. As a result John translated a number of German books which, to his delight, Reynolds managed to sell- despite the fact that John had a taste for the “turgid” German.
Five years later (1964) carrying out what he had taught us in Emo, the “magis” of the Exercises, he accepted the invitation of the Polish Archbishop of Lusaka to set the Mission Archives in order. Though his Provincial, Fr Charlie O'Connor, suggested a stay of six months, John, apart from one furlough, spent almost ten years in Zambia where he wished to leave his bones.
By 1966 a new presbytery had been built adjoining the modern Church of St Ignatius. With his work on the archives completed he joined the Irish parish community, taking on the duties of a curate at the age of 77: baptisms, marriages, pre-marriage courses, keeping the parish registers. As most of the community was working outside the house, he acted as porter, answered the phone, dealt with callers. One of the Community - no great admirer of John in his Socius days - prevailed on him to take a glass of grog every night, and so he learned to relax.
Returning to Zambia in 1969 after a break in Ireland, he was able to spend four days in Greece - from the human point of view the highlight of his life. Less than three years later he had to return to Ireland on stringent medical advice, but he refused to hang up his boots. Between bouts in hospital he continued translation work, was no “laudator temporis acti” but had a warm welcome, a keen interest in the theologians whose régime was so different to what he had experienced when Fr Peter Finlay and Matt Devitt were the stars in his student days (1920-1924).
May the Lord reward him for his enthusiasm and generosity; may he win for his two Jesuit nephews of whom he was so proud, for his three sisters and all the family, abundant grace.
RBS.
PS. For most of the facts in this notice I have drawn from a sixty-one page typescript which Father John was prevailed upon to write in his last year in Milltown (1977): It is, in the main, Province history with little personal comment and remarkably restrained in passing judgments “discreta caritas”. (RBS).

◆ The Clongownian, 1978

Obituary

Father John Coyne SJ

John Coyne had moved round Ireland more than most of hie generation when he joined Rhetoric in September 1905; His father was an Inspector of Schools, so John Moved from Dunmore to Dublin, then to Tralee, next to Cavan and finally to Cork. His contemporaries in class included Paddy McGilligan, Tom Arkins, Canon J B O'Connell and Tom O'Malley who moved furthest afield to Malaya, as it then was. A formidable team of Scholastics stretched them to good effect: Messrs Tim Corcoran, Charlie Mulcahy, Patrick Connolly and William O'Keeffe. Paddy McGilligan beat John for the Latin medal by 25 marks.

One readily associates exhibitions, medals, prizes, even a travelling studentship with Fr John, but it will come as a surprise to those who knew him in later life that one of the greatest disappointments of his youth was when as a dashing forward the Munster Schools Junior Cup was snatched from his team when at the last moment the Pres full back dropped a goal from half way.

As a young Jesuit he had rather a unique travelling studentship: he spent his first term in Innsbruck, after Christmas moved to Munich, and was lucky enough to have a fortnight's holiday in the Austrian Alps before war broke out. Until Italy entered the war in May 1915 he worked in a make-shift hospital the Jesuits set up in Innsbruck, but with the Italians forcing the Brenner Pass he had to move to Vienna, and then to Poland for three years in Nowy Sacz, south of Cracow. On returning from Poland he taught for a year in Clongowes (1919-20). After four years Theology in Milltown he did his Tertianship in Exaten in eastern Holland.

Destined for Scripture study in Rome, at the last minute he was switched to a secretarial post in the Jesuit Curia. Three years later he was sent back to Ireland as Rector of Belvedere; then he was named Novice-master at Emo. So many switches were to be followed by an unprecedented stint of almost 25 years as Socius to four Provincials.

At the age of 75 he went out to Lusaka and spent almost ten years in Zambia. He came home on stringent medical advice but, though two or three times at death's door, he continued to keep alert and, more than occupied, in his favourite hobby, translating from German. He died within a few months of his eighty-ninth birthday, quite at home in the world of post-Vatican II.

We offer our sympathy especially to his three sorrowing sisters and all his family, not forgetting his nephew Fr John Russell SJ (OC 1941-43) who has recently completed his term as Vice-Provincial of Hong Kong.

Born: 24 January 1894, County Galway
Entered: 01 September 1918, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Left Society of Jesus: 31 May 1927

Born: 27 January 1917, Ballyvaughan, County Clare
Entered: 29 September 1947, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1957, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1960, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 07 February 1999, Sacred Heart community, Limerick City

His father was a retired National School teacher and remained living in Ballyvaughan with his step-brothers. He lived with his mother, brothers and sisters at Edenvale Road, Ranelagh, Dublin.

He is the eldest of seven boys (1 deceased) with three sisters.

After leaving his father’s school he went to St Joseph’s College (Garbally) Ballinasloe 1930-1935. He achieved an Entrance Scholarship to UCG where he intended to do Arts with a view to Secondary Teaching. However, he went into the Civil Service in 1936, having passed the Junior Executive exam, and spent eleven years working in a variety of jobs at the Departments of Finance and Industry & Commerce. In June 1940 he was awarded a BA at UCD.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 101 : Special Edition 1999

Obituary

Fr Richard Coyne (1917-1999)

27th Jan 1917: Born at Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare
Early education: St. Joseph's, Ballinasloe, Galway, up to Leaving Cert, and scholarship.
31st July 1957: Ordained priest at Milltown Park
1958 - 1959: Rathfarnham, Tertianship
1959 - 1961: Mungret College, Limerick, Asstd. Dir. Apostolic School
1961- 1963; Crescent College, teaching Classics
1963 - 1964: Belvedere, teaching (+H Dip Ed, UCD)
1964 - 1969: Mungret College, teaching, Editor “Mungret Annual”
1969 - 1972: Rathfarnham, bursar, study Social Science, UCD
1972 - 1989: Tullabeg, Asst. Director of Spiritual Exercises, assisted in the Church, Librarian
1989 - 1991: Cherryfield Lodge, promoted “Bethany Groups”
1991 - 1999: Sacred Heart Church, Limerick, Church work.

Father Coyne felt a little unwell on the Saturday evening and retired to bed. He was visited a number of times by members of his community and seemed to be resting peacefully at bedtime. He was found dead in bed on the Sunday morning, 7th February.

I first came to know Dick Coyne in the 1980's when he was in Tullabeg and I had returned from Zambia. We found that we had interests in common (including Wodehouse and history) and a friendship developed. He helped me to wade through the Tullabeg archives and assorted papers prior to Jesuit departure - though perhaps his help was rather dubious because of his “conserving” tendencies.

I associate some of my more placid memories of the 1990's with him: visiting Clonmel, Cashel, Kilkenny, Waterford in honor of pre Suppression Jesuits; another holiday in Galway with visits to Aran and Ballyvaughan; meeting him in Veritas and being treated to coffee in Wynn's (which seemed the absolutely right hotel for him); seeing him off at Heuston (on one occasion not so placidly diverting him from the wrong train)...

He was a most pleasant companion, understanding and undemanding but (on holiday) quietly intent on seeing what interested him - with, I seem to remember, a prior visit to the local tourist office. He was a great man for telling you in the most civilized and encouraging way) what you should do for God. And when you modestly told him what you were doing, you felt that you were being listened to. He reached out for and appreciated companionship (I wonder if there was a lonely streak in him), and was close to his family.

As I say, I associate him with placidity. I am sure that many people associated him with peace. He was, I am told, a good listener, “would inquire how things were going”, very patient and kind. It was not surprising that he was drawn to the Bethany bereavement apostolate. He was a peaceful presence in his Tullabeg “parish” and afterwards kept in touch with “his flock” in annual pilgrimage to Knock. And I like to think that something of the peace-giving came across in the way he celebrated Mass.

He was a man of the mind: he combined being a civil servant and later a bursar with university courses. His incredible array of pamphlets, magazines, cuttings, notes (carefully classified), seemed to indicate a passion for the written and conserved word. I suspect that this interest in intellect and its expression derived from his school-master father.

And I more than suspect that this urge to keep everything on file camę largely from his Civil Service experience. The paper clips and rubber bands which had served the State were, as it were, transferred to the service of the Church: in both areas symbols of a personal and professional integrity and devotion to duty.

He delighted not only in the word of the spirit' but in the word of humour and wit (Wodehouse was a favourite author), of friendly conversation, of history and tradition. (His long-term assignment in Tullabeg enabled him to explore and appreciate the roots of the people he served.) His interest in the focal Gaelige went back at least to his days at St. Joseph's, Ballinasloe and his careful and researched writing in An Timire was an example both of his devotion to the Sacred Heart and of his attachment to Irish tradition.

Fear ann féin é. Fear sibhialta é omósach i gcursaí dúchais, feasach i gcúrsaí comhshaolacha. Cara dílis. Thar gach ní, fear le Dia. Requiescat.

Stephen Redmond

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

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

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

Second eldest of four sons and has two sisters.

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

by 1929 in Australia - Regency at Xavier College, Kew
by 1934 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship
by 1935 at Catholic Mission, Ngau-Pei-Lan, Shiuhing (Zhaoqing), Guandong, China (LUS) language studies
by 1936 at Aberdeen, Hong Kong - working
by 1944 at Xavier, Park St, Calcutta, West Bengal, India (BEL M)
by 1948 at Sacred Heart Accrington (ANG) working
by 1949 at St Joseph’s Leigh (ANG) working
by 1955 at St Francis Xavier Liverpool (ANG) working

Born: 16 October 1894, Clifton Hill, Melbourne, Australia
Entered: 01 February 1915, Loyola Greenwich, Australia (HIB)
Ordained: 31 July 1926, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1930, St Ignatius College Riverview, Sydney, Australia
Died: 07 April 1969, St Vincent's Hospital, Fitzroy - Australiae province (ASL)

Part of the Kostka Hall, Melbourne, Australia community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

by 1919 in Australia - Regency
by 1923 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1929 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
His early education was at CBC St Kilda and later at St Aloysius College Milsons Point.

1917-1918 After First Vows he did a Juniorate At Loyola Greenwich
1918-1921 He was sent for Regency at St Ignatius College Riverview where he was Third Prefect and in charge of Music.
1921-1924 He was sent first to Milltown Park Dublin, and then St Aloysius College Jersey for Philosophy
1924-1928 He returned to Milltown Park for theology. he was Ordained by “war privilege” after two years
1928-1929 he made tertianship at St Beuno’s Wales
1929 & 1932 He was sent teaching at St Aloysius College Sydney
1930-1932 He was at St Ignatius College Riverview teaching
1935-1936 He was sent as Minister to the Toowong Parish Brisbane, but became unwell and was sent to Sevenhill (1935-1936)
1939-1969 He was sent to Kostka Hall at Xavier College Kew where he taught Latin and French, did some Prefecting and helped with accounts. His teaching style was very traditional, and involved methodical repetition.

In later years, after a road accident, a heart attack and a stroke, he became less effective. Yet he was closely associated with the building of a new Chapel, which opened in 1967, and for which he was most particular about various fittings.

His final illness was brief and he died at St Vincent’s Hospital.

Born: 08 August 1899, Marl Park, Shannongrove, Pallaskenry, County Limerick
Entered: 31 August 1916, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Left Society of Jesus: 06 August 1925

Parents lived at Mulcair, Barringtons Bridge, County Limerick, supported by a small farm and his father’s job as a canvasser for Irish Independent Newspapers.

Eldest of four sons with one sister.

Early education at a National School in Scotland, then they came to Ireland and he was educated at Sacred Heart College SJ (Crescent)

1916-1918: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Novitiate
1918-1920: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, studying Rhetoric
1920-1922: Maison Saint Louis, Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying Philosophy
1922-1924: Régis College, Montpelier, France (TOLO) Regency
1924-1925: Milltown Park, studying Philosopjy

Born: 1612, Cashel, County Tipperary
Entered: 27 September 1635, Mechelen, Belgium - Belgicae Province (BELG)
Ordained: 07 April 1640, Antwerp, Belgium
Final Vows: 1654
Died: 17 November 1685, Limerick City, County Limerick

Alias Piers Crow

His father John was an alderman in Cashel. His mother was Elizabeth Flemine
Studied at Cashel, then Lille, Louvain and Douai under Jesuits
1642 at Lyra (Lier FLA)
1644 First came to Irish Mission
1654 a formed Spiritual Coadjutor
1655-1658 at Arras College (FRA) teaching
1666 Living near Limerick teching Grammar, Catechising and administration - then banished to France for 6 years

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of John and Elizabeth née Flemme. Uncle of Dr Creagh, Archbishop of Dublin.
Early education was at Cashel and then studied Humanities under the Jesuits at Lille and two years Philosophy at Douai at Anchin College before Ent. He was admitted to the Society by the FLA Provincial Frederick Tassis, and Brussels 28/09/1635 (Mechelen Album)
After First Vows he did three years Theology taught Humanities for five years
1642 At the Professed House in Antwerp (FLA Catalogue)
1644 Came to Irish Mission (HIB Catalogue 1650 - ARSI)
1666 Living near Limerick, teaching Grammar and Catechism, and administering the Sacraments
He was an exile in France for six years and on the Mission for twenty-five (HIB CAt 1666 - ARSI)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of John (Alderman) and Elizabeth née Fleming
Studied Humanities under lay masters at Cashel and later at the Jesuit College of Lille. He then began Philosophy at Douai before Ent 1640 at Mechelen
After First Vows he was sent for his studies at Antwerp and was Ordained there 07/04/1640
1641-1642 Tertianship at Lierre (Lier)
1644 He sent to Ireland and to the Limerick school to teach Humanities.
1652-1660 Under the “Commonwealth” he was deported to France, where he taught Humanities at Arras College and later Prefect at Bourges
He returned to Ireland again after the restoration, and sent first to Cashel, but then in 1666 until his death he worked as a teacher and catechist at Limerick, where he died 17 November 1685

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Piers Creagh 1612-1685
Piers Creagh was born in Carrigeen Castle 3 miles form Limerick on the Robborough Road in 1612. He was a nephew of the Primate Martyr, and a brother of the Mayor of Limerick who distinguished himself during the siege. Another brother was Domestic Prelate to Alexander VII.

Piers entered the Society in 1637. He was attached to our College in Limerick as a Master, as we find in the examination of Fr Netterville of October 1678. Later he taught at Poitiers, where he had as his pupil his nephew Peter, later Bishop of Cork and finally Archbishop of Dublin.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CREAGH, (or Crow) PETER, was 33 years of age in 1649, and then residing at Limerick

Born: 1594, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 27 February 1670, Limerick
Ordained: Limerick - pre Entry
Died: 28 February 1670, Limerick City, County Limerick (“in articulo mortis”)

Alias Creevy

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Had the General’s permission to enter “in articulo mortis” (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Ordained before Ent 1628 Back Lane Dublin
In the Winter 1626-1627 he asked to be received into the Society. The General wrote a letter to the Provincial of Flanders on 24 April 1627 instructing him to receive Fr Creagh into the Novitiate at Mechelen, and he Entered there the following year (1628). During his Noviceship he was advised that the Society was not suitable for him, and so he LEFT on good terms with the Society.
He then returned to Limerick and remained a staunch friend of the Society over the succeeding years.
In 1663 he asked the Superior of the Mission if he could be received into the Society again “in articulo mortis” and the General agreed to his request. Seven years later, the Mission Superior Richard Bourke (de Burgo), while on a visit to Limerick, received him into the Society on 27 February 1670, and he died there the following day 28 February 1670.
He may well be the young priest mentioned as working with Thomas Bourke in Limerick of 1621, and described as an “aspirant” to the Society.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CREEVY, ROBERT. He is thus mentioned in F. Richard Burke s letter, dated Galway, the 4th of April, 1670, - “Mr. Robert Creevy, Priest, aged 57, with your permission was admitted at Limerick to the simple vows of the Society, on the 27th of February, and died on the day following

Born: 1626/7, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 04 July 1648, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: 1655, Salamanca, Spain
Died: 13 September 1660, Soria, Castile y León, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

1649 in the Villagarcía Novitiate
1655 Operarius at Salamanca College and last year of Theology

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Andrew and Joan née Lea
Had already begun studies in Philosophy at Salamanca before Ent 04 July 1648 Villagarcía
After First Vows he was sent for Theology to the Royal College Salamanca where he was Ordained c 1655
When he finished his studies he was sent to Soria to teach Latin, where he also gained a reputation as a zealous Operarius and - even though he was a man who suffered greatly from scruples - as a Spiritual Director. After a short illness there he died 13 September 1660

Born: 26 April 1821, Ireland
Entered: 02 May 1847, Fordham College, New York, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)
Died: 10 July 1847, Fordham College, New York, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)

Born: 25 December 1814, County Monaghan
Entered: 30 October 1842, Florissant MO, USA - Missouriana Province (MIS)
Died: 10 February 1849, Florissant MO, USA - Missouriana Province (MIS)

Born: 24 August 1922, Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 05 October 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1955, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1961, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 21 February 2012, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin - Zambia-Malawi Province (ZAM)

Part of the St Ignatius community, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin at the time of death.

Transcribed : HIB to ZAM 03/12/1969

Father was an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. Mother died in 1931.

Third of four boys with one sister who died in 1928.

Early education was at Sion Hill Convent in Blackrock and then he went to Blackrock College for nine years. After school he went to UCD and achieved a BA in Legal and Political Science, as well as studying for the Irish Bar

◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Note from Arthur J Clarke Entry
During his six years as rector, he was blessed with such outstanding heads of Canisius as Dick Cremins and Michael J Kelly. Arthur's vision for Canisius as a leading secondary school was influenced by his experience of Clongowes Wood College in Ireland. First, he wanted a proper house for the community. Though the actual building was the responsibility of Fr McCarron and Br Pat McElduff, the siting and design of the spacious community house are largely Arthur’s.

◆ Irish Jesuit Missions : https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/203-missionary-experience-of-the-late-fr-richard-cremins

Missionary Experience of the late Fr. Richard Cremins
Father Richard Cremins, SJ died on 21st February 2012 in Cherryfield Nursing Home in Milltown Park after a long illness. The funeral mass took place on Friday 24th February in Milltown Park Chapel, after which Fr. Cremins was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Fr. Cremins spent over 50 years working as a missionary in Zambia until a stroke brought him back to Ireland in 2006 where he remained until his recent death.
Fr. Richard Cremins was born in 1922 and attended Blackrock College in Dublin. He went on to study at university for 3 years before making the decision to become a Jesuit priest after being impressed by the spirit among the students of Milltown Park. Fr. Cremins taught in Belvedere College for 2 years before he was ordained in 1955. In 1957 Fr. Cremins was sent out to Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia, to work in the Chikuni Mission. He spent several months learning the local language, Tonga and was mainly involved with the primary schools in the area. He spent a year travelling around the country finding schools a job which required him to learn a second language, Bemba. In 1964, Fr. Cremins was sent to Monze to step in as principal of the secondary school for 6 months. He remained in the post for four and a half years until the appointment of Michael Kelly as principal. Fr. Cremins spoke fondly of his time as parish priest in Monze. “They were lovely people. Very nice” he said. He felt it was important to value the customs and traditions of the people in the area. He recounted an early experience he had of a woman who was having trouble with her husband and he had been asked to step in. He sat with them in their family home but realized that his presence there was enough. “They had their own way of settling these things. So I never tried to interfere and just let things take their course”. Fr. Cremins kept this stance throughout his time in Zambia. He did a lot of work in development in the area which included the setting up of Church councils in each area and also the translation of the Bible into Tonga. This occurred in 1970 after the events of Vatican II.
Fr. Cremins was most noted for his work in AIDS prevention and development in Zambia. He went to Lusaka, the capital, in 1970 and spent 12 years there working on development with particular attention given to the introduction of natural family planning. This followed the work of Doctor Sister Miriam Duggan who wanted to introduce the idea to the area. After the implementation of a programme in Lusaka, Fr. Cremins then moved to Malwai in 1990 where he spent 12 years working on a similar project resulting in the establishment of FAMLI. In 2004, he helped to set up an AIDS programme called Youth Alive which aimed at educating young people in Malawi about the risks of AIDS.
Fr. Richard Cremins enjoyed his work as a missionary and spoke positively of his experiences abroad. “I always had a principle that if you have to do something you might as well enjoy it and I always enjoyed my work whatever it was".

https://www.jesuitmissions.ie/news/225-fr-richard-cremins-sj-1922-2012

Fr. Richard Cremins, SJ 1922-2012
Dick was raised in Dublin during the post independence and post civil war years. He attended the Holy Ghost Fathers' Blackrock College and then proceeded to do undergraduate studies at University College Dublin (UCD). Afterwards he began legal studies spending one year at King's Inn, passing his first bar exam with first class honours. He was a formidable debater and was elected president of the LH Society (Literary and Historical Society), well known for the who's who of Irish politicians and professionals who had been members in their younger days. Dick resigned as president of the Society and discontinued his legal studies to join the Society in 1943. He followed the usual course of studies in Ireland doing regency at Belvedere and Mungret Colleges. After theology at Milltown Park he was ordained a priest in 1955.
In response to a request from Father General, the Irish Province formally assumed responsibility in 1949/1950 for missionary work in much of the Southern Province of Northern Rhodesia (later to become the independent country of Zambia). This led to the establishment of the Chikuni Mission in the Southern Province with a procure in the capital, Lusaka. Building on the great accomplishments of the Zambezi Mission and of Jesuits from the Polish-Krakow Province who had laid the foundations of Church presence in this area, the new arrivals for the Chikuni Mission quickly found themselves engaged in the work of mission development. This they did through the establishment of parishes, the consolidation and expansion of secondary and teacher training institutions, the management and growth of an extensive network of primary schools, and the advancement of women and lay leadership in the Church.
Throughout the 35 years of his period in Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, where he arrived in September 1957, Dick Cremins found himself involved in each one of these works, apart from teacher training. On completion of a period learning chiTonga, the major local language used in the Chikuni Mission territory, his first assign- ment was as Manager of Schools, in charge of supervising, improving and expanding the large network of Catholic primary schools for which the Mission was responsible. In an era when Church presence in an area tended to be closely linked to educational presence through a Church-managed primary school, this involved much hard bargaining with similarly placed representatives from other Christian Churches and colonial officials. Though he threw himself into this work with enormous verve, this was something that did not fit well with Dick's broader ecumenical vision. Neither did it give much scope for his manifest abilities, including his sharp understanding of the needs of a colonial territory that sooner rather than later would become independent.
The situation changed for him in 1959 when he was appointed as Principal of Canisius College, a Jesuit boys' secondary school which had commenced in 1949, much to the displeasure of the colonial authorities who protested at the time that the territory already had a secondary school for boys and so did not need a second one. But by 1959 the winds of change were already blowing in Northern Rhodesia and Dick saw it as his duty, not to challenge the colonial authorities, but with their (sometimes grudging) financial support to develop a school that would respond to the territory's future needs for well qualified human resources. His task in doing so was facilitated by the transfer of the teacher training component from Canisius to the newly established Charles Lwanga Teacher Training College nearby, leaving Dick free to promote a programme of expanding boarding and teaching facilities (especially science laboratories and a library) at Canisius and to increase the number of staff.
A very significant development during the four-and-a-half years of Dick's tenure as Principal of Canisius was the commencement of 6th Form (A-level). Those who completed this programme would have spent almost fifteen years in school - this in a territory where by 1963 less than 1,000 (up to 200 of them from Canisius itself) had completed even twelve years in school. Equally significant, and an early sign of what would be a major con-cern throughout the rest of Dick's life, was his determination that girls should benefit from this development and be able to attain the highest possible level of education. This resulted in Canisius becoming the only school in Northern Rhodesia that offered 6 h Form education to both girls and boys - a noteworthy advance not only towards gender equity but also in Jesuit understanding of the need to ensure that the equality between women and men became a lived reality.
A further development was the active recruitment of a large number of lay teachers for the staffing of the expanding Canisius College. But more was at work in Dick's case, for here he found it possible to give expression to his pre-Vatican II vision of increasing the role of the laity in Church affairs. The strength of Dick's convictions in this area led to his appointment in 1964 as parish priest of the town of Monze and subsequently as chaplain to the Lay Apostolate Movement in the newly established Diocese of Monze. That same year, Northern Rhodesia's colonial status ended when it became the independent country of Zambia. Dick identified wholeheartedly with the new State and as soon as it was possible for him to do so adopted Zambian citizenship, even though this necessitated renouncing his status as a citizen of Ireland, the country of his birth. For the rest of his life, Dick remained a Zambian, a man committed to improving the status of women, and a man passionately concerned to give practical expression to Vatican II's vision of the importance of the laity and the involvement of the Church in the development of peoples.
Dick worked indefatigably for six years as parish priest of Monze town and for five years as promoter of the lay apostolate throughout the diocese. An outstanding legacy to his term as parish priest was the establishment by the Holy Rosary Sisters of Monze Mission Hospital. Dick always proved himself a staunch ally of these Sisters, some of them still fresh from the Biafran war in Nigeria. Always conscious of the dignity of women and the active role that lay and religious women could play in the Church, he supported the Sisters with deep practical love and respect (which they in turn generously reciprocated). Dick pursued these apostolic commitments in Monze Diocese at such expense to himself that he had to spend the greater part of 1976 rebuilding his health. When he was strong enough to return to Zambia late that year, his enduring commitment to the development of the laity resulted in his transfer to Lusaka and appointment, on behalf of the Catholic Hierarchy, as national chaplain for the lay apostolate and secretary for development. For the next seven years he spent the greater part of his time educating and training the laity, mobilising and energising lay groups, and advocating on their behalf. His constant concern was to ensure that Vatican II's vision of the role of the laity became a reality energetically adopted and practised, not only by the ordained ministry of the Church and by members of the Society, but also by lay-persons themselves. These years also saw his trail-blazing support for the National Council of Catholic Women in Zambia, with his unflagging insistence to the women who asked him to implement some of their ideas, "No; this is for you to do, yours are the voices that should be heard." His belief in the power of women was remarkably vindicated in 1982 when, because of the outspoken opposition of the Catholic Women's League to the Zambian Government's inclusion of communist ideology in the curriculum for schools at all levels, the Government capitulated and backed off from this development.
Dick's experience and reflections during this time brought into sharper focus for him the importance of the family. A prime concern here was to enable women to control the number of children they bore while observing the teaching of the encyclical Humanae Vitae about contraception. He was motivated here not just by loyalty to Church teaching, but also by his commitment to improving the lot of women and his anguish at the suffering women endured in bearing more children than their health, their means, the well-being of their already-born children or their prospects as persons who were fully equal to men, could sustain. He was further energised by his deep-seated conviction on the supremacy of human life and hence was driven by the imperative of preventing abortion and opposing its legalisation.
Both of these concerns led Dick to become a protagonist for natural family planning as a way that respected human dignity, while enabling women take more control of their lives and avoid abortions by not having unwanted pregnancies. He became skilled on the medical and social aspects of natural family planning and was soon recognised as a national and international authority in this area. His views did not always find acceptance with others, but this did not diminish their respect for his integrity, the consistency of his approach, and his manifest commitment to bettering the condition of women. His involvement in the area of natural family planning be- came more all-consuming when in 1983 he was appointed as Director of Zambia's Family Life Movement. He was to remain in this position until his appointment to Malawi, the second country that constitutes the Zambia- Malawi Province, ten years later. During this Lusaka period Dick also served for six years as Superior of the Jesuit community of St. Ignatius. Throughout the latter years of that time, St. Ignatius' was the base for the newly established Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection, a faith and social justice think-tank which received wholehearted support from Dick's wisdom, experience, and vision.
In 1993 Dick was sent to Lilongwe in Malawi to set up a Jesuit residence there. Since a number of Jesuits were already working in the Malawian seminaries, Malawi was now recognised as part of the Zambian province, but there was no specifically Jesuit residence there. Dick first stayed with the Kiltegan Fathers for a few months as he surveyed the houses which came on the market in Lilongwe. He was responsible for the purchase and rehabilitation of the present residence of Our Lady of the Way, more usually known as 9/99, the official address. This house became the rallying point for a scattered Jesuit community whose members were working hundreds of kilometres away to the four points of the compass (Zomba, Kasungu, Kachebere and Mangochi).
However 9/99 was not merely a convenient staging point - one of the attractions was meeting Dick. At breakfast and especially after evening meal, one could be sure of a stimulating discussion arising on some point relevant to our mission that had been noticed by Dick and obviously pondered over by him. One might not always agree with Dick's point of view, but that made the discussions all the more stimulating. Dick continued the family apostolate he had animated so well in Lusaka and set up an official NGO called FAMLI, supported by overseas aid.
In Lilongwe in 2007, Dick experienced a massive stroke that ultimately led to his return to Ireland and admission to Cherryfield, the Irish Province's nursing home for infirm, disabled and recuperating Jesuits. Here Dick was to remain until his death in February 2012. But his approach to his transformed conditions was not one of self-pity. Instead, with characteristic determination and enormous courage, he succeeded in teaching himself to speak with some sort of clarity and in making himself mobile with the aid of a "walker" that had been designed according to his specifications for a person whose right hand was crippled. The strength of his resolve and his unfailing commitment to his priesthood were shown by the way he struggled every week to serve as principal celebrant at the community Mass. Despite his limited mobility, he succeeded in attending outside lectures and functions. He taught himself to use a laptop by tapping out messages with one finger of his left hand. And in an effort to build up a sense of camaraderie among his fellow-residents in Cherryfield and the wider community of Jesuits living in the Dublin area, he organised Scrabble and draughts competitions.
Dick put his hard-won computer skills to good use in these final years. From the darkness that must have enshrouded his own life, he regularly sent warm and supportive messages to colleagues who, like himself, were experiencing the cloud of unknowing. But even more, despite his limitations, he continued to press for the better- ment of women, loyal adherence to the teachings of Humanae Vitae, ever greater involvement in the official Church on the part of "outstanding lay Catholics who are to be found as leaders in every walk of life," and advocacy for a Church "where St. Peter might feel at home. "At a meeting just six weeks before his death, he expressed concern that Cherryfield might be obtaining its medical supplies from a pharmacy where the "morning-after" pill could also be purchased. His spirited contributions continued after his death - nine days after he died, The Furrow, the respected religious journal from Maynooth, published his article in support of the Irish government's decision to close its Embassy to the Vatican as he saw this as a step in the direction of making it possible for the Church to remain true to the simplicity of the Gospel.
Throughout his long and very full life, Dick Cremins emerged as a gentle person, kind and peaceful, who lived his life joyfully in the service of others and in pursuit of the highest ideals. At times, people could be upset by his sabre-sharp remarks or forthright statement of his views. But behind these there always lay his fearlessness in challenging accepted points of wisdom, his passion to see the Kingdom of God as envisaged by Jesus realised among us, his zeal for the genuine development of all peoples, his razor sharp mind and his powerful sense of humour with its love of irony, laughter and the joy of people.
Years ago, Dick was characterised as being shaped like a paschal candle - tall, thin and luminous. But his moral stature far surpassed his physical tallness. The Bible tells us that there were giants in the early days. But Dick Cremins shows us that giants are still to be found in modern days.

