Born: 26 May 1932, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1964, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1968, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway
Died: 02 January 1997, Dublin

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

by 1971 at Loyola Chicago, USA (CHG) studying
by 1985 at University of Warwick, England (ANG) studying

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 92 : August 1996

Obituary

An t-Ath Seán B. Ó Conchúir (1932-1997)

26th May 1932: Born in Dublin
Early education; St. Mary's, Athlone and St. Ignatius, Galway
7th Sept. 1950: Entered the Society at Emo
8th Sept. 1952: First Vows at Emo
1952 - 1955: Rathfarnham, Arts at UCD
1955 - 1958: Tullabeg, Studying Philosophy
1958 - 1959: Belvedere: Regency
1959 - 1961: St. Ignatius, Galway, Regency
1961 - 1965: Milltown Park, Studying Theology
31st July 1964: Ordained Priest at Milltown Park
1965 - 1966: Rathfarnham, Tertianship
1966 - 1968: St. Ignatius, Galway: Teacher and MA studies
1968 - 1970: St. Ignatius, Galway: Prefect of Studies
1970 - 1973: Chicago: Doctoral studies in Education
1973 - 1977: Crescent Residence: Director, Research Project at Shannon
1977 - 1978: Crescent Residence : Lecturer in Education at New University of Ulster
1978 - 1980: Galway: University of Ulster work and Pre school project in Irish, Connemara
1980 - 1984: Resident in Connemara: Irish Project work
1984 - 1986: Warwick University Studies
1986 - 1991: Galway: Studies in Lifestart, Gaeltacht Project
1991 - 1997: Carraroe: Director of Lifestart Project and Researcher

There’s a photo in the house of Seán’s sister Mairin, deceased, in Cork, showing four army officers. They are Seán’s grandfather, father and two brothers of his father. One of them, Uncle Patrick, was a member of Michael Collins’ ‘Twelve Apostles’. The four of them played their part in the War of Independence. Sean’s mother (Mary Harper before marriage) was a member of Cumann na mBan (Fellowship of Women) and while still a child was involved in the Easter Rebellion. Sean’s pedigree, therefore, was not so different from that of the Basque, Ignatius of Loyola; a pedigree that begot loyalty, magnanimity, a large and generous heart ready for great deeds and exploits. The Son of God chose someone of that caliber – Thomas the Zealot, and perhaps also two others – James and John, the Sons of Thunder. Would you not think that Jesus has a special feel for someone who is ready to risk their life for a cause? He himself was facing into such a future: ‘I give my life for my sheep.’

That is what I say of Seán O Conchuir of the Society of Jesus; he never slackened, when younger and also in his thirty-two years of priesthood. Always he was searching for what was ‘greater’ and ‘more perfect’ until his strength, health and his very life were spent ‘for the sheep’, and especially for the sheep in the flock of his Lord and Master. In all that work, his soldier-like qualities were patience, gentleness, love, humility and humor, a humor that he could turn on himself with a delightful explosive laugh.

Seán was committed to education (was it not so with Christ?) on every level –primary, secondary and university. He educated himself through diligent study: an MA in the sixties, a doctorate in the eighties. Curriculum development, use of statistics, evaluation of teaching programmes and progression, and of the work of students or trainee teachers; psychology and child-development—he gained a mastery and reputation in all these disciplines.

His achievement, whether in founding ‘Home Education’ and the ‘Life-start Foundation’ -- his most outstanding and effective projects--is all the more remarkable when one considers that he was struck down with rheumatic fever as a child, and was a weak boy who was wheeled along the Prom at Salthill, swathed in blankets. Thus he remained until his early teens, so he could not participate in football or rowing in Colaiste Iognaid. But he began to swim and this improved his health, as did life-saving, which was being taught by Jimmy Cranny and Des Kenny. At the end of secondary school he was strong enough to join the FCA and wear a soldier’s uniform in 1949, the year when the Republic was again proclaimed. In autumn of the following year he and Padraic Mac Donnchadha joined the Jesuit Order in Emo, Portarlington.

Seán was born in Dublin: his father, Ceannphor (Commandant) Sean Ó Conchúir, was ADC to President Sean de hIde.

The family spent a while in Athlone and the father then transferred to the Cead Cath (First Battalion), which was fully Irish, in Galway. Little Seán was sent to Scoil Fhursa, managed by Bean a’Bhreathnaigh. Scoil Fhursa and later Colaiste Iognaid planted in him a love and appreciation for Irish music, dancing and song, which lasted until the end of his life. If you heard him rendering ‘An Bhinsin Luachra’ or ‘Jimmy Mo Mhile Stor’ you would understand that love and appreciation.

The experience that Seán gained of the arts of music and acting through the Feis Cheoil, and later through the Colaiste Iognaid choir, was only an extension of his family’s gifts. There is a dynamism in the family always to celebrate life, especially through close association with nature and the practice of the arts – do you remember Seán performing a solo ballet in Tullabeg? You can see this love of life in the lives and families of his three sisters too – Mairin (the bright light of God be on her), Dairine and Grainne. A permanent feature of the home life of the O’Connors were the Sing Songs. Everyone had their own song or recitation. Any Jesuit who participated in these evenings in the O’Connor home in Galway between 1966 and 1972 will look back on them with appreciation and gratitude, and will especially remember the party-piece which Sean composed and rendered with a strong Claddagh accent. Seán’s creativity blossomed: he produced plays, composed prose pieces, and wrote poetry. One of his philosophy companions in Tullabeg baptized him as ‘The Bard’.

Frequently you would notice that Seán was absorbed in deep thought. He had a great gift of focusing entirely on a person (he was an excellent listener, full of respect for the speaker whether man, woman or child), or on an object or on scenery. To the end of his life every aspect of nature gave him joy, gladness and pleasure. Wild flowers by the roadside or the bare tops of the Beanna Beola or Snowdon would give wings to his heart. Seán steadily cultivated the spirit of the Contemplatio of the Exercises of Ignatius, especially in his final years in Connemara from 1980 onward. ‘To recognize God in all things… working on my behalf’. When I study his beautiful photos of Connemara and its flora, my heart shakes with wonder: he is a man spell-bound by the beauty of creation, a silent beauty which speaks to him of the eternal and mysterious beauty of God. And in his commitment to his calling as a wise man, a teacher and a priest, whose task was to break open and divide this bread of beauty, he spoke of it in images which would take the eye out of your head. He conveyed it to the children of ‘Home Education’ in the form of jigsaws, and in the form of poems for the grown-ups.

Lord, we live out of death;
therefore I say to the animals: ‘You who were tame and gentle
In the meadows yesterday,
You nourish what is beautiful and pure
In me today.’

And I say to the fish:
‘You who were free in the water a short while ago,
You now feed the freedom and agility of my body’.

And I say to the harvest:
'The music you played to the sun in autumn
I sense now as a poem
In the cold winter of life’.

And I say to Christ:
‘The pinnacle of goodness died in your body
But now you clothe the heavens
With white flowers’.

‘And you, Host of Christ on my lips
You are the wine of blood and the seed of flesh,
You are the honey of Easter, you are the sap of youthfulness
You are the flowering branch within me
Which does not wither.’

The beauty of that poem is awesome: it leaves me rooted to the spot. God reveals his secrets to children. I believe that in all his high learning and deep study Seán kept safe within himself the heart and pure mind of a child. It was this that gave him wonderful insight into the essential stages of a child’s development. This is why the programme ‘Home Education’ satisfies the need of children from Connemara to Ballymun, from Wexford to Derry, from Barcelona to Belfast’s Shankill.

Michael Hurley gave heartfelt witness to the reputation Seán had achieved within the various strata of the Six Counties: ‘He made it easier for us to encounter one another and forge bonds of friendship’. His close friends Dolores McGuinness and Aine Downey in Derry put it incisively: ‘There was never anyone like Sean who could move among people without causing them nervousness or fear. He was full of respect for everyone, and he listened to them with total attention.’

In his final days, on his bed of sickness and weakness, I was frequently at his side. The only syllable he could articulate was his heavy breathing, regular and low. But throughout that time he made a living prayer of his hands which were stretched out before him on the bed-clothes: thumbs joined and fingers clasped, as if he had the Body of Christ within his fingers, and Seán steadily gazing on it with the eyes of his soul, constantly focussed on it, endlessly adoring: ‘I adore you, O spirit of fruitfulness, O beautiful One of the heavenly rampart’-- a quotation from ‘Adoramus Te, Christe’ by Daibhi O Bruadair (1625 – 1698): Sean learnt it at the feet of Professor Gerard Murphy in UCD. It was he who opened up for Sean the enchanting treasury of Irish literature and folklore.

And with Gregorian chant as a lullaby, to the very end he made that mysterious sign of his priesthood and his life; offering – as a child shyly offers his little fists to its mother—his labours, sweat, joys, troubles, failures, retraining, petitions, despair, despondency, love, integrity and the achievements of the years.

May the two hands of the Child Jesus enfold you forever, Seán, while He merrily teaches you the beautiful ‘Home Education’ of his own hearth and household.

Translation Brian Grogan SJ

Interfuse No 98 : Autumn 1998

VISIONARY, YES, POLITICIAN, NO

Conall Ó Cuinn

I missed Seán O'Connor's funeral. But this article is not an obituary. It's a reflection about Seán's short time as headmaster of Coláiste Iognáid in Galway for just two academic years, 1968 and 1969, the period immediately following the Prague Spring and the Paris Student Revolution. It corresponded to my own 4th and 5th Form as a student there. I write as someone who was greatly influenced by Seán's vision for education, a catalytic factor in my joining the Society. I supported him in as much as any 4th or 5th Form student was capable of supporting a headmaster.

In Seán's time I was also privileged to be a member of the first elected school council, which, like the Sunningdale Parliament, was quickly dissolved from above after a very short life, I served as a prefect in 5th year, trying to implement what I understood as Seán's vision of pupils being creative participants in their own education. I was on the editorial team of the student newspaper whose last edition never reached the newsstands, having been confiscated by the authorities. We did manage to spirit a few copies away before the police came knocking at the door and Patrick Hume tells me there is a copy in the archives. Shortly after Paddy Tyrrell took over from Seán in 1970, I was appointed School Captain, and so had a lot of contact with staff.

