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In 1878 the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Roger Bede Vaughan, a Benedictine, met with Fr Joseph Dalton SJ and asked the Jesuits to found a College for boys to meet the needs of the growing Catholic community in Sydney. A property known as St Kilda House on the corner of Cathedral Street and Palmer Street was rented for this purpose. Forty-five students were admitted on 3 February 1879. The number gradually increased during the year to one hundred and fifteen.

In September, 1883 the College moved to a property known as Auburn Villa in Darlinghurst. This building was later demolished to make way for St Margaret's Maternity Hospital. The name "Auburn Villa" was changed on purchase to ‘St Aloysius’, the patron Saint of Youth.

Numbers fluctuated considerably towards the end of the century. On 2 February 1903, the College relocated to its present site on Upper Pitt Street at Milsons Point.

As the College community increased, a new wing was constructed and in 1916 an attractive property known as Wyalla, opposite the College, was purchased. In 1939 some market gardens in Tyneside Avenue, East Willoughby, were acquired to build the College Sports Ground.

The number of students after World War II increased rapidly and after considering various options, the Jesuits re-developed the College, beginning in 1961. Existing buildings were demolished and rebuilt in four stages.

To celebrate its one hundredth birthday, the College embarked on a fifth stage which was opened in 1981. Then, in 1991, the College purchased Milsons Point Primary School and created a Junior School Campus in Burton Street, Milsons Point.

In 1995 the Jesuit community, who had always lived within the College, left the main building for a community house at 38 Jeffrey Street. This allowed the top two floors of the College to be renovated.

Most recently, in 2011, the College opened a new basketball court, swimming pool and gymnasium at Dalton Hall, next to Wyalla. Going forward, Plan Magis plans for further redevelopment of both Upper Pitt St and Wyalla, to meet the growing needs of the College.

Born: 29 April 1815, La Vittoriosa, Malta
Entered: 30 December 1844, Palermo Sicily Italy - Sicilian Province (SIC)
Final vows:02 February 1855
Died: 29 April 1871, Milltown Park, Dublin - Sicilian Province (SIC)

Came to HIB in 1861

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He came to Dublin in 1861 on the expulsion of the Jesuits from Rome, Naples and Sicily. About twenty Jesuits came, with Aloysius Sturzo as their Superior.
He was a tailor by trade, and he worked at Milltown until his death there 29 April 1871

Born: 01 November 1919, San Bernard, Lindsay Road, Glasnevin, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1939, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1956, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 26 May 2000, Mater Hospital Dublin

Part of the Belvedere College SJ, Dublin community at the time of death.

Youngest of three boys.

Early education was at a National School, and in 1931 he went to O’Connells school for six years. He then did a year of Engineering at UCD

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Studied 1st year Engineering at UCD before entry

◆ Interfuse
Interfuse No 105 : Special Edition 2000

Obituary
Fr Gerard (Gerry) Spillane (1919-2000)
1st. Nov. 1919: Born in Dublin
1931 - 1938 Christian Brothers' O' Connell Schools, Dublin - Leaving and Matric.
1938 - 1939: UCD for a half-year, studying Engineering.
7th Sept. 1939: Entered the Society at Emo.
8th Sept. 1941: First Vows at Emo.
1941 - 1944: Rathfarnham-studying Arts at UCD.
1944 - 1947: Tullabeg- studying Philosophy.
1947 - 1950: Clongowes- Teacher; Prefect; Clongowes Certificate in Education.
1950 - 1954: Milltown Park- Theology
31st July 1953: Ordained at Milltown Park.
1954 - 1955: Tertianship at Rathfarnham.
1955 - 1962: Clongowes- Teacher, Higher Line Prefect
1962 - 2000: Belvedere- Teacher; Games; Vice-Rector. Since 1988 he has served as Health Prefect; Chaplain St. Monica's Nursing Home; Sacristan; Guestmaster.

From March 1999, Fr. Spillane's health was in decline. He was admitted to the Mater Hospital and was diagnosed to be suffering from cancer in July of that year. Since then, he spent several periods receiving special nursing care in Cherryfield Lodge, after which he would be well enough to return to Belvedere. He was again admitted to Cherryfield Lodge in March, but was not confined to bed and until shortly before his death he was able to go for walks around the grounds. He died peacefully on 26th May 2000 at the age of 80.

Joe Dargan writes ...
Behind the simple facts of the Curriculum Vitae given above there was a life of faithful commitment and service which was the heart and soul of Gerry. He touched the lives of many people who valued his support and judgement and recognised that his influence on their lives was deep and personal. Fr Gerry was above all else a Religious and Priest. His life was centred on the Eucharist. Through it he became an act of worship of God. The witness of his life spoke volumes. The quiet impact he made on people was shown by the numbers and variety of people who attended his funeral.

As a teacher in Clongowes and Belvedere he dedicated himself to the hidden, constant and grinding work of the classroom as well as forming boys according to the values of Jesus Christ. When his close friend, Fr. Tom Scully, died in 1968 at the age of 46 Gerry became chaplain and mentor of the Catholic Housing Aid Society which provides accommodation for the aged poor as well as newly weds. At the time of his death another flat complex was near completion.

In 1988 Gerry retired from teaching. He became Chaplain to St. Monica's Nursing Home. His care of the sick and dying was unstinting. He would sit for hours with a dying patient, just being present offering support and prayer. At his death the patients of St. Monica's asked that the funeral from Gardiner Street to Glasnevin cemetery would pass and stop at St. Monica's.

Gerry is greatly missed by the members of the Belvedere Community. His was a constant presence and made everyone feel welcome. One of his late colleagues wrote this letter to the community at the time of his death.

"I regret that I cannot attend the funeral of Fr. Gerry Spillane this morning. Gerry is in my prayers. I send my sincere condolences to his family and the community. Gerry was already an established and hugely respected member of the staff of Belvedere when I arrived in 1965. I well remember that he made me feel very welcome and was kind and helpful to me as I settled in to life in Belvedere. We struck up a nice bond of friendship as we chatted on the corridor. I was struck from our first meeting by his transparent decency. I never heard him raise his voice to any boy - nor did I ever hear him speak badly of any boy. He had a great respect for our students and they had huge respect for him.

I was always aware of his love for all sports. He seemed to believe that the real value of sport was in contributing to the good of the team, rather than seeking personal glory. I feel that Gerry was very much at home in Belvedere. He knew Belvedere and its community very well and was most generous in giving his time and energy for their good.

I believe that Gerry lived his vocation fully every day of his life. I feel privileged to have known him as friend and colleague over 30 years. Please convey my deepest sympathies to his family and members of the community.

Sincerely,
John Brown."