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 147 : Spring 2012

Obituary

Fr Richard (Dick) Cremins (1922-2012) : Zambia Malawi Province

24 August 1922: Born in Dublin.
Early education: Blackrock College, UCD and 1 year at King's Inns (legal studies)
1943: Obtained a BA Degree in Legal and Political Science in 1943 from UCD
5 October 1943: Entered Emo
October 1945: First Vows: Emo
1946 - 1949: Tullabeg, studying Philosophy
1949 - 1951: Belvedere - Regency
1951 - 1952: Mungret College, Teaching, Prefecting
1952 - 1955: Milltown Park, studying Theology
28th July 1955: Ordained
1955 - 1956: Milltown Park, 4th Year Theology
1956 - 1957: Rathfarnham, Tertianship
1957 - 1958: Zambia, learning the language
1958: Chikuni, Manager of schools
1959 - 1963: Chikuni, Canisius College, Principal
2 February 1961: Final Vows at Chikuni
3 December 1969: Transcribed to Zambia Province
1964 - 1970: Monze, Parish Priest
1971 - 1975: Monze, Chaplain, lay apostolate
1976: Monze, Nairobi, Dublin, recovering health
1976 - 1983: Lusaka, Catholic Secretariat, Chaplain, Lay Apostolate, Secretary for Development
1983 - 1992; St. Ignatius, Director Family Life Movement St. Ignatius,
1983 - 1990: Superior
1990 - 1993: Luwisha House, Director Family Life Movement
1993 - 2007: Lilongwe (opened the house in 1993) FASU consultancy (later FAMLI)
1999 - 2004: Chaplain Lilongwe International Catholic community
2000 - 2001: Assistant Diocesan Pastoral Coordinator
2007 - 2012: Dublin, Cherryfield Lodge, recovering health. Praying for the Church and the Society
21 February 2012: Died Cherryfield

Obituary : Conall Ó Cuinn
Dick grew up in Dublin and was the last surviving sibling, having been predeceased by his brothers, Pat, Gary and Paul, and by his sister, Nora. Though his education at Blackrock College left a strong mark, unlike his brother he was clear that the Holy Ghost Fathers were not for him. General Richard Mulcahy, his mother's cousin, connected him with the turbulent socio-political situation of post-independence and post civil-war Ireland. So it was not surprising that he studied Law and Politics in UCD, including a year at King's Inns. He was a bright student, a formidable debater with a razor sharp sense of humour tinged with a certain killer instinct, not always appreciated by his adversaries, and which sometimes got him into trouble. Having graduated from UCD and passed his first Bar exam, both with 1st class honours, he joined the Society at the then late age of 21, a late vocation, a man of the world. And all of this during World War II.

Zambia--Monze (1957-1975)
Dick spent 50 years living and working in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia for his first 7 years there). He embraced the new State on independence and became a Zambian citizen, a symbolic statement representing a desire to insert himself into Zambian life and culture. This involved revoking his Irish citizenship so that he required a visa each time he needed to visit Ireland. He put down roots in the Chikuni Mission which was later to become Monze Diocese. He arrived there in 1957, just nine years after the first involvement of the Irish Jesuits. From there he later launched himself nationally, and even internationally.

Learning Tonga for a year was always the first task before being thrown into the apostolate. His first job was that of Manager of Schools at a time when the primary education project of the mission was in full swing. He then became Principal of Chikuni Secondary College in the lead up to Independence (1964). Effectively he was educating what would become the leaders of the new Zambian state. And clearly Dick was seen by his superiors as a man of ability and initiative.

In 1962, as the Second Vatican Council was getting underway, James Corboy, then Rector of Milltown Park and Theology Professor, was appointed Bishop of Monze. The Council changed James, as a person and an ecclesiastic. He embraced it as a process, and ever afterwards claimed that the Council was his introduction to theology, especially the seminars given on the fringe of the Council's formal sessions. On his appointment to Zambia he had a clear vision of the importance of the laity and the involvement of the Church in the development of peoples. With that vision he gathered people of the calibre of Dick Cremins around him to promote the project of Vatican II in the new Diocese of Monze. Dick would be a right-hand man when appointed Parish Priest of Monze in 1964 and also Chaplain to the Lay Apostolate movement.

At the same time and at the invitation of Bishop Corboy, the Holy Rosary Sisters were establishing their hospital next door. Dick became great friends with the sisters, a camaraderie and friendship similar to that of siblings in a family, brothers and sisters who supported each other in deep and practical love. This is an occasion to acknowledge and give public thanks for such support and love, and to thank God for it, not just to the Holy Rosary Şişters, but also to the Sisters of Charity, the RSHM sisters (Ferrybank), and the Holy Spirit Sisters (founded also by Bishop Corboy).

Amid the hardship, labour and struggle of those first years there was much fun and laughter. Dick's humour became legendary in the land. For example, rushing out the door at 9.50 a.m. one morning he declared: “I've got to rush. There is a meeting that was due to start at 8.00 am and I don't want to be late!”

And another, told by Sr. Theresa, a Holy Rosary sister. She arrives in the country, fresh with a sociology degree and some notion of community development. Her first task is to interview the PP to avail of his vast experience and local knowledge. Dick lets her ask her questions and avidly write her notes with that neophyte enthusiasm of the recently arrived. “Sister”, interrupts Dick as she begins to ask another question, “I'd like you to know that I've only arrived here myself 3 days ago. So I'm finding my feet too:. They became friends that moment, a friendship which included Theresa sitting by Dick's bed as he lay dying, 38 years later. Such was the quality of friendship on the Mission that we celebrate and acknowledge today.

Shortly after independence when three of the Sisters were PI'd (declared persona ingrata] by the new, youthful and over-confident government, for refusing the orders of local officials regarding medical matters, Dick went to bat for them with the government officials in Lusaka. The PI order was revoked after hours of palaver. Dick came within a hair's breadth of being PI'd himself, so that Zambia nearly lost this “troublesome priest”, a term used to describe him in a government memo on the events.

Zambia -- Lusaka (1976-1993):
Vatican II had taken place; the Decree on the Laity played a central role in Bishop Corboy's strategy. As a result a huge investment was made in the education and training of lay people. Dick, given his experience in Monze, moved to Lusaka in 1976 to take up an appointment at the Catholic Secretariat (set up by Fr. Colm O'Riordan SJ) as National Chaplain to the Lay Apostolate, and Secretary for Development

He was a trailblazing supporter of the National Council of Catholic Women of Zambia, at a time when women were invisible supernumeraries both in the church and in Zambian society. Dick encouraged them to take a lead and use their power. He campaigned hard for them to have an appropriate place both in the church and in African society, and he saw his job as an enabler, giving them the courage to make the moves themselves; so when they came up with an idea and asked him to act on it, he would say No, yours is the voice that should be heard.

Later in 1983, he became Director of the Family Life Movement which tried to implement the teachings of Vatican II on family life. Dick was very much taken with Humanae Vitae when it was published in 1968, and believed its practical teaching could be put into practice if the vision behind it were understood and assimilated. Of course, this was controversial, and in a sense grist to Dick's mill. With determination and humour he developed and led the organization, Famously, he introduced himself to a somewhat sceptical if not hostile international conference with a statement, that he had practiced natural family planning all his life!

So Dick had many friends, and some enemies. An example of such friendships is the message of Clare Mukolwe, now a graduate student at Fordham University in New York:
“A gentle spirit gone before us marked with a sign of faith. I was introduced to Fr Richard Cremins by my mother Grace Mukolwe. They worked together for the National Council of the Laity. Fr Cremins was also my mother's first spiritual director and he introduced Mum to the Ignatian Spirituality retreats. He gave me my first real job straight after high school. It was fun”.

Malawi --Lilongwe (1993-2007)
As a number of Malawian men had joined the Society, Malawi opened up as a mission possibility in the early 90's. Dick was sent to open a new house in Lilongwe and to develop his Family Life apostolate in that country. He worked there for 14 years, until his stroke in 2007. Like a tree being felled, he was suddenly reduced from full health to a state of great disability, both in his walking and in his speaking. He returned to Ireland via Zambia and moved into Cherryfield Lodge, his last home.

Ireland--Cherryfield (2007-2012)
Dick's approach was not one of self-pity. In his usual manner he confronted the problem head on. Getting himself as mobile as possible, and getting himself to speak with some sort of clarity was now his main goal. And with great determination, never accepting to lie down in the face of difficulty or refusal, he achieved much of what he set out to do. The sharp mind and quick wit never deserted him, even after the stroke in March 2007 which crippled and distressed him --- as with characteristic determination he set himself to recover clarity of speech.

An example of his logic and determination had to do with his wheeled walker: All wheeled walkers have two brakes, literally one on the left hand and one on the right hand. But what if your right hand doesn't work, as was the case for Dick and thousands of other stroke victims? Two-handed breaks do not work. They are positively dangerous. If you asked a car driver to break with two break pedals, he argued, there would be carnage on the roads. Why are stroke victims expected to do with two-handed breaks? Such a break doesn't exist, he was told. Should exist, he insisted, and if you won't locate one, I will do so myself. So using the Internet he located one in Sweden. Expensive, but existent. It was bought and functioned well. But he needed to redesign the right handle to suit his withered hand which design he then sent to Sweden where they made it for him and sent back to Ireland for fitting, Where Dick had a will, there was a way: Dick's way, “No” was not an option for Dick when he saw that something was possible.

And again the humour: Matron Rachel McNeil was the subject to which one of Dick's Ditties was addressed:

    Poem to Rachel
    Dick has more problems with his vowels
        than with his bowels
    And therefore needs more alcohol
        than Movicol®

Dick died six months short of his 90th birthday. Even to the end of his days in Cherryfield he was a formidable crusader for a number of causes, often a champion against the authorities, and always on the side of life – whether it was through natural family planning, or organising a draughts championship in Cherryfield for men who'd have thought their gaming days were over. He lived life to the full and to the last. In his last week in hospital he had an article accepted for publication in the Furrow, and one in the Irish Catholic. All he needed was a WiFi modem to send it to the editors. Both articles were controversial, questioning the standard version. Both rocked the boat.

Now the questioning and the rocking and the struggling are over. For those who did not know Dick, remember how a chieftain in Tanzania described him: :I know only one human being who is shaped like the paschal candle: Fr Dick Cremins, tall, thin and luminous”. His light faded for us on 21 February, but shines now in a broader heaven.

The first Jesuit school in Limerick was founded by Father David Wolfe SJ (1528-c.1578) in 1565. Over the next three hundred years, the Jesuits presence in Limerick ebbed and flowed. By 1640, a Jesuit residence was established at Castle Lane and by 1672, a school was opened near St Mary’s Cathedral. After an interval of eighty-six years from the Suppression of the Society in 1773, the Jesuits returned to Limerick in 1859 after Bishop John Ryan (1784-1864) had invited the Society to establish a school in the city. The school initially opened in 1859 as St Munchin's College on Hartstonge Street. The pioneer Jesuit community in 1859 were Frs. Edward Kelly (1824-1905) (Rector), Thomas Kelly (1829-1898), Peter Foley (1826-1893), Edmund Hogan (1831-1917), Matthew Saurin (1825-1901) and one scholastic, Mr. Matthew Russell (1834-1912). In January 1862, the Jesuits purchased a neighbouring residence, Crescent House. The church building was started in 1864, opened in 1868 and named after the Sacred Heart in 1869. The college had ceased to be a seminary for the diocese in 1867 and was renamed the Sacred Heart College in 1873. Commonly known as the Crescent College, it ceased to be a fee paying school in 1971 and became the Crescent College Comprehensive SJ. In 1973 the Comprehensive moved to a modern greenfield site at Dooradoyle. Later it became a co-educational school and the Crescent Preparatory School was closed in 1976.

Born: 09 October 1888, Drift, Belfast, County Antrim
Entered: 07 September 1908, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 15 August 1921, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1925, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 30 November 1966, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois

Father was a retired army Major, and now lives at Rynn House, Rosenallis, County Offaly. Mother died in June 1905.

One deceased brother and two younger sisters.

Early education at home and then Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1912 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying

Irish Province News 42nd Year No 2 1967

Obituary :

Fr Henry Croasdaile SJ (1888-1966)

Lancelot Henry Croasdaile was born on the 9th of October 1888, at The Drift, Belfast, the native place of his mother, formerly a Miss O'Rourke. His childhood was spent at Rynn, Rosenallis, in the then Queen's County, the estate of his father, Major Croasdaile, D.L., J.P. He had a brother, who died in infancy, and two sisters, younger than himself. His father was a member of the Church of Ireland, but all the children were brought up Catholics. His mother died in 1905. Harry was educated at home until early in 1906 when he was sent to Clongowes. Though over sixteen, he was in the junior grade for his first two school years and ended in the middle grade. This comparatively undistinguished career was doubtless due to the informal nature of his previous education. He was later to show that he had more than average intellectual powers. In his last year at Clongowes he was Secretary of the House, an office then usually bestowed not for athletic prowess, but for the ability to entertain visitors, a task for which he was admirably suited.
In September 1908 he entered the noviceship at Tullabeg. His father, not unnaturally, strongly opposed this step, and Harry must have had considerable strength of character to persevere and to renounce an inheritance which must have been peculiarly attractive to one who had such a love of country life. After a year's juniorate at Tullabeg, he went to St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, for philosophy.
From 1914 to 1919 he taught at Clongowes. He was quite an effective teacher, and his musical gifts added to his usefulness on the staff. He figures in many photographs in the Clongownian as a member of the choir and conductor of the orchestra. He was very popular with the boys, and no doubt this popularity was enhanced by his remarkable prowess as a sportsman. Though it belongs to his later time at Clongowes, there may be recorded here an excerpt from a letter still treasured in the family of one of the boys. “We went for a walk today with Fr. Croasdaile and he shot a peasant (sic)”
During this period occurred an incident which he was fond of recounting. In the early days of the Easter Rising of 1916 he be came anxious about his sisters, who were then living in Dublin, and set off on his bicycle to try to locate them. On reaching Dublin, he found the usual roads blocked by the military. He then attempted a circuitous approach, but somewhere in the vicinity of Dundrum was arrested by a patrol of soldiers and brought to Dunlaoire police station. Here he was lucky in finding a sympathetic sergeant of the D.M.P. who was indignant at the arrest of a priest and secured his release.
It may be mentioned in passing that Fr. Croasdaile used to boast that he was the only member of the Province to be imprisoned for his country. This was not correct. During Easter Week a present member of the Milltown Park community was lodged for an hour in Beggars Bush barracks. Some idea of the confusion that reigned in the minds of the military may be formed from the fact that the chief grounds for making the arrest were that the Jesuit had in his pocket a handkerchief with the initials of another member of the community and a list of names (which turned out to be his selection of “Possibles” for the next rugby international).
In 1919 Harry went to Milltown Park for theology and was ordained in 1922. After tertianship at Tullabeg he taught for a year at Belvedere and then returned for his second spell on the staff at Clongowes, 1926-31. It was about this time that he began to write a series of short stories for boys, largely based on his own experiences. At intervals, published by the Irish Messenger Office, appeared Stories of School Life, Parts 1-6, and later When the Storm Blew and a Dog Led. It seems to have been during these years also that his interest in organ-building was developed. He had a remarkable combination of the two gifts required for this craft, being a good musician (he played, besides the organ, the double bass and the euphonium - an unusual combination) and a first-class carpenter. This activity continued all his life until ill health forced him to relinquish it. He was an adept at buying up old organs and combining their parts to make new ones. He thus provided organs for Emo, Rathfarnham, Clongowes and for several country churches.
In 1931 Fr. Croasdaile was transferred to Mungret where he again taught and organised musical activities until 1939. He then acted as Assistant Director of Retreats at Rathfarnham, and in 1944 was appointed teacher of religion in the Commercial College, Rathmines, which post he held until 1955. In some ways this was the most successful period in his life. His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin had in 1941 appointed the first teachers in the Dublin vocational schools and the system was still in an experimental stage. Fr. Croasdaile entered into the work with enthusiasm, and carried out the purpose intended, not merely to teach religion formally, but to act as spiritual guide to the pupils. He interested himself in all their activities, especially, as might be expected, in music, and with a production of The Geisha in Rathmines Town Hall began a tradition of musical entertainments which still continues. He also established most friendly relations with the members of the teaching staff. One of them recalled a statement made to him by the late Mr. George Clampett, then Principal of the College : “I am not a co-religionist of Fr. Croasdaile, but I have no hesitation in saying that he has meant more to this school than any other person”. The following tribute to Fr. Croasdaile was recently paid by Mr. Seán O Ceallaigh, the present Principal :
“The teenage boys and girls attending the Technical School in Rathmines accepted him immediately as one of themselves. His fatherliness, his simple loyalty to the simple Christian principles which at their age they could understand, his facility in using the language which they could grasp, his obvious interest in the material progress and spiritual welfare of each one of them and of their families, all these virtues endeared him to them in a perfectly natural way. The obvious happiness which he took in their extra curricular activities brought them nearer him; his active participation in their games, in their drama, in their operas, in their Gaelic cultural activities (to make up, as he used to tell them, for his being a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell!), and particularly his desire to give them a love for church music, exemplified in his accompanying the school choir in their rehearsals for the annual Votive Mass.
He took the greatest pleasure in meeting ex-students and in his daily conversation with the men and women teachers of different denominations in the school. He was really the first of the permanent priest-teachers in the city's technical schools; he exercised a new and wonderful influence on all of them. To this extent, Fr. Croasdaile was the pioneer, the man who proved to the educational and religious authorities that priest-teachers could play a vital role in vocational education. The remarkable development of this work in recent years is a monument to his character”.
When Fr. Croasdaile retired from his work in the College of Commerce in 1955, his health had been for some time giving cause for anxiety. After a year as Assistant in University Hall, he was transferred to Emo, and from that on was more or less an invalid. One who knew him well wrote: “There was a staunch courage and hardy faith about the way he met the ever-present prospect of death during the later precarious years of his life”.
It was, however, a consolation to him to be back in the county of his boyhood. He had always been devoted to his native Rosenallis, and delighted in reminiscences of his family. He found relief also from the inevitable monotony of a semi-invalid's life in a new interest which he developed, the local history of Laois. In this he was helped by the kindly interest of a good neighbour, Fr. Barry O'Connell, C.C., Mountmellick, with whom he made frequent historical and archaeological trips. His death, so often expected, came at last on 30th November 1966.
In the foregoing sketch many of Fr. Croasdaile's gifts have been touched on, his success in dealing with boys and young people, his musical talents, his skill in field sports, which was often a help to him in establishing good relations with men who would ordinarily have fought shy of a priest. To fill in the picture, a word must be said about him as a good companion. During the long years in which he worked in the colleges, he was heart and soul in his task. Knowing the boys so well, their work and play were a constant source of interest to him, and he had a droll sense of humour which enabled him to see the amusing side even of their misdemeanours. He was, therefore, a great community man, a great enlivener of recreation. He was an outstanding raconteur, and seemed to have an uncanny gift of getting involved in strange experiences, which he related with gusto. It is regrettable that the best of his stories have escaped the writer's memory.
Such are our memories of Fr. Harry Groasdaile, “Cro”, to use the name by which he was affectionately known throughout the Province, a memorable character, and, in his own humorous and original way, a most loyal and devoted son of the Society.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1967

Obituary
Father L H Croasdaile SJ

Rev Lancelot Henry Croasdaile SJ, who has died, aged 78, at St Mary's, Emo Park, Portlaoise, was a well-known teacher.

He taught for a time at Belvedere College, Dublin, and at Clongowes Wood College for a period. He was chaplain to the College of Commerce, Rathmines, Dublin, for a number of years.

Irish Independent, 2-12-1966

Born: 26 March 1653, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 26 November 1673, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1685, Rome, Italy
Died: 24 March 1690, Drogheda Residence, Drogheda, Co Louth

1675 In the Novitiate at St Andrea
1678 In Roman College studying Philosophy for 2 or 3 years
1681 At Sezze College
1685 In 3rd Year Theology at Roman College

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Was educated at the Jesuit School in Tournai before Ent 26 November 1673 in Rome
After First Vows and a course of Philosophy at the Roman College he spent three years Regency at the Colleges of Sezze and Fermo.
1682-1686 Sent to the Roman College for Theology and was Ordained there in 1685
1686-1688 After a short Tertianship he was sent to Irish College Poitiers as Prefect
1688 Returned to Ireland and sent to Drogheda, but died there 24 March 1690

Born: 17 September 1880, Tureencahill, Gneevgullia, Rathmore, County Kerry
Entered: 18 October 1900, Frederick MD, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)
Ordained: 28 June 1915
Final Vows: 02 February 1921
Died: 10 December 1968, Bronx, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1951

Our Past

Father David Cronin SJ

Father David Cronin SJ, celebrated his Golden Jubilee as a Jesuit last November. When in Mungret Father David had as classmates the late Archbishop Curley of Baltimore, and Frank Fahy. The Jubilarian has had a distinguished career in America. In 1919 he became the first Director of Journalism in Canisius College, Buffalo, where he exercised a wide influence. In 1937 his services were sought as a Professor of Philosophy, and he has taught successively at Buffalo, Georgetown and Fordham. On the occasion of his jubilee he celebrated Mass at the Fordham War Memorial Chapel and a reception was held afterwards.

Born: 26 December 1637, Cork City, County Cork
Entered: 06 September 1657, Toulouse, France - Tolosanae Province (TOLO)
Ordained: 20 April 1669, Tournon-sur-Rhône, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1676, Poitiers, France
Died: 28 November 1694, Ballingarry, County Cork - Tolosanae Province (TOLO)

1660 At Toulouse College
“Jerry C = Gemanus or Dom, means that Germanus and Domitius are equivalent of Diarmaid”
1671 Set out for Ireland
1682-1684 Prefect of Studies at Irish College Poitiers

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1671 After studies and Tertianship he came to Ireland
1694 In a poor district of Cork.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1639-1666 After First Vows Studied Philosophy for three years at Toulouse and then spent four years Regency in TOLO Colleges.
1666-1670 He was then sent to Tournon for Theology and Ordained there in 1669
1671-1675 When his studies and Tertianship were complete, he was sent to Ireland and for a while was at the Jesuit School in Drogheda, before heading to the West Cork Mission
1675-1676 Sent to the new Irish College at Poitiers, but spent only a year there including making Final Vows.
1676-1682 He then returned to Ireland continuing his missionary work - presumably in West Cork
1682-1684 After a further six years on the Irish Mission he was sent as Prefect of Studies to Poitiers
1684 He returned to West Cork, though in 1691 he was suggested as Rector of Poitiers, but because he had such a command of the Irish language it was decided to leave him in West Cork. He lived a life of great poverty and died prematurely 02 December 1694

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Dermot Cronin 1637-1694
The tragedy of the history of our Province, is that so little is known of our brethren who “bore the burden of the day and the heats” during the Penal Days. We should be anxious therefore, to perpetuate what little we know, even of the most obscure of them.

Such a man is Fr Dermot Cronin. In a list of Jesuits we find the date 1651 after his name, presumably the date of his entry into the Society. Beyond that, all we know is that he laboured as a parish priest near Drogheda, and that he was so poor that he had to wander about in sheep and goat skins.

He exemplifies the words of St Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews (9:37) “They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted.

His death is recorded in “Fasti Breviores” as taking place probably on December 10th 1694.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CRONIN, DERMOT. On finishing his studies at Toulouse, and his third year of Probation, he was placed at Drogheda towards the end of the year 1671. He excelled as a Preacher and Catechist, and had the advantage over several of his Brethren by his perfect acquaintance with the Irish language. In a letter written by the Superior F. Knoles, at Waterford, on the 25th of November, 1694, it is said that he had a charge of a poor country Parish and had to wander about “in sheepskins and goatskins”, (Heb. c. xi. v. 37. ) on account of the extreme poverty of the Catholics. The Apostolic man must have died a few days later; for the same Superior thus begins a letter, dated the 17th of February, 1695: “On the 9th of December, I wrote announcing the death of F. Dermot Cronin in this Mission, and requesting the usual suffrages for his soul”.