In many ways, even at that time, I had “insider” knowledge of what was going on above and around me (sources remaining anonymous). However, I am aware now that I didn't really understand the complexity of what was happening politically, or how delicate and fragile the whole situation was. So naive was I, that I was greatly surprised when Seán finished as headmaster after only two years. As captain of the school, I had a lot to do with his successor, Paddy Tyrrell. Like for others enthused by Seán's vision, his removal and replacement appeared to me to be a Margaret Thatcher-style takeover intent on reversing the new social order (others would say social disorder).

I now understand better what a very difficult assignment Paddy Tyrrell had been given. Seán and he were contemporaries and friends during formation. I now appreciate how Paddy managed to preserve many of the positive elements of what we might call the O'Connor revolution. For example, neither corporal punishment nor the 11-plus type streaming into A and B classes were reintroduced. The new pupil oriented attitude continued. People remained more important than system. And further developments took place under Paddy's leadership.

Seán, like Padraig Pearse, was a great visionary, but a poor politician. Seán's studies on education had been about the Pearse educational experiment at Coláiste Eanna. Only later in both cases did their vision begin to flower into political reality. In the immediate, however, Seán failed to win over the four very difficult constituencies which he needed to engage in order to succeed. These consisted of the Jesuit Community, the Lay Staff, the Parents, and the boys (especially the senior classes).

Many of the senior boys used the elimination of corporal punishment as an excuse for license, which initially gave the school a certain chaotic appearance. In his first year, Seán had welcomed a large group of repeat, but disgruntled, 6th years back to school. In general, they proved to be a very disruptive force among the senior boys and Seán's first academic year ended with a riot on the school pitch during the taking of the school photo. This resulted in all 6th years being sent home a full week before schedule, an act just short of expulsion. While the 4th and 6th year battled it out before the assembled school, with Fr. Jack Hutchinson trying to appease both sides, the lay teachers were gathered in the corner of the field to discuss whether they should go on strike. It appeared that the educational revolution had degenerated into chaos.

Owing to the suddenness of Seán's reforms, teachers had suddenly found themselves, without any real training, invited to abandon more formal teaching methods in the junior forms. Classwork was to be organised around projects whereby the teacher's role was to serve the intellectual curiosity of the pupil by providing resources and advice about topics of the pupil's interest. With no corporal punishment as the usual backup control and with little or no focus on public examinations, some of the teachers quickly found themselves bewildered and longing for the good old days of law and order.

The Jesuit staff and community lived with two unresolved tensions. Jesuits in general were divided in their reception of the new orientations of GC31, and in Galway there was the additional division between the “Gaeilgeoirs” and the “Non-Gaeilgeoirs”. Skills of community dialogue were in their rudimentary stages. Communication still tended to move vertically between the individual and the Rector. Despite the many meetings, so difficult for those not used to them, much of the political communication was beamed from one group to the other via the Rector. Our subsequent growth in ability to dialogue can now be seen more clearly when we contrast the serene atmosphere of today's province meetings to those very first acrimonious meetings of the late 60's and early 70's.

Finally, the parents, despite the importation of some high level lecturers of Lonergan leanings from Milltown Park, found it difficult to form a vision beyond the newly introduced points system for entry to University, a system necessitated by the increased number seeking university places following the introduction of free secondary education and university grants. Many parents feared the project/pupil orientated method adopted for the 1st years would spread to all classes prompting visions of their off-spring failing to progress to third-level education. The parents, like the Jesuits, were divided into two camps. The “Jes” parents saw the school as a mini-Clongowes without the boarding fees, and the “Coláiste lognáid” parents wanted an all-Irish education. I believe this division of parental motivation is one reason why Coláiste lognáid in my time never won a football match because the pool of best players was always divided between Gaelic and Rugby which was played in a club independent of the school. With divisions like this it was difficult to work with the parents as a single group. In general, however, the parents were not convinced by what they saw as a Galway version of the Paris Revolution with its sit-ins and teach-ins which were already being picked up in the Irish universities. Our having a silhouette of Che Guevara, with a clenched fist, on the cover page of the banned magazine certainly would not have helped Seán with the parents had it been circulated!

Changing metaphors, Seán was seen as the Dubcec who had gone a step too far. The hot line to the Rector and to Eglinton Road was often engaged for long periods. Both Rector and Provincial were, as far as I understand, ideologically in tune with Seán. However, they could not ignore the persistence of representation from the unconvinced part of the Jesuit Community, and many of the lay-staff and parents. Enrolment was beginning to drop too. Seán's term would have to end prematurely, without time for the fruits to show themselves. The tanks rolled in. At least it seemed like that at the time.

It was not that Seán did not know how important it was to share his vision with the four constituencies. It seems to me, however, that he confused explanation with acceptance. He made great efforts to explain ... all those meetings after school, which went on late into the night. One man, I heard, who did not see the point of all these meetings, obediently attended but spent the time correcting his copy books. However, acceptance comes ultimately with understanding. Seán may not have realised that many of the players were not convinced enough to have a team that could pull together. In fact, the team pulled apart.

Seán himself had come back to Galway after many years of openness to new ideas, both in Dublin and in the US. A small number appreciated or understood all three strands of his vision: Gaelic, child-orientated education, and Vatican II reflected institutionally in the documents of GC31. Some accepted one, or even two of these strands. But with pressure to maintain the status quo, only a few could back Seán in all three strands. Those who were still uncomfortable on any of these three areas found themselves unable to throw themselves into the project. Intellectually, emotionally, or professionally many of the teachers were ill-equipped to deal with the changes. They reacted in different ways, some by withdrawing, some with belligerent opposition to that part which seemed to be “non-sense”, some with quiet passive resistance. Weakened by this, the rope was not strong enough to carry the experiment, unraveled, and eventually snapped.

Politically, Seán might have had a better chance of succeeding if he had taken more time to introduce his changes in a slower fashion. On the other hand, the changes were the result of an intellectual and spiritual paradigm shift: none of the individual changes he introduced would on their own have made any sense without the others, Seán had not had the backup benefits of today's Ignatian colloquium, a systematic way of engaging lay-teachers and parents, and even students, in our vision. (I regard myself as having been introduced to the Jesuit educational vision through “colloquy”). It was out of experiences such as the “Galway experiment”, that the need for such methods developed.

Finally, it seems to me that Seán did have the prophet's self immolating tendency, which we see in Pearse. Say what needs to be said, even if they don't understand. Do what needs to be done, even if they don't follow. Die on the pyre of truth, for the phoenix will rise from the ashes.

But the line between prophetic word/action and railroading is often difficult to distinguish, especially when viewed from the outside. There were 'in' and 'out' groups. Invitation and command were then often perceived, and intended, as synonyms. So there might not have been the freedom to really talk through apprehensions in order to include other wisdoms in the vision. Seán may have interpreted silence as consent, and genuine opposition as belligerence.

This article is one attempt to understand what was happening in Galway at that time. I hope it can be part of the healing process which Seán is now intimately involved with in his new position in the Communion of Saints. His vision was a major stepping stone in my own journey into the Society. It has touched many people and continues to grow and develop in them. As the woman said of her husband who had walked out on her some years previously, “he was doing the best he could”: all were doing the best they could under the circumstances.

There may still be some lessons to learn from this particular phase of the history of the Irish Province. We form one Body, where each person's contribution is vital, and no one can be left out without all suffering their absence. The spirit runs, but must carry the often, as yet, unfit body. Vision must patiently wait for the slow inertia-laden swing of tradition and habit. The body lives in and needs time.

The Galway experiment was about adapting to cultural change. Genuine dialogue and inculturation are an essential part of the quality of our apostolic living and working together, not just tools of the trade or means to an end. They are movements in the continuing act of incarnation, of the Word being made flesh, of t”he entire creation ..groaning in one great act of giving birth...all of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit we too groan inwardly ... we too must be content to hope to be saved ... something we must wait for with patience” (Rm 8:22-25).

Seán, continue to pray for us, the pilgrim Society on earth as we continue to grow/groan “till fully grown into the Body of Christ”.

Born: 16 June 1932, Clifton Ville, Ennis Road, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 07 September 1950, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1964, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1967, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 06 August 1992, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin - Zambiae Province (ZAM)

Transcribed HIB to ZAM: 03 December 1969

Son of Mr and Mrs Thomas O'Brien. Father was a businessman.

Second in a family of ten, nine boys and one girl.

Educated at Crescent College SJ for nine years.

by 1959 at Chivuna, Monze, N Rhodesia - studying language Regency

◆ Companions in Mission 1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Fr Tom's death was very sudden. He was acting Mission Procurator in Dublin and had just picked up his sister from the airport. He drove back to the Mission Office. While speaking to her there, he just fell from his chair, with a massive heart attack, and so he died. That was on 6 August 1992.

Tom was born in Limerick in 1932, attended the Jesuit school of the Crescent and then entered the Society in 1950 in Emo. He pursued the normal course of studies of the Society and came out to Zambia for his regency where he taught, prefected and was games master at Canisius Secondary School and Charles Lwanga Teacher Training College.

He was ordained priest at Milltown Park, Dublin on 31st July 1964 and returned to Zambia after his tertianship. He was in the Southern Province from 1966 to 1970 as minister and bursar at Chikuni, minister and assistant Parish Priest in Monze and minister/teacher at Charles Lwanga TTC. The rest of his life in Zambia was spent in Lusaka. Chaplaincy and teaching occupied his time and he also helped in the parish at St Ignatius. He taught at Munali Secondary and Chongwe Secondary. For the Advanced Primary Course at Chalimbana, he taught Religious Education as well as being involved in student counselling. Students at Evelyn Hone College also saw him for spiritual direction. Counselling was what he wished to do with third level students and so he studied at Loyola University in Chicago, USA, for his Masters in Education.