May he rest in the Peace of Christ,

Joseph Dargan SJ

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 2000
Obituary
Father Gerry Spillane SJ
Gerry Spillane was born on 1 November 1919, one of three brothers, a north Dubliner, from the district around Drumcondra and Glasnevin which - as he liked to point out - produced so many Jesuits around those years, mostly, like himself, pupils of the Christian Brothers at O'Connell's (for whom he always retained great regard). He had in a high degree the virtues typical of his background: straightforwardness, conscientiousness, great human decency and loyalty to the traditional values he had inherited at home and in school.

Having started an engineering degree at UCD, he soon abandoned it to follow what he had come to recognize as his true vocation and he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Emo, Co Laois, in September 1939, in lean times just as the Second World War was breaking out. He was a few months short of his 20th birthday.

He followed an entirely traditional course of Jesuit formation, mostly during the war-years and their aftermath; after Emo, juniorate in Rathfarnham Castle, while studying for the BA at UCD, philosophy in Tullabeg, Co Offaly, three years as a teacher and prefect in Clongowes and then theology in Milltown Park. Following ordination on 31 July 1953 by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, there was a fourth year of theology, and finally tertianship back in Rathfarnham.

He had hoped to go on the newly-opened Irish Jesuit mission to Zambia (known in those pre-independence days as Northern Rhodesia) but was sent instead to teach in Clongowes. It was not a posting which greatly appealed to him. Quite apart from the thwarting of his missionary desires, boarding school life in the early fifties was austere and relations between pupils and staff were formal and relatively remote.

Within a year, Gerry was appointed Higher Line Prefect, which meant that, in place of teaching, he was responsible for the discipline and good order of the school as a whole and of the most senior pupils - the Higher Line - in particular. His sense of duty and his scrupulous anxiety to ensure the highest standards of behaviour in the school probably had the effect of concealing his enormous humanity from those in his charge (his formation had partly concealed it even from himself) and only the more perceptive among them descried it.

1962 marked a watershed in his life: it was the year he was transferred to Belvedere, in the wide-ranging “reshuffle” of Jesuit assignments made at that time by the American Jesuit plenipotentiary sent by Father General to visit the Irish Province. This change brought him back to his north Dublin roots and set him to tasks which were more congenial than the role of Higher Line Prefect, faithfully though he had discharged that office. He was to spend his remaining thirty-eight years in the college - until 1988 as a member of the staff, thereafter, until his health failed, as chaplain to a nearby nursing home.

Gerry taught mathematics and his specialty was the “matric” class at the top of the school. His teaching had all the hallmarks of the man himself: solid, faithful, meticulously and painstakingly prepared. In the first years, he also taught religion. But 1962 was another, deeper watershed, not only for him but for priests of his generation and the church they served. In October of that year the Second Vatican Council began. It was to transform the landscape and seemed to render the theological studies Gerry had undertaken with such careful fidelity suddenly irrelevant. Like others, he lost confidence and found it difficult to master the new insights so prodigally unleashed in those years. After a short time, he stopped teaching religion and never gave a retreat again.

He had come to Belvedere as replacement for Tom O'Callaghan, sent to Limerick the year Gerry arrived. He inherited not only Tom's classes but also his teams and, for the next nineteen years, his name became synonymous with Junior Cup rugby in the college. Tom - regarded by Tony O'Reilly as the best coach he ever had anywhere - had ended a long sequence of semi-final near-misses through the fifties by winning in 1960 and 1961 and had failed only narrowly to make it three-in-a-row with a talented team the following year. Gerry Spillane, with less natural flair, was to maintain Belvedere's high standards at this level throughout his long term in charge.

But he was dogged by every kind of misfortune in the Cup itself and, despite reaching five finals, he never succeeded in winning the trophy. One year, there was the loss of key players through freak injuries between a drawn match and a delayed replay against Blackrock (delayed, as he would explain to you, against his will); defeat through a last-minute try and touchline conversion at the hands of Pres Bray another year; a comeback from 3-14 down to 13-14 against Blackrock finally thwarted in the closing minutes, with 'Rock on the ropes, by the referee's failure to play advantage, a third year. “What do you have to do?” he wondered aloud on the night of his last final in 1979, when Conor Hickey's team had lost by only a single score - once again to Blackrock. It was hard to find an answer.

Gerry's own tension and nervousness on big match days was apt to communicate itself to his young teams and may have played a part in their undoing. But there is no doubt that he made a huge contribution to the welfare of the game in Belvedere and he did much to develop the school's rugby talent in his time. What he lacked in flair he made up for by dogged, methodical study of the game, which helped to make him the perceptive coach he was.

It was typical of him that he looked after equipment - balls, pumps and the rest - with scrupulous care, preferring to keep them in his own room rather than entrust them to anyone else. There was no waste, no needless damage or loss, no lavish expenditure of any kind. That was how he conducted his entire life. (Instances of venality among the clergy and the abuse of the Mass-card system by some of them was one of his well known conversational whipping-boys). His whole approach was somehow epitomized in the vision of him on so many winter afternoons setting off on his bicycle at the end of a full day's class (he didn't drive), already middle-aged, three or four rugby balls laced together and hung from the handle-bars, for another carefully prepared practice in Jones's Road.

He expected of his players the same high standards of application and attention to detail he set for himself and he helped to pass on these standards to his successors.

His preparatory work in the earlier years must surely be given some of the credit for the memorable Senior Cup successes of 1968, 1971 and 1972, under Gerry Brangan, Paddy Lavery and Jim Moran. Needless to say, he would never claim such credit for himself - he shunned the limelight and took a dim view of coaches who were less self-effacing, whether colleagues at schools level or those on the national stage. There were certain bêtes noires in particular, but they cannot be named here!

After his retirement from coaching in 1981 - he was by then 62 and had been fit enough to referee until shortly before - he retained a close interest in the school's fortunes. Whatever rueful reflections it may have inspired in him, he greatly rejoiced at the ending of the long drought in 1994 and the two further Junior Cup successes of the nineties. He may be forgiven if he found the victories over Blackrock, at whose hands he had so often tasted bitter disappointment, especially sweet.

He had much better fortune as a coach on the athletics track and his sprinters, hurdlers and relay teams won several Leinster and All-Ireland championships over the years. Even here, there were, of course, occasional disasters', as he would have said himself - his sprinters misplaced by a negligent judge on the tape, recalcitrant parents, long meetings in the parlour, to little avail, and so on. Gerry had a certain expectation that reality would disappoint him and, although he loved to win, he probably found losing fitted better into his view of the world.

He also had success coaching cricket in Belvedere, somewhat to the surprise of those who had known his apparent disapproval of it in Clongowes. One of his junior teams famously ran up such a big score (a currently very prominent Jesuit playing a starring role) that his opponents refused to bat and conceded the game in high dudgeon. Gerry's hyper-caution in this instance was punished by - horror of horrors - having the incident reported in the newspapers. This he would certainly have regarded as “Disastrous in the extreme”! He had been a gifted tennis player in his youth, but he didn't talk about that. He was somewhat less private about his support for Manchester United, whom he followed loyally, if at times a little despairingly, until the good times came at last - happily he lived long enough to see them reach their present heights, even though he would have found adjustment to such a flood of good fortune quite hard to cope with.