Born: 29 March 1909, Rosshill House, Roscommon Town, County Roscommon
Entered: 01 September 1926, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1940, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 08 December 1944, Manresa House, Roehampton, London, England
Died: 08 December 1990, Canossa Hospital, Old Peak Road, Hong Kong - Macau-Hong Kong Province (MAC-HK)

Part of the Wah Yan College, Hong Kong community at the time of death

Transcribed : HIB to HK 03/12/1966

Father was an officer in Customs & Excise and died in October 1916. In 916 his mother became an officer in Customs & Excise, working in pensions. She lived at Norfolk Road, Phibsborough, Dublin.

At the age of two he went to live in West Clare, and then a year later in Cardiff, Wales. A further year later saw him living in Bandon.

He has a brother (a Vincentian Novice) and a sister (a Professed Dominican nun)

Early education was at a Convent school and then a National School in Bandon. Then his father died and he went to live in Mullagh, County Clare and attended a National School there for three years. Then the family moved to Dublin and he went to O’Connells School.

Tertianship at Rathfarnham

WW2 Chaplain 1943-1947

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966
Mission Superior of the Irish Jesuit Mission to Hong Kong: 10 August 1965-03 December 1966
1st Vice-Provincial of the Irish Jesuit Mission to Hong Kong: 03 December 1966-1972

by 1935 at Aberdeen, Hong Kong - Regency
by 1936 at Wah Yan, Hong Kong - Regency
Hong Kong Mission Superior 10/08/1965
VICE PROVINCIAL 03/12/1966

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Death of Father Fergus Cronin, S.J.
R.I.P.

Father Fergus Cronin, SJ., of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, priest in charge of the Catholic Centre Chapel, died at Canossa Hospital on Saturday, 8 December 1990, aged 81.

In the course of his long life here he won distinction both as a priest and as a voluntary servant of the public. Yet he will be remembered most vividly for his almost unrivalled power of making personal friends and giving wise and sympathetic personal advice.

Father Cronin was born in Co. Roscommon, Ireland, in 1909, the youngest of three children of an early-widowed mother. His only sister became a Dominican nun. His elder brother became a Vincentian priest. He himself joined the Jesuits in 1926.

He first came to Hong Kong as a Jesuit scholastic in 1934, and spent three years studying Cantonese and teaching in Wah Yan College, then housed in Robinson Road. He returned to Ireland in 1937 to complete his Jesuit training and was ordained priest in 1940.

In 1942 he became a chaplain in the British army, serving in the U.K., the Faeroes and Iran and Iraq. In 1944, he had the rather gruesome task of organising replacements for Catholic chaplains who were wounded or killed in the allied assault on Europe.

He was demobilised in 1946 and, apart from one year in India, spent the rest of his years serving the Church and the people of Hong Kong.

The posts he held testified to his gifts as an administrator and a leader - Warden of Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong; Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia; Rector, first of the Jesuit community of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, and later of the Ricci Hall Community; Director of the Hong Kong Catholic Centre; Bishop’s Delegate for Charismatic - the list is incomplete. In 1964 the Jesuit Superior General sent him to India for a year to make a survey of the intellectual resources of the numerous Indian Jesuit Provinces. The gifts that drew these offices to him were apparently family characteristics his elder brother revived the C.B.E. for his work as head of the Teacher’s Training College in Strawberry Hill, London, his sister became Prioress in one of the chief girls' schools in Dublin.

For many years he was lecturer on Logic in the University of Hong Kong. For decades he acted as a Justice of the Peace and was a member of the Hong Kong Housing Society. He took these tasks very seriously and was awarded the O.B.E. in recognition of his services.

All this may seem to add up to a very full life. Yet to those who valued him most, lists of posts held and of work done seem almost irrelevant. The Father Cronin they mourn was the adviser who guided them and the friend who sustained.

He spent his life forming and keeping friendships - men whom he taught as boys in the 1930s, men and women to whom he lectured in the 1950s, former students of Ricci Hall, hosts of those with whom his busy life brought him into contact, have cherished his affection through decades and are permanently grateful for his wise counsel.

His advice was always personal and was often unexpected. It could be bracing, astringent or gentle as the occasion offered. Always it was based on a sympathetic and intelligent assessment of the person he was advising.

Since the vast majority of the people of Hong Kong are Chinese, the vast majority of his friends were Chinese, but there were no national limits to his friendship. Recent years had brought many Filipinas within its scope. Other Asians, Europeans, Americans and Australians in great numbers will be saddened by the news of his passing. Only lack of opportunity robbed him of African friends.

These friendships were independent of social and economic status. He will be mourned equally by Sir Philip and Lady Haddon Cave, the Frequenters of the Catholic Centre Chapel, the members of the Catholic Women’s League, the members of the Little Flower Club, and Pak Ching and A Chau, two former number on servants of Ricci Hall. He valued people, not for what they possessed or what they had achieved, but for what they were - as he might have said, “because of the love that I bore them.”

We shall not see his like again.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 14 December 1990

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013.

Note from Alan Birmingham Entry
On the death of Father Fergus Cronin SJ, Father Alan took over as rector of the busy Catholic Centre Chapel.

Note from Thomas Fitzgerald Entry
A Solemn Requiem Mass for the repose of his soul was celebrated in the chapel of Wah Yan College Hong Kong, on Monday, 17 July, by Father F. Cronin, S.J., Regional Superior.

Note from Jimmy Hurley Entry
Martin Lee Chu-ming, former legal advisor to The Justice and Peace Commission :
Lee said that he could find many similarities between Father Hurley’s life and his own. They were both inspired by Father Fergus Cronin in the fight for people’s rights. Lee recalled how Father Hurley sought clearance before attending a press conference to speak for the students and Father Cronin, the then-Jesuit superior in Hong Kong, told him: “Go James, attend! This is where you must be.” Father Hurley said he could not forget such a clear instruction and was grateful for the support. Lee recalled that when he started in politics, he also visited Father Cronin, who was then seriously ill, and asked what he could do for the Church. Father Cronin told him to follow his conscience and do what he thought he should do.

Note from Terry Sheridan Entry
The chief celebrant, Father Fergus Cronin, Provincial Superior of the Hong Kong Jesuits and one of Father Sheridan’s oldest friends in Hong Kong, paid the following tribute. I suppose all of us here are people who knew Father Terence Sheridan so it is not necessary for me to say who he was nor to mention many of the things he did....

Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
1st Vice-Provincial of Hong Kong (1967-1972)

His older brother was a Vincentian Priset and was awarded a CBE for his work at the Teachers Training ollege at Strawberry Hill London. His sister was a Dominican sister who became Prioress at one of the chief Dublin Girls School.

1928-1931 He studied Histroy at UCD graduating BA (Hons)
1931-1934 He was sent for Philsophy to Tullabeg
1934-1935 He was sent teaching to Hong Kong and the Regional Seminary at Aberdeen for Regency
1935-1937 He moved to Wah Yan Hong Kong
1937-1940 He was back in Ireland for Theology at Milltown Park
1941-1942 He was at Rathfarnham making Tertianship
During 1962-1964 he toured the Asian Provinces to assess what kind of Provincial cooperation might be possible in the intellectual level.
1963-1965 He was Superior at St Joseph’s, Wise Mansion
1972-1974 After finishing as Vice-Provincial he was in charge of St Joseph’s Church and the Catholic Centre for the Diocese of Hong Kong
1980-1986 He was Superior of Ricci Hall
1986-1990 He was Director of the Catholic Centre.

He was in Hong Kong for over 40 years. He was a gifted administrator and leader as Vice provincial in Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Singapore.He pursued the expansion of the Province and was very keen for inter Provincial cooperation in east Asia. He was once the Bishop’s Delegate for Charismatics and also a lecturer in Logic at HKU (1946-1962). He was appointed by the Hong Kong Governor as a member of the Board of Education, a member of the Education Appeals Board, the Council for Social Services and the University of Hong Kong Council.
He was also active in the Catholic Women’s League, Catholic Marriage Council and American Sailors Catholic Service. He served as Rector at the Catholic Centre, the English Catholic “public relations” and a member of the HK Housing Society.
He was awarded a “Justice of the Peace” in Hong Kong as well as an OBE in recognition of his services.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 22nd Year No 1 1947

Departures for Mission Fields in 1946 :
4th January : Frs. P. J. O'Brien and Walsh, to North Rhodesia
25th January: Frs. C. Egan, Foley, Garland, Howatson, Morahan, Sheridan, Turner, to Hong Kong
25th July: Fr. Dermot Donnelly, to Calcutta Mission
5th August: Frs, J. Collins, T. FitzGerald, Gallagher, D. Lawler, Moran, J. O'Mara, Pelly, Toner, to Hong Kong Mid-August (from Cairo, where he was demobilised from the Army): Fr. Cronin, to Hong Kong
6th November: Frs. Harris, Jer. McCarthy, H. O'Brien, to Hong Kong

Born: 11 November 1873, Listowel, County Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1892, Macon GA, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)
Ordained: 26 July 1908, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1913
Died: 09 December 1939, Mercy Hospital, New Orleans, LA, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)

part of the Jesuit High School, New Orleans LA, USA community at the time of death

Brother of Michael J Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1962 and Patrick Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1951
First Cousin of Daniel M Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1957; Timothy A Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1939; Michael F Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1936

by 1906 came to Milltown (HIB) studying 1905-1907

Born: 21 January 1871, Derrindaff, Duagh, County Kerry
Entered: 02 December 1890, Macon GA, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)
Ordained: 02 August 1903, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1905
Died: 31 October 1936, New Orleans LA, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)

First Cousin of Michael J Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1962 and Patrick Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1951
Brother of Daniel M Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1957; Timothy A Cronin (NOR) - RIP 1939;

by 1903 came to Milltown (HIB) studying

Born: 16 April 1888, Bandon, County Cork
Entered: 07 September 1905, Roehampton, London - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1922
Final Vows: 02 February 1927
Died: 18 September 1945, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1926 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

Born: 08 April 1715, County Kilkenny/Tenerife Canary Islands
Entered: 08 May 1737, Watten, Belgium - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained” 1744
Final Vows: 15 August 1755
Died: 22 April 1785, Worcester, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Was on the Mission of Vera Cruz
1764 Rector of St Ignatius College (London) 13 November 1764 for many years
Subsequently he served the Worcester Mission, where he died 22 April 1785 aged 70

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CROSS, BERNARD, born in Tenerife, 8th April, 1715, and on his 22nd birth-day consecrated himself to God in the Society. He was admitted to the profession of the Four Vows on the Feast of the Assumption, 1755. For some time he exercised his missionary functions at Vera Cruz : for several years, I am informed, he was stationed in London, but died at Worcester, 22nd April, 1785; another account say 22nd October, and another 3d February that year. 1 think the first date is the correct one

Born: 04 September 1864, Carlow Town, County Carlow
Entered: 07 September 1899, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Final Vows: 02 February 1909
Died: 27 February 1909, Mater Hospital, Dublin

Part of the Crescent College, Limerick community at the time of death

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Before Entry he had been working at a butcher’s in Thomas St, Dublin, and had been a member of John Bannon’s Sodality in Gardiner St.

He made his Novitiate at Tullabeg, and was then sent as Buyer and Cook to Crescent.
1909 He had a bad heart attack due to overwork and strain. He was sent to the Mater Hospital in Dublin, and died there to the surprise and great regret of his community 27/02/1909.
A good, holy, patient, good-humoured and hardworking Brother.

Belvedere student, Irish Rugby International and Athlete.

Born: 04 January 1919, Palmyra Park, Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 14 September 1944, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 15 August 1963, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway
Died: 17 October 1990, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway

Entered Scholastic Novice until just before Ordination;

Father was Secretary to Galway County Council and died in 1931. Mother died when he was very young and his father remarried.

Third of four boys with one sister.

Early education was at St Joseph’s Boys National School, Nun’s Island he then went to St Joseph’s Secondary School.

In 1936 he secured a position as a Clerical Officer passing the exam, and subsequent exams 1939-1943 for Junior Executive Officers in the Civil Service.

by 1947 at Roehampton London (ANG) studying

Born: 05 March 1925, Monasteroris, Edenderry, County Offaly
Entered: 07 September 1943, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1957, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1961, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 04 July 2017, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Father was a Veterinary Surgeon.

Eldest of four boys with four older sisters.

Early education in Edenderry after which he went to Clongowes Wood College SJ for five years.

by 1977 at St Ignatius College Prep San Francisco CA, USA (CAL) Sabbatical

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/paddy-crowe-sj-a-quality-educator/

Paddy Crowe SJ – a quality educator
Paddy Crowe SJ died peacefully on Tuesday morning, 4 July, in the wonderful care, love and compassion of the staff at Cherryfield Lodge Nursing Home, Milltown Park, Dublin 6. At his funeral mass in Milltown Park Chapel on 6 July, former community member and friend Bruce Bradley SJ gave the homily. He was buried in the Community Cemetery in Clongowes, Clane, Co. Kildare.

Born on 5 March 1925 in Edenderry, Co Offaly, Paddy was the oldest boy in a large family. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College SJ in Co Kildare before entering the Society of Jesus in 1943. Early on, it was thought he would make a good professor of philosophy, but he had a more active interest in schools. He soon found himself working in education under various roles. At Clongowes Wood College SJ, for example, he became teacher, prefect, rector, and eventually headmaster.

He served as Director of Education Policy and Education Delegate for the Irish Province and worked at several other schools, including Crescent College SJ and Mungret College SJ in Co Limerick, and Belvedere College SJ, Gonzaga College SJ, and Greendale School in Dublin. Referring to his personality, Fr Bradley said: “He was an extrovert and had such a sense of humour. He was bravely adventurous, who loved to travel, have new experiences and make new friends”.

“Educational value,” Paddy said once, “is based largely on personal contact of good people with the young.” Fr Bradley, who worked with him for many years, noted: “In all the schools where he served, he was demanding and firm, but fair. He lived in the continual tension between the old and the new, always reading, questioning, and seeking to move on”.
One of his former students commented: “You always knew where you stood with Fr Crowe”.

Paddy was consultant to Fényi Gyula Jesuit High School, the only Jesuit school in Hungary, founded in 1994. He was heavily involved in the University of Scranton (USA) Scholarship Scheme, which led in time to his honorary doctorate in education, of which he was justly proud.

Later from 1998 to 2009, he returned to Clongowes where he lived among his Jesuit community; acted as spiritual father for students; assisted in a local parish and ministered to the Holy Family Sisters. His mind remained very alert as his physical health deteriorated. As one friend said of him: “He was a great man to have a conversation with but a terrible man to play scrabble with”. He also retained a great interest in computers and loved using up-to-date devices.

His passing is deeply regretted by his family, Jesuit companions, friends, former colleagues and his many students, some of whom posted warm tributes on Facebook. Fr Bradley concluded: “As Paddy arrives at last at the father’s house, we can rejoice with him and for him. Paddy, go without fear. Amen”.

Early Education at Edenderry NS; Knockbeg College, Carlow; Clongowes Wood College SJ

1945-1948 Rathfarnham - Studying Arts at UCD
1948-1951 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1951-1953 Crescent College SJ, Limerick - Regency : Teacher
1953-1954 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Regency : Teacher; Third Line Prefect; Studying for CWC Cert in Education
1954-1958 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
1958-1959 Rathfarnham - Tertianship
1959-1960 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Lower Line Prefect; Teacher
1960-1965 Mungret College SJ - Prefect of Studies; Teacher
1965-1976 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Prefect of Studies; Teacher
1968 Rector
1971 Headmaster
1976-1977 St Ignatius Prep. San Francisco, CA, USA - Sabbatical
1977-1978 Loyola House - Province Special Secretariat
1978-1979 University Hall - Vice Superior; Province Special Secretariat; Director Province Education Policy
1979-1984 Belvedere College SJ - Working in Education; Director Province Education Policy
1980 Headmaster; Teacher; Education Delegate; Colloquium
1984-1987 Campion House - Education Delegate; Director Colloquium
1985 Manager Gonzaga College SJ; Chair Board Gonzaga College SJ; Vice-Superior
1987-1992 Loyola House - Superior; Education Delegate; Director Colloquium
1990 Central Province Admin; Asst Education Delegate; Chair Board Gonzaga College SJ
1992-1995 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Rector; Provincial Team
1995-1998 Belvedere College SJ - Principal of Junior School
1997 Chair Board Cherryfield Lodge
1998 - 2017 Clongowes Wood College SJ - Assists in Clane Parish of St Patrick & St Brigid
1999 Chair Board of Greendale School, Kilbarrack, Dublin
2001 Spiritual Father to Third Line
2006 Ministry to Holy Family Sisters, Clane, Co Kildare
2009 Prays for the Church and the Society at Cherryfield Lodge

◆ The Clongownian, 1977

Appreciation

Father Patrick Crowe SJ

It is doubtful if anyone has had such a varied experience of responsibility in Clongowes as Fr Crowe, our first Headmaster, who left us last summer. He was Third Line Prefect 1953-54, Lower Line Prefect '59-60, Prefect of Studies '65-68, Rector '68-71 and finally Headmaster from '71 to '76. For eleven years, then, his office, if not regal, was at least consular in the Roman sense: he was one of two holding “imperium” in our little state. Anyone in a position to make a “before-and-after” assessment of that period in Clongowes must agree that the many changes which took place have amounted to a transformation. These range from unlocked notice-boards and study. halls to new buildings, from boys distributing their own letters to voluntary Mass on week-days, from entrance exams to self-service in the refectory, from a catering committee to a School Council, from monthly breaks to women teachers, from an integrated staff lunch to a stand-by generator, from cups for tennis, choir and orchestra to work for the poor and aged of the district and the handicapped children in Stewart's hospital, from masters' classrooms to parents' meetings, from social evenings to an O Level year, from boys telephones to a crowded programme of holiday engagements in the college. The degree of Fr Paddy's involvement in these changes varied, of course, from agonising personal decision to mere encouragement of other people's energy and initiative. But the work of any man in government or administration is judged, for credit or condemnation, by what actually took place during his term of office. By that test our first Headmaster when he comes back to visit Clongowes - which we hope he will do very often - will be able, with all the confidence and gratification of Christopher Wren in St Paul's, to look around and see everywhere monuments to his vision and efficiency. His devotedness to visiting the sick and attending funerals will endure in the grateful memory of very many parents and past pupils, the community and teaching staff, and all whom, in a favourite phrase, he liked to call the “Clongowes family”.

◆ The Clongownian, 2017

Obituary

Father Paddy Crowe SJ : A Quality Educator

Fr Paddy Crowe SJ died peacefully on Tuesday morning, 4th July, 2017 in the wonderful care, love and compassion of the staff at Cherryfield Lodge Nursing Home, Milltown Park, Dublin 6 and was buried in the Community Cemetery in Clongowes, Clane, Co. Kildare. Paddy spent much of his life in Clongowes, first as a pupil and then as teacher, prefect, rector as well as being the first headmaster. At his funeral mass in Milltown Park Chapel on 6th July, former community member and friend Bruce Bradley SJ gave the homily

Herbert McCabe, the English Dominican theologian of Irish descent and a near contemporary of Paddy's, wrote in his book, “Faith Within Reason”, published posthumously in 2007: “The whole of our faith is the belief that God loves us; [...] there just isn't anything else. Anything else we say we believe is just a way of saying that God loves us”. And the corollary of that is that everything we hear in Scripture is the message of God's love. The whole of salvation history, the account of God's interaction with us from the beginning of time, through different epochs, across diverse cultures, expressed in a variety of human literary forms and devices, all of that history recorded in the complex collection we call 'the Bible', carries the same message, finally summarised in St John's heartbreakingly simple phrase of just three words at the end of the New Testament: “God is love”.

Herbert McCabe's fellow-Dominican, the great Flemish theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, prefaced his book on the Church with a memorable anonymous quotation: “People are the words with which God tells his story”. In the Word of God we read at a funeral, we seek to cast light on the human life we are celebrating and to discern the working out of God's love in that life. It's not difficult to see that the leit-motif of Paddy Crowe's story, the leading theme, was education. On one occasion, speaking in this instance about Clongowes - but the remark has much wider application when referred to himself - Paddy said: “We think Clongowes is a good school and to it we are willing to give our time, our energy. our humanity, our lives”. Education, the eliciting of potential and the nurturing of gifts and talents in young lives, is, properly understood, above all a work of creative love. And that is the work to which Paddy gave himself, directly or indirectly, for much of his long, dedicated life.

Clongowes, of course, where he went after the local national school and a period in Knockbeg, looms large in his story. The oldest boy in a large family from Edenderry, to which he remained always attached, he was there as a student in the war years from 1938 to 1943. The records - as is often the case - hardly presage the distinguished career in education that lay ahead of him, although he was clearly an able first division student and produced excellent Leaving Certificate results. He was a prominent and able debater from the beginning and in his second year - perhaps a little harder to imagine but accurately reflecting the interest he always had in music - he was praised for his portrayal of the shy and petite Germaine in the comic opera “Les Cloches de Corneille!”

His keen, enquiring intellect
Having joined the Jesuits straight from school, in the course of his formation he was at one stage envisaged as a future professor of philosophy. That points to his keen, enquiring intellect but it was almost certainly a misreading of his temperamental inclinations and he was destined to more active work in schools for almost all of his life. He served as Third Line Prefect in Clongowes from 1953 to 1954, as Lower Line Prefect from 1959-60, as Prefect of Studies from 1965 to 1968, as Rector in the old days of the Rector Magnificus from 1968 to 1971, as Headmaster from 1971 to 1976, as Rector again from 1992 to 1995 (though by then, as he discovered somewhat to his disappointment, with headmasters now in place to lead the school the role had gone down a bit), and, finally, for the years from 1998 to 2009, as a member of the community and carrying out some duties inside and outside the school, but without the burdens of office which he had carried for so long and at a time when his health was beginning to decline.

“But Clongowes was far from the whole story. Apart from the valuable work he did in other Jesuit schools in Ireland - the Crescent in Limerick; Mungret, where he was Prefect of Studies for five years before moving to the same role in Clongowes; Belvedere, where he served as Headmaster for four years at the beginning of the eighties, after his long stint in Clongowes, and later as Principal of the Junior School in the mid nineties; and Gonzaga, where he was manager for a time - he was also Education Delegate to the Provincial in the 1980s, giving him oversight of all the schools and those who worked in them. In addition, he was heavily involved in these years in promoting what was known as the Colloquium, which brought Jesuit and lay teachers together to talk about their shared aspirations - the kind of dialogue he had come to believe in more and more. It partly explains, too, his great interest in psychology. And I have not mentioned the many organisations and projects and committees beyond the Jesuit sphere to which he made substantial contributions, often in leadership roles, to promote an educational vision and foster its practical application to the actual life of classrooms; or his chairing of the board in Greendale Community School in north Dublin for several years from 1999; or his heavy involvement in the Scranton University scholarship scheme, which led in time to an honorary doctorate in education, of which he was justly proud; and so on. And that list, long as it is, is not exhaustive.

Paddy thought a lot about education and, over his time of leadership in Clongowes, he delivered reflective, well-crafted addresses at the annual past pupils' dinner, expounding his own developing understanding and the need for change. One such speech even made the front page of The Sunday Press! His first administrative appointment was to Mungret in 1960 and he would remain in school leadership continuously until 1976, almost two decades, which finally left him exhausted. This was a period of huge change in Ireland and further afield. Paddy was keenly aware of such change and worked hard, reading and consulting widely, to keep abreast of it. in his speech to the Clongowes Union, in the autumn of 1969. he made what must have been one of the earliest references to computers in such a context - computers, as we know, would prove a lifelong passion and his room in Cherryfield became something of a computer graveyard, as latest model succeeded latest model in the relatively confined space, all identified and ordered on-line by Paddy himself! In that speech he also spoke, in the same sentence, of the government's pivotal Investment in Education report and the all-important decree of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 'The Church in the Modern World'. The introduction of free education in Ireland, followed by the points system, gradually transformed the system here, asking new questions of Clongowes and all the Jesuit schools. The Church's role in education, as has become so familiar to us now, was beginning to be called into question. Les évènements in Paris in 1968 took place as he was making the transition from Prefect of Studies, in which he had been, in the words of “The Clongownian”, “the architect of aggiornamento”, to the heavier responsibilities of Headmaster.

Personal contact of good people
“Educational value”, he said once, “is based largely on personal contact of good people with the young”. Paddy himself was one such good person and he sought this kind of contact to the extent that he could. Over time, his direct manner, which could be intimidating, softened considerably. In all the schools where he served, he was demanding and firm but fair. One former student was quoted as saying that you always knew where you stood with him. He was never afraid to confront but colleagues and parents found him accessible and often became his good friends. A notable part of his legacy in Clongowes was the effective abolition of corporal punishment, which took full effect after he left. In Belvedere he put an end to streaming just before he completed his term, a no less important change for the atmosphere and culture of a school. Schools, boarding schools especially perhaps, have a tendency to be somewhat conservative places and Paddy was well aware that his modernising policies were the subject of criticism inside and outside the school. He confronted the challenge directly at the Clongowes Union Dinner in 1974. “Meeting many of the older men here”, he said, “sets me thinking of all the things that have changed”. Having listed some of the changes, he asked: “How did it happen? If you like simple answers to complex questions, take your choice: ‘they’ have gone permissive, soft, have no backbone, will not stand out against the rot... As we see it, things began to happen, matters were forced on our attention - we began to listen to others, began to accept an enormously changed world, began to reflect more on what we were trying to do and what in fact we were doing. The Catholic school could easily become a place of comfortable conformity, he had said a year earlier.... Priests and religious do not wish to stay in their schools for this ... We are at the end of Phase | Catholic Education in Ireland. The response of 1814 does not answer the needs of 1973”.

He ended one of his addresses by quoting the inspirational Jesuit General of the time, Father Pedro Arrupe, whose “Men for Others” address in Valencia would soon make its impact on all Jesuit schools: “If our schools are to perform as they should, they will live in continual tension between the old and the new, the comfortable past and the uneasy present”. Paddy, destined to lead schools in a period of extraordinary change, always wanted them to live in that way. That was where he tried to live himself, always reading and questioning and seeking to move on.

Bravely adventurous There is so much more to be said but time does not allow and, despite what you might think, this is not, in the end, intended to be a lecture on the educational career of Paddy Crowe or a mere personal eulogy. Through these - often lonely and taxing - endeavours (and he could get down and discouraged), Paddy was working out his vocation, responding to God's call, telling God's story through his own life. In this very inadequate sketch, I have stressed the educational component and the richness of what he achieved, for particular reasons. From our present vantage-point, Paddy's life easily seems to fall into what we might almost think of as two “halves”. There have been more recently what seem - and certainly seemed to him - like the long years of decline, which weighed so heavily on him, despite the devotion - and even, we have to say, the forebearance! - of Mary Rickard and Rachel McNeill and the staff who cared for him in Cherryfield, since he went there actually less than a decade ago. Even before that, in his last years in Clongowes, as the extrovert that he was, with such an appetite for life and involvement and activity, as a man who was so bravely adventurous and loved to travel and have new experiences and make new friends, as a man used to being in authority and exercising influence and in control, he felt himself”'beached” and on the sidelines and found this very painful. Who knows what heroism he practised, behind the mask of failing powers and old age, as he went, increasingly and inscrutably silent, through all this? And so it is appropriate to correct the balance and beware of forgetting his achievements in the many earlier decades of his life. That's my first reason for laying such emphasis on them now, as the trajectory of that life comes more clearly into focus.