From 1978 to 1983 he became socius/secretary to the provincial, a job which took him to all the Jesuit houses. He became rector of Luwisha House in 1983 and worked as chaplain at the Christian Centre at UNZA. While there, he had a serious heart attack and left for Ireland when he was well enough to travel. It was while he was acting mission procurator, that he had the massive heart attack. As he wished, he was active to the end.

There was a history of heart sickness in the family. Tom himself had minor strokes as well as a by-pass. He was well aware that he would probably die from a heart attack but forged ahead with his life even with this in mind. He was so busy in Dublin – meetings of the Irish Missionary Union, interviewing possible volunteer teachers, traveling for Missionary Exhibitions, fund raising, bringing missionary awareness to the pupils of the Jesuit schools in Ireland – these all kept him on the go. Added to these were family functions such as weddings, baptisms and funerals.

His great talent was his ability to relate to other people, to share friendship with them. He had his own close circle of friends in the Society, yet this never interfered with his sharing his friendship with others. He was approachable and warm-hearted, person-centered. Being with others meant more to Tom than efficiency in planning and execution. On one occasion, he had three appointments in different places at the same time! He looked for the best side of others, accepting them as they were. In his own communities he would give himself as freely and as warmly to the shy and withdrawn as to the stronger members.

A 20-year friend of Tom wrote about him after his death: “He loved life; he loved people. And he did so from a base that was hidden and silent because he dreaded that anyone would think him ‘pious’. But over the years, I became more and more aware of that hidden rock in Tom – his love of Christ. It came through in his homilies to the students and his love of the Jesuits. I think he was at his most fulfilled and contented as a Jesuit during his years at Luwisha. He loved his brothers. I find myself also thinking of the contradictions in him. He was confident and proud; but he was also humble. He was contented, so contented – but he was questioning, sometimes startlingly so. He was above all compassionate but his compassion didn't let you off the hook”.

Note from Jean Indeku Entry
In 1955 he came to Northern Rhodesia with Fr. Tom O’Brien and scholastics Michael Kelly and Michael Tyrrell. They were among the first batch of missionaries to come by air and the journey from London took almost five days via Marseilles – Malta – Wadi Halfa (now under the Aswan Dam) – Mersa Matruh (north Egypt) – Nairobi – Ndola – and finally to Lusaka.

Born: 17 August 1932, Cois na hAibhne, Emmet Terrace, Ballina, County Mayo
Entered: 07 September 1951, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1964, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1967, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 18 November 2016, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Son of James Moran and Mary McHale. Father died in the year of his birth was a commercial traveller, and his mother remarried becoming Mrs Durcan.

Two step-brothers.

Educated at Convent and National schools locally, at age thirteen he went to Mungret College SJ for five years.

by 1966 at Salamanca, Spain (LEG) making Tertianship
by 1978 at Wilmette IL, USA (CHG) studying
by 1984 at Palo Alto CA, USA (CAL) studying
by 1985 at Barrington IL, USA (CHG) studying
by 1987 at Menlo Park CA, USA (CAL) working
by 1992 at Chicago IL, USA (CHG) working

Early Education at NS Ballina, Co Mayo; Mungret College SJ

1954-1955 Rathfarnham - Studying at UCD
1955-1958 Tullabeg - Studying Philosophy
1958-1961 Crescent - Regency : Teacher
1961-1965 Milltown Park - Studying Theology
1965-1966 Salamanca, Spain - Tertianship at Collegio de San Estanislao
1966-1968 Belvedere - Teacher; Assistant Gamesmaster; Spiritual Father (3rd & 4th Years); “Newsboys Club”
1968-1969 Clongowes - Teacher; Lower Line Prefect; Studying CWC Cert in Education
1969-1974 Belvedere - Teacher; Assistant Gamesmaster; Spiritual Father; Career Guidance (5th & 6th Years)
1974-1976 Leeson St - Principal at University Hall, Hatch St, Dublin
1976-1977 University Hall - Community Minister
1977-1983 Chicago, IL, USA - Studies at Loyola University; St Joseph’s Parish, Wilmette, IL, USA
1982 Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Glenview, IL, USA
1983-1984 Palo Alto, CA, USA - Doctoral Studies at Palo Alto University; St Thomas Aquinas Church
1984-1986 Chicago, IL, USA - Studies at Loyola University; Parish work; Counsellor at St Anne’s Rectory, Barrington
1986-1991 Palo Alto, CA, USA - Post Graduate Training at Palo Alto University; St Raymond Catholic Church; Menlo Park
1988 Research in Family Therapy MRI at Palo Alto University
1987 Our Lady of the Rosary Rectory, Palo Alto
1991-1994 Chicago, IL, USA - Visiting Professor in Psychology at Loyola University; St William’s Church
1992 St Philip the Apostle Rectory, Northfield
1994-2016 Leeson St - Sabbatical (94-95); Lecturer in Education at Trinity College Dublin; Family Apostolate; Writer
1998 Vice-Superior
2002 Principal University Hall, Hatch St, Dublin
2003 Family Therapist
2015 Prays for the Church and the Society at Cherryfield Lodge

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/a-man-for-others/

A man for others
friends, and fellow Jesuits bade him a final farewell at his funeral Mass in Milltown Chapel on Monday 21 November.
Jim had a wide circle of friends associated with the various ventures he undertook as a Jesuit. They were active on Facebook when news of his death broke. Despite some bad health and a twice broken leg, Jim was quite an athlete. He had a passion for rugby, which he taught with gusto to many students down the years in various Jesuit schools. Ivan Morris, one of his former pupils, posted a photo of the rugby team Jim coached, a long time ago. He wrote: “55 years ago these old geezers were quite a decent rugby team! Sadly, our trainer Fr. Jim Moran passed away yesterday. We all owe him a lot. He instilled in us the ability to focus on our goals, gave us just about the right amount of confidence and enough back bone to last a lifetime.”
Similar sentiments have been echoed by many since his death. Preaching at his funeral Mass, his life-long friend Fr John Looby SJ recalled two stories that summed up Jim’s determination and desire to win, even though he would have roundly protested that ‘it wasn’t about the winning’. One concerned the handball games they used to play as novices. John said that although he himself was the better handball player, Jim worked out a strategy and a war of attrition that always resulted in Jim being the victor.
He recalled another occasion when Jim went off to Chicago to study and offered his rugby training services to a Jesuit school there, telling them of his winning accomplishments back in Ireland. His offer however was politely declined and he was told the school was already proficient at winning rugby games. So Jim took himself off to a neighbouring Jewish school where the same offer was gratefully accepted. Some time later his rugby team took on the Jesuit school that had spurned him and won.
Jim had a number of careers in his lifetime – teacher, coach, psychologist, family therapist, and finally lecturer in Trinity College Dublin. Wherever he went he made friends. “He never forgot his friends and I was to learn that his friends never forgot him,” said John, noting that this was especially true of his Jesuit brothers. John learnt in later years that Jim’s father had died before Jim was born, and his stepfather was instrumental in cultivating the talent he had for making lasting friendships. “Providentially his stepfather was a strong influence, setting an example that Jim copied for the remainder of his life. He was given great freedom and he confidently went out to meet new people and allow them into his life.”
The Gospel read at the Mass was that of the Good Samaritan, a fitting one for Jim who was, according to John and indeed all those who knew him well, “a man for others”. He was always quick to offer any help he could to those who crossed his path. Be it the mother in difficulty with her teenage son or the former student who needed some good advice. The music at the funeral was the work of the well known composer and musician Willie Hughes who played and sang in gratitude for the influence Jim had been on his life.
When he returned to Dublin from America in the ’90s, Jim was part of the Leeson St community. They had a large garden at the back-end of the large Georgian house, and Jim spent years lovingly and patiently transforming it. He planted trees and stunning rose bushes, and made arbours and boundaries out of bushes and flowers. It was a labour of love that to this day gives endless pleasure to those who visit the community house in the centre of Dublin.
John concluded by noting that Jim was a person who never saw events in life as mere chance but rather as due to “the providence of a loving God whom he loved and trusted in all his life”.
He served Him well. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 2017

Obituary

Father Jim Moran SJ

An Appreciation by Peter Thompson

dozen of us from the Rhetoric year of 1972, welcomed in by the open door of Belvedere House, manned by the great Mick Hickey, from the year of 1973and, like Ollie Campbell, one of our great Rugby players of that era, a man who had owed the nurturing of his sporting talents to the recently-deceased Jim Moran, in honour and memory of whom we had come to celebrate Mass in the Boys' Chapel. Mick had come a long way, literally, for the occasion, a testimony to Jim, certainly, for he now lives in Delaware, the beautiful peninsular State on the eastern shores of the United States.

I hadn't been in Belvedere at all since leaving the college over 40 years previously. In the Chapel, noticed immediately the absence of confession boxes, a sign (I hope) that the Sacrament of Reconciliation has moved on from its days as “Penance” to a more enlightened interpretation of what it means to feel oneself whole again after a period of mental and emotional stress.

Also different, and a most welcome difference it was too, was Leonard Moloney's model of celebration of the Mass, we old boys gathered around in a semi-circle before a simple altar table, with the Holy Communion administered in both Kinds, after a gentle invitation from Leonard that, if any of us felt awkward about receiving, We come forward anyway for a blessing.
This was an inclusiveness I was delighted to experience, after many years of alienation from the Church, and I for one was grateful indeed for it, for its sensitivity. It expressed for me also that ritual, much criticised today, has at its best a capacity to act as a means, a fuselage, a hull by which eternal truths of love are conveyed from one generation, one time as it were, to the next.
Another sensitivity was shown by the great Ollie, my childhood friend from north county Dublin, who, gentleman that he is and always has been, had gently touched my left elbow earlier in the quadrangle and asked me discreetly if I would do one of the Readings from Scripture - St Paul to the Ephesians, 1 think it was. I deeply appreciated that invitation, which I was happy to accept.

The name Jim Moran may not mean all that much to today's young Belvederians, if anything, but in a darker, much more formal time he was a beacon of warmth to his pupils and schoolboy rugby players, whom he coached to victory in the Leinster Schools' Senior Cup in 1972. It is fitting, in a serendipitous way, that in this year's edition of The Belvederian the present generation of pupils are celebrating yet another victory in that intensely competitive of sporting challenges for Leinster schools.