When he retired from teaching in 1988 - by then he was beginning to find classes harder to control (and the milder sobriquet “sausage” for troublesome boys was giving way with growing frequency to somewhat harsher terms) - he suffered a minor crisis. For someone so unstintingly devoted to duty and so averse to relaxation or self indulgence of any kind, not working seemed close to not being. He was a life-long Pioneer and he didn't smoke. He wasn't a reader and he lacked cultural interests. Well-intentioned (or occasionally mildly mischievous) efforts by colleagues in the community to remedy such defects by luring him to a concert or a play were apt to founder on Gerry's imperviousness to the delights of coloratura cadenzas or what he regarded as the unintelligible, unfunny fantasies of the stage and screen. He found holidays a penance and was glad of an excuse not to take them. An invitation to join some of the community on a picnic outing to the Dublin mountains one St Stephen's Day was met by the puzzled - and, of course, unanswerable - enquiry, “What's the purpose?” Loyalty made him accept occasional invitations to class reunions of former pupils of both Clongowes and Belvedere - so many of whom had, at worst, sneaking respect for him, while many more felt genuine affection - but it was against the grain and, having made a brief appearance, he would be gone.

With such a temperament, reinforced by the rigidities of his training in the thirties and forties, retirement from the work he had been doing all his life was very difficult. But with time and care the crisis passed. In due course, and with real success, he undertook chaplaincy to the nursing home run by the Irish Sisters of Charity, St Monica's, across Mountjoy Square in Belvedere Place. Although he had spent so much of his life in the classroom, Gerry had always been very much a priest. His pastoral instincts expressed themselves in his care for his family, in his work with Fr Scully Flats (Tom Scully had been his colleague in the Belvedere community), and in many other ways, most of them known only to himself and those for whom he worked. His recent, harrowing experience of personal weakness helped to bring some of his deep humanity more visibly to the surface. He greatly admired the dedication of the Sisters and his gentleness and compassion and zeal as a priest found a new outlet in his ministry to the sick and dying old ladies in his care in St Monica's.

His significance in the Jesuit community grew steadily over the last fifteen or twenty years of his life. He had lived through the changes in community brought about by the Council and survived them. His official role for much of the last period of his life was that of guestmaster (or, as he half-jokingly preferred to insist, eschewing the appearance of self-importance through use of the official title, “distributor of rooms”) and he was a warmly welcoming presence for the many visiting Jesuits, from Ireland and abroad, who came each year to stay in Belvedere.

But his profile in the house far transcended any formal function - he was also, at different times, vice-rector, prefect of health, and sacristan. His warmth and capacity for humour, his lack of self-regard, the simplicity of his personal life, his courtesy and graciousness, his obvious rectitude and integrity, all these and something else, a certain enduring youthfulness of spirit, despite being old-fashioned in so many ways, something irreducible which was just “Spillane”, gave him unique stature and he became, for far more reasons than the length of time he had spent there, 'father of the house, loved and respected, the very heart of his community.

Cautious and conservative by instinct and training as he was (he never, for example, wore anything but clerical black), he genuinely enjoyed being teased and taken for what he emphatically was not. The sheer absurdity of having it suggested to him that he was a crypto-charismatic, a “banner man” who, beneath the sober surface, was really into “raising and praising”, greatly tickled his fancy and no one saw the ludicrousness of it more keenly than himself. Some of the things that made us - and him - laugh most were stories he told about himself, usually with a hint of the absurd lurking not far away, Thus, he took pleasure in recounting how he had responded to an earnest American lady who, on learning that he was in Belvedere, asked him expectantly how the Jesuits now viewed their famous past pupil, James Joyce (of whom Gerry would, on principle as well as by disinclination, almost certainly have read not a single line): “As a bowsy!”

He enjoyed telling us, too, of the times when he had been mistaken for the then Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Henry McAdoo, to whom he bore more than a passing resemblance. One lady, who had insisted that, despite his denials, he must be Dr McAdoo, had forced him to walk away from the bus-stop where he was standing and seek alternative means of transport. Someone else had taken him for 'the Abbot of Mellifont and he had had to flee then too! Another topic we liked to draw him out on was the terse one - or two - line letters he had written in his time in response to parents whom he regarded as unduly interfering or presuming to tell him how to train - or, much worse, pick - his rugby teams. Such Spillane rebuttals would have invited no further dialogue on the recipient's part and he richly enjoyed our detailed analysis of the merits of his literary style!

In July 1999, when he was nearly 80, after being in obvious decline for some months, he was admitted to the Mater Hospital and diagnosed as having cancer. The progress of the disease was quite slow and, after periods of convalescence in Cherryfield Lodge, the Jesuit nursing home beside Milltown Park, he was able to return to Belvedere. His lack of energy distressed him and - consistent with the gentle pessimism which was part of his make-up - he could always find some reason for a measure of frustration, some minor “disaster” to lament. But the prevailing note was of patient resignation in the face of illness and the mystery of life and death, great gratitude for what the nursing staff in the Mater or Cherryfield Lodge were doing for him, and deep, characteristically undemonstrative faith.

In March of the present year, Gerry returned to Cherryfield, where he died on 26 May, halfway through his 81st year, predeceased by his brothers. May that slightly taut smile, worn so often in life, relax now in joy and surprise as he beholds the unclouded glory of God.

◆ The Clongownian, 2000
Obituary
Father Gerard Spillane SJ

Fr Spillane was teacher and Third Line Prefect for three years 1947-50, while preparing for the priesthood. Later, he returned to teach and then become Higher Line Prefect in 1955,
remaining until 1962. He was to spend the rest of his life in Belvedere College and died, aged 80, on 26 May 200. The following is a slightly edited extract from the obituary which recently appeared in “The Belvederian”.

Following ordination, Fr Gerry Spillane had hoped to go on the newly-opened Irish Jesuit mission to Zambia (known in those pre-independence days as Northern Rhodesia) but was sent instead to teach in Clongowes. It was not a posting which greatly appealed to him. Quite apart from the thwarting of his missionary desires, boarding school life in the early fifties was austere and relations between pupils and staff were formal and relatively remote.

Within a year, he was appointed Higher Line Prefect, which meant that, in place of teaching, he was responsible for the discipline and good order of the school as a whole and of the most senior pupils - the Higher Line - in particular. His sense of duty and his scrupulous anxiety to ensure the highest standards of behaviour in the school probably had the effect of concealing his enormous humanity from those in his charge (his formation had partly concealed it even from himself) and only the more perceptive among them descried it.

1962 marked a watershed in his life: it was the year he was transferred to Belvedere, in the wide-ranging reshuffle of Jesuit assignments made at that time by the American Jesuit plenipotentiary sent by Father General to visit the Irish Province. This change brought him back to his north Dublin roots and set him to tasks which were more congenial than the role of Higher Line Prefect, faithfully though he had discharged that office. He was to spend his remaining thirty-eight years in the college - until 1988 as a member of the staff, thereafter, until his health failed, as chaplain to a nearby nursing home.