The second reason for thinking about those achievements, which perhaps brings us closer to what Paddy's inner experience was like, is that I think he did not always believe in all the good he had accomplished himself. And, for all his extroversion and his capacity to encourage others and promote development around him, there was a depressive side which showed at times and he was prone to self-doubt or at least to doubt the extent to which his efforts were appreciated by others. For him, on a superficial level at least, the measure of success - and perhaps of approval - was always further worthwhile employment. And when, in the judgment of others though not his own, he was past that, he found it harder to cope.

I began by quoting Herbert McCabe and I want to end with him. Paddy, full of humanity, longed for acceptance and emotional connection with others. In him I sensed that the emotion was often masked behind the brusque, direct, sometimes even abrasive manner. He was hardly aware of this or the degree to which it conditioned some of the responses he evoked in others. I think, to the extent that I knew this or have any right now to make such a surmise (and we lived and worked together in a variety of capacities over many years), in some measure it affected his spirituality and his search for a closer felt relationship with God. The uncertainty of the prodigal son in the parable in Luke's gospel at the reception he might expect from his father when he returned home, the journey on which we are all embarked, sometimes, judging by what he would say himself, seemed to infect Paddy's efforts to pray and to find rest in prayer. Herbert McCabe, interpreting that wonderful, utterly seminal parable in his posthumous book earlier referred to understands the essence of the story of the prodigal not to be the father's forgiveness of the son, but the father's welcoming and celebrating the son's homecoming with a feast. The love shown in this by the father is, for McCabe, analogous to God's love for us, sinners that we are. “His love”, he writes, “does not depend on what we do or what we are like. He doesn't care whether we are sinners or not. It makes no difference to him. He is just waiting to welcome us with joy and love”. As Paddy arrives at last at the Father's house and the banquet of which Isaiah writes so eloquently (Paddy would appreciate that!), the good fight finished (and he was always a fighter) and his race run, we can rejoice with him and for him that he knows the truth of the parable of the returned prodigal and the heavenly Father's welcome now. Now he can say with the psalmist that, through all his endeavours and all his struggles, “I was always in your presence; you were holding me by your right hand” (Psalm 73 1721,23). In the words Pope Francis, a man after Paddy Crowe's heart, likes to use for such a moment, we say to him: “Paddy, avanti senza paura! Go without fear! Amen”.

Born: 28 February 1817, County Carlow
Entered: 10 January 1845, St Mary’s, Lebanon, KY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final Vows: 15 August 1855
Died: 08 August 1869, Fordham College, NY, USA - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province NEBCAN)

Kennedy Crowley & Co. Chartered Accountants

Lay apostolate for youth

Born: 02 March 1924, Tubercurry, County Sligo/Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 06 September 1941, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1955, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1959, Wah Yan College, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Died: 16 December 1978, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong - Hong Kongensis Province (HK)

Transcribed : HIB to HK 03/12/1966

by 1951 at Hong Kong - Regency

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Father Martin Cryan, S.J.
R.I.P.

Father Martin Cryan, SJ, of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, died suddenly at Wah Yan on 16 December 1978, aged 54. The Hong Kong Jesuits have lost an inspiring and original thinker, a teacher of force and lucidity, a dedicated priest and a very good companion.

An outline of his life suggests placid academic devotion - Birth in Tubercurry, Co. Sligo, Ireland, in 1924: education at St. Ignatius’s Galway: Jesuit novitiate, 1941: Hong Kong, 1949-52, for study of Chinese and teaching in the Wah Yan Hong Kong afternoon school: Ireland, 1952-57, for theology and ordination: 1957, Hong Kong, teaching first in Wah Yan, Kowloon, and then in Wah Yan, Hong Kong, broken only by a year of special study of biology in the Ateneo. Manila, after which he concentrated chiefly on teaching biology.

Placidity was, however, the last thing his friends associated with Father Cryan. His life was one long adventure. He seized on every idea that caught his interest, Squeezed all that he could from it, and then thrust eagerly forward to put the idea into practice, without regard to hampering conventions. This made him an agreeably unpredictable companion. His last passion was for astronomy. Again and again he passed his nights in a sleeping-bag on a hillside so that he might see his well-loved stars at their brightest.

He will be much and lastingly missed.

He was buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Happy Valley, on 18 December, after Mass at St. Margaret’s. The Bishop led the concelebrating and officiated at the graveside.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 22 December 1978

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
His early education was at Coláiste Iognáid in Galway.

After his Novitiate he studied at UCD, graduating with a BA in History, he then went on to study Philosophy at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg, and later Theology at Milltown Park.

He taught Biology at Wah Yan Colleges in Hong Kong and Kowloon, even though History and Theology were his interests.

he was interested in broad educational matters and was a founding member of the Educators’ Social Action Council (ESAC). In fact, at the time of his death, he was helping to compile a handbook for ESAC on Counselling Services in Hong Kong.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 56th Year No 3 1981

Obituary

Fr Martin Cryan (1924-1941-1978)

Mairt Cryan died suddenly at 6 pm on Saturday, 16th December 1978. He was in his room getting ready to concelebrate Mass with Donal Lawler, when he called Derek Reid and Dick McCarthy to tell them he was not feeling well. They contacted Ruttonjee hospital, run by the Columban sisters, but Mairt was dead by the time help arrived. He had never been to hospital, and had very rarely visited a doctor. True, he had seen Sr Aquinas only a week or so earlier about his hypertension.
He was considered one of the strongest and most robust of the “younger” men of the province. In recent years particularly, he took long walks at the weekends and in the early mornings, and not infrequently camped out on his own overnight. On his last home vacation in 1977, he camped out for a few weeks on the island of Crete, and walked, cycled and camped over much of his native West of Ireland. However, he did have some inkling of his high blood pressure, and privately often expressed a desire to die while still in fuil possession of his faculties, quickly and without troubling anyone, and relatively young.
Born at Tubbercurry, co. Sligo, he later moved with his family to Galway, where he studied at St Ignatius College. After joining the Society at Emo in 1941, he took a good degree in history at UCD before his philosophy at Tullabeg. In 1949 he went to Hongkong, and after studying Cantonese taught in the after- noon school at Wah Yan, Robinson road. Returning to Ireland for theology, he was ordained in Milltown Park in 1955. After tertianship he returned in 1957 to Hongkong and spent the rest of his life in the classrooms. The subject of his special study was biology, and for this he went for a year to the Ateneo, Manila, in the 1960s.
He gave enormous energy and devotion to his classroom teaching, demanding high standards and a strict discipline of his students, coupled with a real concern for their full development and warm encouragement for their growing interests whether in biology or in other school or “life” subjects. (V-PL) He had some unorthodox teaching methods. He was one of the first to research and introduce scientific multiple-choice testing methods in his own subject. Educational matters held a deep interest for him. He was a founder member and active contributor in the Educators' Social Action Council. He saw himself as a Jesuit priest educator. His colleagues did not always find him the easiest of men to deal with - he was sometimes exasperating in his ways - but they always nonetheless regarded him with esteem and affection.
Theology and history remained two of Mairt's particular interests, though he was well-read in many fields. He was a simple, humble, modest and private person, behind the external excitableness and occasional bluster: at heart, a very kind and gentle man. One of his community wrote about him for the daily press. The following is an excerpt from the appreciation:
“He had the command ing personality, tinged with agreeable eccentricity, that makes a schoolmaster vibrate in the memory of those he taught. He was interested in many things and pursued his interests with what may be described as intellectual and practical ferocity”.
An engaging eccentric, whose eccentricity was rarely difficult for others, he could be oblivious to the consequences of his noisy habits. He invariably saw things from an original angle, but always with absolute honesty. He was a shy man who liked people. He was first a priest and religious, next a teacher, and when he had fulfilled his obligations to these métiers, he had time to think over the problems of the world around him: he was extremely concerned about others, His witness to poverty was very clear, as anything he had was always old, well worn and practical. He was an excellent teacher, going to great pains to prepare his classes, and he had the art of being able to explain the most complicated matters with great clarity and force.
Harold Naylor

Born: 02 October 1878, Mountjoy Square, Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1897, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 27 July 1913, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1916, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway
Died: 09 December 1935, St Ignatius College, Manresa, Norwood, Adelaide, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

Father died in 1889. Six brothers (one deceased) and two sisters.

Educated at Mungret Coillege SJ then Ushaw College, Durham then back to Mungret

by 1902 at Chieri Italy (TAUR) studying
Came to Australia for Regency 1904

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
He came from a well known County Wicklow family. Mass was said in their private Oratory at home for the family and those who lived nearby by priests from Milltown Park.

1899-1901 After First Vows he continued at St Stanislaus Tullabeg for a Juniorate
1901-1903 He was sent to Chieri Italy for Philosophy.
1904-1905 He was sent to Australia for Regency, and firstly to St Aloysius College Milsons Point
1905-1910 He was then sent to continue his Regency at St Ignatius College Riverview, where he was Third Prefect and orgainised junior Debating
1910-1914 He returned to Ireland for Theology at Milltown Park and then made tertianship at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg (1913-1914)
1915-1920 He was sent teaching at Coláiste Iognáid Galway
1920-1921 He was sent teaching at Mungret College Limerick
1922-1931 He was sent back to Australia and firstly to St Ignatius Church Richmond, caring especially for the Church of St James
1931-1935 He was sent to the Norwood Parish and he was not in good health at this time.

He was a gentle and amiable man.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 11th Year No 2 1936

Obituary :
Father Charles Cuffe
Father Charles Cuffe was born 2nd October, 1878, at Mountjoy Square, Dublin. In 1889 he went to Mungret lay school, remained there a short time. and continued his education at Ushaw College, Durham. In 1895 he returned to Mungret. He began his noviceship at Tullabeg, 7th September, 1897.
He made two years juniorate at Tullabeg, three years philosophy at Chieri, and in 1904 we fid him in Australia, Praef. Mor. at St Aloysius College, Sydney. Next year he was transferred to Riverview, where he remained, Praef. Mor., etc., until 1910, when he began his theology at Milltown Park. Tertianship at Tullabeg followed. After Tertianship he went to Galway, where he taught, and worked Sodalities up to 1920, when he became Assistant Moderator of the Apostolic School at Mungret. The following year saw him once more in Australia amongst the “recently arrived”.
For about the next ten years he was stationed at St. James' Presbytery, Somerset Street, as Minister, and Director of a vast number of Parish works. At the end of that period his health began to fail, and, according to the Australian Catalogue of 1932, he was stationed at Norwood (Adelaide) with the ominous “Cur Val”, appended to his name. However, he did not give in. He remained at Norwood, getting through no small amount of work to the end. He died on Monday, 9th December, 1935. R.I.P.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1936

Obituary

Father Charles Cuffe SJ

To those who knew Fr, Cuffe in youth his death at the relatively early age of 57 may appear surprising, as nobody could have seemed more destined than he to reach a ripe and even venerable old age. But already in the year 1931 he had a heart seizure of a serious kind, from which he rallied, indeed, but never quite recovered. Hence for his friends the end was not unexpected.

It was not, however, on that account the less mournful for it was impossible to know him and not to grow attached to him. He had the qualities that conciliate affection the natural qualities of kindliness, helpfulness, generosity and seren ity of soul, the supernatural quality of solid virtue and piety.

Born in Dublin, Oct 2, 1878, he was educated at Mungret College, Limerick, 1888-89 and 1895-97. He entered the Novitiate, Tuliabeg in Sept. 1897 and took his first vows in 1899. In 1901 he went to Chieri in Italy to study Philosophy. In 1904 he made his first acquaintance with Australia where he taught and acted as Prefect (principally at Riverview) till 1909. In 1910 he commenced the study of Theology in Milltown Park, where he was ordained priest in 1913. In 1915-16 he returned to Tullabeg for his Tertianship. From 1916 to 1920 he was on the staff of St Ignatius College, Galway. In 1921 he became Assistant Moderator in the Apostolic School, Mungret. The following year he took a last farewell of Ireland to find in Australia the final theatre of his activity and the place of his resurrection. He worked in St James' parish, Melbourne till the parish was relinquished to the diocesan clergy in 1931. He then went to Norwood. Shortly after arriving, he suffered that breakdown in health which the doctors thought must mean death within six months, but in point of fact took four years to complete its work.

Such is the dry-as-dust chronicle of events. It gives us little clue to the animating spirit of the life. Character and personality escape the chronicler of dates and occupations, yet it is just character and personality we would like to recapture and retain. The outstanding feature of his life as I remember it was a quiet cheerfulness which was proof against any trials; a steady dedication to the tasks of the day without any of that peevish fretfulness which dissipates energy and wears out the forces of soul and body; an extraordinary readiness to lend a helping hand to those about him. These characteristics seemed natural - an inheritance as it were or the result of early training. He was one of those rare beings who seem to have escaped the effects of the Primal Fall. No one could imagine him making an enemy or even losing a friend. He walked the quiet ways of life, doing good unobtrusively and winning affection unostentatiously. He was ideally suited to the parish work in which his last years of activity were spent.

The Melbourne Advocate in its obituary notice, Dec. 12, 1935, writes:

Fr, Cuffe needs no monument in stone to recall his fruitful labour for souls. He leaves an abiding memory in the hearts of all with whom he came in contact. For he was a most kindly and lovable priest, generous and deeply esteemed”.

I think it was Dr Johnson who said : “No man is on his oath in a lapidary inscription”. I suppose it is the same in obituary notices. But no one who ever knew Fr Cuffe will need an oath to accept this tribute. Every word of it rings sincere and true. It is the least, and not the most, that could be said of him. He was a good priest, a good religious, a good friend; and he will be remembered by all who had the privilege of his acquaintance till they too pass from the transitory to the eternal. May he rest in peace.

Born: 10 June 1887, Mountjoy Square, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 February 1907, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 15 August 1920, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1924, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 06 April 1951, Dublin City, County Dublin

Part of St Mary's community, Emo, County Laois at time of his death

Father was a sheep and cattle salesman and he died in 1888. Mother is still living and lives at Westbrook, Rathnew, County Wicklow.

Youngest of six sons and has two sisters.

Early education at a convent school in Athlone he went to a college of the Josephite Fathers in Melle, near Ghent , Belgium, and then returned home for private instruction. He then went to the Eastern Telegraph Company, Electra House, Moorgate, London for six months. He returned home and went to Clongowes Wood College to gain a matric.

by 1911 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1912 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 26th Year No 3 1951

Obituary :

Fr. Cuffe was born in Dublin on June 10th, 1887. He was educated in the College of the Josephite Fathers, Ghent, Belgium, and at Clongowes. He entered the Society in 1907, and after his Juniorate, studied philosophy at Louvain and St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst. As a scholastic he taught in Clongowes, Belvedere and Mungret, besides being Third Line Prefect in Clongowes and Third Club Prefect in Mungret. He studied theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1920. After his Tertianship at Tullabeg (1922-23), he was appointed Vice-Superior in the Apostolic School, Mungret, a post which he held until 1933. He was then transferred to Clongowes where, in addition to his duties as master, he had charge of the People's Church. In 1943 he was appointed Spiritual Father at St. Mary's, Emo.
During the last few years of his life he suffered from heart trouble, which steadily became more acute. Shortly before Easter of the present year he went to stay with his family at Rathnew, Co. Wicklow, where, it was hoped, a period of complete rest and quiet would revive his fast-ebbing strength, But he was soon attacked with congestion of the lungs. His case became so serious that he was transferred to a nursing home in Leeson St., Dublin, where, fortified with the rites of the Church, he peacefully died at about 7 p.m. on Friday, April 6th.
Fr. Cuffe's personality and character, simple, straightforward, honest, devout, answered in a striking manner to the description of “the just man” in Holy Scripture. For him life had no brain-bewildering, heart-aching problems, but was a plain matter-of-fact business of ordinary duties to be faithfully performed day in day out. Be was of a courteous, cheerful disposition, a pleasant companion to live with, free from every trace of moodiness or low spirits, scrupulously exact in doing the work assigned to him, and ever ready to help in times of stress and strain. He was easily disturbed, it is true, when things went wrong, but impatience was but a passing “shadow of annoyance”, swiftly fleeting across the sunny landscape of his spirit. He was, indeed, incapable of deep and enduring resentment, and I doubt if he ever said a hard word about any of his brethren.
His religious life was cast in the same mould. Upon the deep spiritual foundation laid down by him in the noviceship, he raised the solid structure of his holy life as a Jesuit. The performance of his spiritual exercises, observance of rule, progress in virtue, he never failed to regard as duties of strict obligation, which he fulfilled with edifying exactitude. During the last few months of his life on earth, when physical debility rendered him incapable of even the lightest work, he was most assiduous in prayer, with the rosary or Dolour beads constantly in his hands. Death came to him peacefully; and I can well believe that he answered the Master's call with unruffled tranquility, as though it were part of the day's routine.
To simple-hearted, faithful servants such as Fr. “Freddy” Cuffe Our Lord Himself gives testimony : “Of such is the Kingdom of God”.

◆ The Clongownian, 1951

Obituary

Father Frederick Cuffe SJ

The news of the death of Father Fred Cuffe early in April will come as a sur prise and a shock to all Old Clongownians who knew him either as a boy in the college or as an enthusiastic and energetic professor of the French language. One who knew him intimately for a quarter of a century finds it difficult to imagine any part of his life not characterised by this enthusiasm and energy. Over that considerable period one could not, on the closest observation, discover the slighest change in the principles that guided his every action, little or great. These principles were founded on a deep appreciation of the supernatural; for Fr Cuffe was above all a man of God possessed of a self-belittling humility that was never scandalised, and consequently souls were drawn to him as iron to the magnet. People who had met him only casually frequently and affectionately asked for him. Past pupils home on holidays from their labour's as priests in the far-flung mission fields of South Africa and Australia went out of their way to visit Fr Cuffe at Clongowes. His fervent sermons from the altar of the People's Church are still recalled; likewise his tender and untiring care and solicitude for the sick of the locality.

But the strongest of constitutions could not indefinitely withstand the demands of his unbounded energy and enthusiasm for God's work. Some eight years ago saw him struck down by an illness that forced him to retire from his work in Clongowes. That was doubtless a great blow to a man of such supernatural ambitions as Fr Cuffe; but here, too, the character of the man of God was apparent. Never once was he heard to murmur a word of complaint though he inust certainly have regretted that he no longer possessed his former energy to spend in the service of the well beloved Master. A cold developed while attending the Easter ceremonies in the parish church brought on a severe attack of pneumonia, which he was not strong enough to resist, and Fr Cuffe passed to a well-deserved reward. RIP

The Irish Province of the Society of Jesus is the poorer for his loss. To his brothers and sister we tender our deepest sympathy in their bereavement.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1951

Obituary

Father Frederick Cuffe SJ

It is with deep sadness that we chronicle the death of Father Frederick Cuffe, Vice-Superior of the Apostolic School (1923-'33). Though Father Cuffe has been in poor health for a number of years, bis last illness was short. On April 5th he was taken suddenly ill and died the following day in a Dublin hospital.

Father Cuffe's connection with Mungret goes back to 1917 when he came here as a Scholastic. Having himself been educated in Belgium, he was well grounded in the French language, and consequently his two years' teaching was very fruitful in its results. After his ordination in 1923; Father Cuffe returned to Mungret as Vice-Superior of the Apostolic School, Again he showed himself as a skilled and highly efficient teacher of French, but his main work lay in a different sphere. As an upholder of the highest ideals, Father Cuffe is principally remembered by the students of this time who passed under his care. Thoughtfulness, gentle ness with firmness, piety, strength of character, a great devotion to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady were the virtues that he inspired in those whom he helped to form both by word and his own example; for Father Cuffe was above all other things a saintly priest. A grotto to the Sacred Heart in the Apostolic playground bears witness to his efforts to adorn the college. The boys who passed through his hands in Mungret can each testify to his special interest in them, for he never failed to write to each of his old alumni on the occasion of their ordination, and later, when he was at Clongowes and Emo Park, was constantly inquiring about the Past whom he had known.

Two years ago we were glad to have a visit from him. It was apparent then that he was not in good health. Yet he bore his suffering with his accustomed cheerful spirit. We offer our sincere sympathy to his brother George, who was a student here, to Colonel Cuffe, DSO, and to his sisters. RIP

Born: 24 June 1917, Edward Street, Armagh, County Armagh
Entered: 07 September 1937, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1951, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1954, Belvedere College SJ,Dublin
Died: 08 December 1995, St Joseph’s, Shankhill, County Dublin

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

Father was an engineer and died in 1936. Mother was then supported by her daughters.

Only boys with two sisters.

Early education at Sacred Heart Convent School in Armagh, and then at the Christian Brothers Secondary School Armagh. He then went to St Patrick’s College, Armagh.

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 86 : July 1996
Obituary
Fr Brian Cullen (1917-1995)

24th June 1917: Born, Armagh, Northern Ireland
Education: CBS, St. Patrick's College, Armagh
7th Sept. 1937: Entered the Society at Emo
8th Sept. 1939: First Vows at Emo
1939 - 1943: Rathfarnham, Arts and H Dip in Education, UCD
1943 - 1946: Tullabeg, Philosophy
1946 - 1947: Crescent College, Teaching
1947 - 1948: Belvedere College, Teaching
1948 - 1952: Milltown Park, Theology
31st July 1951; Ordained at Milltown Park
1952 - 1953: Rathfarnham, Tertianship
1953 - 1962: Belvedere, Teacher, Choirmaster
1962 - 1995: Clongowes:
1962-70: Teacher and Prefect of Study Hall
1970-81: Promoting S.R.P.A. and teaching in Naas Technical College.
1981-82: Promoting S.R.P.A. and teaching in Prosperous Vocational School.
1982-90: Promoting Society for Relief of Poor and Aged (S.R.P.A)
1990-95: Retired from active apostolate due to ill health.
8th Dec, 1995; Died.

All his life, Brian Cullen remained proud of his Armagh origins. He was proud of having been an altar server of Cardinal McRory and of having known his successors down the years. His contemporaries recall his powerful build as a novice, his fine voice and his prowess on the violin. In his scholastic years, he was often given the role of choirmaster. He was gifted with his hands; he could make almost anything. As a scholastic in Milltown, he helped Jim Lynch and John McAuley install the first internal phone system in Clongowes!

Brian was of shy disposition, preferring the company of one to a group. Although a bit of a loner, he had a roguish sense of humour. One of his year said of him that “he kept custody of the eyes, yet took everything in!” On one occasion in Rathfarnham Castle he slept it out and missed morning oblation. When he finally appeared on the juniors' corridor he spotted Charlie O'Connor, the minister of juniors, at the chapel end, so he about turned and headed off down the back stairs to the stone corridor on the ground floor. The O'Conor Don, dutiful by nature, pursued him. All in vain; the unrecognised scholastic had vanished into a brush room!

A fellow philosopher in Tullabeg with an interest in the grounds used knock on scholastics' doors for volunteers for outdoor works. Whenever he asked Brian, “Visne rastrare, frater?”. Would you like to do some raking, brother?. Brian used answer with a roguish smile, “Non hodie, Frater”, Not today, brother. On a famous occasion also in Tullabeg, when the rector was away, the scholastics planned a meal in the chemistry lab. Brian's contribution was to supply the chicken. A contemporary recalls Brian returning from the farm, rosary beads in one hand, the dead chicken in the other. Such moments provided a welcome break from class and study that was far from being student friendly.

What carried Brian through these years was his strong desire to be a priest. According to one of his year, “There was nothing Brian wanted more than to be a priest”. His priestly life was spent in two houses: Belvedere and Clongowes. He liked Belvedere and I am told that initially he found the change to Clongowes enormously trying.

Brian's quiet voice and shyness did not help him to establish authority in the classroom. It made teaching difficult. It explains why as the years went by he did less and less teaching and was given the job of study prefect, supervising one of the large study halls: a job he did not like.

These were difficult years, but Brian was not without the capacity to respond creatively. For several years he taught in the Vocational School in Naas and in the mid-sixties started the SRPA (Society for the Relief of the Poor and Aged). He had became aware of many old people living within a few miles of Clongowes, some of whom were on their own and living in poor housing. He saw that responding to their needs could also be a "schola affectus" for the older boys.

For twenty-five years this great work became the focus for all his energies, skills and compassion. He built up a well run organisation. Each year he made a careful selection from the members to form his committee. He taught them how to grow plants, make all sorts of toy animals, dolls, soldiers, lamp-stands and so much else which were sold on Union Day to raise funds.

On Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays his white van would be seen around the country roads dropping off the boys in pairs to visit, clean, paint, chop firewood or just chat with an old person. Eyes were opened, and hearts were moved to respond. Many boys attained a responsibility that might not otherwise have been attained. The SRPA shed occupied a sort of extra territorial status within the school! Prefects and teachers respected this embassy-like status, and never entered. The SRPA was not confined to Clongowes. A branch still functions in Rathnew girls school, and for a time there were other branches in towns where former members lived. Brian wrote out a constitution to guide its development.

One cannot understand Brian without knowing something of his family. When he joined the Society, his mother was already widowed, his older sister Rita was an invalid, and his younger sister, Sally, a nurse in England. Brian worried about them and sought to attend to their needs as best he could. This was especially true of his time in Belvedere when he made many journeys to Armagh at weekends, sometimes “sub rosa’. Perhaps it was through them that he grew sensitive to the needs of the sick and the old.

My first meeting with Brian was not very auspicious! While on a visit to Clongowes as a scholastic, I asked him how the SRPA was going. I got the initials mixed up calling it the SPRA or something. Brian looked at me and said, “You are typical of the Province, you have no interest in what I am doing.....” This unexpected response was perhaps an indication that he felt his work was not appreciated by his brethren.

Ten years later when I was stationed in Clongowes we came to know one another better. It was the year before his stroke. He was still running the SRPA I remember being with him in Rathnew at the opening mass of the year for their ŞRPA. In community he enjoyed the company of some who could pull his leg. With others he was not at ease. Community meetings were not his joy! At recreation his conversation often went back to things of the past which did not make it easy for younger people to engage with him.

He always had a strong sense of priesthood and was most faithful to daily mass, office, and rosary. Brian loved nothing more than to head off in his van for a few days to visit friends. He hated to be tied down. He loved the independence of being able to come and go as he wanted. He was truly blessed in having wonderful friends. It was in their company that he was most at ease, most himself.

In June 1990 all was to change. While staying with his good friends, Maurice and Anne Dowling in Carlow, he suffered a stroke. After a fortnight in St. Vincent's the prognosis was not good. His speech was greatly impaired and conversation was difficult. The medical advice was that he would need some nursing care. I remember telling him that he would be going to Hazel Hall nursing home in Clane. He accepted it without complaint, mentioning he knew it from his visits. Thus began a stay of twenty months. He was well looked after. But it was not home. The day was long and he was often anxious; numerous were the telephone calls to Br. Cha Connor whose care of him was second to none. While he liked to be brought to Clongowes for his lunch, he was always anxious to leave again immediately afterwards. This was a time of adjustment; gone was his van, his bedroom in the castle, the SRPA work. Yet in all this he was sustained by visits from friends and Jesuits and his deep faith in God. In the midst of his confusion he never forgot the things of God and received Holy Communion with utmost reverence. From time to time he indicated his desire to go to confession, through some wordless gesture that I came to know. The mystery of the sacrament was deepened by his utter humility and my inability to understand anything he said.

