File 348 - Fr Thomas F O'Sullivan SJ

Born: 01 April 1908, Wood Quay, Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 14 September 1927, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1939, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 03 February 1942, Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick
Died: 31 August 1983, Milltown Park, Dublin

Parents were National teachers and resided at New Dock Street, Galway City.

Middle of three boys with three sisters.

Early education was at the Claddagh and Bohermore National Schools, he then went in 1921 to St Mary’s College Galway. In 1924 hhe went to St Joseph’s College Galway to prepare for the National Bank exams, but decided to apply for a Clerical Officer ecxam in 1926 and was successgul. He then went to Rockwell College in 1926 for one year.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 58th Year No 4 1983

Obituary

Fr Thomas O’Sullivan (1908-1927-1983)

Tommy O'Sullivan entered the noviceship in Tullabeg in 1927, a fortnight later than the main body which entered on 1st September. All those who entered late that year are
gone to Heaven now, and most of the others.
Brother O'Sullivan did not make himself noticeable in the noviceship nor later. He was always quiet and humble and good-humoured. The solid thing was there which made him so useful in Limerick for many years and then in Rathmines.
Being slightly older, he was given a home juniorate with several others instead of university. There he was fortunate to have forming him Fr Fergal McGrath and Fr Alan P Farrell (America). After two years he was sent to Tullabeg for philosophy, He slipping a year ahead of those who entered with him. In Tullabeg he helped to mould the happy life that the new philosophate there became.
Colleges were done in Limerick, theology in Milltown ("shorts', under Frs Fr Joey Canavan, an excellent course), ordination in 1940 in the war, tertianship in Rathfarnham under Fr Henry Keane, then back to Limerick (194 1-71), until age retired him to parish work in Rathmines.
We are meant to be insignes. With him it meant that quiet solidity that makes a college or church the successful apostolate which the Society expects. Heart attacks in his last years were taken in the same quiet way, slightly interrupting his routine of church work. One would altogether take for granted that it was: Come, good and faithful servant, the night the Lord called him Home after another heart attack.

In a letter written by His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, addressed to Fr Provincial and transmitted to Fr O’Sullivan's community, Milltown Park, Dr Dermot Ryan regretted that he had not been represented at the funeral. He himself had been away. and Archbishop’s House did not become aware of Fr O’Sullivan's death till some days had elapsed. added: “The diocesan clergy knew Father O’Sullivan well. He was very devoted in his attendance at deanery meetings. He will be missed by the priests and people in Rathmines.”
Fr O’Sullivan died on 31st August 1983.

Obituary
Fr Thomas O'Sullivan : continued
† 31st August 1983

To our obituary notice of Fr Thomas O'Sullivan in the October issue of the Province News, we append the following details submitted by his contemporary an tAthair Proinsias O Fionnagáin:

Thomas (he resented deeply the diminutive “Tommy”) O'Sullivan from his earliest days at Tullabeg gave advance notice of that self-effacement which so characterised his scholastic years and priestly life. Yet he was one of the few of the 1927 intake of novices to be admitted to the “vows of devotion” - surely an indication of the esteem he had earned with Fr Martin Maher and the Provincial of the time, Fr John Fahy.
Shortly after his arrival in Rathfarnhan it was discovered that he had not presented Latin in his Leaving Certificate and so was ineligible for admission to the Arts faculty of the NUI. As a result, Fr Fahy decided he should do one year of the home juniorate and then go on to philosophy. But we, his contemporaries, knew that he might have read a most distinguished course at UCD. The present writer recalls that in Fr Maher's Latin classes for second-year novices, Thomas could give a penetratingly good account of the subtleties of Latin syntax. I think he felt passed over when no arrangement was made to allow him to go to College. He never complained but we knew that deep down he felt hurt. He gave a poor account of himself in his philosophy exams.; perhaps his ingrained disposition to self-effacement gave the wrong impression to his examiners. In any event he was appointed to the short course in theology.
When I arrived in Milltown in 1938, Fr Frank Shaw asked me one day, “Aren't you a contemporary of Tom O'Sullivan's?” I agreed. Then Shaw, no mean judge of intellectual ability in a man, remarked, “Well, O'Sullivan is one man at least who is well fit to be in the ‘longs’.”
After his tertianship he was sent to the Crescent where he was to spend so many years. Here, his fellows realised that Thomas was a man gifted beyond the common run, this self-effacing man who shunned the limelight. I wonder how many in the province today, who knew him, are aware that he was a violinist of ability who had won the approval of Fr Arthur Little, a musician of uncommon sensitivity. He was a welcome member of the teaching staff and proved a capable master in Latin, Irish and other subjects. But as the school began to increase towards the middle 1940s he felt less and less at home in the classrooms that were now crowded with tall hefty youth. Bit by bit he eased himself out of the secondary school except for a couple of classes and established himself in the junior school. His credit with the parents of his pupils was simply immense.
Meantime he was being prepared for the really great work of his life in Limerick - the church choir. In 1943. Fr Robert Dillon-Kelly, choirmaster since 1914, was transferred to Galway and Fr Thomas was presented with his baton. The first few years in command must have tested his diplomacy and patience to the limit. In the choir-room he was faced by a formidable array of faithful old-timers, voluble prima donnas and operatically-voiced gentlemen of a more gracious age. Their répertoire, Mercadante et al, was all very well for a vanished generation that wanted their sermons long ... thirty, preferably forty minutes ... and luscious intervals of devotional bombastic music. Thomas had to bring a sense of reality into the choir-room and the organ loft.
He had also to provide a choir for ordinary Benediction services, of which there were very many, and to meet this need he formed a young girls' choir from amongst the sisters of our lads whose voices inclined to break, alas, too soon. Year after year this Crescent girls' choir had an audition on Radio Éireann that won acclaim throughout the country.
The reformed senior choir was meticulously trained to render worthy programmes at the sung Mass on Sundays and the greater feasts. Such was Fr Thomas's devotion to duty as choir master that it can be safely said he was absent for only three weeks out of fifty two: to make his retreat and spend a fort night near his family in Galway
Like the late Fr Peter Troddyn, Thomas was a very well-informed man. Uninvited he never advanced his views on anything. Likewise he never started an argument. If you found yourself arguing with him, then you had already lost.
During my father's last illness in 1944 I had to pay a number of visits home. As often as I returned to Limerick, an apologetic knock at my door told me it was Thomas or Fr McWilliams who had come to express sympathy and promise continued prayers. Thomas was then a young man, Fr McWilliams was into his eighties, but both priests had so much in common: an unobtrusive capacity for Sympathy and an exemplary gift of discretion. It is safe to say that no man living can recall a rash judgment, an uncharitable word, expressed by Fr Thomas.
Like Zachaeus, Thomas was a man of small physical stature ... so was St lgnatius himself ... so also were such celebrities of the Irish province as Fr Albert Power (”the mighty atom”), Fr Patrick Gannon and Thomas's own contemporary, Fr Terry Sheridan. You don't judge a man's worth by his physical stature, as David Lloyd George once said to an elongated nit-wit who referred to him as “the little man”: “In my country (Wales) a man's stature is measured from the chin up”.
Gaeilgeoir dúthrachtach ab ea an tAthair Tomás. I measc sluaite na nGael i bhfaitheas De, faoi bhrat Mhuire, go raibh a anam caomh, cneasta, cróga.