Born: 28 June 1875, George (O’Connell) Street, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 13 August 1892, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 26 July 1908, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1912, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Died: 24 July 1937, Dublin City, County Dublin

Part of the St Mary’s community, Emo, County Laois at the time of death.

Educated at Sacred Heart College SJ, Limerick

by 1896 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
Came to Australia for Regency 1898

Not in Catalogue index 1893, 1894

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Ernest Spillane entered the Society at Tullabeg in August 1892, and undertook regency at Xavier College, 1898-05, where he was a teacher and prefect.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 12th Year No 4 1937
Obituary :
Father Ernest Spillane

On July 24th, 1937, at a Private Nursing Home in Dublin, Father Ernest Spillane died after a short illness. Though all his life he had to contend with ill health and though for his last few years he had to suffer the pangs of “Colitis” in addition, yet when he came to Dublin for treatment, no one expected the serious turn that was soon to come, and that was finally to cause his death. He was fully conscious up to the end, and he edified all around him by his patient endurance of his sufferings, by the fervour of his prayers and by his submission to the Will of God.

Father Spillane was born in Limerick on June 28th, 1875, was educated at the Sacred Heart College, the Crescent, and entered the Society at Tullabeg on August 13th, 1892. Having taken his vows in 1894, he came to Milltown Park for his juniorate, and in 1895 was sent to Jersey, where he studied Philosophy for three years. He did his College teaching in Kew, Melbourne, and in 1905 returned to Milltown Park to study Theology. Having been ordained in 1908, and having during the following year completed his Theology, he went to Tullabeg for his Tertianship. But the strain of the years of study had told on his health and not until 1914, after a period at Petworth, was he able to resume work. Then we find him at Mungret College for twelve years, with one year's interruption, in 1921, when he was Minister at Belvedere.
At Mungret he was Master, Sub-Minister and Minister for two periods of three years each. From 1925 to his death he was connected with the Noviceship, first in Tullabeg as Minister, and finally in Emo, where for seven years he was Spiritual Father and Confessor of the Novices.
What manner of man was Father Spillane? First of all he was a most saintly Religious, a source of edification to all who had the privilege of living with him. When his conscience dictated a course of action nothing could deflect him from carrying it into effect. This, perhaps. at times game him the appearance of rigidity when “coping”, as his word was, with practical matters. He himself was guided by principles of honour and justice, and perhaps it was demanding too much of human nature to expect others to be always so directed. Yet, he was always gentle and courteous with a certain dry sense of humour, and, it may be added, a taste for Metaphysics. One who knew him well summed him up by saying “Father Spillane was a model Religious, a man of honour, always a gentleman.” And that was a fitting estimate of his character and qualities. May he rest in peace!

◆ Mungret Annual, 1938

Obituary

Father Ernest Spillane SJ

Many old Mungret men will hear with regret of the death of Father Ernest Spillane SJ, which took place in a Dublin nursing home on July 24th, 1937.

Father Spillane first came to Mungret in 1912. For the next six years he was engaged chiefly in teaching French to the Senior boys, and in 1918 he was appointed Minister, a position which he held for three years. In 1921 he was transferred to Belvedere College, Dublin, but was back again with us as Minister in 1922. He held that position till 1925, when he was called away for other important work.

During his years in Mungret, but especially during the time when he was Minister, Father Spilane endeared himself to boys and community alike. He was a kindly man, and though in very poor health, he was always bright and cheerful. To the sick in particular he was most attentive, and boys in the Infirmary looked forward to his daily visits, eager to suggest answers to conundrums which he had given them, or to resume an argument on some question raised by him. Their hopes of scoring a point, however, were always quickly dashed to the ground, for Father Spillane had a very acute mind and was an adept in subtle argument.

But, perhaps, what the boys appreciated above all was the Minister's justice. He was a man with a great sense of honour and justice, and all were sure of a fair hearing and a just decision.
It is impossible, in this short notice, to touch on Father Spillane's many virtues, but we cannot omit to mention his holiness. He was a remarkably prayerful man, and one felt that God was never far from his thoughts. An atmosphere of prayer seemed to surround him as he paced backwards and forwards on the walk by the garden, reading his Office or reciting his Rosary - a very familiar sight indeed during those years.

Well, he is gone from us forever-gone, as no one who knew him can doubt, to the God Whom he served so well.

To his brother and sisters who survive him we offer our deep sympathy, for they have lost a saintly brother on earth. But we rejoice with them also at the passing away of one of whom it can surely be said : “He did not receive his life in vain”. May he rest in peace.

JAD

The foundation of the South China Regional Seminary at Aberdeen, Hong Kong was laid in 1930 and opened the following year. It is directly under the Congregation of Propagation of Faith of the Holy See and managed by the Irish Jesuit priests.

The Sodality of Our Lady, an association formed by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and approved by the Holy See, was a religious body which aimed at fostering in its members an ardent devotion, reverence and filial love towards the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary & St. Patrick was canonically erected in the Church of St. Francis Xavier, Upper Gardiner Street on 1st May, 1853. Members of a sodality would attend devotions in the evening time or at weekends.

The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and since then has grown from the original seven to 24, 400 members today who work out of 1,825 houses in 112 countries. In the intervening 455 years many Jesuits became renowned for their sanctity (41 Saints and 285 Blesseds), for their scholarship in every conceivable field, for their explorations and discoveries, but especially for their schools. The Society is governed by General Congregations, the supreme legislative authority which meets occasionally. The present Superior General is Father Arturo Sosa. Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish Basque soldier who underwent an extraordinary conversion while recuperating from a leg broken by a cannon ball in battle (see picture). He wrote down his experiences which he called his Spiritual Exercises and later he founded the Society of Jesus with the approval of Pope Paul III in 1540.

From the very beginning, the Society served the Church with outstanding men: Doctors of the Church in Europe as well as missionaries in Asia, India, Africa and the Americas. Men like Robert Bellarmine and Peter Canisius spearheaded the Counter Reformation in Europe, courageous men like Edmund Campion assisted the Catholics in England suffering under the terrible Elizabethan persecutions and missionaries like deNobili Claver, González, deBrito, Brebeuf, and Kino brought the Gospel to the ends of the earth. No other order has more martyrs for the Faith.

Ignatius Loyola had gathered around him an energetic band of well-educated men who desired nothing more than to help others find God in their lives. It was Ignatius’ original plan that they be roving missionaries such as Francis Xavier, who would preach and administer the sacraments wherever there was the hope of accomplishing the greater good. It soon became clear to Ignatius that colleges offered the greatest possible service to the church, by moral and religious instruction, by making devotional life accessible to the young and by teaching the Gospel message of service to others. From the very beginning these Jesuit schools became such an influential part of Catholic reform that this novel Jesuit enterprise was later called “a rebirth of the infant church”. The genius and innovation Ignatius brought to education came from his Spiritual Exercises whose object is to free a person from predispositions and biases, thus enabling free choices leading to happy, fulfilled lives.