Then came a moment of crisis that turned into a blessing. Brian began to get confused about which room was his! The nursing home with great regret told us they could not keep him any longer. There was a brief stay in Cherryfield followed by some time in St. John of God's, Stillorgan. It was while in Stillorgan that his close friends of twenty five years, Bill and Bridie Travers, asked if they could look after him in their country hotel in Prosperous, two miles from Clongowes. Their kindness and that of their family to Brian was truly wonderful. He remained with them until his health deteriorated still further and necessitated his going to the new St. John of God's nursing home in Shankill for his last three months.

It was fitting that Brian died in the company of Bill and Bridie, who along with their family had taken turns to keep vigil with him during his last week. Fitting too that Brian who had such love for Our Lady should have died in the early hours of the 8th December.

Charlie Davy SJ

◆ The Clongownian, 1996

Obituary

Father Brian Cullen SJ

The death took place of Fr Brian Cullen SJ, founder and first director of the Society for the Relief of the Poor and Aged (SRPA) on the feast of the Inmaculate Conception, 8 December 1995, at St Joseph's Nursing Home, Shankill, Co. Dublin. The following is an extract from the homily preached at Fr Cullen's funeral Mass by Fr Kieran Hanley SJ, for many years his colleague in the Jesuit community and its Rector 1983-89.

Seventy-eight years ago Fr Brian Cullen was born in Armagh on 24 June 1917. He certainly had a happy life as a schoolboy with good parents and two devoted sisters. He always spoke with a certain nostalgia of Armagh. Every step leading up to that majestic cathedral on its imposing hill, every stone of the cathedral itself, he loved with some thing akin to awe and reverence. His days were spent in the school under the shadow of the cathedral, in the care of the Vincentians, at St Patrick's College.

When Brian was twenty, his father died and in that same year, 1937, he joined the Jesuits. He did all the normal studies performed by young Jesuits at that time. In 1939-45, owing to the war, his opportunity of going abroad to study in Spain or France or Germany did not materialise. He was ordained priest on 31 July 1951 at Milltown Park.

After ordination he spent nine years teaching at Belvedere, where he had been a scholastic for a year, and the remainder of his life was here in Clongowes. At this stage his mother had poor health and needed constant care. The younger sister developed some sort of paralysis and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The other sister had taken up nursing and eventually became matron of a hospital in London. But she too developed a form of illness that necessitated confinement to a wheelchair. For many years Fr Cullen spent all his Christmas, Easter and summer holidays attending to the three patients. This was undertaken without a word of complaint - it was really heroic work and I doubt if anyone heard a tiny grumble from him.
I also think that few were quite aware of the strain that was involved in his life, as he was working during term-time - for eight years he was prefect of the Big Study in Clongowes and then he worked for twelve years in Naas Technical College (1970-81) and Prosperous Vocational School (1981-82).

In 1968 he started the SRPA among the boys in Clongowes. This was a labour of love for Fr Brian. The Lord blessed him with a marvellous pair of hands that could make umpteen sorts of Christmas toys for children that were really works of art. These were sold on Union Day to raise funds for the SRPA. He worked very hard and was a keen judge of a boy's gifts and sense of responsibility. He liked the boys and they appreciated his ideals and what he was trying to do. His work was good for them. The SRPA was his brain-child in every detail, from start to finish. During the years when I was Rector, many past Clongownians asked me how Fr Cullen was. They were obviously past members of the SRPA. This association gave Fr Brian a great sense of fulfillment. He did trojan work in a very professional way and there is no reason why the work of the SRPA should not continue to prosper and thrive.

So, our prayers and the Mass this morning are in thanksgiving for the work Fr Brian Cullen did through the gifts that God gave him. This brought him great joy but also, I fancy, a certain sense of worry and pain, which no doubt eventually brought on the stroke that God, in his plan for Brian, asked him to carry until his death.

Luckily he was blessed by certain families who were very good to him - like the Powers of Co. Waterford, the Dowlings of Carlow and the Travers of Curryhills in Kildare. The Travers nursed him with extraordinary care and love. I speak for the Jesuits and all I can say is this: may the Lord reward them for their wonderful devotion and genuine kindness. It certainly made Fr Cullen's last five years on this earth that much more tolerable under such difficult circumstances.

We pray for Fr Brian, his cousins and those who loved him, and we offer them the comfort of our sympathy,

-oOo-

Fr Charlie Davy, Fr Hanley's successor as Rector of Clongowes, writes:

In the mid-sixties Fr Cullen started the SRPA. He had become aware of many old people living within a few miles of Clongowes, some of whom were on their own and living in poor housing. He saw that responding to their needs could also be a schola affectus (a school of love) for the older boys.

For twenty-five years this great work became the focus for all his energies, skills and compassion. He built up a well-run organisation. Each year he made a careful selection from the members to form his committee. He taught them how to grow plants, make all sorts of toy animals, dolls, soldiers, lamp stands and so much else which were sold on Union Day to raise funds.
On Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays his white van could be seen around the country roads dropping off the boys in pairs to visit, clean, paint, chop firewood or just chat with
a old person. Eyes were opened, and hearts were moved to respond. Many boys attained a responsibility that might not otherwise have been attained. The SRPA shed occupied a sort of extra-territorial status within the school! Prefects and teachers respected this embassy like status and never entered. The SRPA was not confined to Clongowes. A branch still functions in Rathnew, and for a time there were other branches in towns where former members lived. Brian wrote out a constitution to guide its development.

Born: 1657, Ireland
Entered: 1677, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1681, Évora, Portugal
Died: 22 July 1703, Tuticorin (Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu), India - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Colan

Nephew (?) of Hugh Hughes (Cullen) - RIP 1705

1681 Went to the Indies (Franco’s synopsis)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Possibly a nephew of Hugo Cullen (alias Hues, Hughs)
Had already begun Philosophy before Ent 1677 Lisbon
After First Vows he was sent to Évora for studies, but only remained until 1681 when he was Ordained and was heading for the Indian Mission
In India he worked at Travancore (Thiruvithamkoor) in Tamil Nadu and the Malabar Region, and he died in Tuticorin (Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu) 22 July 1703

Born: 23 October 1841, New Ross, County Wexford
Entered: 08 September 1881, Leuven Belgium - Belgicae Province (BELG)
Ordained 25 October 1864, Cathedral of the Assumption of BVM, Carlow, County Carlow - pre- entry
Final Vows: 02 February 1892
Died: 06 December 1921, Linden Convalescent Home,Blackrock, County Dublin

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

Early education at Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1883 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Excerpts and paraphrase from a notice which appeared in the newspapers on his death :
Early Education at Clongowes, and then at Carlow College where he was Ordained 1964. He was then appointed by the Bishop of Ferns Dr Thomas Furlong as CC in Wexford for two years. in 1866, at the invitation of the Bishop, he became a member of a community of Missioners comprising four Priests in Enniscorthy. He then joined the Society in 1881.

After his Noviceship his career may be divided under three headings : Literary, Missionary, Temperance work.
He is probably best known as the founder of the “Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart”, which he started in January 1888. For sixteen years he watched over the development of his periodical, and starting offshoots such as “Messenger Popular Penny Library” which was the forerunner of the “Irish Catholic Truth Society”.
1904 He was sent to Gardiner St aged 63, and he worked there until his death in 1921. Here he began another phase of his work, that of Missioner and retreat giver. In this work he became known in almost every Parish in the country. In addition to bringing his work to England, he also spent two year long stints working in South Africa.
However, it is mainly his work in the cause of temperance that he is best known. He is sometimes called a “Second Father Matthew”. He had been a leading figure in the temperance movement of Ferns in the 1870s, and in 1885 founded the “St Patrick’s Total Abstinence Association” among the students at Maynooth.
1901 He inaugurated a branch of the “Pioneer Total Abstinence Association”. Confined at the outset to women only, it started with four ladies under the Presidency of Mrs AM Sullivan. However, after a homily he gave in Cork, so many men came to the Sacristy asking for the “Pioneer Pledge”, that he decided to extend the Association to both men an women. The Association made such rapid progress that at a public meeting in the Mansion House he could say that its numbers had reached a quarter of a million, and his Pioneer Catechism had by 1912 reached a circulation of 300,000.
Many messages of sympathy were received at Gardiner St from Bishops and Clergy in Ireland”. (cf https://www.ucd.ie/archives/t4media/p0145-ptaa-descriptive-catalogue.pdf)

“Extract from a paper Entitled ‘The Holy Eucharist in Modern Ireland’ read by the Right Rev Mgr MacCaffrey, President, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, at the International Eucharistic Congress, Dublin 1932”.
The extract eulogises James Cullen for his spread of devotion to the “Sacred Heart” throughout Ireland, his work on the “Apostleship of Prayer” and the “League of the Sacred Heart”. It also eulogises his founding of the “Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart”, and his particular work in promoting the spiritual welfare of its Promoters, with the assistance of local Bishops and Priests, such that in his own lifetime, there was hardly a Parish in Ireland in which devotion to the Sacred Heart had not been established. This in turn left to a devotion to Our Lord and the Eucharist, replacing a spirit of fear with one of love and confidence. The “First Friday” practice, founded on a promise made to St Margaret Mary Alacocque, became widespread in Ireland, and led people to more frequently receive communion. ‘Holy Communion is not to be regarded so much as as a reward for a holy life, but as a means of becoming holy’, wrote Father Cullen.” (The Book of Congress p 161)

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Cullen, James Aloysius
by Diarmaid Ferriter

Cullen, James Aloysius (1841–1921), Jesuit priest and temperance reformer, was born 23 October 1841 in New Ross, Co. Wexford, the eldest of five sons and three daughters of James Cullen, a businessman, and Mary Cullen (née Bolger). He was educated locally by the Christian Brothers in New Ross before moving to the Jesuit college at Clongowes Wood, Co. Kildare, in April 1856. From 1861 to 1864 he was a student at Carlow college and was ordained a priest at Carlow cathedral on 25 October 1864, only five days after he had reached the canonical age. He was appointed curate in Rome Street Church in Wexford and worked closely with Dr Thomas Furlong (qv), bishop of Ferns. He became heavily involved in fighting intemperance, building churches, founding religious teaching institutions and retreats for nuns and priests, and launching the Missionary Institute in Enniscorthy.

Although he had been wary of the Jesuit order from an early age, disliking their association with the middle classes, his preoccupation with the spiritual exercises of their founder, St Ignatius Loyola, and his apostolic endeavours slowly led him to reverse his opinion: in March 1881 he made a vow to enter the order, enrolling in September 1881 at the novitiate of the Belgian province at Arlow, at the age of 40. The following year he enrolled to study moral theology and canon law at Louvain. In September 1883 he took his vows at the Jesuit House of Studies in Milltown Park in Dublin, where he became well known as a missionary of the Blessed Sacrament, a promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin, and a temperance reformer. He was appointed spiritual father to the students at Belvedere College, Dublin (1884) and national director of the Apostleship of Prayer (1887), marking a further commitment to the spread of Sacred Heart devotion. In 1888 he began publication of the hugely circulated Catholic weekly, the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart, which he also used to promote temperance. He produced his Catechism of temperance in 1892, and in the same year travelled to South Africa as a missionary, making a return visit in April 1899.

Extraordinarily demonstrative in his personal piety and organisational ability, Cullen established the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart in the presbytery of the Saint Francis Xavier Church in Gardiner St., Dublin, on 29 December 1898. Over the course of the twentieth century it grew into one of the largest temperance movements in the world and claimed 500,000 members by the 1950s. They were labelled ‘Pioneers’ because of a novel method of pledging: Cullen developed the concept of adults (those over 16) making what was termed a ‘heroic offering’, pledging to abstain from alcohol for life, publicly identifiable by the wearing of a pin which depicted a bleeding Sacred Heart. Cullen's initiative was not only the product of an acute social conscience – his early endeavours in Wexford and his work in inner-city Dublin convinced him that much of the poverty and deprivation he witnessed was the result of excessive drinking – but also a belief that intemperance could only be fought by an absolutist life-long pledge, in contrast to the loose ‘en masse’ administration associated with the famed but short-lived temperance crusade of Fr Theobald Mathew (qv) in the nineteenth century. The Pioneers were organised on a parish basis under the guidance of a spiritual director and controlled by a central directorate of Jesuit priests based in Dublin. Juvenile and later temporary pledge branches were also introduced.

A strong opponent of British imperialism, Cullen closely aligned his argument for temperance with the political and cultural nationalism prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland. Although never a masterful orator, he aggressively pursued the temperance cause through a column devoted to Pioneers in the Irish Catholic newspaper which he wrote from February 1912 until his death. This portrayed Pioneers as the soldiers of Christ engaged in a battle against intemperance which was destroying Irish health, morals, and welfare, and demeaning Irish claims to be a viable political and economic entity. He continually claimed that ‘the only thing wrong with Ireland is the excessive amount of drinking going on’. At the time of his death there were 280,000 Pioneers in Ireland.

Cullen was also active in Dublin's inner city in promoting sodalities, religious leagues and social alternatives to the public house. He also placed exacting spiritual demands on himself including four hours of obligatory prayer every day. He died 6 December 1921 in Dublin; he was said to be elated on hearing of the signing of the Anglo–Irish Treaty, hours before his death. Over 200 priests and ecclesiastical dignatories attended his funeral in Dublin.

Lambert McKenna, Life and work of Rev. James Aloysius Cullen SJ (1924); P. J. Gannon, Fr James Cullen (1940); Diarmaid Ferriter, A nation of extremes: the Pioneers in twentieth century Ireland (1998)

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father James Cullen 1841-1921
Fr James Cullen was born at New Ross in 1841. He received his education at Clongowes, and he was ordained priest for the diocese of Ferns in 1841. For two years he served as curate in Wexford Town. In 1866 he and three other priests of the diocese founded the “House of Missions” at Enniscorthy.

In 1881 Fr Cullen entered the Society. As a Jesuit Fr Cullen is best remembered as the founder of the Pioneer Movement of Total Abstinence, which started in the Presbytery at Gardiner Street in 1898, with a membership of four women. Today its members number thousands, not only in Ireland, but across the sea in America and Australia, and anywhere an Irish Priest works on the Mission.

But his greater claim to fame may be found in the words of Monsignor McCaffrey, President of Maynooth, in a paper read at the Eucharistic Congress in 1932 :
“But, to the distinguished Jesuit Fr Cullen, the great Apostle of Total Abstinence, more than to any single individual must be given the honour of spreading this devotion to the Sacred Heart throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. A man of the highest spirituality himself, thoroughly convinced of the efficiency of this devotion to effect a spiritual revolution, and gifted with wonderful powers of organisation, he threw himself with ardour into the work, once he had been appointed Director of the Apostleship of Prayer and League of the Sacred Heart. Through the pages of ‘The Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart’ which he founded, he carried through this campaign so successfully, that even in his own lifetime, there was hardly a parish in Ireland, in which the devotion to the Sacred Heart was not firmly established. He was also the founder of the ‘Messenger Popular Penny Library’, the forerunner of the ‘Irish Catholic Truth Society’.”

He died on December 6th 1921. Truly, when we think of the Pioneer Movement as it exists today, Fr Cullen’s epitaph might justly be written :
“Exegi Monumentum aere perennius”.

◆ The Clongownian, 1922

Obituary

Father James Cullen SJ

Father Cullen’s Life in brief:

1841 Born at New Ross, Co. Wexford.
1856-61 Student at Clongowes.
1864 Ordained priest at Carlow and appointed Curate at Wexford.
1866 Becomes one of the founders of the House of Missions, Enniscorthy.
1881 Enters the Society of Jesus..
1885 Founded a Total Abstinence Association among Maynooth Students.
1888-1904 Founder and Editor of the “Irish Messenger”, Editor of the “Messenger Popular Penny Library”--the forerunner of the Catholic Truth Society.
1898 Founded the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association,
1904 Attached to the Church of St. Francis Xavier, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin,
1921 December 6th - Death. RIP

If the aim of Clongowes is to turn out great Catholics and great Irishmen - and what other aim has any Irish Catholic School? - then Father Cullen is the greatest of her children. His work falls under three heads - Catholic Literature, Temperance, and Mission Work. In the domain of literature he has a unique record. In 1888 he founded the “Irish Messenger” (the sum of one pound being advanced by the Provincial towards expenses !) He watched over its fortunes until 1904, and to-day the “Irislı Messenger” has a monthly circulation of over 300,000 copies, and is read by Irish Catholics in every quarter of the globe. In addition, he founded the “Messenger Popular Penny Library”, which was the forerunner of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland. His Temperance Catechism - though it comes more under the head of temperance than of literature, had a circulation of over 300,000 by 1912.

His work for temperance began in the House of Missions, Enniscorthy. In fact, he himself has said that he entered the Society of Jesus because he hoped thus to give his undivided attention to the study of the Temperance problem. In 1885 he founded a Total Abstinence Society among the students of Maynooth College. But it was not until 1898 that he founded the association with which he is most identified in the public mind - the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, which to-day has a membership of over a quarter of 2 million.

In the conduct of missions and retreats, he travelled all over Ireland, and worked also in England and South Africa. In this branch of his life's activities, too, he had won his reputation as a young priest in Enniscorthy, and even to this day the old people of the diocese of Ferns talk of those woriderful missions preached by him then and of the great good they wrought.

Such in the barest outline is his life, Up to the time of his death he was still working, and, what is still more wonderful, he had that same interest in the live problems of the day which was his as a young man. About three years ago he visited us here in Clongowes. He heard of the Social Study Club, and at once was interested. He asked to meet the officials, took them for a walk in the pleasure ground, and talked to them of the importance of this new work. Later, speaking to one of the Community who was then President of the Club, he told him how interested he was in social work. “If I was a little younger I would attack it”, he said, “but I am afraid I am too old. It would hardly be worth my while”.

We had hoped that the writer who is engaged in collecting matter for a life of Father Cullen would be able to write a sketch of his career in this year's “Clongownian”. Unfortunately, however, this he found impossible at the last moment owing to illness, and we are compelled to content ourselves with this brief outline.

The beautiful appreciation of Father Cullen which follows is from the pen of an old Crescent boy, and first appeared in the “Irish Monthly”. To the editor of that periodical our thanks are due for permission to reproduce it here. For those who knew Father Cullen, his saintliness, his kindliness, his quaint, pleasant humour this beautiful sketch will recall one whom all looked upon as a personal friend. For those who did not have the privilege of his acquaintance, it may do something to explain the greatness of his personality and the astounding success of his world for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

-oOo-

Recollections of Father Cullen

It was in the year 1876 that I first I heard father Cullen's name mentioned. A kind friend, now dead, had invited me to spend some days at Raheny Park, Dublin. On the first evening he said to me at dinner :
“What drink will you have?” “Is there no good water in the neighbourhood?” I said.
“Oh! so you are a Cullenite”," said he; on seeing my puzzled look, he added “Don't you know Father Cullen, the Jesuit?” I told him I did not. Then he spoke in glowing terms of Father Cullen, a young Wexford priest, who was devoured with zeal, especially for temperance. He told me, further, that the Bishop of Ferns, having set his heart on diocesan priests giving Missions through the diocese, had put certain selected priests in a House of Missions, and among the first, or at the head (I forget which) was Father Cullen. The zeal and success of these priests was such - I hope nobody will be offended if I tell - that in ecclesiastical circles they were (half in joke and half in admiration) styled the Needleguns. (This was a new weapon put into the hands of the French soldiery in the Franco-German War of 1870, spoken of with most as much awe as the “Big Bertha” that bombarded Paris from 80 miles away, during Holy Week in the late war.)

Many a priest calculated to give name and fame to any institution passed through it; two only need be mentioned, His Grace the present Archbishop of Sydney and the subject these lines.

From the House of Missions Father Cullen passed into the Jesuit Noviciate; but, whatever else he left behind him, the divine zeal for Temperance, “like the scent of the roses, hung round him still”. . At any rate so much was I enraptured by my friend's account of him, that from that day forward I had my eye out for “Father Cullen the Jesuit”.

But it was a dozen years or so before I met him. In the year 1888, while I was one of the priests attached to the Limerick Workhouse, two doctors told me that I was threatened with consumption. Late in the month of May, or early in June, I obtained leave to go to Lisdoonvarna. Having got into the train I found only a few in the compartment; but huddled up in a corner, with a black woollen muffler round his neck, was a priest who seemed to me to be aged, and whose harsh cough at once awoke my sympathy, for I was only too familiar with it myself.

I was wondering where he came from, and where going to, when the train, drawing up at Ennis, I found him, like myself, changing into the little West Clare Railway. Oh, for the good old days of earlier years, when we took “the long car” here and drove over the magnificent country through Corofin, Kilfenora, and by Maurya Rua's Castle into Lisdoonvarna, as the afternoon sun was declining towards its bed in the ocean. Thomond of ancient times, with its windowed castles, its ferny hills, and bushy glens, is to my mind the most romantic land in Ireland. Or run in the mail car, if the old mail car is still running, of a summer's evening, for a remembrance that will last you all your life, from Lisdoonvarna by Quinn Abbey in its ruins, through Ruan in its loveliness, into Ennis.

We reached Ennistymon and I found my companion priest preparing to leave. “He is for Lisdoonvarna, on the same melancholy errand as myself”, I said in my own mind. But, no; a private car, in waiting, took him away. I sat in one of the public vehicles, as, bereft of company and interest, I jogged up and down the uneven road to the Spa.

That evening I was surprised to see the place full of priests, going along in soutane and cap, but all solitary and silent. I couldn't think what it meant. Happening, however, to see an old classmate of Maynooth, I stopped to inquire. He put his finger to his lips and whispered : “On Retreat!”

All the priests of the diocese were on Retreat. “Who is conducting it?” I asked hastily. “Father Cullen, the Jesuit; there he is”.

I looked, and saw my companion in the train. I may here add that, at the end of the Retreat, the same priest told me that he thought he never attended so beautiful or so elevating a one; and the subject matter that Father Cullen took was, “The seven steps of : the Priesthood”.

Of all the priests there Father Cullen and I were the only two not on retreat. I watched a favourable opportunity to approach him, I told him where I had first heard his name, and he spoke as charmingly and as delightedly of our common friend of Raheny Park as he had spoken twelve years before of him to me.

We had a high time of it for that week. Every moment that he was free we were off together. We talked of many things as “the bee through many a garden roves”; but when we came to talk of Temperance “we settled there and strayed no more”. At this winding up, I said to him:

“You have now a grand opportunity. You have started your beautiful magazine, The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, which God bless and prosper. Make it a vehicle of temperance”.

It was the first year of the Messenger; and if there is a mistake in the date I have given above, this will correct it. On its appearance I had written to him welcoming it; I had already been getting and circulating the English Messenger.

His answer was: “We must wait till we are fixed in the saddle”. And his final words at our parting on the last day of that week, when I was still insisting, gave this definite promise : “As soon as the circulation of the Messenger reaches 2,000 I will cry, in the words of Father Mathew signing the Temperance Register at Cork, ‘Here goes in the Name of God’.”

During the year I kept dropping him an occasional line, reminding him of his promise. Towards the end he wrote cheerily: “The circulation has reached 5,000; here goes in the name of God”; and the January number, 1889, had duly the beginning of the Temperance Crusade.

Somewhere about this time I had to go to Dublin. At Gardiner Street I learned that Fr Richard Clarke SJ, (the Oxford convert at the time Editor of the Month), would preach on the following day, the 3rd December, on St Francis Xavier. My heart gave a jump. Not long before that, at a critical moment Father Clarke had, all unasked, done me a seasonable and valuable service at a time I badly needed it. I determined at once to be present to hear him, and try to get a chance of saying one word of thanks to him viva voce, I had already written to him, and some letters: had passed between us, but I had never met him.

Next morning I was in good time at St Francis Xavier's. I begged the good Brother to take me where I could see, and not be seen - that the pulpit was all I wanted to see. He took me through corridors and doors, up flights of stairs the inner economy of St Francis Xavier's always reminds me of the Greek cave, where, when one enters, one never could find the way out. He took me, as I thought, up to the ceiling. I said, “O, thank you, Brother, this is grand; but will you come for me again, when the ceremonies are over?” He was good enough to smile at my evident fears and said he would.

With my weak sight I thought I was alone, and was exulting; but a low cough told me there was some one else there. I turned and saw Father Cullen, bent in his characteristic attitude of humility and thought, his cap pushed far down on his head and his Roman cloak about him. I told him what had brought me, and asked him to introduce me to Father Clarke, to say one word of thanks. “We must hurry, then, after the sermon”, he said, “and it must be only one word, for he has to go away immediately”.

I met him, had that one word, was satisfied and glad.

The next place I met Father Cullen was in Limerick, when the present Canon Cregan was the indefatigable Adm of St Michael's. Father Cregan had invited him to conduct a Retreat for the Women's Temperance Sodality and, knowing that Father Cullen and I were old Temperance friends, asked me to meet him, It was in the forenoon, with a brilliant sunshine pouring into the church, that, being put into the organ loft; I was in time to see Father Cullen in the pulpit. He was leaning out over the edge, and a subdued ripple of laughter was passing through the gathering. He was heaping ridicule on the drink fetish: “The baby is born, and there must be drink at the christening; the grandfather dies, and there must be drink at the wake. The horse has got a colic, or the calf has got wind in the stomach - send for whiskey. The boy gets his head clipped and, to prevent ‘getting cold’, he must shampoo with drink. If the day is hot - I'm thirsty, come, and we'll have a pint; is it freezing, come, and we'll have something to warm us. Are you going on a journey, put up a frost-pail. Have you a cough going to bed, put on a night-cap. Have you a pain in your tooth - oh, nothing like a drop to cure a toothache!”

It is singular how trifles remain in one's memory, when serious things, with the passage of years, fade away. I do not remember one thing more about that meeting ; but an incident happened about that time which I tell with some diffidence. It may serve, however, to put learned men “on their taw” about signatures to great things, when one finds a mistake in the case of a small signature.

He wrote to me one morning, saying: “I enclose you a letter, that asks how to establish a branch of the ‘Apostleship of Prayer’. Father Cullen then went on to say that he had a great deal of work pressing on him; and (with some roundabouts and apologies) asked would I write an article or two. My answer was: It was hard for one man to write what was in another man's mind; but I would do my best, and send them to him.

On considering the matter, I thought it would be well to divide it into three papers, and because of the subject, and for Father Cullen's sake, did my best; signed them with his name, and sent them to him. He forwarded them on to the Record, and in due time the first came back to me to be proofed, bearing my name as signature. I corrected it; and because the articles, written at Father Cullen's suggestion, were approved of by him; because I, not being sent, had not authority to preach on the subject, and because Father Cullen's name would carry infinitely more influence than mine, scored out my name, put Father Cullen's to it, and sent it back to the Record.

In a week or two I had a letter from'him, telling me how puzzled he was, when a friend, meeting him in Gardiner Street, spoke of his paper in the Record. He went on to say that at the first opportunity he hastened to find out what his friend had alluded to, and was “so sorry to see the paper with his name to it, that it was a shame”, etc, etc. I laughed at him, and said nothing.
Of course, when the first went on that line, the other two followed on the same rails - with his signature to them.

The last place I met him was at Sacred Heart College, The Crescent, Limerick. It is not many years ago, and again it is only a trifle. All my memories seem to be trifles, but happy trifles inseparably connected with friends, like “the old familiar faces” of poor Charles Lamb; and in the kindly spirit of the gentle philosopher, I make the avowal, with grey hairs on my head and the sands in the glass running low, that God has been kind in allotting to me all through life the truest and happiest friends that human heart could desire.

I forget what Father Cullen was doing at the Crescent - Temperance, I suppose. It was told in Waterford long ago of two brothers who took a hand in stealing sheep, when sheep-stealing was a hanging matter. One was taken, but through some loophole or influence, instead of being hanged, was transported. He served his time, and on returning, the first thing he saw as he set foot on the wharf, was his brother hanging on the gallows. His only comment, they say, was - “Mutton, of course!”