Jim had had earlier success in the Crescent College (now Comprehensive) in Limerick in 1961 where, as a scholastic, he coached its Junior team to success in the Munster Schools Junior Cup. After Belvedere, both Clongowes and UCD were also to benefit from his striking ability to relate to, and inspire, young people to sporting and perhaps also personal excellence. Jim was the sort of james who became jim, if my readers follow me. From the rural west of Ireland of the now so-remote 1950s, he was bereft of that bourgeois stiffness and aloofness with which, rightly or wrongly, our college was associated in the minds of many Dubliners in the past. He would have strongly approved of the wonderful example which Belvedere has shown to other private schools in recent years by the reservation of 10% of its pupil numbers to boys whose parents, for financial reasons, would never have dreamt of having one of their sons enter the portals of James Joyce's alma mater.

When last I met him, at the most recent 1972 re-union held in Portmarnock in 2012, I, trying my best with the best of intentions, invited him to have tea with me someday in the Shelbourne Hotel, around the corner from where he was then living at the Jesuit house in Lower Leeson St. to my dismay, but not, on reflection, to my surprise, he refused, saying he could not accept the offer, however sincerely made, of such a “luxury” as tea in Dublin's premier hotel. He was instructing me still, teaching again the values which I would like to think we all have in common, however we may express them now.

After Mass, the company - minus Leonard - moved on to the congeniality of the Dergvale Hotel in Gardiner Place, a very different hostelry from the Shelbourne, but a favourite watering hole of us early Seventies OBs, where I found myself in animated conversation with the said Mick Hickey about, of all things, Dublin Gaelic football, of which his distinguished medical brother David, with three Senior All Ireland Medals to his credit, was a great exemplar.

Now maybe Mick was pulling one of my legs, or indeed both of them, but he told me that David had developed a totally new strategy in Gaelic football, which is now used also, I believe, in Rugby. As a corner right forward, he would kick the ball, not towards the net, but into the right corner of the opposition, then race ahead, before the opposing defence had cottoned on. to the move, collect the ball, Garryowen-style, and lope it back into the goal mouth for a fellow teammate to collect and pummel into the net. David, apparently, developed this following on from an idea by his coach, the late Kevin Heffernan.

Mick and I were joined by another distinguished sportsman of our generation, Neil Murphy, formerly President of the Irish Sailing Association and helmsman of a Puppeteer at Howth Yacht Club. In discussing the emollient effects of the Mass we had all just experienced, Neil made a telling remark which has stayed, and will continue to stay with me. “Age gives you perspective”, he said, which I think is a piece of wisdom, deeper, much deeper than it might seem at first glance, which I wish to share particularly with the young Belvederians of today.

The mention of another great football coach brings me back of course to Jim. He lived long enough, as a man for others, always, to live in an age when, in some quarters today, that ideal, that nobility of spirit and of behaviour seems almost reviled. Yet he achieved so much, in obscurity, by practising it. I hope up there on the Fields of Elysium he will forgive me this notoriety I pen in his memory. In the best sense, he was Old School, all right

Born: 25 March 1913, New Street, Abbeyfeale, County Limerick
Entered: 07 September 1931, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1945, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1949, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 05 June 1984, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin - Zambiae Province (ZAM)

Part of the St Ignatius, Lusaka, Zambia community at the time of death.

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 03 December 1969

Father was a cattle dealer.

Eldest of three boys with one sister.

Educated at a National school in Abbeyfeale and then at St Michael’s College, Listowel, and then for two years at Mungret College SJ

by 1965 at Loyola Watsonia, Australia (ASL) working

Born: 27 May 1931, O’Connor Square, Tullamore, County Offaly
Entered: 07 September 1949, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1963, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1967, Loyola University, Chicago IL, USA
Died: 05 December 2008, Jersey City, NJ USA

Based at St Malachy’s West 49th St, New York NY, USA at the time of death

Youngest Brother of Bob Kelly (ZAM) - RIP 2005 and Michael Kelly - RIP 2021

Son of Michael Joseph Kelly and Agnes Sheehy. Father was a managing director.

Youngest offour boys with three sisters.

Early education was at a the Christian Brothers (St Columba's) school in Tullamore for about thirteen years. He then went to UCD for one year studying engineering.

by 1966 at Cornell, Ithaca NY, USA (BUF) studying
by 1967 at Loyola Chicago (CHG) studying
by 1969 at St Peter’s College, New Jersey NJ, USA (NEB) working
by 1995 at St Malachy’s, New York NY, USA (NYK) working

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/fr-joseph-a-kelly-sj/

“Some people become priests because they love God, some because they love talking about God, and some, like Fr Joe Kelly, because they love people.” Joe had moved from Dublin to Jersey City in 1968, and worked in particular with students, and later actors – he played a Catholic priest in City Hall with Al Pacino. The crowds who attended Joe’s funeral in Jersey City, and the memorial Mass in Milltown Chapel, showed the affection he inspired, and the impact he made during his 59 years as a Jesuit.

https://www.jesuit.ie/news/celebrating-the-pastor-of-broadway-2/
Celebrating the Pastor of Broadway
Fr. Joe Kelly SJ served for years on the Boards of the Broadway Association, the Times Square Alliance, and the Mayor’s Midtown Citizens Committee. He was also the
beloved Parochial Vicar of St. Malachy’s, The Actors’ Chapel, and was responsible for having the section of 49th Street between 8th Avenue and Broadway named “St. Malachy’s Way”. He was a much-sought-after speaker and a friend to all. To honour him for his tireless work and his wonderful contributions to the Times Square neighbourhood and the entertainment community, his caricature will hang with the “greats” on the wall at Sardi’s, a well-known Broadway restaurant. The picture will be unveiled at a cocktail party on Wednesday, May 26, 5:30-7:30 pm.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 139 : Easter 2009

Obituary

Fr Joseph A (Joe) Kelly (1931-2008)

27th May 1931: Born in Tullamore, Co. Offaly
Early education in CBS, Tullamore (St. Columba's Classical College)
1948 - 1949: Studied engineering at UCD
7th September 1949: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1951: First Vows at Emo
1951 - 1954: Rathfarnham - English Literature and Language at UCD
1954 - 1957: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1957 - 1960: Gonzaga - Teacher
1960 - 1964: Milltown Park -Studied Theology
31st July 1963: Ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin
1964 - 1965: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1965 - 1967: Cornell University & Loyola Chicago, USA - Sociology
2nd February 1967: Final Vows
1967 - 1968: College of Industrial Relations - Lecturer
1968 - 1993: St. Peter's College, Jersey City, USA -
1968 - 1973: Chaplain
1973 - 1988: Director of Campus Ministry
1988 - 1993: Senior Development Officer
1993 - 2008: St. Malachy's Church, 49th Street, New York City -
1993 - 2003: Parochial Vicar
2003 - 2008: Assisted in the Church
2008: St. Peter's College, New Jersey
5th December 2008: Died in hospital in New Jersey, USA.

When Fr Joe Kelly died in New Jersey, many of his friends wanted to speak and write about him. Rather than a conflated obituary, here are three distinct voices with their memories of Joe: his brother Michael who spoke at the funeral Masses in Jersey City and Milltown Park; his close friend Roddy Guerrini; and a eulogist from the congregation of St Malachy's, the Actors' Chapel in New York.

The Joe of Surprises

From Fr. Michael Kelly's homilies at Joe's funeral Masses at St. Peter's College, New Jersey, and Milltown Park, Dublin
When going through Joe's things at Saint Peter's College (Jersey City) a few days after he died, I came across the book by Father Gerard Hughes, The God of Surprises. On the fly-leaf Joe had written: “This is my favourite book. If ever you find it lying round make sure it gets back to me”. Well if Joe loved the book The God of Surprises, I am quite certain that the God of Surprises in Person loved and got a great kick out of the Joe of surprises!

Joe never failed to surprise us. He surprised everybody in 1949 when he gave up engineering studies at University College Dublin to join the Jesuits. He surprised even himself in the positive way he influenced the boys at Gonzaga in the late 1950s, when he was the first Jesuit scholastic to teach there. His extensive theological understanding surprised me in Milltown Park where fate in the person of a formal Visitor to the Irish Province appointed me to be one of his theology examiners. It was my feeling that he surprised (and greatly relieved) our mother and father by staying the course to ordination, tertianship and thereafter. He surprised Saint Peter's in Jersey City, and later Saint Malachy's on Broadway, by his stunning success as Director of Campus Ministries, pastor, homilist, counsellor, and ever in-demand baptiser, solemniser of marriages, support in time of stress and grief, and (like his namesake, Joseph of Arimathea whom we heard about in the Gospel) burier of the dead.

And his death was a surprise, something totally unexpected. Though he had been having heart and circulatory problems for quite some time, he seemed to be coping with these. But on Friday 5th December things were different. That day he was leaving Saint Malachy's and changing back to Saint Peter's where he had served for 25 years. He got to his new home early in the afternoon but complained, as he had done earlier in the day, of chest pains and overwhelming tiredness. Late in the afternoon he was taken to hospital where the authorities said they would keep him under observation for a few days. As the evening wore on, they had to give him a whole bunch of IV drips and other medical supports. But in between times he was in good form, spoke to many friends on his cell-phone, was making arrangements for the coming weekend, and asked a few close friends to come and keep him company. After chatting with these for some time, he fell into a quiet sleep and a few minutes later his friends saw that his monitor had changed from blips to a straight line. In his sleep, Joe had just slipped away into the arms of the God he loved and served so well. There was no pain, distress or trouble, but great peace and calm, and for this we must, in one of his own favourite expressions, praise and thank God.

But the thing that bowled us over most of all, Joe's family on this side of the Atlantic, was the flood of people, thousands of them from New York and Jersey City, talking of the way Joe had touched their lives and crying warm tears because he had left them. We knew that Joe was a good priest, but we didn't realize how good until we saw the outpourings of love and grief, heard the testimonials, and shared the tears of some of the thousands for whom he was so significant.