Jesuits were always deeply involved in scholarship, in science and in exploration. By 1750, 30 of the world’s 130 astronomical observatories were run by Jesuit astronomers and 35 lunar craters have been named to honor Jesuit scientists. The so-called “Gregorian” Calendar was the work of the Jesuit Christopher Clavius, the “most influential teacher of the Renaissance”. Another Jesuit, Ferdinand Verbiest, determined the elusive Russo-Chinese border and until recent times no foreign name was as well known in China as the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, “Li-ma-teu”, whose story is told by Jonathan Spence in his 1984 best seller. China has recently erected a monument to the Jesuit scientists of the 17th century – in spite of the fact that since 1948 120 Jesuits languished in Chinese prisons. By the way, no other religious order has spent as many man-years in jail as the Jesuit order.

Jesuits were called the schoolmasters of Europe during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, not only because of their schools but also for their pre-eminence as scholars, scientists and the thousands of textbooks they composed. During their first two centuries the Jesuits were involved in an explosion of intellectual activity, and were engaged in over 740 schools.

Then suddenly these were all lost in 1773. Pope Clement XIV yielding to pressure from the Bourbon courts, fearing the loss of his Papal States, and anticipating that other European countries would follow the example of Henry VIII (who abandoned the Catholic Church and took his whole country with him), issued his brief Dominus ac Redemptor suppressing the Society of Jesus. This religious Society of 23,000 men dedicated to the service of the church was disbanded. The property of the Society’s many schools was either sold or made over into a state controlled system. The Society’s libraries were broken up and the books either burned, sold or snatched up by those who collaborated in the Suppression. As if unsure of himself the Pope promulgated the brief of suppression in an unusual manner which caused perplexing canonical difficulties. So when Catherine, Empress of Russia, rejected the brief outright and forbade its promulgation, 200 Jesuits continued to function in Russia.

That Jesuits take their special vow of obedience to the pope quite seriously is evident from their immediate compliance with distasteful papal edicts. Clement XIV’s Suppression is one example. Another occurred earlier in 1590 when Pope Sixtus V wanted to exclude Jesus from the official name of the Society. Jesuits immediately complied and offered alternate names but Sixtus died unexpectedly before his wish could be carried out. Included among these occasional papal intrusions in the Society’s governance was Pope John Paul II’s appointment of a delegate to govern the Society during Superior General Arrupe’s illness. So edified was he at the Society’s immediate compliance that the pope later lavished extraordinary praise on the Jesuit Order.

The Society was restored 41 years after the Suppression in 1814 by Pope Pius VII. Although many of the men had died by then, the memory of their educational triumphs had not, and the new Society was flooded with requests to take over new colleges: in France alone, for instance, 86 schools were offered to the Jesuits. Since 1814 the Society has experienced amazing growth and has since then surpassed the apostolic breadth of the early Society in its educational, intellectual, pastoral and missionary endeavors.

They form a Jesuit network, not that they are administered in the same way, but that they pursue the same goals and their success is evident in their graduates, men and women of vast and varied talent.

Born: 24 September 1909, Aungier Street, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 September 1926, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1938, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1944, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 1993, Paris, France

Left Society of Jesus: 23 March 1964

Father was a clerk for Gilbert’s of Eustace Street, and his mother worked part time at her mother and brother’s business, Cahill’s Tin Works, Aungier Street, as doed his Father.

Family of four boys and four girls, and is second eldest with one sister older.

Early education at Holy Faith Convent, Clarendon Street he then went to CBS Synge Street, Dublin. and was there for nine years.

by 1933 at Vals, France (TOLO) studying
by 1936 at Valkenburg, Limburg, Netherlands (GER I) studying

Interfuse No 76 : Christmas 1993

Obituary

Kevin Smyth – former Jesuit priest (1909-1993)

Kevin studied Classics in UCD, finishing with a brilliant MA thesis on Wemer Jaeger's distinction between practical (phrone sis) and theoretical (sophia) wisdom in Aristotle's Nicomachaean Ethics. He studied philosophy in Valkenburg in Holland with the German students of the day. Even though the Jesuits had moved their philosophate to Holland because of Nazi activity in Germany, there was more than a trace of German chauvinism among Kevin's fellow-students. In his final year the coveted honour for the brighter students was to defend the Disputatio during the final year - this was in the heyday of neo-scholasticism. To the chagrin of many, Kevin was picked for this honour. Traditionally, in order to ensure a good show, those making the formal “objections” discussed the gist of what they had prepared with the defendant a few days before the great day. No such courtesy was extended to Kevin. But the objectors paid dearly for this: Kevin with brilliant distinctions and sub-distinctions stopped them in their tracks, so that the occasion became a public humiliation for them, much to the delight of the other non-Germans present. To prolong the occasion some of the professors intervened with the own 'objec tions', but although Kevin spoke with perfect courtesy, they fared... no better. This was a side of Kevin which he seldom revealed. He had a brilliant and incisive mind, but if pushed too far could reveal a lack of patience, almost an attitude of contempt - which he regretted immediately and tried hard to make amends for,

When I moved to Milltown Park in 1955 I was asked to teach the Short' course in dogmatic theology in a three-year cycle. Part of the old presentation of each 'thesis' was the Scriptural proof. Knowing that the whole world of Scripture was moving from for merly entrenched positions, I tried to make sure that I was as up to date as possible. After trying various people I finally settled on Kevin as my scriptural guide. He was a gifted guide, always avail able for consultation, invariably helpful and friendly. To this word which refers to friendship | shall return shortly.

Once he had been appointed to Milltown Park, where he had studied theology, Kevin was assigned to teach the old course of Apologetics; this included at that time an introduction to the Gospels. Here Kevin developed his own encyclopaedic knowledge of Scripture. Where he studied Hebrew I do not know, but he became an expert in it - so much so that he was Mgr Boylan's 'external examiner' for the degree in Oriental Languages in UCD The “Dead Sea Scrolls”, the writings surviving from Qumran, were discovered about this time, and Milltown Park Library was soon enriched with the official facsimile publications of the Scrolls. As well as becoming an expert on the Scrolls, Kevin translated, from the original Dutch, Fr Van Der Ploeg's book on the writings of Qumran. He worked in close cooperation with Professor Driver of Manchester University during this period, and together they combated Allegro's attempts to use the Scrolls in order to undermine the documentation for the origins of Christianity. Kevin wrote for Studies on diverse topics, but never received the publicity and recognition which his work deserved. In another Jesuit Province of that time he would have been given the opportunities he deserved for study and writing; a doctorate would have meant little to Kevin, but some recognition should have been given to him.