With Father Cullen it was Temperance, of course. He was at luncheon when I called. With the invariable charm and courtesy of the Society towards “an old Jesuit bay”, I was invited in to meet him. My very first look gave me joy, he seemed so hale and vigorous, I reckoned on years and years to come, bringing with them innumerable holy and fruitful works. We shook hands with delight across the table, and in a roguish vein he bent down and kissed my hand. But if he “reviled, I reviled him again”, for before he could withdraw it, I, too, had bent down and kissed his. We then rose up and laughed in each other's faces with gladness, like two schoolboys. God be with him! That is the last time we met.

I saw the noble Avondhu in its flood roll down from the mountains. There was sun shine about it; and on its heaving breast I read the beautiful words of the Holy Book: “I am black, but beautiful” ; black with the burden of riches it bore from its solitary wandering among the distant heights. God had placed riches there, and had bade the infant rivulets to take them in their charge, bear them up in their hands, and carrying them down, fertilize the waiting lowlands, throng. ing with multitudes of men and beasts. One rivulet, hearing God's call before the rest, springs forward, and leads the way; the others follow, all uniting in forming the glorious Avon-dhu.

So it is with the Temperance movement of each generation. The Sacred Heart is scattering its graces on the height. Men come and meditate. Over against is the expelled demon of Drink, having with him (as confessors only know too well) seven others worse than himself; showing the kingdoms of the earth, and crying in his lying voice, for he was a liar from the beginning : “All these will I give you, if, falling down, thou wilt adore me”. Alas! alas ! some poor fools believe.

But the Sacred Heart cries out: “He that will be My disciple, let him deny himself, and so follow Me”. And Father Mathew, in his time, with his vehement slogan,“Here goes in the name of God," springs forth on the height and leads on”. In the next season Fr Cullen, filled with love of the Sacred Heart, devotes a whole lifetime, with all the elan of the mountain flood, to the holy cause. Today men, whose names have not yet become household words, are as truly and wholeheartedly devoting themselves to the sacred cause of temperance: which, religion alone excepted, surer than any other, makes the rough ways smooth and the crooked ways straight.

With the vehemence of the grand old Irish river, they pour down the mountainside, bring ing from theirconversation with God, indelibly written on tables of stone, the peace and blessing of their Creator.

R Canon O’Kennedy

◆ The Clongownian, 1924

Clongownians in Literature

Father James A Cullen SJ - by Father Lambert McKenna SJ

In the “Clongownian”of 1922 there appeaed a very vivid sketch of that distinguished son of Clongowes, the Rev James Cullen SJ. The editor of that date prefixed to this a tolerably complete summary of the work of this man, whose varied activities affected millions of his countrymen. It is unnecessary, therefore, to recapitulate here the career of Father Cullen, but it would be a pity to pass over this biography which, though not the work of an old Clongownian, is still so intimately connected with Clongowes as to fall naturally under the heading “Clongownians in Literature”.

And first, a few words about the book in general before we consider in detail those parts of it which will particularly interest Clongownians. The first, the absolutely essential quality we demand from the author of a life, the primary interest of which is religious, is absolute straightforwardness. He must not fall into the error of imagin ing that because the subject of his work was a very holy man he must be presented to the world as a faultless paràgon. Still less pardonable is the modern error which would transmute charity into common bonhomie, austerity into mild eccentricity, and mistakes and errors into the most lovable qualities in their watered down hero. Father McKenna is utterly removed from either of these irritating attitudes of mind.

Father Cullen is, in every page of the book, a living human being. There is an abundance of detail to enable us to see him as he really was at each stage of his career. It is a record of growing, not a description of a born saint, for if it is true some. saints are born, all are made. Father McKenna shirks nothing, but puts down with frankness and understanding all the facts of this remarkable life, though they are at times puzzling and even disconcerting. But at the end of the book we find ourselves saying, with something a little like awe: “What a life of zeal, of labour, of prayer. If only there were a few more like him”.

The book is well proportioned, much better so than the average biography, and the writing is vivid and clear, and in parts beautiful. The author possesses that vein of quiet humour without which we dare say Father Cullen could not be wholly under stood. He has collected excellent and very complete materials and used them with great effect.

To Clongownians, naturally, the chapter on Clongowes Wood is the most interesting. Father Cullen came to us almost by chance in 1856, and was here five years. He entered in Elements, and until he reached Poetry skipped a class each year in his upward progress and yet found himself each summer an Imperator. It is scarcely necessary to add that in the Debates, the Literary competitions, and the academic dis plays, he was peculiarly distinguished. One good story is told in this connection.

When the subject of the Academy-day Essay (carrying with it a prize of £10) was announced, he found that it was an historical question, of which he was totally ignorant. At the same time, he knew his only serious competitor to be extremely good at history, though poor in graces of composition. He therefore approached this boy with the following novel proposal : I suggest you get up the historical matter and arguments. I will then use them to write two essays one for myself, the other for you. One or other of us will get the prize, which we shall then go halves in. His friend accepted the terms, studied up the matter, and wrote the two essays as arranged. The Master of Rhetoric, who was official judge of the essays, detected signs of James Cullen's style in both compositions. James, summoned before him, stood on the defensive : You have no proof. But all to no purpose. He was to be punished for deceit, etc. James appealed forthwith to the Rector, who admitted the case was not proved against him, but seemed inclined to temporise. James would have none of this: if he was not proved guilty. he was to be treated as perfectly innocent. He therefore did a most unheard of thing. He wrote a long protest to the Provincial in Dublin. He won his case, too, and loyally shared the prize, which was adjudged to the essay he had presented in his own name.

There is another story of a stolen swim which we would dearly like to quote, an episode in which James' audacity brought him even nearer to a flogging, in this case at least well deserved. He had indeed an over-developed liking for playing at Tribune of the Plebs; but apart from that, he seems to have been a studious and quiet boy. He was in after years a great believer in school games, but as a boy was a poor performer. He was, as one expects to find, very pious, more so than is natural in most boys, and it was while serving the Mass of Father Eugene Browne, then Rector of Clongowes, that he felt, as he tells us hinself, with great distinctness, that God wished him to be a priest. There and then his resolve was made, his promise given, and a decision taken which in God's Providence saved, it would seem beyond all doubt, hundreds and hundreds of the souls of his fellow-men.

◆ The Clongownian, 1999

Pioneer Apostle

Father James Cullen SJ

by Bernard McGuckian SJ

Continuing our occasional series on the occupants of the Serpentine Gallery, we feature an essay on Fr James Cullen ST, one of the great apostles of the Irish Church in the late 19th and early 20th century. His enduring influence is to be seen in the periodical he founded in 1888, the “Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart”, and the Pioneer Association to promote abstinence from alcohol and sobriety in its use in honour of the Sacred Heart, founded ten years later. He has found more improbable fame as the original behind James Joyce's Fr Arnall in chapter three of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Previous denizens of the Gallery covered in this series are Sir Nicholas O'Conor (The Clongownian 1994), John Redmond (1995), Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and Oliver St John Gogarty (1996) and Kevin O'Higgins (1997). The contribution on Fr Cullen is by the present Central Director of the Pioneer Association, Fr Bernard McGuckian SJ. Fr McGuckian served on the Clongowes staff for a year before ordination in 1966-7.

For over a century now strangers have been puzzled by our Irish use of two common words, messenger and pioneer. For most of them a messenger was a person, usually male and under twenty, haring around a town delivering goods on a bicycle. A pioneer was an intrepid individual blazing a trail across North America. But here in Ireland these words had a different connotation. “Messenger” meant a little red booklet about the Sacred Heart and “pioneer” someone who took the soft option where drink was con cerned. Behind both these peculiar uses of language is an Old Clongownian and Jesuit priest, one of the Rogues in the Gallery, James Aloysius Cullen.

Late Vocation
Father Cullen's vocation to the Jesuits was slow in coming. He couldn't get far enough away from them on finishing at Clongowes in 1861 although he wanted to be a priest. He opted for his home diocese of Ferns. After four years of study he was ordained at St Patrick's College, Carlow, on 28 October 1864, just five days after his 23rd birthday, the minimum canonical age.

Seventeen years later, after establishing himself as a priest of extraordinary apostolic zeal in Ferns and further afield, he was admitted to the Jesuit novitiate at Arlon, Belgium, on 7 September 1881. He wrote of his intense joy but, particularly, his relief that the Jesuits had been prepared to have him at what he considered that late stage.

For the next forty years his life was an inces sant round of apostolic initiatives of all sorts; missions, retreats, hospital visitations, pam phlets, booklets, conferences, pilgrimages, “magic lantern” presentations, societies, sodalities, St Vincent de Paul meetings, in short, whatever he thought to be “ad maiorem dei gloriam”, the great ideal of his hero, Ignatius of Loyola. It is not surprising that he was a frequent visitor to “Undercliff”, the family home of Fr John Sullivan, in the period leading up to the Servant of God's reception into the Catholic Church. When he died on 6 December 1921, the day of the momentous Anglo Irish Treaty, he was universally regarded as one of the greatest benefactors of the Irish nation of his era.

At Clongowes
His years in Clongowes made a lasting impression on him and he talked affectionately about them afterwards. He was often first in his class, a keen debater and prominent in “Concertationes”, which involved declamation, translation and musical contributions on Academy Day. In a talk at his Alma Mater in 1904 he recalled the games he had played there. “handball-the two kinds of it, Common and Indian - a good old Irish game - cricket, archery, marbles, stilts, peg-tops, battie-dore and shuttlecock”. He was a particularly committed member of the sodality, which was meant to foster regular religious practice. His initiative in founding a branch of the Arch confraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the Conversion of Sinners gave some inkling of his later bent.

Although enthusiastic about things religious he found nothing to excite him in this regard about his Jesuit teachers. From early childhood, particularly through the influence of his very religious mother, he had developed a gen uine passion for the salvation of the world, something that stayed with him for the rest of his life. But he just couldn't see how what the Clongowes Jesuits did had anything to do with this. What had teaching grammar and sums to do with spreading the Kingdom of God? His view, however, underwent a radical change during his years as a dynamic young priest in Wexford, bent on converting the world. By degrees he came to appreciate the apostolic efforts of his old masters as they tried to imple ment the Ignatian vision in the humdrum of life in a boys' boarding school. When he discov ered the wisdom and shrewd apostolic strategy of the Spiritual Exercises he began to rethink his Clongowes experience. In his voluminous diaries (unfortunately lost, but, we hope, not irretrievably) he often laments his short sightedness during his years there. Lambert McKenna's fine biography, the “Life and Work of Father James Cullen SJ” (1924) documents How zealously he made up for any lost time by giving himself totally to the Ignatian ideal during every waking moment of his subsequent life.

The Sacred Heart
The great passion of his life, as with many of his contemporaries in all the provinces of the Society of Jesus at the time, was the spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart. For him, this devotion, as revealed in 1675 to an enclosed nun, St Margaret Mary at Paray-le-Monial, France, and made public through her Jesuit spiritual director, St Claude la Colombière, was the inspired answer to all problems, personal or otherwise. His appointment as Director of the Irish branch of the Apostleship of Prayer in 1887 gave him full scope for his zeal. This work based on Sacred Heart devotion, the brainchild of two young French Jesuits, François X Gautrelet and Henri Ramière, aimed at mobilizing the prayerful support of all believers for the missions of the Church. Fr Cullen's prayer to Christ at the time appears in his diary: “Make this Apostleship the business of my whole life; make all my works for Thy glory succeed - above all the Apostleship and the Messenger”.

Through the Apostleship he encouraged the devotion throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. In a very short time there was a little red light burning before a picture of the Sacred Heart in every kitchen in the country, people were making a morning offering of all their "prayers, works and sufferings of the day to the Sacred Heart, churches became as crowded at Mass on the First Friday of every month as on Sundays and large numbers were attending a "Holy Hour" in the churches every month.

To promote this work he published the first edition of the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart on 1st January 1888. When he first mooted the idea of a publication to his Rector in Belvedere he was given an assurance of “warm approbation and sympathy”. But the cunning Cullen said “How much do you sympathise?” “One pound” was the answer. This was all he needed. By the end of the year the circulation had reached 9,000 and six years later 45,000. As we enter the new millennium it is still going strong. Between four and five thousand volunteer promoters are responsible for maintaining a very high circulation and keeping distribution costs to a minimum. While exact circulation figures are not available (the Messenger is unique in that it does not carry advertisements), it is probably read by substantially more people than anything else published in this country. “This little red book according to one writer remains one of the most startling phenomena of Irish life”.

The Pioneer Association
Another significant contribution of Fr Cullen was the foundation of the Pioneers. He wanted to alert the Irish people to the need for great care in the use of alcohol as he came to know of the widespread heartbreak caused through abuse of it. As a man of faith he was convinced that a remedy was to be found in the “Heart of Christ, the Abyss of all Virtues”. Among these virtues the one he focused on was sobriety. Jesus had once said that some “demons could only be driven out by prayer and fasting”. Working on the assumption that irrational addictive behaviour was one of these “demons” Fr Cullen set about organising what he called the Pioneer Association of the Sacred Heart, It was to be a concerted campaign of prayer and fasting”. Members were asked to make three simple promises: to pray each day for excessive drinkers, to abstain from even the most innocent use of alcohol for life and to wear publicly a little emblem of the Sacred Heart.

Beginning with four ladies on 28 December 1898, the movement grew phenomenally. Within 20 years over 200,000 Irish men and women from every social class had joined the Association. Eventually Irish missionaries took it overseas so that today there are upwards of 500,000 members worldwide, especially in Africa. It was appropriate that an African should have been the principal speaker at the Centenary Mass in Croke Park, attended by 35,000 people from all five continents on 30 May 1999. His Eminence Francis Cardinal Arinze, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, who had seen for himself the great transformation effected in the lives of thousands of his fellow-Nigerians by the Pioneer ideals, spoke of how “the careful apostolic planning of Father Cullen had been blessed by Divine Providence". The Cardinal referred to Fr Cullen's insistence on the importance of prayer and his awareness that without Christ we can achieve nothing. Indeed in his diaries he once wrote, “For every one word I say to a sinner, if I am to do that sinner any good, I must say one hundred words to God”.

Another of the “rogues in the gallery”, Doctor James Corboy SJ, a former Bishop in the Diocese of Monze in Zambia, is also part of the Pioneer story. He received his own pioneer pin as a boy in Clongowes from Fr John Sullivan. He has seen for himself the good fruit produced by the little seed thrown into the ground over a hundred years ago by his great fellow-Clongownian. The most recent Pioneer report from Zambia mentions a membership of “16,000 adults and 10,000 youths” and still growing. The first Pan African Congress of the Pioneers is scheduled for 2001 in Nairobi. The story is just beginning.

◆ The Clongownian, 2009

Roundabout Route To The Jesuits

Father Bernard J McGuckian SJ : Central Spiritual Director of The Pioneer Association.

James Aloysius Cullen (1841-1921), founder of both the Messenger, the well known monthly religious magazine and the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart, first came to Clongowes in 1856.

Gifted all his life with a computer-like capacity for recalling dates, anniversaries and minute details about events, he recalled that it was on April 7th of that year that he set out in the family car from his home in New Ross, Co Wexford to Bagenalstown, where he boarded the Sallins-bound train that would take him to Clongowes. While a boarder there he involved himself enthusiastically in the school-activities, especially the music, debating and academic side of things. Sport was not one of his priorities. There was one thing, however, that did not impress him at the time: the Jesuits who ran the place. Although only in his early teens he was greatly taken by things religious and the notion of evangelisation. Yet he saw little evidence of a similar passion in the teaching staff of his school. As priests they were meant to be “saving souls” and spreading the Kingdom of God and yet all they did was say Mass, teach classes, organise games and supervise dormitories. This impression, formed during his school-days became so much a part of him, that while feeling called to priesthood, the last place that he would have considered living out this vocation was among the men responsible for his secondary education. This attitude would later return to haunt him.

At Clongowes he was academically successful. The Christian Brothers in New Ross had done such a good job on young James that he skipped from Elements to Rudiments after a few weeks and for the rest of his time in the school was usually “Imperator” or first in his class. Strangely enough, in spite of being a model student and punctilious about his religious duties, he was often in trouble with his Prefect whom he considered, according to his biographer, Lambert McKenna, S.J., “unreasonable and arbitrary”. Cullen's own independent streak and tendency to originality were also contributory factors in a series of showdowns.

Father McKenna's account of one extraordinary episode is worth reproducing in toto.

When the subject of the Academy-day Essay (carrying with it a prize of £10) was announced, he (Cullen) found that it was an historical question of which he was totally ignorant. At the same time, he knew his only serious competitor to be extremely good at history, though very poor in the graces of composition. He, therefore, approached this boy with the following novel proposal: 'I suggest that you get up the historical matter and arguments. I will then use them to write two essays, one for myself and the other for you. One or other of us is sure to get the prize, which we shall, then go halves' in. His friend accepted the terms, studied up the matter, and handed the result to James, who wrote the two essays as arranged. The Matcer of Rhetoric, who was official judge of the essays, detected James Cullen's style in both compositions. James, summoned before him, stood on the defensive: “You have no proof”. But all to no purpose. He was to be flogged for deceit, etc. James appealed forthwith to the Rector, who admitted that the case was not proven against him, but seemed to temporise: James would have none of this; if he was not proved guilty he was to be treated as perfectly innocent. He therefore did a most unheard of thing; he wrote a long protest to the Provincial in Dublin. He won his case, too, and loyally shared the prize, which was adjudged to the essay presented in his own name.

McKenna commented that this incident “illustrates James's courage, unconventionality, and initiative qualities which under prudent guidance served him well in after-life in”.

Pioneering zeal
On leaving Clongowes he was accepted for priesthood in Ferns, his native diocese and was sent to St Patrick's College, Carlow for studies. Ordained in 1864 when barely 24 years of age, he actually required a dispensation because he was under the canonical age. Right away, he chrew himself into apostolic work with the enthusiasm and zeal that were to characterise all the activity of his subsequent life. Being in demand for missions and retreats all over Ireland did not prevent him from attending to his parish duties. It was while a curate in Ferns that his advocacy of temperance began. He felt impelled to do something drastic to end the widespread heartbreak caused in so many homes as a result of excessive drinking among boatmen along the Slaney.
While seemingly happy and fulfilled in his work, his copious personal diaries reveal. a deep unease during the 17 years after his ordination, Exteriorly his initiatives were attended by success and were attracting universal admiration but he himself was beginning to see things in a new light. The upshot of it all was his application for admission to the Society of Jesus on May 28th, 1881. As it had the consent and approval of his Bishop his application was approved by the Jesuit authorities. Over those years, as he became more aware of the influence of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola in the life and spirituality of the Church, he began to reconsider his attitude to the rank and file of the Society of Jesus. The motto of St Ignatius and his Order, “Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam” (for the greater glory of God) helped James Cullen to understand that very ordinary activities, if done for a good motive and with a right intention could lead to the salvation of souls and the spread of the Kingdom. He later confessed that, if during his school years he had known of the variety of works undertaken by the Society, he would probably have applied for admission on leaving school. However he was unaware of even the great Jesuit missionary outreach, spearheaded in the Far East by the herculean labours of St Francis Xavier. Only slowly did he come to realize that the whole thrust of the works of the Society was “the salvation of souls” and that this could very well be done by accepting the drudgery of correcting the essays of the burgeoning human being and trying to put manners on him before he had become an incorrigible adult! Indeed, it was only after he had reached this conclusion, the result of a long interior struggle, that he considered himself ready for admission to the Society of Jesus. An entry in his diary for July 29th, 1881 reveals the completion of chat extended gestation process: “I feel today quire a consolation in thinking that I shall have much to do with educating boys”. Fr McKenna's comment on this was; “The prospect, which in Clongowes had turned him from the Society, the prospect of teaching boys, even attracts him”.

After his novitiate in Belgium, as a singularly obedient Jesuit, he would have been ready to spend his life as a teacher in a classroom if his superiors had so wished. This, however, was not what he was asked to do. His superiors realized that his talents lay elsewhere. With their blessing he spent his life, based in Ireland, spreading devotion to the Heart of Christ in an endless variety of good works, publishing, preaching, organising sodalities, clubs, counselling people (among them the Servant of God, John Sullivan SJ), promoting sobriety etc. Many of the good works he started are still thriving.

He died on the day the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on December 6th, 1921. Fr McKenna described his last hours.

A friend said to him; “Fr Cullen, you have done a good work in your day”. He answered: “Well, I think I can honestly say I have tried to do my best”.

On the morning of 6th December when the newspaper arrived he was told that the Peace Treaty had been signed during the night. “Thank God”, he replied, “I have lived to see Ireland free”.

A few hours afterwards he said to the nun attending him: “I am going into port, and he breathed his last peacefully about 12 o'clock”.

Born: 01 March 1814, Tintern, County Wexford
Entered: 12 February 1853, St John’s, Fordham, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)
Professed: 15 August 1863, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Canada
Died: 03 November 1885, St Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 09 February 1936, Anne Street, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 07 September 1954, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 10 July 1968, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Manresa House, Dollymount, Dublin
Died: 16 September 1997, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 03 December 1969; ZAM to HIB : 31 July 1982

Father was a Civil Servant with Customs & Excise.

Only boy with three sisters,

Educated at The High School, Clonmel

by 1963 at Chivuna, Monze, N Rhodesia - studying language Regency

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
A familiar picture of Fr. Paul (known as Cu) was of him rubbing the palm of one hand against the back of the other with a skittish laugh.

He was born in Clonmel in Co. Tipperary on in 1936, attended the Christian Brothers there for school and then entered the Jesuit novitiate at Emo Park in 1954. After his degree at University College Dublin and philosophy in Tullabeg, Paul came to Zambia in 1962. This involved, first of all, giving time to learn ciTonga and then teaching in Canisius Secondary school accompanied by the many chores which scholastics had to do when in a teaching job. He enjoyed these three years with his fellow scholastics, for Paul was essentially person-oriented.

Paul returned to Ireland to study theology at Milltown Park in Dublin and was ordained priest there in 1968. Prior to returning to Zambia, he asked to do a course in London (teaching English to foreign students) and a counselling course in the USA, which he believed would be of help to him when he came back whether he was assigned to teach or to work in a parish.

He returned to Zambia in 1969 and went to teach in Canisius for a short time then to Fumbo mission in the valley (which he found extremely difficult) and then back to Canisius. As a priest he wanted to help people. For him people were more important than any issues. Just teaching in a school with a little prefecting was not his idea of priestly work. To counsel schoolboys at a deeper level, he found that the differences in cultural background interfered and were a block. In Fumbo parish he discovered that the type of life there was not for him: the language barrier, cultural differences, loneliness and a certain anxiety in his character, all militated against a fruitful sojourn in the valley.

He left the mission and returned to Ireland in 1972. From then to his death in 1997, twenty five years were spent in parish work in a number of Dublin parishes, Walkinstown, Bonnybrook, Ballymun, and finally in Gardiner Street where he was curate from 1985 to 1991 and then parish priest from 1991 to his death. His priesthood was expressed in his care for people. Working in a parish gave him great scope for this. Always with a thought for others, he had a sensitivity for the concerns of those with different opinions and any differences he had with people were always expressed with an apology.

When a sabbatical year was the in-thing in the eighties, Paul's thoughts turned to Zambia not the USA or Canada, as he wrote to the Provincial there. "I would like a chance to visit old places with the Holy Spirit. I believe it would be good for me personally. However I would also like to help in a genuine way". This offer was accepted in Zambia, but the actual going never materialised.

Paul had a sense of fun and a hearty laugh. He liked to be with people with whom he related. A contemporary of his wrote, "There were great depths of kindness, sympathy, generosity and love in him, which even longed for a fuller expression. He needed his own freedom and the assurance of encouraging affirmation, something Paul did not always experience. He was basically a pastor, sympathising with strange waywardness while kindly suggesting a way forward, or dealing jovially with people".

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 93 : Autumn/Winter 1997 & Interfuse No 97 : Special Edition Summer 1998

Obituary
Fr Paul Cullen (1936-1997)
9th Feb. 1936: Born at Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
Early education: Christian Bros. School, Clonmel.
7th Sept. 1954: Entered Society at Emo
8th Sept. 1956: First Vows at Emo
1956 - 1959: Rathfarnham: Arts at UCD
1959 - 1962: Tullabeg: Philosophy
1962 - 1965; Zambia: Canisius College: studying language;
Canisius College: teaching
1965 - 1969: Milltown Park; Theology
10th July 1968: Ordained Priest at Milltown Park
1969 - 1972: Zambia; Fumbo Parish, Director and Minister; Canisius College, Teacher
1972 - 1974: Walkinstown Parish, Curate
1974 - 1975: Tertianship, California
1975 - 1977: Walkinstown Parish, Curate
1977 - 1982: Bonnybrook Parish, Curate
1982 - 1985: Ballymun Parish Curate
1985 - 1991: SFX Parish, Gardiner Street, Curate until 1991
1991 - 1997: SFX Parish, Parish Priest
16th Sept. 1997: Died aged 61

The seriousness of Paul's illness was diagnosed 6 months ago. He fought it with great determination. He was admitted to Cherryfield Lodge following major surgery, where he received six months continuous Palliative care.

When his energy was good, Paul planned to visit Lourdes in September with his sister, but this was not to be. In the last few days, it was evident that death was near. He faced death with great calmness and died peacefully at Cherryfield Lodge in the afternoon of 16th September 1997. May he rest in Christ's Peace!

AN APPRECIATION OF PAUL CULLEN SJ

This writing runs the risk of falling into the two great errors of funeral homilies which we are wisely warned against - giving a “curriculum vitae” or being a eulogy. All judgement has to be left to the Almighty - with normally no declaration of a saint or a giant - Who knows? More fittingly it has to be in line with the biblical advice, which presents death as novelty, and suggests that we leave the past behind: “Remember not the events of the past..... See I am doing something new” (Is 43.18; cf Rev). And while it is more appropriate to try to figure out the greatness to which Paul has hopefully advanced, some glimpses of the past bring to light aspects of him that are (or are coming) to the fore in his new existence.

Death was far from our minds, as Paul Cullen and I and another who left after a few years joked and laughed in an innocent way, while hay making many years ago in Emo. Our conversation, then, as frequently afterwards, turned to the thrills of Munster hurling. Still, despite the gaiety and the apparent ease, Paul made me alert to the insecurity of life in that lovely midland scene. Quietly now and again, he kept me informed that the old horse Quare Times' was running again - meaning that someone was about to leave or had left the noviceship. He could read the signs of the times better than me or perhaps had his ear more to the ground.

A host of Rathfarnham memories and events come back to mind, hours of tame adventure and good-humour, handball games (Paul liked to win, and I often proved a weak partner) etc. But there were tensions too, in a world where the psychological vision of developing youth was gravely lacking - faith in a rule being paramount - and where the acquiring of erudition was grossly over-valued. The wounds Paul suffered there left a deep mark on him. Yet for this there was never any personal bitterness in him - he could readily laugh at the characters of the past - just the plain recognition that the “times and seasons” of that period needed to be changed. His and my blatant revulsion at a refusal to be allowed to listen to a Munster hurling final led to a secret “escapada”, with the aid of an accomplice (since left), to the seismograph house, where the unbecoming world outside gave us some cheer. Our quiet defiance was just an indication that something was rotten in the state we were in, and that “aggiornamento” was called for.