Perhaps in some ways we tended to think of him as Joe the rebel, Joe the “irreverent reverend”, or in the words of one of his close friends, as Joe the Catholic anarchist. And certainly he could be a rebel, and was critical and irreverent whenever he encountered pomposity, sham, formalism, heavy-handed clerical bureaucracy, putting rules and regulations before people, using religion to enslave instead of to set free. In this he identified wholeheartedly with the Jesus he so dearly loved who scorned the pomposity, the nit picking, the ritualistic ways and the oppressive religiosity of many of the religious leaders of his time. Joe was the same. There was no side to him and he had no time for legalism or sham in today's church. He loved pomp and circumstance and good acting in the theatre, but he had no time for anything like this in the church or for anything that might make it harder for people to experience how greatly God loved them.

Mention of the theatre reminds us of Joe's very extensive work throughout the theatre world, from front stage to back stage, and the enjoyment, strength and encouragement that he in his turn got from the support of the theatre community. And it is really marvellous to hear that his friends from the theatre world are considering a celebration to remember him, to be held in a Broadway theatre some time in the New Year.

Messages have poured into St. Malachy's website testifying to Joe's dedication as a great and concerned pastor who always tried to ensure that all should be for the best with each individual whom he contacted. Let me share with you something from two of them.

The first is from Steven Kelly who acknowledges that his lifestyle is one that is not accepted by the Catholic Church but states that because of Joe he is an active Catholic and very comfortable in being one. Steven goes on: “I can remember when our church would publish the name of the priest saying the next week's Mass. They had to stop doing that because people would only go to the Mass that Father Joe was celebrating.... I know he is in a better place ... but it's not fair to all of us remaining. He will be in my heart and head for as long as I live”.

The second comes from Charles Michel, who calls himself “an old-time member of the St. Malachy's Family”. Charles wrote:
There has been a lot of talk recently about guys named Joe. “Joe” has come to stand for any regular guy who is identified with the job he does. He and his job are almost one and the same. He does his job well because this is a natural extension of who he is at his core. This was never truer than it was for "Joe the Priest”. Of all the clergy I have ever known, I cannot think of a more priestly one than Father Joe Kelly.
And here is why ... Some men become priests because they love God. Some men, especially Jesuits, become priests because they like to think about God. And some men become priests because they love to wear robes and pretend they are God!

But Joe Kelly was a priest because he loved PEOPLE. And for him loving people WAS loving God. And since he lived in a world full of people every relationship in his life was a prayer. He didn't need to fall to his knees to commune with The Almighty. He just needed to pour a glass of good wine for a friend, cook him a gourmet meal, and tell the best story ever into the wee hours of the night. ... Father Kelly knew God because he knew Susan and Paul and Margie and Sam. He saw God in the face of everyone he knew. He did not look up to heaven to see God. Instead, on countless occasions, he found God across the dinner table and he would simply say to him or her, Isn't this a good Cabernet?”

This past Sunday one of St. Malachy's long-time parishioners shared with me her last conversation with him. Joe had said to her, “The only thing I now know is that God is love. Everything else - all rules, all the theology, all the struggle, all the guilt - is meaningless”.

Again I see how near he was to the Lord Jesus, the great lover of people, who always gave pride of place to people and their needs, no matter how exhausted he was, his heart going out to them, especially if they were in trouble or seemed harassed or dejected. And that's how it was with Joe.

And Joe identified closely with the Lord in another significant way. Both of them loved feasts, banquets, celebrations, parties – Jesus to the extent that he was criticized as being a drunkard and a glutton, Joe to the extent that, as Charles said in his message, he could so easily find God across the dinner table and make it possible for others to do the same. For Joe, every celebration, every meal with friends, was the literal fulfilment of the promise made in tonight's First Reading, that God would prepare a banquet of fine wines, of food rich and juicy, and would wipe away the tears from every cheek and take away the mourning veil covering all peoples. Even in the most desolate moments, Joe's exuberant humour, vitality, wit, and interest in finding God, brought out the presence of God in every meal and gathering, not only as the God of Surprises, but also as the God of gentle healing, rejoicing and laughter. Certainly, he found God more easily and much more surely in a glass of Chateau-neuf-de pape than in any document dealing with infallibility-de-pape! And surely this comes out in the last photo taken of him on 3rd December, just two days before he died, celebrating a meal at Ciro's Restaurant in New York with Sister Peggy and some of the other stalwart women who supported him not only as a priest but also as a person whose health situation was dicey.

And let us remember that it is through a Eucharist that we are celebrating Joe tonight. And the Eucharist is a meal, a feast, a celebration - just what Joe loved. Our Eucharist is a joyful celebration with the great Master of festivities, Jesus Himself, and we find it enriching and fulfilling and a great happiness to be here.

Alongside his deep love of God and his extensive love for everyone as a child of God (recall our First Reading tonight, “We are all children of God, though we still don't know what we are to be in the future”. Joe had an extraordinary love for all the members of his many families, his natural family here in Ireland and those who became his family in New York and Jersey City.

We were a very united family, seven of us and our parents, though we were dispersed all over the place. Like myself, Joe would have heard our mother saying, “It breaks your father's heart and mine to see you going away, and yet we are glad that you are all living far from one another, because that way we know you will stay close and will not be quarrelling”. How right she was! We never knew squabbling or bickering or falling out. Coming back home, whether to Tullamore, or Newbridge or Blackrock, was always wonderful for Joe and all of us, with great reunions all round and great celebrations. Joe idolized our father, and I'm sure this helped him experience what it meant to be loved by God as Father, And our father in Tullamore worshipped the ground Joe walked on, even to the extent of refusing to let himself die until he became aware that Joe was at his side. This great warm bond between us was what Joe wanted to re-create as he tried to strengthen the union and harmony in the families of his countless friends, students and parishioners.

Joe also had a powerfully strong love for the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus to which he belonged for more than 59 years. Just one illustration of that. Going through his personal effects last week, we came across a notebook clearly marked "private". At first we were going to put it with papers to be shredded. But earlier we nearly did the same with an envelope containing a thick wad of dollars, thinking it was an old diary. So although some things remain private even in death, I thought I'd better have a quick look at the private notebook. I flicked through the pages, and what did I find? Not a single dollar! Nothing, in fact, except blank pages with just a few thinly scribbled ones at the beginning. One of these, dated August 2002, read: “I don't know how I can ever be grateful enough to my Jesuit colleagues at America House, for all the support, encouragement and boundless love they have always given me. I could never have got on without them”. This was for his own eyes only, but it shows how much it meant to him that he was a Jesuit, a member of the Society of Jesus, the Society of love. The Jesuit Community at America House, and in earlier years the Jesuit Community at St. Peter's College, were his lifeline, the umbilical cord that bound him in love and unity to his fellow Jesuits there and to his Jesuit brethren across the world.

We were indeed proud of Joe as a first class Jesuit and an excellent priest. And Oonagh and I remain very, very proud that he was our brother.

And one last thing before we end. Joe was always very close to Ed Williams of Tullamore. They were a real Jonathan and David pair in modern times. By an extraordinary coincidence, this very day of Joe's memorial Mass, 15th December, is the first anniversary of Ed's death. The bond that united these two in life was too strong to be broken by death. But perhaps I shouldn't have said "coincidence". This was no coincidence. It was the God of Surprises, dearly loved as a Person and a book by both Ed and Joe, who brought them together again. When Joe would visit Ed in Tullamore, one of Ed's daughters would pop her head into the room where Ed was sitting and announce, “The God of Surprises is at the door”. I'm sure that when Ed realized last week that Joe was at the door of heaven he would have welcomed him ecstatically and proudly presented him, the Joe of surprises, to the God of Surprises.

When the Old Testament prophet Elijah was taken up to heaven, his follower Elisha threw Elijah's cloak over his shoulders and became a great and powerful prophet in his place. May Joe's mantle of love of God and family, loyalty and love for the Society of Jesus, joy in celebration, honesty, integrity, compassion, concern for every child of God, and joy in all God's goodness, fall on the shoulders of each one of us so that our lives may help every one we deal with to encounter the surprise and the joy of God and to recognize with Joe that in the final analysis the only thing that has meaning is that God is love.

Roddy Guerrini, for many years Joe's contemporary in the Jesuits:
I think I knew Joe Kelly fairly well. We were friends as novices and continued to communicate well all our lives though separated by distance. The funeral homily is accurate. I'll add some comments to it.

Joe was highly intelligent and sensitive to people and circumstances, what you might call the signs of the times. He would hate to be called an “intellectual”, thinking the word smacked of superiority to others or conceit of self. Those who considered themselves 'intellectuals', he would think phonies or poseurs. Consequently he never talked above peoples' heads or talked down to them. But he was a fast learner in any field he engaged. In Theology he and I repeated every evening for one hour. It was all the theology I needed for the ad grad. Joe was a gifted mimic and could take off the professors and make the dullest lecture a comedy performance. In addition he had a photographic memory and hearing once was all he needed to retain the material, a great help to me who didn't always pay attention. We developed a vocabulary of our own, code words that stood for whole theses. In exam I would hear Joe's voice in my head repeating our wild theology, and answer with a straight face in the conventional way. It made theology a very agreeable experience.

Joe is portrayed in the homily a good listener. This is fair comment but omits mention of the cost. He took many problems on himself and suffered much stress as result. Often I would suggest “detach a little”. It was not in his nature. To detach seemed like “not caring”. I do believe that this 'involvement' harmed his health and took some joy out of his life.

Eulogy in Saint Malachy's Church, Broadway (The Actors Chapel):
Joe Kelly was a lover and a love. He was a lover because, as his brother, nephew and friend said at his funeral mass, he loved God and he loved people and he loved bringing God to people. He was a love because he was a warm, caring, compassionate dynamo, with an unparalleled sense of humour and such a deep humility that you just couldn't help but love him. He walked the walk – “What you do unto others, you do unto me”.

He always remembered the forgotten. Even when he was feeling weak, he managed to visit the elderly, the sick and the dying. Years ago, he had a friend who had a relative in prison. When he would visit him, the man would tell him how much he hated prison food and would love to have veal scaloppini. So, as only Joe would do, the next time he visited him, he went with a veal scaloppini sandwich wrapped in foil and plastic and strapped to his leg.