On the ordinary level of Jesuit community life Kevin was exemplary, deeply pastoral by inclination, which was revealed in his own pastoral work and especially when he was in charge for many years as sub-minister of “Supplies” from Milltown Park - allotting to many Dublin parishes priests to help out on Sunday. It is true to say that he was deeply respected by the Dublin dioce san clergy for his self-sacrificing willingness to help. On another level he was very proud of being a Synge Street past pupil, and he was a gifted football player, playing in Milltown Park well into his forties - even though he did this at some risk with some of his former pupils concentrating on knocking him out!

When in 1961 I was sent to Rome the excitement of the pre Vatican Il times was just beginning. During the few years that followed Kevin corresponded with me regularly, because I was collecting for him from the Italian and French newspapers any items which might throw light on intra- and extra-conciliar manoeuvers: these I sent on to him every week as he was writing a regular column for some Irish newspaper on Vatican II. But there was little personal in this correspondence. Kevin, in many ways, was a prisoner of his very academic world, in spite of his pastoral ad generous qualities. For him I think that some unforeseen suffering was needed to break open the academic armour. In some ways he was the product of the poorer elements in Jesuit formation in his time.

My last letter from him arrived to accompany investment-transfer documents which I had sent to him for his signature. In this let ter he revealed more humanity than in all the other years I had known him. He wrote: “You do not realize what a paradise you live in, with all its faults”.

Paddy Simpson who visited Kevin in Paris always stressed that “he was a much nicer fellow now”.

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

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

Son of Thomas Smyth and Frances Lyne. Parents were farmers and business people

Second in a family of two boys and one girl.

Educated at a local National school he then went to the Apostolic School at Mungret College SJ

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

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

James Smyth SJ RIP: Friend of the poor

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

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

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

Renowned for compassion and kindness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a ainm dílis.

Richard Dwyer SJ

September 2023

Born: 01 July 1918, Drumcondra Park, Drumcondra, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1940, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1953, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1981, Sacred Heart Church SJ, Limerick
Died: 03 June 1991, Mater Hospital, Dublin

Part of the Belvedere College SJ, Great Denmark Street, Dublin community at the time of death

Father was an Insurance official.

Only boy with three sisters.

Early education was at a private school and then at St Pat’s BNS, Drumcondra. In 1932 he went to O’Connells School for three years. He then went to a commercial college, and in 1936 was employed by the New Ireland Assurance Company in Dublin until 1940. During this time he also attended night classes and matriculated in 1940.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Insurance clerk before entry

Director of Irish School of Ecumenics

Born: 29 September 1922, Ennis, County Clare / Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1946, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 10 December 1946

Born: 15 August 1825, Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan
Entered: 07 January 1849, Florissant MO, USA - Missouriana Province (MIS)
Professed: 15 August 1859
Died: 28 March 1912, Florissant MO, USA - Missouriana Province (MIS)

Born: 21 November 1923, Kevit Castle, Crossdoney, County Cavan
Entered: 07 September 1942, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 25 November 2012. Bloomfield Care Centre, Rathfarnham, Dublin City, County Dublin

Left Society of Jesus: 28 August 1944

Father was a doctor.

Youngest of four boys with four sisters.

Early education at a Convent school in Kildare he then went to Clongowes Wood College SJ for seven years.

https://www.dib.ie/biography/smith-louis-patrick-frederick-a10051#:~:text=Smith%2C%20Louis%20Patrick%20Frederick%20(1923,wife%20Isabella%20(n%C3%A9e%20Smith).

Smith, Louis Patrick Frederick
Contributed by
Clavin, Terry
Smith, Louis Patrick Frederick (1923–2012), agricultural economist and academic, was born on 21 December 1923 in Kevit Castle in Crossdoney, Co. Cavan, the youngest of eight children of Dr Frederick Paul Smith, a farmer and ophthalmologist of Kevit Castle, and his wife Isabella (née Smith). He was born into a thriving branch of an ancient Cavan family, known originally as O'Gowan. His grandfather Philip Smith bought the Kevit Castle estate in the 1850s and later became Cavan's first catholic JP. Of his uncles, Philip H. Law Smith was county court judge for Limerick; Louis Smith, the crown solicitor for Cavan; and Alfred J. Smith an internationally respected UCD professor of midwifery and gynaecology. As well as having a successful ophthalmological practice, his father was elected to the first Cavan County Council and helped establish the local cooperative movement.

Louis was educated in Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, before studying economics and history in UCD, graduating with a first class honours BA (1947). Continuing in UCD, he won the Coyne Memorial Scholarship while receiving a first class honours MA in economics (1948), writing a thesis comparing agriculture in Northern Ireland and the Republic. He also studied law at King's Inns, passing his bar exam finals, but preferred a career in economics and spent a year at Manchester University researching British agriculture and getting lecturing experience.

In January 1949 he sat the civil service examination for the position of third secretary of the Department of External Affairs. Despite otherwise coming first by a distance, he failed the oral Irish test, which he retook unsuccessfully in August and then September. The examiners were unmoved by his protests that the test was unfair so on 28 November the cabinet intervened by temporarily appointing him economic assistant in the trade section of the Department of External Affairs. This was at the behest of the external affairs minister, Seán MacBride (qv), who wanted Smith to explore the potential for trade liberalisation.

In 1951 he joined the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) for which he organised agricultural cooperatives in the northern parts of the state. Farmers were initially suspicious of the 'man from Dublin', but were won over by his lucidity and soft-spoken decency. That year he married Sheila Brady of Herbert Park, Dublin. They lived in Dartry, Dublin, later settling in Donnybrook, Dublin, and had three sons and three daughters. Tall and with refined features rendered distinguished by his prematurely grey hair (a family trait), Smith relaxed by playing tennis at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club. He also enjoyed cycling, boating, rambling and do-it-yourself work, including furniture making, and was fluent in French.

Formatively impressed by what he saw on a research trip to Scandinavia, he lauded the progressive cooperative farming that prevailed there as a model for an Irish agricultural sector resistant to modern scientific and business methods. He concluded that Ireland's weak social structures had bred a suffocating state paternalism towards agriculture and that strong vocational institutions were needed to counteract this. Drawing upon his training as an economist and personal experience of cooperatives, he later wrote The evolution of agricultural co-operation (1961), which examined the application of the cooperative principle in various countries with a characteristic emphasis on the practical over the theoretical.

In 1954 he left the IAOS to join Macra na Feirme, a vocational association that trained young farmers. He directed its activities in economics and marketing, and became involved in efforts underway towards creating a farmers union spanning all commodity interests. Appointed economics adviser to the National Farmers Association (NFA) formed in January 1955, he helped establish the system of commodity committees that served as the basis of the NFA's organisation. (His brother Alfred Myles Smith served as the NFA's legal adviser and later as president of its Cavan executive and vice president of its Ulster executive.) At this time Louis worked a ninety-hour week making the case for the NFA to farmers.