I could go on prolonging the drama of light and shade in his noble character over many years. It was the struggle that was part of his existence, and which sprang basically from his goodness. There were great depths of kindness, sympathy, generosity and love in him, which ever longed for fuller expression. He needed his own freedom and the assurance of encouraging affirmation, to allow these to calmly blossom - something Paul did not always experience, since others, alas, are disjointed too. Yet his truest qualities always marked his life and his winning ways, even when the legitimate circumstances and drives of others and their different views curtailed him and did not smooth his path. He found it hard to accept preferences shown to others. He was intuitively shrewd at assessing people, but was, at times, intolerant of their incapacitates or limitations. I have never heard him express an idea that was totally wide of the mark!

He had clear views on the role of a priest. He often quoted what a man once said to him: “Your job, Father, is to keep the God dimension alive in my life”. He was a good parish priest - I can vouch for this myself - with a disposition that left him close to ordinary people. His “forte” tended to be in the charismatic, spontaneous sphere. He might have been more at ease as a secular parish priest. Challenged settings did not suit him.

I have not dwelt enough on his sense of humour, his openness towards life, his profound faith, and the serenity and dignity of his end - something those who knew him well would have expected. It has been said, “As a person lives so he dies”. And doesn't the Bible say that the worldly find it hard to die? Paul was very humble, vividly conscious of human frailty, and used to yielding to life's whims.

And so he has gone forward to probably the stretch called purgatory - which we'll all most likely have to go through. There in the words of Dante, the human soul is purged, 'e di salire al ciel diventa degno'. This marvellous writing on the high peaks to be climbed with difficulty, finishes with a moving account of the complete confession of sins made in shame and humility, and with the washing in the river of forgetfulness, and that of renewal, which magnifies the good deeds of the past. And then it's on to eternal glory - to the heaven allotted to each by the Creator - perhaps even to the highest: “al ciel ch'e pura luce, luce intellettual, piena i amore, amor di vero ben, pien di letizia: letizia che trascende ogni dolzore”.

Paul is the first of our novitiate to go. He was never a beadle or a superior - yet what cares the scales of eternity for such honours! - but has been chosen by God for something greater. He is the one who has gone before us, to be our leader, sharing for us in Christ's role of being 'the pioneer and perfecter of our faith'. He has departed to play his part in hopefully bringing the rest of us to glory. The more one ponders over this, the more one gets a glimpse of the wisdom and the originality of God.

It is inspiring to reflect on the wonderful creature that Paul now is. His dying is not sad, being a call and a mission of love. May divine glory shine through him, creating in him his final adornment. He is hopefully at peace in Christ, and remains as he always was, though now to an unimaginable degree augmented, a comforting friend to many.

James Kelly

Born: 22 October 1852, Danesfort, County Kilkenny
Entered: 21 December 1872, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 26 December 1874, Santa Clara College, Santa Clara, CA USA - Taurensis Province (TAUR)

Transcribed HIB to TAUR : 1873

Early education at St Kieran’s College, Kilkenny

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Went to Novitiate at (Santa) Monica and died there shortly afterwards

Born: 08 June 1881, Upper Leeson St, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 18 January 1900, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1916, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1918, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Died: 16 June 1919, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Father was a grocer.

Early education at a private infants academy in Rathmines and then at a convent in St Stephen’s Green, then CUS, Dublin and then Clongowes Wood College SJ

Came to Australia for Regency 1903
by 1912 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying
by 1914 in San Luigi, Napoli-Posilipo, Italy (NAP) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
After his Noviceship and owing to very delicate health, he was sent to Australia for Regency and did excellent work at Xavier College, Kew. He also spent a little while caring for his health at Sevenhill.
He returned to Ireland and carried on his studies including Theology at Naples, coming back to Ireland after three years and being Ordained here.
After Ordination he spent some years as an Assistant Missioner at Tullabeg in the Public Church. He was loved there by the people, especially by the young men. He had charge of their Sodality and increased its membership. He started a library for them, increased athletic sports, and pushed himself to help them in every way spiritual and temporal. He was very talented with very winning ways.
The end came unexpectedly. he was found dead, having suffered a hemorrhage of the lungs. He died 16 June 1919 only 38 years of age.

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
William Cullen entered the Society on 18 January 1900. From 1903-09 he taught at Xavier College, Kew, and was a prefect to the junior boarders. At the end of this time his health declined, and he spent 1910-11 at Sevenhill recuperating. His health recovered sufficiently for him to complete his studies, and he was ordained in 1916. He worked at Tullabeg after tertianship in 1917 in the house and school, but his health quietly deteriorated.

Born: 20 November 1888, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1907, Roehampton London - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 24 August 1921
Final Vows: 02 February 1925
Died: 09 May 1969, St Beuno’s, St Asaph, Wales - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1924 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

Born: 30 April 1922, Summerhill, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 September 1940, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 16 October 1941

Parents ran a businesse in Summerhill, Dublin.

Second of five boys with three sisters.

Early education at O’Connells school

20 Bothar an tSliable, Moycullen, Galway

Born: 17 March 1920, Pembroke Road, 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, Chikuni Mission, Zambia

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

Transcribed: HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

Father, Ignatius, was a pawnbroker, and family resided at Highfield Road, Rathgar, Dublin. Mother, Mary (Kenny), died in 1924 of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Only boy with two sisters, one older and one younger. First child f the family died at seven months from tubercular meningitis.

Early education at Dominican Convent Wicklow for six years he then went to Clongowes Wood College SJ (1930-1936). In 1937 he went to Belvedere College SJ for one year.

LEFT to Lusaka Diocese 1977 RIP 04/01/1979

1937-1939: St Mary's, Emo, Novitiate
1939-1941: Rathfarnham Castle, Juniorate
1941-1944: St Stanislaus College Tullabeg, Philosophy
1944-1946: Sacred Heart College, Limerick, Regency
1946-1947: Milltown Park, Theology
1947-1950: Fourvière, Lyon France (LUGD) studying Theology
1950-1951: Rathfarnham Castle, Tertianship
1951-1968: Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) working
1968-1969 at Camaldolese Hermits, Fairplay Road, Bloomingdale, OH USA

After leaving the Hermits, Paddy returned to Ireland, keen to leave the Society, though ot for any rancour. He then went to Lambay Island to function as something of a hermit with Lord Revelsticke’s approval. This did not work out, and after a period of rest and treatment, he eventually returned to Zambia, where at the end of 1976 he formally left the Society for the Diocese of Monze, though he continued to work closely with the Society.

◆ 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

Death Notice
CUMMINS (Zambia) - January 4, 1979, after a short illness, Rev Patrick Joseph Cummins, Chikuni Mission, PO Box 199, Monze, Zambia. Deeply regretted by his sisters Miriam and Pauline, relatives, missionary brethern and friends RIP.
Funeral on Saturday after 10am Mass in Chikuni Mission, Zambia. Concelebrated Requiem Mass at 11am, Monday 8th January, in St Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner Street, Dublin.

Obituary

Father Paddy Cummins, a native of Dublin, was born on St Patrick’s Dau 1920.

He was educated by the Jesuits at Belvedere College and Clongowes Wood College.

In September 1937 he entered the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus. He studied Philosophy at Tullabeg from 1940 to 1943, and for the following three years taught at the Crescent College, Limerick. He studied Theology at Milltown Park and at Lyon, and he was ordained at Fourvière, Lyon, in 1949. His tertianship was made at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, and in 1951 Fr Paddy went to what was then Northern Rhodesia with a group of 6 other Irish Jesuits. With the exception of a few short breaks spent in America and here in Ireland, the remaining years of his priestly life were spent in Zambia.

For many years he was a parish priest in the extreme south of our Zambian Mission. As a result of his outstanding ability with the African languages of Zambia, Father Paddy has spent many years teaching the local languages to newly arrived missionaries. In the months preceding his unexpected death he was preparing a grammar for piublication. Among the many gifts with which Paddy was blessedc, perhaps the one which was of the greatest material benefit to the Zambian people and to the missionaries was his uncanny success as a water diviner. Many of our mission stations and schools have their water boreholes and pumps situated at the precise point indicated by Father Cummins as being the best available.

We praye that Father Paddy may enjoy eternal peace.

Born: 01 July 1817, Knockbegg, County Roscommon
Entered: 09 September 1853, St John’s, Fordham, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final Vows: 02 February 1864
Died: 11 March 1874, Xavier College, New York, NY, USA - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

Born: 28 September 1908, Benraw, Castlewellan, County Down
Entered: 13 May 1950, Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)
Final Vows: 15 August 1962
Died: 28 May 1972, Benraw, Castlewellan, County Down - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)

Part of the Jesuit High School, New Orleans, USA community at the time of death

Born: 22 June 1804, Aghaloo, County Tyrone
Entered: 12 April 1845, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Final Vows: 08 January 1857
Died: 27 September 1888, Mercy Hospital, Baltimore, MD, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Part of the Woodstock College, Washington DC, USA community at the time of death.

Born: 29 March 1817, Cobh, County Cork
Entered: 07 September 1834, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England (ANG)
Ordained: by 1847
Final Vows: 02 February 1858
Died: 26 December 1858, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

by 1844 in Rome Studying
by 1847 in St Paul’s Malta

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at Clongowes - “Here he made such rapid strides at his books, that in a short time he had few equals in class” (Biographer). All through school he was noted for his remarkable talent, piety and good conduct. he Entered the Society in his 17th year, 07 September 1834.

After First Vows he was sent to teach Humanities and Mathematics, doing this for a number of years until his health broke down. A man of resolute character, this quality helped him deal with his illness. He was sent to Rome for a change of air, and hopefully to pursue his Priestly studies. He was advised to go for these to Sicily and later to Malta, after which he was Ordained. He then returned to Ireland and Tullabeg, both to teach and as Operaius at the new Church attached to the College. He was also Minister there for a while. he spent all his spare time on the Confessional, and eventually was appointed to concentrate solely on this work. Crowds came to him. He was kind and sympathetic in manner, and helped many troubled souls. The people looked on him as a kind of “Thaumaturgus” (miracle worker), and many are the stories related of him. Some years before his death his health failed him again, and he had to give up this work in the Confessional. He had a long and painful illness, though throughout he never complained. Worn out, he died 26 December 1858.
The crowds at his funeral were immense. His remains were first interred in the College grounds in a cemetery near the Church. Alfred Murphy had been a pupil of his at Tullabeg, and held him in such high esteem, that when he became Rector there, he had a special vault built on the Gospel side in the Church, and John was reinterred there.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Cunningham SJ 1817-1858
John Cunningham was born at the Cobh of Cork on March 29th 1817. At Clongowes “He made such rapid strides in his studies that he had few equals in class”. He entered the Society in 1834, being then 17 years old.

After his noviceship he was sent to teach Humanities and Mathematics. He continued at this for some years until his health broke down. To improve his health he was sent abroad to Rome, Sicily and Malta. Ordained a priest, he returned to Tullabeg as professor and operarius in the newly built church attached to the College. He spent all his spare time in the confessional, till he was finally assigned to this work alone. Crowds came to him from all sides.The people looked at him as a kind of “Thaumaturgus”, and many are the stories related of him.

His health failing, he had to spend work in the church. He had a long illness, crowned by a long and bitter agony. Worn out in body and mind, he expired on St Stephen’s Day 1856. The crowds of people at his funeral were immense. His remains were interred first in a cemetery in the College grounds. Later on, Fr Alfred Murphy, who had been a pupil of his, had a special vault built in the church on the Gospel side, whither his remains were re-interred.

He died with the reputation of a saint and miracle worker.

Born: 30 December 1824, Mountrath, County Laois
Entered: 07 September 1849, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 17 August 1855
Final Vows: 15 August 1866
Died: 20 May 1889, Hospice Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, Longue-Pointe, Québec, Canada - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

part of the Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Québec, Canada community at the time of death

Born: 24 January 1825, Birr, County Offaly
Entered: 07 November 1853, Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India - Tolosanae Province (TOLO)
Ordained: 1860
Died: 06 December 1861, Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India - Tolosanae Province (TOLO)

Born: 30 March 1924, Millmount Avenue, Drumcondra, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1942, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1957, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1960, Wah Yan College, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Died: 15 June 1972, Fujen Catholic University, Dalat, Vietnam (Kingsmead Hall, Singapore) - Hong Kong Vice-Province (Died in air crash)

Part of Kingsmead Hall community, Singapore at time of his death. Died in air crash

Transcribed : HIB to HK 03/12/1966

Mother died in June 1937, and father was an official in the Rents Department of Dublin Corporation. Family lives at Avondale Road, Phibsborough.

Older of two boys.

Early education was for three years in a private school and then at Belvedere College SJ.

by 1952 at Hong Kong - Regency

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
His early education was at Belvedere College SJ, Dublin. he had a keen interest in things that moved : cars, ships, trains and planes, but above all he was interested in helping people.

His strength was his pastoral work, and particularly teaching catechistics, which he taught at the Swiss School, the Australian Army School and the International School.
He was a founder of the Road Safety Association in Hong Kong.
He also worked in Singapore where he focused on drug addiction.

he died in 1972 when the plane he was in blew up over South Vietnam.

Note from Paddy Finneran Entry
He came to Hong Kong as a young priest with Peter Dunne and 5 Scholastics - Liam Egan, Paddy Cunningham, Matt Brosnan, Tom O’Neill and Tony Farren. He spent two years at the Battery Path Language School learning Cantonese.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 47th Year No 2 1972

The tragic news of Fr Patrick Cunningham's death, together with 80 others, in the air-smash in Vietnam, reached us in the middle of June, first surmised, then confirmed. We hope to have further information later.
We offer sympathy to Fr Cunningham's brother, Frank, on the calamity.
Fr P. Cunningham's remains, after various delays, were conveyed to Dublin - Gardiner Street - 20th July. There was an Obsequial Mass concelebrated by Fr Provincial and twelve other participants on Friday 21st. R.I.P.

Irish Province News 47th Year No 4 1972

Obituary :

Fr Patrick Cunningham SJ (1924-1972)

A brief notice of the tragic death of Fr Cunningham in the middle of June and of his obsequies in Gardiner Street on July 20th was contained in the last issue of the Province News Editor.]
When we think of Fr Paddy Cunningham (PJ or Pat as his contemporaries knew him) we think of mechanical things and movement. We think of cars and aeroplanes, of launches and ships and of a man who was ever on the move. We think of a man ready at a moment's notice to address any audience on any topic what ever and in any part of the world. He would then return home and either delight or annoy his community with endless chatter about the people Pat had met and the things Pat had done. I once saw him rather obviously choose a place at recreation beside the late Fr Tommy Ryan and I heard Fr Ryan's opening remark : “Well, I suppose you're going to tell me about all your works and pomps!” Pat could be pompous at times especially when wearing one of those unnecessary uniforms he loved so well.
Never a scholar, he was a man, nonetheless, whose interests were limitless and he carried in his head an astonishing amount of factual information about all kinds of unlikely persons, places and things. He used to chuckle over a comment made by a superior who once told him that he would make an excellent railway porter with information about timetables, ticket prices and train stops at his finger-tips. But you could not be sure of the information at Pat's finger-tips. He never could say, “I don't know” or “I'll check that for you”. To any question he always made an immediate and definite reply and he would be right a surprising eighty per cent or so of the time. The trouble was you never knew which twenty per cent was not correct so you always had to verify Pat's statements.
On 7th September 1942 twenty three novices entered Emo, five of them from Belvedere and Patrick Joseph Cunningham was one of these. It was not long till he made his presence felt especially at Socius' Conferences where we looked forward to his shared reflections, observations and suggestions which were never dull and often sensational. Once he suggested that a novice should be appointed to collect the skin from on top of the hot milk - enough could be collected each morning, Pat assured us, to make a plastic egg-cup. That was Fr Brendan Brennan's first year as Socius and he never quite knew how to manage Brother Cunningham.
In Rathfarnham Pat was more at home ... not because it gave him an opportunity for study but because Dublin was the place where Pat was born and he knew Dublin street by street. Indeed if one believed him he knew everyone who lived in every street - at least everyone who mattered. He claimed connections at managerial level with many commercial firms and not only scholastics but fathers, too, were taken in by this. More than one man entered Dublin firms on Pat's recommendation hoping to get special terms by using his name only to discover that nobody in the firm knew a Patrick Cunningham. Tullabeg meant back to the country and Pat was essentially a city man and his three years there might have been trying ones for him were it not for the building of the swimming pool in which he was deeply involved. He also claimed a multitude of relations in the neighbourhood.
Then came his appointment to Hong Kong and his influence with people really blossomed. No one would rate him an expert at the Chinese language and yet he could somehow establish contact with Chinese people in almost any dialect. But he did not confine his apostolate to Chinese people. He had a universal love for mankind and a desire to help wherever help was needed. A characteristic he revealed in Emo was a generosity with his time and a readiness to go to the assistance of anybody and this characteristic he never lost. He was a man for others. He loved people and served them. Thus, as well as the boys in our schools, the groups he worked for or with in Hong Kong included Chinese hostesses from Cathay Pacific Airways, British Airforce personnel, Rotary Clubs, Road Safety Associations, to say nothing of the seamen of varied nationalities that he dealt with in his work for the Apostleship of the Sea.
The pattern in Singapore was the same as the following paragraphs from Father Liam Egan testify :
“In a little less than two years in Singapore Pat had won an astonishing number of friends and admirers. ... Pastoral work, and in particular, catechetical work proved to be his forte. To those of us who knew him well his success with children and especially with teenagers both boys and girls and of all nationalities was incredible.
He taught catechism in two convent schools, in the Swiss school, the Australian Army School, the International School and the children loved him. Not only did he teach them but he established an extraordinary rapport with them. He organised a weekly evening session in Kingsmead Hall for the “tough” teenagers of the American School and the International School. They attended in ever increasing numbers: they brought their friends : some of them brought their parents. They became enthusiastic about their religion, possibly for the first time in years”.
And then came the fatal air-disaster of 15th June and with it the end of life for Pat at the age of 48. He loved to be alive and he loved to be on the move and for one who was liable to turn up almost anywhere at almost any time it is hard to believe that he won't turn up again. An enquiry into the cause of the crash established that it was caused by a bomb placed on the plane in Bangkok and which exploded over Vietnam. The exceptionally large crowds that turned out for requiem Masses offered for him at Singapore and Hong Kong bear testimony to the love and esteem that so many had for him. He will be remembered by many for a long time. May he rest in peace.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1962

Belvederians On The Hong Kong Mission

Just before Easter, Fr Paddy Joy SJ gave a talk in the gym on the Irish Jesuit Mission in Hong Kong.

Father Pat Cunningham SJ
Father Cunningham is in charge of this Apostleship of the Sea, and flies the papal flag on the smartest launch on the harbour. He has vitalised this work, which had just got beyond its growing pains, and he is “on the job” in a way that has won wide attention. Last yeat, after attending the Sea Apostolate convention in Rome he toured most of the important ports in Europe and Asia. to see what is being done, and he will not be happy until he has made Hong Kong as good as the best for Catholic seamen. Twelve ships visit Hong Kong every day and none of them escapes his notice. Father McAsey and he dovetail their work excellently and between them they have gained the goodwill of ships of all flags.

Transport is one of Father Cunningham's surprising interests, and it has brought him into connection with our local traffic problems. He is known to many as a member of the Port Welfare Committee, but when a “Road Safety” committee was brought into being he was roped on to it and promptly made chairman. He has given lectures and addresses and interviews on the subject, and has won the special goodwill of the Police Traffic Department because of the practical help that he is giving in keeping blood off the roads.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1965

Sons of Xavier

Father Pat Cunningham (1942). For several years Father Pat Cunningham kept the flag of the Apostleship of the Sea flying very prominently in our harbour-which ac cording to our local statisticians was visited by over 27,000 ships last year in addition to its own 20,000 local craft. Now that he is engaged on land activities he is as a ubi quitous on shore as he ever was on land. In addition to being Assistant Prefect of Studies, and Prefect of Discipline as well as teacher, he has taken a very prominent part in the promotion of “road safety”. All his life he has been interested in everything that moves on wheels, and is greatly annoyed at the number of pedestrians that get in the way of vehicles on our roads. As those statisticians to whom I already referred tell us that there is a vehicle for every 200 feet on our roads and as those are more than 31 million people use those roads, it is not surprising that we have an abundance of accidents, with 20 killed every month and nearly 1000 injured. Father Cunningham is President of a Road Safety Association and in this capacity is heard frequently on the radio and in addresses to various organisations.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1972

Obituary

Father Patrick J Cunningham SJ (’42)

Father Paddy was killed in an air disaster over Vietnam. The cause of the disaster has not yet been made public. It was a fitting death for him and I am sure he would not have had it otherwise.

When he left school he entered the Society and very soon got a reputation for getting things done - no matter what the things were. For such a man the missions offered limitless scope and as soon as he could he went out on the Chinese mission and remained on it till his death. The most obliging of men nothing was too trivial, nothing too arduous for him to undertake. The following appreciation of him appeared in the “Evening Press”.

A Hong Kong meeting. between the then bosun of the Irish Larch and Father Paddy Cunningham, the Dublin born Jesuit who died tragically in Thursday's Vietnam air disaster, is recalled by the bosun, Joe Fay, in the following article:

“Thousands of seamen from all over the world, including many from behind the “Iron Curtain” will hear with deep regret the death of Fr Patrick Joseph Cunningham, a Dublin Jesuit, who was killed in an air crash in South Vietnam.

He wasn't only a good soldier of Jesus, but he was also a good sailor for him. To many mariners he was known as just plain Paddy and others referred to him as affectionately as the “Vatican Skipper” or “The Commodore Chief of the Vatican Navy”.

How well I remember my first meeting with Paddy. It was the day after we anchored off Hong Kong. Some of the crew and I were loading cargo from the Irish Larch into Chinese junks, It was somewhere near the middle of summer in 1963. At about 10.15 am, the deck boy came along to me on the after deck and said, ‘Bosun, there's a quare looking boat coming along side with sailors in funny looking uniforms’. At this time the sweat was running out of us and I was just about to tell him to go and get stuffed when he said, “Honest to the living Bosun, there
is a funny looking boat alongside”.

I looked over the side and saw a beautiful large motor launch with what looked like Chinese crew boys dressed in navy uniforms in the Vatican colours of yellow and white.. On the small bridge stood a tall well-muscled slim man well over six feet tall. He was wearing a dark grey uniform with a Roman collar. On the stern of the Launch the Vatican flag was flying and underneath, the name Stella Maris and below that the words Reg in the Vatican. I knew that this was the man I had heard referred to in many ports I had visited as the “Vatican Skipper”.

He came up the gangway looking at me and said: “Céad Míle Fáilte”. I felt a right mug and looking for a quick answer I said: “Sorry me ould flower, I only speak Dublinese”. He put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Don't worry I'm a Jackeen Myself’. I then asked him if I'd take him up to the officers' mess and he replied: ‘Let the gold braid wait. I can see them later, but I would like to have a little talk with the five-eights’. As it was only a few minutes to go for smoko (tea break) I blew the men up and we all went into the crew's messroom.

It must have been one of the longest tea breaks on record as it lasted about an hour and a half. His love and knowledge of Dublin was fantastic. He knew the Liberties and Dublin dockland like the back of his hand, We spoke about Biddy Slicker and her barrel organs. He knew a lot about the old Dublin boxing fraternity and names like Spike McCormack and Paddy Dowdell came as easy to him as if he had lived next door.

Next morning he came aboard and said Mass. I'm sure he helped to bring our native shores closer to all the crew. I am sure when you meet your maker, Paddy, he will give yon the job of chartering a steady course for many seamen in the years to come”.

Evening Press

Born: 29 June 1917, Boyle, County Roscommon
Entered: 25 October 1936, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 03 February 1947, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 23 October 1990, Milford House Nursing Home, Limerick

Part of Sacred Heart Church, Limerick community. Buried Mungret, 26 October 1990.

Born: 24 February 1906, Taieri, Otago, New Zealand
Entered: 04 March 1924, Loyola Greenwich, Australia (HIB)
Ordained: 12 August 1934
Final Vows: 10 March 1942
Died: 03 September 1959, St Patrick’s Mission, Barrow (Utqiagvik), Alaska, USA - Oregonensis Province (ORE)

Transcribed HIB to CAL : 1929; CAL to ORE

by 1928 at Eegenhoven, Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
His grandfather was deported from Ireland to Australia for some act of patriotism. His secondary education was with the Christian Brothers at Dunedin, New Zealand before he Entered the Society in Australia at Loyola Greenwich, 1924.

1926-1927 He was sent to Rathfarnham Castle Dublin for a Juniorate
1927-1930 He was sent for Philosophy to Eegenhoven Belgium and Spokane Washington, USA. During his third year of Philosophy he was transcribed to the Oregon Province (ORE) having volunteered for the Alaska Mission. At Spokane he was known as a quiet and hardworking student with a fine mind, who never seemed to get tired. He was fiercely competitive at sports and the best soccer player among the scholastics.
1930-1931 He was sent to Kashunak School, Holy Cross, Alaska for Regency
1931-1934 He went to Montreal Quebec, Canada for Theology
1934-1935 He made Tertianship at Mont-Laurier Quebec, Canada
1935-1936 He began his missionary work at Nome Alaska
1936-1944 He was sent to work at Little Diomede Island Alaska. He became a US citizen 01 October 1941.
1944-1946 He was a Military Chaplain with the US Army, during which time he visited Australia and the Pacific region, which included New Caledonia, Manila, Honolulu, Guam and Japan. He even spent four months in Korea in 1946
1946-1947 After the war he returned to Little Diomede Island
1947-1950 He was sent to work with the Eskimos at King Island Alaska. Here he taught school at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as catechising, visiting the sick and sharing in village life. This included joining the local men hunting.
1950-1952 He became a Chaplain with the Air Force, spending much of his time teaching Arctic survival to servicemen.
1952-1953 He spent a year as a missionary at Kotzebue (Qikiqtaġruk) Alaska
1953 He moved further north in Alaska to Point Barrow (Nuvuk). Using this as a base, he went on long dog-sled journeys across the world’s last frontier, seeking Eskimo souls for Christ and working with white Catholics in Point Barrow (Nuvuk), construction workers, military personnel, people connected with the school, the hospital, the US Weather Bureau and the Civil Aeronautics Administration. He also ministered to the men working on the “Distant Early Warning” radar sites.

His life in Alaska was a saga of heroic deeds. he once saved a village from starving by personally conducting a hunt on the Arctic Ocean during very severe weather. His trained eye picked out the ice floe that was to be the home of scientists and airmen for eighteen months during the “International Geophysical Year” of 1957. This project was known as “Operation Ice Skate” and was completed under the guidance of Thomas Cunningham.

His “Parish” had been the 150,000 cold square miles of Alaska above the Arctic Circle. His parishioners were anyone he met. For a quarter of a century he laughed at Arctic dangers, survived pneumonia - which he caught while cruising the icy Bering Sea in a leaky sealskin boat. He leapt down an icy cliff and jumped to safety from ice cake to floating ice cake as Soviet officials sought to take him captive when his boat had been blown into Big Diomede Island (Gvozdev) during an Arctic storm. He mushed through winter blizzards that had kept even the Eskimos indoors, travelling on one missionary journey for 2,500 miles behind dogs.

His deeds in the Arctic became legendary and were told and retold wherever Eskimo or white men gathered along the Arctic coast or north of the glacier-packed Brooks Mountain range.