Agnes Sheehy and Michael Kelly were married on April 13, 1919 in Tullamore, County Offaly Ireland. They had 7 children, four boys and three girls; Joe was the youngest. Three of the boys became Jesuit priests: two of them served in Africa and Joe ended up here in the U.S. (lucky for us). He entered the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus at the age of 18. He was not a proud man, but he was proud of that S.J. after his name. He always took his orders in his stride, and in his early days he was assigned to be a beekeeper. He learned to love it and became quite an expert on bees and honey (and you thought he was just an expert on wine).

While studying at University in Ireland, he had to prepare a paper that was sent to Oxford for review and then he had to have a personal meeting with his reviewer, who just happened to be JRR Tolkien. During their meeting, Tolkien told Joe about a book he was currently working on called “The Lord of the Rings”.

After graduation in 1954, he became an English teacher in Ireland, and his students still love him to this day. Many have kept in touch all these years, have brought him back to Ireland to baptize and marry their children and have visited him here in NY. In 2002 they had a special dinner in Ireland to honor him. Joe was an avid bird watcher and was passionate about literature, poetry and music. He could recite entire passages from Shakespeare and frequently a poetic quote would pop out of his mouth. He had no favorite poet – he loved them all.

He left Ireland in 1965 with a heavy heart to come to the U.S. to study labour relations at Loyola in Chicago and in Cornell in NY, but ultimately he fell in love with America.

As head of Campus Ministry at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, he started the “How To Club”. He would bring the students into New York City to go to the theatre and opera, and took them to fine restaurants and taught them proper etiquette and “how to” order food and wine.

He loved opera and Gilbert & Sullivan. In fact, he usually sat there mouthing the words to the songs because he knew them all. He loved theatre. About a month ago, he called me one night and said, “I just have to share this with you – I just had the most incredible night on Broadway that I have ever had”. Phil Smith had taken him to opening night of Billy Elliott and they sat behind Elton Jon, with Mayor Bloomberg in the row behind them. Pity that they have no idea how lucky they were to be sitting so close to such a great man.

I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him on a number of projects for St. Malachy's so I could see him in action first hand. We worked for a whole year on the centennial dinner that was held in January 2003 and many, many hours were spent writing the keepsake journal with St. Malachy's history that was given out at the dinner, Because he was so well loved in the community, people generously responded to him and ultimately $250,000 profit was made at that dinner.

Through his tireless efforts, there is now a “St. Malachy's Way” sign at the corner of 49th Street and Eighth Avenue. He jumped through many hoops to finally get the approval and a wonderful street-naming ceremony was held in June 2003, complete with a Proclamation from the Mayor declaring June 10, 2003 “St. Malachy's Day”. He was beaming - he loved St. Malachy's and one of his dreams became a reality that day.

Aside from being active in the church, Joe was a valued and well-respected member of the community, serving on the Broadway Association, on the board of the Times Square Alliance and was appointed by the Mayor to the Mayor's Midtown Citizens Committee. The Catholic Church couldn't have asked for a better person to represent them in the secular world because everyone loved Joe Kelly and he brought a humanity to the church which attracted people from all faiths.

Joe Kelly was a friend to all, from the famous to the forgotten. He lived life to the fullest, gave unselfishly of himself, touched more lives that he could have ever imagined, and always held fast to his love of God.

I would like to close with a quotation from one of his homilies in 2001:

Years ago there was a play, a great musical here on Broadway. It was called “La Cage Aux Folles” and included a song called “The Best of Times”.
The best of times is now.
What's left of summer but a faded rose?
The best of times is now
For tomorrow, well, who knows?
Who knows?
So hold this moment fast
and live and love as hard as you know how.
And make this moment last because the best of times is now.

Then he went on to say,
“Our Lord himself said it a long time ago in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Take today for today. Today's troubles are enough. Leave tomorrow. Leave the end of the world, leave all of that – leave even our own death in the hands of a loving and a compassionate God’.”

Joe Kelly did just that – he lived and loved as hard as he knew how. How lucky are we to have had him in our lives.

Interfuse No 162 : Winter 2015

REMEMBERING JOE KELLY

Fr Joseph Kelly (1931-2008)

In the years before he died in Jersey City in December 2008, I seldom met my brother Joe. But almost every time we managed to meet he would at some point say to me, “Michael, when I'm dead and buried no one will remember me”. Little did he know how wrong he was! Within two years of his death, the Broadway Association was instrumental in having his “caricature” hung in the renowned Sardi's Restaurant in New York, along with the greats of the theatre, film and entertainment industry. This was in recognition of the unique pastoral relationship Joe had developed with the Broadway community-actors, choristers, theatre staff - as their special friend and priest-on-call. A year later, Mary Higgins Clark, the “Agatha Christie” of American detective fiction, dedicated her novel I'll Walk Alone to Joe's memory, with the words:

Always a twinkle in this Jesuit's eye
Always a smile on his handsome face
Always faith and compassion overflowing his soul
He was the stuff of which saints are made
When all heaven protested his absence
His Creator called him home.

Some time later, in December 2013, St. Peter's Jesuit University in Jersey City dedicated to his memory a new chaplaincy unit, The Joseph A Kelly SJ Office of Campus Ministry, so that, in the words of the University President, his legacy and love could be experienced by the entire St. Peter's community, including those who never had the good fortune of knowing him personally.

Now Joe is once more being remembered in Times Square in the heart of New York where every day throughout the month of July 2016 one of the huge billboards or “signages” will recall his name, “in memory of a wonderful priest”.

At the time of his death, one of Joe's theatre-world friends wrote: “Some men become priests because they love God. Some men, especially Jesuits, become priests because they like to think about God. .... But Joe Kelly was a priest because he loved people. For him loving people was loving God. And since he lived in a world full of people, every relationship in his life was a prayer. He didn't need to fall to his knees to commune with the Almighty. He just needed to pour a glass of good wine for a friend, cook him a gourmet meal, and tell the best story ever into the wee hours of the night”.

How better could he be remembered? Thank God that the memory of a dedicated Irish Jesuit survives in New York, in St. Malachy's (the Actors’ Chapel), on Broadway, in Sardi's and in the chaplaincy unit at St. Peter's Jesuit University and the annual university walk which he instituted to gather funds to provide international food assistance. Joe, if this is what you mean by saying that no one will remember you after you are gone, let every one of us live so that we can be “forgotten” in a similar way!

Michael J Kelly

Born: 07 January 1930, Coote Terrace, Portlaoise, County Laois
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 02 November 2006, Sue Ryder Home, Ballyroan, Portlaoise, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 07 September 1966

Parents William, a Chemist and a Dentist and Gertrude (Aird)

Seventh of eight boys with three sisters.

Early education was at a Christian Brothers National School, and then at the Secondary School, both in Portlaoise.

Baptised in St Peter and Paul’s, Portlaoise, 12/01/1930

1948-1950: St Mary's, Emo, Novitiate
1950-1953: Rathfarnham Castle, Juniorate, UCD
1953-1956: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Philosophy
1956-1959: Mungret College SJ, Regency
1959-1963: Milltown Park, Theology
1962-1966: at Loyola Chicago IL, USA (CHG) studying Industrial Relations

Left community 20/06/1966, whereabouts unknown.

Married Peggy (Margaret Bowers) in Chicago, but in 2001 they were divorced, and he had returned to Ireland and the Church.

1966 Address: New Orleans Street, Chicago IL, USA

Had taught at the Latin School, North Boulevard, Chicago and then relocated to Maine.
Address 2000: Madawaska Road, Palmyra, Maine, USA. In 2000 he writes he is not in great health - bypass surgery.

Dispensed from Priestly Celibacy 28/05/2002

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

DONAL ROBERT GANNON

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

Born: 24 April 1921, Roxboro Road, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 07 September 1939, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1956, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong
Died: 04 September 2006, Cherryfield Lodge, Dublin

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

Transcribed HIB to HK: 03 December 1966; HK to HIB: 21 May 1993

Father was a Senior Tax Office in the Civil Service. The family resided at Loretto, South Circular Road, Limerick City.

Second in the family with an older sister and a younger brother and four younger sisters.

Early education was at the Model School in Limerick and then at Coláiste Mhicil, Limerick.

by 1948 at Hong Kong - Regency
by 1958 at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency studying language

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Hong Kong says farewell to a friend and a scholar
Father Neary

Around 500 people gathered at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on 14 September for a memorial Mass, celebrated by the local ordinary, Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, to mourn the passing of a much-loved teacher and creative administrator, who began the process of systemising Catholic education in the diocese.

A revered teacher at both Wah Yan College in Kowloon and in Hong Kong, Jesuit Father Joseph Foley died in his native Ireland at 11pm on 4 September 2006 at a nursing home in Dublin. Born in Limerick on 24 April 1921, Father Foley entered the Society of Jesus at Emo, Ireland, in September 1939, and eight years later was appointed to the China mission, arriving in Canton for language studies in 1947.

Forced to leave the mainland in 1949, he taught as a scholastic in the Hong Kong Wah Yan campus for one year before returning to Ireland to finish his theological studies and final formation for priesthood. He was ordained at Milltown Park, Dublin, on the feast of St. Ignatius, 31 July 1953.

The year 1955 again saw him teaching in Wah Yan, once again at the Hong Kong school. Then after another year studying Cantonese at Xavier House in Cheung Chau, he was back teaching, an activity he continued for the next 13 years, alternating between the Kowloon and Wan Chai schools. He did a stint as principal in Kowloon from 1962-1968, then in 1970 completed a masters’ degree in education at Loyola College in Chicago, the United States of America.

The photograph published with this tribute to the man who is remembered as much for his joviality, good humour and ceaseless care for students as for his excellence in education, is one of fond memory for many alumni of both colleges. “It is how we remember him,” reads a short obituary on the alumni Website.

The tribute comments that the value of a teacher can be measured by the number of past pupils who take the trouble to revisit. “You may be comforted to learn that of late, many old boys have written to the late Father Foley and a few even made the trip (to Ireland) especially to visit him,” the Website tribute reads.