His main function was to conduct research, an important role given that agricultural policy had previously been developed on a non-factual basis in response to short-term political exigencies. Part of a vanguard of experts who placed the Irish economic debate on a firm statistical footing, he established the NFA's credibility by churning out facts and informed arguments, clashing regularly with politicians and civil servants discomfited by the advent of a well-organised farmers lobby. Through his public lectures and newspaper pieces, he exerted an important influence over young farmers, most notably by persuading them of the advantages of cooperative livestock marts over unsanitary and inefficient cattle fairs.

From 1954 he combined his work in farm organisations with lecturing in agricultural economics and international trade in the UCD economics department. He also introduced courses on European institutions and was awarded a Ph.D. by UCD in 1955. His dual roles complemented each other, bringing home to him the importance of linking agricultural education with research. He criticised the government for failing to do so and also for starving agricultural education and research of resources and for maintaining political control over the farming advisory services. He identified a lack of training and basic schooling as the besetting weakness of Irish farming.

His research for the NFA revealed that Irish agriculture was unproductive and undercapitalised, but that much of this was attributable to government policies which lumbered farmers with high input and transport costs, arbitrary rates, mistaken breeding programs, volatile prices, weak cooperative marketing and export restrictions. Above all he showed how the strategy of seeking trade preferences for Irish farm produce in Britain had run aground once Britain began protecting its farmers through subsidies rather than tariffs. With their traditional British outlet emerging as the industrial world's most open food market, Irish farmers received the lowest prices in western Europe and became increasingly reliant on exporting unfinished cattle, a form of production that provided the least employment.

Pointing to the European common market as a secure, well-paying alternative, he highlighted the untenable nature of Ireland's position as a small, politically isolated food-exporting country, particularly as generously protected continental farmers produced ever-larger surpluses, which were then dumped on the British market. His arguments convinced previously sceptical farmers that there was a political solution to their economic difficulties, though his assertion that Ireland could join the EEC even if the UK did not was unrealistic. He was a founding member of the Irish Council of the European Movement, established in 1954, serving as its chairman (1962–5).

Having become a full-time UCD lecturer, he resigned his position in the NFA in January 1963, continuing for a time on the NFA's National Council. He received a doctorate in economic science from UCD in 1963 for his published work and became an associate professor of political economy (international trade) in 1969. Enthusiastic and engaging as a teacher, if at times impenetrable and absent-minded, he co-wrote an economics textbook, Elements of economics (1969), and expressed public sympathy for the late 1960s student protests against the UCD administration. A long-serving president of the Irish Council for Overseas Students, he was a council member of the Irish Federation of University Teachers and active in the Academic Staff Association as a committee member and secretary.

Continuing to comment regularly in the print media on farming, the EEC and economics, he had a well-regarded weekly farming column in the Irish Independent (1965–69) under the penname 'Agricola'. In 1971 he contributed to a booklet outlining the farming benefits to be derived from Ireland's membership of the EEC and later disputed claims made by anti-EEC campaigners concerning high food prices within EEC member states. After Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, he opposed efforts to subject the newly enriched farming sector to meaningful taxation. He also argued influentially that Ireland's currency link with a depreciating sterling reduced the benefits of EEC membership by causing high inflation.

He was a director in a firm of management consultants and of the South Dublin Provident Society, and was retained as an economics consultant by various semi-state agencies, the European Commission and AIB. His 1971 AIB appointment reflected his successful efforts to encourage the banks to lend more to farmers. During the 1960s and 1970s, he published a labour survey of the Cooley peninsula as well as studies of the Irish food processing and retailing sectors, the finance costs associated with Irish farming and the compliance costs associated with the Irish tax system. He condemned the high tax policies of the 1970s and 1980s for discouraging savings, employment and investment, and devised tax reform proposals on behalf of the Irish Federation for the Self-Employed. A longstanding member of the Christian Family Movement, he drew attention to the rapid 1970s increase in Irish working mothers and annoyed feminists by suggesting this would put families under strain and encourage lesbianism.

He co-wrote two histories, Milk to market (1989) and Farm organisations in Ireland: a century of progress (1996): the former capably described the role of the Leinster Milk Producers Association in supplying Dublin; the latter contains invaluable anecdotal material relating to the founding and early years of the NFA, though as a history it is workmanlike, partial and sketchy in places. After retiring from UCD in 1988, he kept active by playing tennis into his mid-eighties before switching to snooker and swimming. Following a long illness, he died in the Bloomfield Care Centre, Rathfarnham, Dublin, on 25 November 2012. He was buried in Mount Venus Cemetery, Rathfarnham, and left a will disposing of €1.26 million.

Sources
GRO, (birth, marriage cert.); Ir. Independent, passim, esp.: 2 Nov. 1943; 29 Oct. 1948; 24 May 1963 (profile); 14 Aug. 1979; NA, Dept. of the Taoiseach, S14603, 'Irish test for the post of third secretary: complaint of Louis P. F. Smith' (1949); Louis P. F. Smith, 'Agricultural education by co-operatives', The Irish Monthly, vol. 79, no. 935 (May 1951), 224–30; Nationalist and Leinster Times, 13 Dec. 1952; 15 Jan. 1965; Ir. Times, passim, esp.: 23 Oct. 1954; 3 Aug. 1955; 4 Aug. 1956 (profile); 21 Sept. 1957; 25 Aug. 1959; 28 Nov. 2012; 15 Dec. 2012 (obit.); Louis P. F. Smith, 'The role of farmers organizations', Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 44, no. 173 (spring 1955), 49–56; Kilkenny People, 6 Aug. 1955; Cork Examiner, 6 Mar. 1956; Irish Farmers' Journal, 24 Aug. (profile), 14 Dec. 1957; 4 Nov. 1961; 1 May 1971; 1 Dec. 2012; Ir. Press, passim, esp.: 29 Oct. 1957; 6 May, 11 Nov. 1969; 2 May 1972; National Observer, vol i, no. 1 (July 1958); Southern Star, 16 July 1960; Sunday Press, 27 Aug., 29 Oct. 1961; 3 Nov. 1963; 24 Apr. 1966; Kerryman, 17 Feb. 1962; Sunday Independent, 27 Oct. 1974; 19 May 2013; Hibernia, 2 May 1975; European Opinion, Dec. 1976; Report of the President; University College Dublin, 1988–1989, 185–6; Louis P. F. Smith, Farm organisations in Ireland: a century of progress (1996); Gary Murphy, In search of the promised land: the politics of post war Ireland (2009)

Forename: Louis, Patrick, Frederick
Surname: Smith
Gender: Male
Career: Agriculture, Education, Scholarship, Social Sciences
Religion: Catholic
Born 21 December 1923 in Co. Cavan
Died 25 November 2012 in Co. Dublin

Born: 02 April 1904, Richmond, Melbourne, Australia
Entered: 25 March 1930, Loyola Greenwich, Australia
Ordained 16 June 1939, Los Gatos, California, USA
Final vows: 15 August 1954
Died: 05 April 1989, St Raphael’s Nursing Home, Lockleys, Adelaide, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Part of the Xavier College, Kew, Melbourne, Australia community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ASL : 05 April 1931