He learned the Eskimo language during his early Alaskan years, and spoke it with a fluency that amazed the natives. He was a scholar, who compiled an Eskimo dictionary of over 7,000 words and their English equivalents. He could look at an ice flow and tell the age of the ice, and accurately guess its depth and longevity. He knew more of the traditions, legends and anthropological lore of the Eskimo than anyone else in the north. He held a Major’s commission in the Air Force and had received a commendation-of-merit ribbon from the Secretary of the US Air Force.

He was a very cheerful person, very pro Irish and anti British, and a marvellous raconteur. He was small in stature, but very strong. He said he chose the Alaskan Mission because it was cold like his native place in New Zealand. He died in his Rectory cabin at Point Barrow (Nuvuk) from a heart attack. The US Air Force flew his body from there to Fairbanks, and he was buried there with full military honours and a 15-gun salute.

He was a remarkable Jesuit, described by a fellow missionary as “one of the most loved, versatile and dynamic missionaries ever to serve the Alaska Missions”. He was recorded in the “Congressional Records” as “a noble and gallant figure, a devoted servant of God and his fellow men”. Both “Time” and “Newsweek” magazines noted his passing.

cf “Memoirs of a Yukon Priest”Segundo Llorente SJ, Georgetown University Press, Washington DC 1990 - ISBN 10: 0878403615

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 6th Year No 2 1931
Alaska :
Mr Tom Cunningham has already been doing excellent work in Alaska. He will be most likely prefect and principal of a school next year.
Irish Province News 8th Year No 2 1933
Montreal
A great many of us remember Mr. Tom Cunningham, an Australian, who finished his juniorate at Rathfarnharn in 1927. He volunteered for the Alaskan mission, and at the end of philosophy was sent to the far north. He is now doing 2nd Year Theol. at the “Immaculate” Montreal. He sends an interesting letter :
It will be no time 'till I find myself back in Alaska for a life sentence, and the moment cannot come too quickly for me. It is true that life in Alaska is hard. You are lonely and cold, the food is of the crudest kind, the silence of the Arctic winter nearly drives you crazy, and you begin to wonder sometimes if you will ever see the sun again, or get a letter from home.
But it has its compensations. There is a sort of mysterious something about the Yukon that gets a grip on you, and makes you wish to be there rather than any place else. It must be the grace of God. I know that I wouldn't stay in Alaska one day if it were not for a supernatural motive.

Irish Province News 12th Year No 2 1937
ALASKA :
The following letter is from Father T. Cunningham who was a Junior at Rathfarnham in the year 1926-27. Shortly afterwards he joined the California Province in the hope of being sent to the Alaska mission. He now belongs to the Oregon Province, and when his theology at the Immaculate Conception, Montreal, was finished his hopes were realized, and he was sent to Alaska, the land his heart desired. Our regret is that limited space prevents our giving the entire letter, but the parts we are enabled to give are decidedly interesting. The letter is an answer to one received from a Jesuit friend.
“When your letter arrived the spirit was low. I don't mean low in the wrong sense of the word, but that lowness that comes from a long, miserable, cold winter, with always a couple more months to go, and a lowness that is increased by had grub, hard work and loneliness.
Much to my astonishment I was assigned on my return to Alaska to Nome. (Father Cunningham had spent some time in Alaska before his theology.) Nome has a reputation of wrecking havoc in the minds and bodies of the clergy. Of my predecessors one went completely mad, one froze to death, three lasted a year and then had to leave through ill health. I have been here since September, 1935, alone, and believe me it's no picnic. I have been to confession once since then when I went fifty miles out of my way to call on my neighbor in Kotzebue 200 miles north of here.
When I saw what I was up against I drew up a schedule to be followed as closely as possible here and when travelling. The day was divided from 5 a.rm. to 10.30 p.m. between prayer, study teaching catechism and manual labor, in such a way that I didn't have time to sit down and feel sorry for myself.
Outside of Nome the work was fine. My territory stretches as far north as the Noatak River, well within the Arctic Circle, and as far west as Cape Prince of Wales, the most westerly point on the Continent. I got over the whole district twice and my procedure was always the same, study of the various changes of dialect in each village, and teaching catechism to the children in the afternoon and to the adults at night. In between times, when I had the dishes washed, dogs fed, and the wood chopped against the next morning, I would do what I could towards easing the various bodily ailments to which the Eskimo is prone. I relied as often as not on the grace of God as on my own medical knowledge. Anyhow I produced some surprising results, and didn't kill anyone.
The winter was moderate. The coldest around here was 70 below zero, but only for a day or so. There was a seven weeks spell of minus 50 during March and April. The coldest I experienced when travelling was 58 below zero. That was too cold to travel but I didn't want to spend the night in the open. I came through the winter with only feet frozen twice, and frost-bitten hands and nose every other week, nothing serious, only inconvenient. It is really hard to describe the cold and the famous north Wind which makes it much worse.
Now we are enjoying what is rightly called Little Winter or that period of two months or so between the end and beginning of the Big Winter. We had five beautiful days early this month (July), but most of the time it's a cold damp atmosphere with an occasional frost and snow flurry. It did clear up enough to see the Midnight Sun on two occasions.
I have made satisfactory progress in the language, and can preach, hear confessions, teach catechism without much difficulty, and I hope to know it as well as possible in two more years. There are no books on the subject, and most of all I know I had to find out just by asking around.
The language has one big rule turn everything possible into a verb. Thus, “I didn't eat all day” is “I dayed without eating” - “Oubluzunga herrinanga”. They have no generic words, for the six kinds of foxes, they have six different words.
The method of counting is queer but logical. They count to twenty, as that is as far as the fingers and toes go. Then they multiply and add till they reach a hundred. 67 would be 20 by 3 plus 7.
Now, my status for next year. I have been billed to found a new mission on Little Diomede Island, in the Bering Sea, near Siberia. I shall be the first priest to winter there, and, as far as I know, the only white man. I go there in September (1936), and will have no communication with the mainland from October till the following July, when the ice begins to break up. Someone has to go there as it is a good place in case we can ever work on the Eskimos in Russia. The address will be : Ignalit - Diomede Island, via Nome. Alaska.
I would take it as a favour if you gave this letter to the Editor of the Province News, as I like to think that all my old Irish friends have not completely deserted me simply because I turned Eskimo.
We haven't enough men here. We cannot do half enough. I have at least six native villages to attend to outside Nome, and a fellow can be only in one place at a time, and dogs go only an average of six miles an hour, and that's good going. I was lucky to get all around twice.
Give my regards to all my old co-juniors,
Sincerely,
TOM CUNNINGHAM, SJ”

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948
Letter from Fr. Tom Cunningham, King Island, Alaska :
“... A plane flew over this island last week and dropped some mail - a most pleasant surprise. This mail had been accumulating at Nome since last September and it contained two 1947 copies of the Irish Province News. Though it is a long time since 1929, the names of the older members of the Province are still very fresh in the memory.
If you know of any budding missionaries who wish to come out here, tell them from me that they need only one quality above other missionary requirements, viz. the desire and the ability to learn the Eskimo language, which I am convinced is the hardest language imaginable. I don't know though - a few years ago I came across a tribe in Liberia, who were Eskimo in every respect except language. Their language was very simple and after less than a month's association with them, I could get along fairly well. If a future missionary can grasp a language, he has overcome the most difficult part of the Alaska Missions. The weather, travel, terrain, etc. can be handled easily.
If you don't mind, let me bring you up to date on my personal activities. I was on Diomede Island from 1936 to 1940, when I then went to tertianship. Back again on Diomede till 1942 when the war had upset everything. There were soldiers all over Alaska except on these remote islands. I worked with the army quite a lot as adviser on Arctic conditions and spent some time training Arctic Search and Rescue Crews on the Alaska Liberia Wing of the Ferrying Command. Thousands of planes went through Alaska to the European Front. Americans would fly them to Alaska and the Russian pilots would take over there.
In 1944 I was commissioned in the Chaplain's Corps and sent to the S. W. Pacific, being on Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, Manila and eventually Tokyo and Korea. I was released from the army and went to Lewis Washington in September, 1946 and arrived back at Nome two weeks later. I spent last winter between two Missions on the mainland and from January to June, I was on Diomede Island,
Last summer, Fr. Lafortune, the priest who built the Mission on this island died, and King Island was added to the territory which I already had. My Present Parish is composed of King Island and Diomede Island in the Baring Straits and Teller and the village of Igloo on the Mainland. The latter three are accessible during the winter, but once on the island you must stay put till the ice goes.
My plans now are to alternate between one winter here and one divided between Diomede, Teller and Igloo. The population here is 198, all Catholics. Diomede has 94 of whom 86 are Catholics. Teller has 35 Catholics out of 150 and Iglo has 48 people, all Catholics. The distances between are considerable : Teller to Igloo 50 miles, Teller to Diomede 98 miles and Teller to here 40 miles. Teller is a sort of Headquarters. There are two stores there. I built the Chapels at Diomede, Teller and Igloo. This island and its buildings, I have inherited so to speak; a fine Church, nice living quarters and the most fervent congregation I have ever come across. There are at least 25 Communions daily and over 100 on Sundays.
I have been assigned considerable territory as you see, but except for Igloo it's much the same language and I happen to be the only one who knows it. The language will be necessary for at least two more generations. Here I am the only White, so the White population always sees eye to eye in Religion, recreation, politics and is a staunch follower of De Valera.
I have a Radio and get good reception on an average of once a week, so I don't know much about the outside. The programme except for the excellent News broadcasts are poor. The only station I can hear is an Army station at Los Angeles. Even the news, the odd time I hear it, is not very reassuring.
Life here is tranquil. The island is about one mile and a half in circumference, rising abruptly out of the ice. The village is an in credibly steep rocky slope, at least a 60° incline. It is quite an art to manoeuvre around the village. The only way that I can make it when taking Holy Communion to the sick on dark mornings is to tie a rope. around one of the Church supports and hang on. The Eskimos pick out the darndest places to live.
The living is made entirely off the ice and it takes rugged characters to survive. The weather is not too severe. Our coldest day so far was 44 degrees below zero, with a wind of 45 miles per hour.
My day starts at 5 am. and goes on till 10.30 p.m. There are four Catechism classes per day for the children and one in the evening for adults. On Wednesday and Saturday, I hunt in the afternoons, as I. need to eat too. All hunting is done on moving ice and it is sometimes dangerous and always cold and miserable. I take care of my own cooking, washing and house-keeping, so I really have not time to feel sorry for myself. Still, the hardest chore for me is making altar-breads. The iron must be hot, but not too hot and not too cold, and the dough not too thick and not too thin. A sort of equation with four unknowns. All in all it's a busy and I hope, a useful life.
St. Patrick's Day is coming and I have a sermon all ready for Benediction on Wednesday night. Can't help thinking of the days at Eegenhoven when March 17th was the big day and the Belgians and the Englishmen envied us. I understand our old home was pretty well blown up. I wonder what happened to all the friends we had there.
While in Korea, I had hopes of going as far as Hong Kong but I didn't get beyond Shanghai and I was there for only one night. There was an Irish Sister from Roscommon in Seoul, Korea in charge of an Orphanage and every other American soldier was helping her with stuff for her fold. While in Tokyo I heard that Fr. M. Bodkin was chaplain on a British aircraft carrier but I just couldn't visit him.....”

Irish Province News 35th Year No 1 1960
Obituary :
Fr Thomas Cunningham (1906-1959)
(From the Oregon- Jesuit, October 1959)

The frozen frontier of the Alaska Mission lost its restless “Father Tom” on 3rd September, 1959, when Rev. Thomas Patrick Cunningham, S.J. died of a heart attack in his rectory cabin at Point Barrow, Alaska.
His parish had been the 150,000 cold square miles of Alaska that lie above the Arctic Circle. His parishioners were anyone he met.
For a quarter of a century Fr. Tom had laughed at Arctic dangers. He had survived pneumonia, caught while cruising the icy Bering Sea in a leaky sealskin boat. He had leaped down an icy cliff and jumped to safety from ice cake to floating ice cake, as Soviet officials sought to take him captive, when his boat had been blown in to Big Diomede Island during an Arctic storm. He had mushed safely through winter blizzards that had kept even the Eskimos indoors, travelling on one missionary journey 2,500 miles behind his dogs. His deeds in the Arctic had become legend and were told and retold wherever Eskimo or white man gathered along the Arctic coast or north of the glacier-packed Brooks mountain range. His death was as Fr. Tom would have chosen, a quiet going to eternal sleep as he began another exhausting day.
When Fr. Thomas P. Cunningham joined our philosophy classes at Mount St. Michael's, Spokane, WA., in 1929, we knew him as a quiet, hard-working student with a brilliant mind, who never seemed to get tired. He was fiercely competitive in sports and the best soccer player any of us had ever faced. He had grown up in New Zealand where, on 24th February, 1906, he had been born on a farm near Taieri. He talked little of himself, but in defending some political figure in Ireland, he once said that his grandfather had been deported by England to Australia for some act of Irish patriotism.
Fr. Cunningham travelled a roundabout route to his Alaska mission, High school was spent with the Christian Brothers at Dunedin, New Zealand. He entered the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus at Sydney, Australia, 24th March, 1924. He spent his Juniorate at Rathfarnham, Ireland, his philosophy years at Louvain, Belgium, and Mt. St. Michael's, Spokane. He taught school at Holy Cross, Alaska, 1930-31, before entering theology studies at Montreal, Canada. He was ordained 12th August, 1934, at Loyola College, Montreal, and made his tertianship at Mount Laurier, Quebec, Canada. In 1935 he began his missionary work at Nome, Alaska, and the following year went to Diomede Island for a three-year stay.
Giving a chronological account of Fr. Cunningham's work in Alaska tells so little of what he did. Except for his year out for tertianship, he was at Diomede Island from 1936-44. From 1944-46 he was chaplain with the U.S. army. After another year at Diomede Island, he spent three years as missioner to the Eskimos at King Island. From 1950-52 he was chaplain with the air-force, spending much of his time teaching Arctic survival to service-men. After a year as missionary to Kotzbue, he moved north to Point Barrow, Alaska's northernmost tip and, from there, went on long dog-sled missionary journeys across the world's last frontier, seeking Eskimo souls for Christ.

Many Acts of Heroism
Fr. Cunningham's life in Alaska was a saga of heroic deeds. He once saved a village from starving by personally conducting a hunt on the Arctic Ocean during very severe weather. His trained eye picked out the ice floe which was to be the home of scientists and airmen for 18 months during the Geophysical Year. The project, known as “Operation Ice Skate”, was completed under his guidance. He was first ashore on the ice island and last to leave when it broke up. He foretold that the ice island would break twice during their stay and guessed within a week of when each break-up would occur. No life was ever lost in any of the air-force or scientific operations which he supervised.

A Skilled Scientist
Fr. Cunningham learned the Eskimo language in his early Alaskan years and spoke it with a fluency that amazed the natives. He was a scholar who compiled an Eskimo dictionary of over 7,000 words and their English equivalents. He could look at an ice floe and tell the age of the ice and accurately guess its depth and longevity. He knew more of the traditions, legends and anthropological lore of the Eskimo than anyone else in the north. He held a Major's Commission in the Air Force Reserve and had received a commendation-of-merit from the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force.
Fr. Cunningham's body was flown by the U.S. Air Force from Point Barrow to Fairbanks and buried there on 8th September with full military honours and a fifteen-gun salute by the Air Force of Ladd Field. Bishop Francis D. Gleeson, S.J. said the Mass in the presence of twenty missionaries from all over Alaska and innumerable friends from the military, civilians and Fr. Tom's beloved Eskimos.
Erwin J. Toner, S.J.

Born: 25 October 1796, Athleague, County Roscommon
Entered: 29 September 1827, Frederick MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Ordained: 1833
Final Vows: 02 February 1841
Died: 24 July 1889, Georgetown College, Washington DC, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)

Born: 07 February 1907, Bray, County Wicklow
Entered: 02 July 1938, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Left Society of Jesus: 06 April 1943

Baptised Robert Patrick Curley

Father was Robert. Mother was Margaret (Loughman)

Before entering he had worked as an upholsterer with his father. Initially after school he worked with a bookmaker.

Baptised at Holy Redeemer Bray, 11/02/1907
Confirmed at Holy Redeemer Bray by Dr Donnelly of Dublin, 14/05/1918

1938-1940: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Novitiate
1940-1943: Rathfarnham Castle, Maintenance

It is believed that he married after leaving.

Born: 24 June 1820, Caherciveen, County Kerry
Entered: 23 August 1856, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae-NeoEboracensis Province (MARNEB)
Final Vows: 15 August 1867
Died: 24 October1897, Boston College, Boston, MA, USA - Marylandiae-NeoEboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 22 June 1915, Iona Crescent, Glasnevin, Dublin
Entered: 02 December 1939, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Left Society of Jesus: 20 February 1941

Father was a Civil Servant and died in March 1925.

Second in a family of two boys and two girls.

Early education at Holy Faith Convent Glasnevin and then Christian Brothers, James’ Street, Kilkenny for two years and then at O’Connell's School, Dublin. He then went to Rockwell College CSSp. After school he went to UCD studying Architecture and got his degree in 1939.

Born: 26 December 1864, Crossboyne, County Mayo
Entered: 24 March 1890, Roehampton, London - Angliae Province (ANG)
Final Vows: 15 August 1900
Died: 12 November 1916, Milltown Park, Dublin - Angliae Province (ANG)

Member of the Manresa, Roehampton, London community at the time of death

Died in HIB but member of ANG

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
A member of the ANG Province. He had been in poor health and was sent to Ireland for a change of air in his native surroundings.
On his return journey he stayed at Milltown and died there after a short illness 12 November 1916.

Born: 29 December 1924, Botanic Avenue, Glasnevin Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 02 October 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1959, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 06 January 1978, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 14 August 1999, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

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

Father was a commercial traveller who died in 1942.

Eldest of three boys with three sisters.

Early education at Holy Faith Convent, Glasnevin, and then at St Vincent’s CBS, Glasnevin. After school he began to work as an apprentice projectionist, passing examinations in electricity, light, heat, sound and projection.

by 1949 at Laval, France (FRA) studying
by 1985 at Regis Toronto, Canada (CAN S) Sabbatical

Born: 02 January 1911, Lippa, Spiddal, County Galway
Entered: 07 September 1931, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1945, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1948, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 02 June 1960, St Stephens Hospital, Glanmire, County Cork

Part of Mungret College community, Limerick at time of his death.

Parents were farmers.

Second eldest of six boys with six sisters.

Educated at local National School for ten years, he then went to St Mary’s College, St Helen’s Street, Galway. In 1928 he went to the Apostolic School at Mungret College SJ

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 35th Year No 3 1960
Obituary :
Fr Stephen Curran (1911-1960)
Stephen Curran was born near Spiddal, Co. Galway, on 2nd January, 1911. He was at school at St. Mary's College, Galway, but in 1927 he transferred to the Apostolic School, Mungret College, where he remained until he entered the Noviceship at Emo in 1931. In due course he moved from Emo to Rathfarnham Castle for his Juniorate (1933-36), during which he read for his degree in Celtic Studies at University College, Dublin. For the next three years we find him studying Philosophy at Tullabeg, In 1939 he was assigned to St. Ignatius College, Galway for his “Colleges”, and in 1942 he began Theology at Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1945. After Tertianship at Rathfarnham Castle, 1946-47, he spent the remaining years of his life in teaching at Mungret College, Limerick.
“A gentle scholar, poet and universal friend”. These words from a very appreciative letter of sympathy from the Mungret Union give a true impression of Fr. Curran.
Gentle he was all his life and in every way, notably in a certain delightful charm in his manner of speech and conversation, gentle too in his habitual judgments and outlook, in his dealings with others, and in his exceptional degree of modesty about his own very highly cultivated talents.
A true scholar also. He was blessed with the knowledge of Irish as his natural language, he had enriched this knowledge by a deep and lifelong study. He also had studied kindred Celtic languages. Added to this was a persistent study of Irish history, literature, poetry and art, ancient and modern. A few years ago he became interested in Spanish; this interest turned into serious study and he became proficient at the language and taught it successfully to the Philosophers. It is characteristic that at the same time he studied the history, literature and art of Spain, reading Cervantes, St. John of the Cross, modern drama, novels and biography, Added to this he cultivated Spanish boys in the school, listened to Spanish radio, got to know their newspapers and periodicals, and hoped to have an opportunity of visiting Spain.
This all indicates that he “saw life whole”; it also brings us to his predominant characteristic, his wholehearted and affectionate interest in people. This was evident in the whole bent of his conversation, especially in Irish. Another example is this : the Hungarian Rising inspired him with sympathy and admiration for that people. He studied their history and literature and mastered some of the fundamental mysteries of their so very different language; but his real happiness was when he visited the refugee camp and got in touch with the living Hungarian people. As well as this natural interest there was the urge of his apostolic priesthood. He envisaged translations of religious matter from Spanish into Irish, and had published at least one article, an Irish version of a poem on the Nativity. He worked in England for the last two or three summers and returned with great sympathy for the people. The outstanding example of this interest of his comes from his time in hospital in Cork; he got to know all the patients around him, and all about their families, occupations, ailments and personal histories. When visited by any of his Community he divided the time talking, with wholehearted interest, about the patients and about Mungret. Incidentally his genuine and obvious delight at seeing his brethren was a pleasure to witness, and his sense of gratitude, for what he truly thought quite undeserved attention, would almost overcome him. In a letter shortly before his death he said that so good had everyone been to him by prayer and every way that he expressly wished that to every prayer of petition for him should be added one of thanksgiving
After his Tertianship in Rathfarnham he came to Mungret, his own school, in 1947, and there he laboured until his last illness. The word is used deliberately. Fr. Curran laboured to the fast ounce of his strength. He taught Irish classes right through the school, every day and nearly all day. But the curriculum was merely basic. Irish for him was something loved and living, and he strove with all his inward and outward power to make it live for others. He was like one devoted, lighting little beacons in the darkness and little fires in a great cold. He seemed fully informed about every development in Irish, about writers of the day in prose or poetry, about books, periodicals and plays, and even about techniques in printing and publishing; in general, all received his happy approval, He spoke Irish to the boys, interested them in Club Leabhar na Sóisear, Inniu, An Gael Og, etc. With scarcely any recreational space or facilities he kept Cumann na Gaeilge going with conversation, debates, dramas, prize essays, and a lending library.
Indeed in his last illness he provided for the awarding of the Bonn Óir le haghaidh óráidíochta and the Corn le haghaidh comhrá. Once or twice a year he produced Irish plays. For these he himself planned the stage, painted the scenery, did all the coaching in speaking and acting, costurned the players and was an expert at make-up. One year he produced the opera Maritana, making his own translation very beautifully. On several occasions his players took part in the Féile Luimní, He really was the life and soul of Irish in the College, and we seriously fear that without him, whom all of us together cannot match, it may lapse into a mere class subject.
He whose home tongue was Irish and whose native earth was betwixt the hills and the sea in Cois Fhairrge must have found the inland plains dull and the English language flat. Be that as it may, an unwonted gaiety and joyousness took possession of him when on holidays in a gaeltacht beside the sea and his companionship was a delight. There he who ordinarily was so retiring became a leader, full of happy enterprise and initiative; there too his natural gifts as a homely raconteur shone.
His last illness began with what might have been an ordinary attack of flu. He soon showed symptoms of pleurisy and pneumonia and was brought to the Regional Hospital. They found grave disorder in the lung and recommended Surgeon Hickey, St. Stephen's Hospital, Cork. He made the journey by car on Shrove Tuesday. He had there a big exploratory operation and it was found that the lung and surrounding area was flooded with a great quantity of blood. It had come from a leak in the main artery very near the heart. This artery was in a very thin and worn condition. For nearly two weeks after this he was so low that those who visited him thought him dying. But he made a great recovery and became quite himself, saying Mass and spending some time out in the grounds. He knew he was building up for the crucial operation and he knew its nature, but he kept cheerful and optimistic, planning away for the future, always with the proviso, “If it be God's Will”. The operation consisted in grafting a patch on to the defective artery. Without this he could not live, but the chances of its success were small. It was said that the only other place it could be performed is in Texas. Nothing could exceed Mr. Hickey's devotedness and attention, and Fr. Stephen had full confidence in him and a tremendous admiration for him. The operation began at 1 p.m, and was not over till after 9 p.m. About 10 p.m. Fr. Stephen came to himself and spoke to the doctor, Mr. Hickey. Mr. Hickey said to Fr. Rector: "You may go home now Father and pray he may get through the night, if he does he should be all right". About an hour later he took a bad turn and at 12.25 on Thursday, 2nd June he died. He had been anointed and the chaplain was with him. Those who saw him after death remarked on the tranquillity and peacefulness of his appearance. He was buried in the Community cemetery on the Eve of Pentecost.
Ar dheasláimh Dé go raibh a anam ar feadh na síoraochta.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Stephen Curran 1911-1950
Fr Stephen Curran was a truly gentle and lovable soul. Born near Spiddal on January 2nd 1911, he never lost his tender love of his native language nor his native place. Next to God and the Society, this was his one love.

He worked unremittingly in his Alma Mater, Mungret, from his tertianship in Rathfarnham in 1947 until his death in 1960. Is devotion to his classes was his leading trait, and his energy was unflagging in promoting our native language, in producing plays and running debating societies, and in writing for various Irish periodicals.

His early tragic death at the age of 49 may be traced to the exemplary execution of his duties. The early habits and customs of the noviceship he carried out right to the end. If ever a man earned the right to hear those words “Well done good and faithful servant”, Stephen Curran surely did.

“Ár dheis-lamh Dé go raibh a anam”, as he himself would like to say.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1961

Obituary

Father Stephen Curran SJ

Few of us thought that when Father Curran went to hospital last February twelve months, that he would never return to the College alive.

Father Curran was born in Spiddal, Co Galway, on January 2nd, 1911. He went to school at St Mary's College, Galway. From this he transferred to the Apostolic School in Mungret in 1927. Here he remained until he entered the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1931. After the long studies of the Society he was ordained in 1945. After two years he came to Mungret where he spent the remaining years of his life.

Father Curran's name will always be associated with the Irish language, He spoke it with anyone he found willing to do so. He gave all his free time to working for the Irish Society in the College. His greatest love, perhaps, was centred on the Irish play he produced every year. For this he planned the stage, painted the scenery and did the make-up. In his last illness he made arrangements for the awarding of the “Bonn Oir le haghaidh oraidiochta” and the “Corn le haghaidh comhra”. The Editor of the Annual got a yearly reminder of the Irish Essay.

Many tributes were paid to Father Curran by past students. The Mungret Union spoke of him as “A gentie scholar, poet and universal friend”.

Another wrote of him as “A grand priest”.

Father Curran was an outstanding teacher, but those of us who were priviliged to live with him, will best remember his gentleness, kindness and charm of manner. Father Curran died in St Stephen's Hospital, Cork on June 2nd, 1960. May he rest in peace. RIP

Born: 23 December 1837, County Meath
Entered: 12 November 1868, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1879
Died: 06 August 1893, Dunbrody, South Africa - Zambesi Mission

Part of the St Aidan’s College, Grahamstown, South Africa community at the time of death

by 1883 at at Zambesi Mission

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He was in the Metropolitan Police before Ent

His twenty five years in the Society was spent mostly at Gardiner St and a short time as “Villicar” in Clongowes.
On the occasion of Father Wild’s visit to HIB looking for volunteers for the Zambesi Mission, Thomas volunteered and was accepted. He was sent to Dunbrody on the Eastern Cape, where he cared for an ostrich farm. He died there five months after his companion Thomas Manning 06 August 1893.