Father Foley spent 1973 and 1974 setting up a junior college of education in Singapore, returning to Hong Kong in 1978 to take up what was maybe his greatest professional challenge, an appointment as the first Episcopal vicar for education in the diocese. His successor, Alice Woo Lo-ming, said that it was a difficult time of “breaking the ice.” She explained that up until then, each school had operated quite independently, but Father Foley persistently wrote to the Education Department on various issues and “worked hard to promote “collaboration” between the different institutions.

“It was difficult work,” she said. “Many were not so willing to move.” However, she said that his legendary sense of humour assisted him to break through deadlocks and “he tried to make central management work and drew up guidelines for the Catholic Board of Education and the diocesan and religious councils.”

Woo said that “he achieved much, even though he was a one man office with only one secretary to assist him.”

Father Foley stepped down in 1991 and returned to Ireland to work in parishes until ill health forced his retirement earlier this year.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 24 September 2006

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He first came to Hong Kong as a Regent in 1947 and went to Guangzhou to learn Cantonese.
1949-1950 He was sent to Wa Yan College Hong Kong teaching
1950-1955 He went back to ireland for Theology and was Ordained in 1953.
1955-1968 He returned to Hong Kong and Wah Yan College Hong Kong. By 1962 he was Provincial there (1962-1968)
1968-1971 He was sent to Wah Yan Kowloon
1971-1972 He went to the USA to gain a Masters in Education
1972-1973 He was sent to Singapore (Principal of Catholic Junior College)
1973-1977 He was back in Hong Kong at Wah Yan College, Hong Kong
1977 He was appointed Episcopal Vicar for Education. His task was to coordinate the work of all Catholic schools in the territory. An educationalist of many years standing, he said in an interview that there were many problems i Hong Kong’s educational system. A particular issue was about education in the vernacular. He believed that each school should form its own policy, but all parties locally must discuss the vernacular issue thoroughly before coming to any decision.

Sermon at the Requiem Mass for Fr Joseph Foley SJ, by Freddie Deignan SJ on 14 September 2006 (excerpts) :
“We gather here this evening to celebrate the Eucharist and to thank God for the gift of the life of Fr Joseph Foley who has passed away and to pray for the repose of his soul. We remember him as he touched the lives of many of us here. Today happens to be the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross.....His death on the Cross has made it possible for us to join him in the eternal happiness of Heaven. Father Foley is now enjoying that happiness......and we should celebrate that he has finally reached his home safely and joyfully after a life of service.......
He was born in Limerick on April 24th 1921. He entered the Society of Jesus when he was 18 years old and went through the usual course of studies. He got an Arts Degree at University College Dublin and this was followed by three years of Philosophy. He first came to Hong Kong in 1947 when he was 26 years old, studied Chinese in Canton for two years and then spent a year teaching at Wah Yan College Hong Kong.
He returned to Ireland to study Theology and was Ordained on 31st July 1953. So, he died having been 53 years a priest. In 1955 he came back to Hong Kog, which was to be his home for 34 years. He first spent a year at Cheung Chau trying to improve his Chinese, and in 1962 he was appointed Rector and Principal of Wah Yan College Kowloon. he held this post until 1968. He was fondly known as “James Bond”, as people thought he looked like Seán Connery, and his office was 007!
I knew him at this period of his life as I worked with him as Prefect of Studies. As a newcomer in education I learned so much from him about education in Hong Kong, about teaching and administration. I was only a raw recruit then.
So, I am very grateful to him. His example of personal care and thoughtfulness for teachers and students and of those he met or worked with was an example and inspiration to me.
So, I am very grateful to him and I owe him a lot.
He loved teaching, was lively and active in class, so no student would fall asleep in his class! He participated in all the school activities, and he particularly loved playing football, and he usually played in goal.
He was always concerned about the character formation of the students and made great efforts to instil in them Christian values. In his concern for the formation of the students, he organised groups of students to do social work for the poor, sick and the elderly during the summer months. He wished them to be willing to serve others. Of course he led them by example.
Students in the school obviously admired him for his care for each one of them, and his generosity, as he often visited them in their homes. In administration he had wonderful analytical abilities and he could sum up the main points of a book, document or article very easily. This was very useful when it came to dealing with documents from the Education Department.
He also had a very good memory. he was very good at cantonese, and in his good humour used love to make fun and joke in the language. His ability to lead was obvious and he earned the trust of teachers, staff and all with whom he worked. he won their cooperation and respect by his dedication, hard work, fairness and his friendship and care for each one. There was a break in his life in Hong Kong when he was sent to study for a Masters Degree in Education at Loyola University Chicago.. This was a preparation for him to take up a post as Principal at a Catholic Junior College in Singapore.. When this project failed to materialise, he returned to Hong Kong in 1973. he again taught in Wah Yan when Father Barrett was principal until 1977, when he was appointed by Bishop John Baptist Wu as the first Bishop’s Delegate for Education, and Chairman of the newly formed Catholic Education Board which replaced the Catholic Schools Council. There were then 309 Catholic schools in Hong Kong. This was a very challenging job. he helped coordinate, unify and improve the system of administration in the Catholic Schools of the Diocese, and helped set up the Central Management Committee of Diocesan schools. He wrote many responses to changes proposed by the Education Department on behalf of the Catholic schools after discussion with the Diocesan Schools Council and Religious Schools Council.
After 14 years of service he resigned his post as Delegate and was succeeded by Sister Marie Remedios, now Mother General of the Canossian Congregation.
Besides Father Foley was a member of the Inter-religious Committee on Religious Broadcasting and later became Chairman. He was a commentator for the broadcast Mass for Radio Hong Kong and often did the job of announcer and commentator in English for the Feast of Christ the King in the Government Stadium. He was Secretary in Hong Kong for the Jesuit Mass Media Apostolate, and was one time Chair if the Grant Schools Council.
He returned to Ireland in 1992 to rest and change his apostolate from education to pastoral work. He served as an Assistant to the Parish priest in S Francis Xavier’s Church in Dublin until 2000, when he took similar work in St Ignatius Galway. Early in 2006 he began to show the effects of terminal cancer and he was moved to Dublin and the Jesuit nursing home. When I was back in Ireland this summer I went to visit him on July 18th, and again before I left on August 7th. I noticed his condition had deteriorated from the time of my first visit. He had little energy but he was very resigned, peaceful and still very humourous. He knew his life on earth was coming to a close. He wanted to know all the news about Hong Kong, about the Church, education and Wah Yan Past Students. He expressed his gratitude to all who wrote to him and sent “get well” cards, and to those especially who came all the way from Hong Kong or Canada to visit him. He knew that I was going to attend the Wah Yan Alumni conference in Vancouver and said “Tell them how I am and thank them for their kind invitation”.
A former teacher in Wah Yan, Helen Lee went to visit him from Toronto and she wrote a letter to the Past Students : “Some of you may cherish fond recollections of Father Foley. Others may remember him by his nickname 007! He taught us the best things to choose. Yes I mean us, including myself. As a former colleague in Wah Yan and a friend ever since, I have benefitted much from Father Foley’s teachings, not just his words, but in deeds as well.
When I paid him a brief visit at the end of April this year, I was impressed by his calm disposition in his illness. He was quite frail and lacked energy. Most of the time he stayed in bed. Yet he made quite an effort to entertain visitors. He showed much concern and consideration for others around him. He was very courteous to the staff caregivers. he lived Christ’s teaching of being meek and humble of heart.
The Alumni of ‘62 compiled a book entitled “To Father with Love” for him. It is a collection of photos and writings from them. he showed me this invaluable souvenir. As I read through it, I learned more about the good he had done for his students. It was little wonder that they held him with love and affection”.
What inspired Father Foley was his deep love of Christ who loved him.......
We thank God for him, and I know he would like me to thank all those people who shared their love and care with him, especially during his illness........."

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 133 : Special Issue September 2007

Obituary
Fr Joseph (Joe) Foley (1921-2006)
24th April 1921: Born in Limerick
Early education at Model School, CBS Sexton St. Limerick
7th September 1939: Entered the Society at Emo
8th September 1941: First Vows at Emo
1941 - 1944: Rathfarnham - Studied Arts at UCD.
1944 - 1947: Tullabeg - Studied Philosophy
1947 - 1950: Hong Kong
1947 - 1949: Language studies
1949 - 1950: Wah Yan, HK -Teaching.
1950 - 1954: Milltown Park - Studied Theology
31st July 1953: Ordained at Milltown Park
1954 - 1955: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
2nd February 1956: Final Vows at Hong Kong
1955 - 1992: Hong Kong
1955 - 1962: Wah Yan, Hong Kong - Teaching
1956 - 1957: Cheung Chau Language School
31st July 1966: Transcribed to Hong Kong
1962 - 1968: Wah Yan, Hong Kong - Rector
1968 - 1970: Wah Yan, Kowloon - Teaching
1970 - 1973: Loyola, Chicago - M.A. in Education
1973 - 1974: Singapore - Junior College of Education
1974 - 1977: Wah Yan College, Hong Kong - Teaching
1977 - 1992: Vicar for Religious
1992 - 2000: Gardiner Street -
1992 - 1995: Parish Curate
31st July 1993: Transcribed to Irish Province
1995 - 2000: Assisted in the Church
1998 - 2000: House Consultor
2000 - 2006: Galway Assisted in Church, Spiritual Director (SJ)
4th September 2006: Died in Cherryfield Lodge

Frank Doyle writes:
Two days after his birth, Joe Foley, son of Denis Foley and Alice Gould, was baptised in St Michael's Church in Limerick and at the age of 12 received the Sacrament of Confirmation from Bishop D. Keane in St Joseph's Church, also in Limerick, on the feast of St Peter and Paul, 1933. He received his secondary education at the Irish Christian Brothers' School in Sexton Street and completed it by doing' his Leaving Certificate in 1939.

On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. It was the formal beginning of the Second World War. Four days later, on September 7, Joe entered the Society at Emo Park in Co. Laois. His novice master was Fr John Neary.

There then followed the usual six years of Juniorate in Rathfarnham from 1941-1944 and Philosophy at St Stanislaus' College, Tullabeg, 1944-1947. For his regency he was assigned to the Irish Province's Mission in Hong Kong and spent three years there from 1947 to 1950. As was the custom, he spent the first two years studying the Cantonese dialect, used in Hong Kong, and then taught for one further year in Wah Yan College, Robinson Road, in the Mid-Levels district of Hong Kong Island.

It was during this period that Joe became part of an “incident” which could have had unpleasant consequences. He was with two other scholastics - Donal Taylor and Martin Cryan - in Macau, the Portuguese enclave about 40 miles down the coast from Hong Kong. They passed through an archway on the edge of the territory with the intention of taking photographs on the other side. However, they had unwittingly crossed the border dividing Macau from China. They were arrested by Chinese police and taken into custody. Fortunately, through the good offices of a wealthy Portuguese in Macau, their early release was arranged.

In 1950 Joe returned to Ireland for his theological studies and finished with a Licentiate in Theology. At the end of his third year he was ordained to the priesthood on 31 July 1953. Theology was followed by Tertianship in Rathfarnham Castle in 1954-55 where the directors were Fathers John Neary and Hugo Kelly.

With the completion of his Jesuit formation, Joe returned to the Hong Kong Mission and took up teaching again at Wah Yan College. Just at this time, in 1955, Wah Yan moved from its original location in Robinson Road to a brand new building on Mount Parrish in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong Island. A year after his return, Joe made his Final Vows on 2 February 1956.

In 1957 Joe was made Minister at Xavier House on the offshore island of Cheung Chau and held the post for one year. Xavier House had become the language school for Jesuits arriving for the first time in Hong Kong. It replaced some previous venues - Loyola in the New Territories, which was used up the time of the Second World War, Canton (before the Communists moved in), the Missions Etrangeres de Paris (MEP) house in Battery Path in downtown Hongkong.

In 1957, however, there were plans to open a novitiate at Xavier House and this involved putting up a new building for the novices. The absentee superior of the house was Fr Eddie Bourke, who had been sent down to Singapore to relieve Paddy Joy. The acting superior was Canice Egan, who was to be the new novice master, with Joe Foley as his minister and Socius. There were also three scholastics in the house that year – John Jones, Joseph Shields, and Frank Doyle. It was here that the author first came to know Joe. It turned out to be one of my most enjoyable years in the Society, not least because of Joe's and Canice's constant teasing of each other. We did have a lot of fun together that year.

The original plans, however, were changed. Canice was replaced as novice master by John O'Meara and took up teaching in what were known as post-secondary colleges. Joe Foley, for his part, moved back to Wah Yan College in Wanchai and returned to teaching. In 1958 he was also made Minister at Wah Yan and four years later took over from Cyril Barrett as Rector, a post he held until 1968. It was during this period, in 1966, that the Hong Kong Mission became the Vice-Province of Hong Kong and Joe, with all the other members of the former Mission, was now transcribed to the new Vice-Province.

It was about this time that the Singapore government began implementing a plan to open special “Junior Colleges” for pre university (Form 6) students. The government opened one of its own but also invited other groups including the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Buddhists, to open colleges of their own. In 1972, Joe went to Loyola College in Chicago and spent one year there doing a Master's in Education. The idea behind this move was a proposal that he become the first Director of the new Catholic Junior College in Singapore. However, he never did take up the post. For some reasons – perhaps because he was a European and from Singapore's rival territory of Hong Kong - he was not given the appointment. Instead a local De la Salle Brother was assigned to the post.

In the year 1978, Joe was appointed by the Bishop of Hong Kong as Vicar for Education for the diocese. He held this post for 14 years until he returned to Ireland in 1992. He now had his own office in the Catholic Diocesan Centre, beside the Catholic Cathedral. In this post he was basically responsible for coordinating all the Catholic diocesan schools in the territory - of which there were many.

After 14 years in the post, Joe was expressing a desire to retire and hand over to someone else. The Bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Wu, was, however, reluctant to let him go. Joe then decided that his best recourse was to take a year off and return to Ireland. He was assigned as a curate in St Francis Xavier's, Gardiner Street. He found this new apostolate so much to his liking that he decided to stay on in Ireland and, and in the following year, was transcribed back to the Irish Province. His assignment as curate was modified to 'assists in the church in 1995. In 1998 he became a consultor in the community.

In the year 2000, he was transferred to St Ignatius Church, Galway, 'assisting in the church and spiritual director of the Jesuit community. He became the house historian in 2004. It was during these years that he began to have problems with cancer and, when it became more serious and without any prospect of a cure, he was moved to Cherryfield Lodge where he spent the last months of his life there. He died there peacefully on 4 September 2006.

In his younger days, Joe would be remembered as a vigorous footballer. Most of his life in Hong Kong was devoted to some aspect of education - either as a teacher, a headmaster or the bishop's representative for education. He made no claims to being an intellectual but was competent in the posts he held. He had a good sense of humour and enjoyed teasing and being teased. He is missed by those who knew him.

Eulogy given in late September, 2006, by Helen Chia Chih Lee, former teacher at Wah Yan, Hong Kong, at a memorial Mass in Toronto for a gathering of Wah Yan alumni:
We gather here today to remember Rev. Fr. Joseph Foley, a fine Jesuit, and to celebrate his fruitful life. The last letter Fr. Foley sent me was dated April 12 of this year. Unlike his usual handwritten ones, it was typed, responding to a question I had asked him on prayer. In early June, I was shocked to learn that he was quite sick in the nursing home. It touched me deeply to realize that he still cared so much about me in his illness.

When I visited him some weeks later, I was impressed by his good spirits and quick wit despite suffering from terminal cancer. The concern he showed to those around him was edifying. His command of Cantonese, particularly the slang, was as amazing as ever. When he said 'wuun buun' in Cantonese, looking at the lotus paste bun in Fr. Doyle's hands, I couldn't understand the reason for the remark. It was when he said in English that Fr. Doyle was eating one bun that I got the pun.

I was privileged to have worked with Fr. Foley at Wah Yan HK in the mid 1970's. As a colleague, he was very friendly and helpful. He inspired me to instil moral values through teaching English. Up to this day, I adhere to his idea. As an adult ESL instructor, I often choose topics related to values, particularly Canadian ones, for my immigrant learners. After Father Foley left Wah Yan, he gradually became our family friend. His advice, moral support and prayers were invaluable, especially during the early years of our immigration to Canada,

Most alumni of the two Wah Yans knew Fr. Foley in different capacities, but everybody referred to him by his heroic nickname, “James Bond” or “007”. Students of the 1950's and 60's on the Hong Kong side had Fr. Foley as either their teacher or principal. Later, he served on the teaching staff of either school at different times. In 1978, the late Cardinal Wu appointed Fr. Foley to be the first Episcopal Vicar for Education, a position he held until 1992. Then he returned to Ireland and served the Irish Jesuit Province. In May this year, he was admitted to the Jesuit nursing home in Dublin. On September 4, with close relatives by his side, Fr. Foley passed away peacefully, aged 85.

Fr. Foley dedicated his whole life to the service of God. In his own words, “to be able to help people” was the most rewarding aspect in his priesthood. Indeed, he enriched innumerable people. Wah Yan students and staff benefited greatly from his words, his deeds and his remarkable personality. He was highly intelligent, full of humour, very caring and most generous. In the 14 long years of his tenure as the Cardinal's delegate for education, Fr. Foley's contribution was more widely felt, influencing the direction of Catholic education in Hong Kong.

Fr. Foley was much respected and loved by his students. Some alumni made special trips to Ireland to visit him. The class of 62 compiled a sentimental souvenir book entitled "To Father with Love" for him. In his illness, he received lots of cards from former students. All these show what a great teacher he was.

Before closing, I'd like to share with you a thought from a homily I heard Fr. Foley deliver when I visited him in Galway, Ireland, back in 2002. It has special relevance to those of us brought up in the traditional Chinese way. We were taught to be humble by declining praise. Fr. Foley said that true humility does not lie in denying or diminishing one's talents or achievements. Instead, when being praised, a humble person realizes his/her strong points and accomplishments are gifts from God and is, therefore, thankful for His blessings.

All of us whose lives have been touched by Fr. Foley are truly blessed. As we mourn the loss of such a fine Jesuit, let us be comforted at the thought that he is enjoying his well-deserved heavenly rewards. Let our fond memories of him prompt us to follow his good example. Let us ask Fr. Foley to intercede for us, especially for Wah Yan which he so loved.

Born: 27 March 1930, Whitewell Crescent, Whitehouse, Belfast, County Antrim
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1959, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1962, Coláiste Iognáid, Galway
Died: 10 April 2024, Monaleen Heights, Castletroy, Limerick City, County Limerick

Left Society of Jesus: 18 January 1974

Father, Malachy, was a tram conductor. Mother Delia (Collins)

Only boys with one sister.

Early education was at a primary school in Belfast he then went to the Christian Brothers schools, first at the Hardinge Street technical school for two years and then at St Mary’s Secondary school for four years. After school he went to Queens University Belfast for four years, obtaining a BSc in Civil Engineering.

Baptised at St Mary’s Star of the Sea, Whitehouse, Belfast, 28/03/1926
Confirmed at St Mary’s, Greencastle, Belfast by Dr Daniel Mageean of Down & Connor, 06/05/1934

1948-1950: St Mary's, Emo,, Noviceship
1950-1953: St Stanislaus College Tullabeg, Philosophy
1953-1956: Belvedere College SJ, Regency
1956-1960: Milltown Park, Theology
1960-1961: Rathfarnham Castle, Tertianship
1961-1970: Coláiste Iognáid, teaching
1970-1972: St Louis Hall, Loyola University Chicago, USA (CHG) studying at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Loyola University and also living subsequently at Church of the Maternity BVM, Chicago IL, USA
1972-1973: Coláiste Iognáid, Rector

by 1991 was working at Thomond College, Plassey, Limerick City

Address 2000 & 1991: Monaleen Heights, Castletroy, Limerick City & Thomond College, Plassey, Limerick City