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Walmsley Smith was a man who experienced self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, especially in his later days. This might seem hard to believe in a man who was so gifted intellectually. He was a good teacher of mathematics, and a man of wide interests, which included the garden and astronomy.
Smith was baptised, 10 April 1904, by Thomas Cahill, the first rector of Xavier College. He lived in Hawthorn, and carne to Xavier College aged eleven. After school he took out an engineering degree at Melbourne University 1930, joined the Jesuits, 25 March 1930, and completed his Jesuit studies in Sydney, Ireland and California. His regency was spent teaching mathematics to the juniors, 1932-34.
He left California on one of the last ships before the bombing of Pearl Harbour and settled down at Xavier College in 1941 to teach mathematics until he retired in 1973. For a
few years in the 1940s he was rowing master. For twenty years he was a member of the Mathematics Standing Committee for the Victorian Universities and Schools Examinations Board, 1948-68.
Testimony to his intellectual interests was his personal library, which contained subjects on mathematics, geography, astronomy, geometry and gardening.
This was followed by sixteen years of retirement, many of which gave him joy in pursuing his interests of music, gardening and reading.
His virtues were never conventional or conformist. He was not into being polite or particularly co-operative, and he certainly had very little time for suffering in silence. Greg Deming described him as a maverick who reached into the hearts of lonely and troubled boys. He also reached into the minds of clever and keen students, and he animated them to love and cherish their work. He developed a limp shortly before his 21st birthday as a result of an accident that resulted in a twisted foot. For the rest of his life he needed to use a stick, and with that stick he could give direction, gesticulate, and prod tardy scholars.

Born: 06 July 1893, Benagh, Kilkeel, County Down
Entered: 01 October 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: by 1937, Kurseong, India
Final Vows: 15 August 1937
Died: 28 December 1947, Korangi Creek, Karachi, Pakistan - Chigagensis Province (CHG) - Madurensis Mission (MDU) (in a plane crash)

Transcribed : HIB to TOLO 1926 to CHG 1928 (MDU)

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 1 1948

Frs. G. Casey and C. O'Conor represented the Province at the Solem Requiem Mass celebrated at Kilkeel Church, Co. Down on 22nd January for the late Fr. John Sloan, S.J., of Patna Mission (Chicago Province) who perished in the Dakota crash outside Karachi on the night of 27th December. Fr. O'Conor was the Celebrant. A brief account of his career appears below.

Obituary

Fr. John Sloan (1893-1924-1947) - Patna Mission

Fr. John Sloan (Patna Mission). Many of our Province who knew Fr. John at Tullabeg were shocked to learn of his tragic death in the last days of December, with twenty two others he perished in the Dakota crash just outside Karachi on the night of the 27th. He was at the time Superior of the missionary band (miss. excurr.) and on his way to give a mission.
Born at Benagh in the parish of Kilkeel, Co. Down in 1899, he went straight from the National School to business at John Hughes, Ltd., Liverpool. He appears to have attended night school at St. Francis Xavier's, where he met Fr. Bridge who arranged for his entry to Osterley, from which he came to our Novitiate on 1st October 1924. During the following year he was assigned to the Madura Mission of the Toulouse Province, where he completed his noviceship. He studied philosophy at Shembaganur, and during holidays, when catechising in various mission stations, began to show those talents for preaching which he put to such good use in after years. It was as a philosopher, too, that he started collecting funds for the building of a Church to St. Patrick at Periakulam, South India, a project which was warmly supported by the Bishop of Trichinopoly and was carried through to a successful issue. About 1928 Fr. General granted Mr. Sloan permission to transfer to the Patna Mission of the Chicago Province, where he enjoyed much better health and secured congenial work. On the completion of his philosophy in November 1930, he set out for Patna, where, to his amazement, he found himself Procurator of the Mission and residing at Bishop's House, Banakipore. At the end of the following year he went to Kurseong for theology and was ordained priest on 21st November, 1934.
After his Tertianship he served at various mission stations until 1937, when he became head of a missionary group, engaged in the giving of missions throughout India, a post be held till his untimely death, He travelled extensively by air during the ten years of this fruitful apostolate, and had only returned from the Persian Gulf a few days before the end.
He was the recipient of a personal letter of congratulation from our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, on the success of his work. Fr, Sloan was never in Ireland after he left it as a novice, in 1925.
He is survived by two sisters : Mrs. Harper, Greencastle, Ballyardle, Co. Down, and Mrs. Cavin, St. Anthony, Idaho, and by a brother, Fr. Francis Sloan, pastor of St. Teresa's Church, Midvale, Utah, R.I.P.

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948

Letter from Fr. J. A. MacSeumais, R. A. F. Staging Post, Mauripur.
“I am still awaiting a plane for Singapore. However, there is a possibility that I may be away tomorrow. This Station is served by Dutch Franciscans from St. Patrick's Church, Karachi. I was in there on Sunday and met the Superior Ecclesiasticus of this Area, Mgr. Alcuin Van Miltenburg, O.F.M. He it was who made all the arrangements for the burial of Fr. John Sloan, S.J. Fr. Sloan was travelling from Karachi Airport to Ceylon, in a TATA Dakota when the plane crashed at Karonji creek about 15 miles from Karachi Airport. The Mother Superior of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and one of her nuns, Mother Anthony, an Irishwoman, were called to St. Teresa's Nursing Home, Karachi to prepare Fr. Sloan's body for burial. He is buried in the Catholic Plot at Karachi Cemetery where several other Jesuits are buried. I visited Fr. Sloan's grave on Sunday and I hope to obtain a photograph of it.
The German Jesuits had the Mission of Sind and Baluchistan, and after the First World War, it was taken over by the other Provinces. In 1935, it was taken over by the Franciscans. There is a magnificent Memorial in front of St. Patrick's, built in honour of the Kingship of Christ and commemorating the work done by the Society in this Mission. Under the Memorial is a crypt and in a passage behind the altar is the ‘The Creation of Hell’ by Ignacio Vas, a number of figures of the damned being tortured in Hell. Indefinite depth is added by an arrangement of mirrors”.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Sloan 1893-1947
John Sloan has been described by his biographer as a Francis Xavier from Ulster. Born in Kilkeel County Down in 1898, he was what we might have called a late vocation. At the age of 23 he entered Osterley College in London, under Fr Lester, to fill in the gaps in his education. In 1924 he entered the Irish noviceship, during the course of which he was selected for the Indian Mission. Eventually in India, he was attached to the American Misison at Patna. Here began his life’s work.

The All-India Mission Band, which travelled the length and breadth of India, preaching Missions, mainly to English speaking residents. His conversions were untold, and the harder the case, the better John Sloan liked it. He was also responsible for numerous late vocations. His energy was boundless, though his frame was frail. Being warned by his doctor to take at least a year’s rest, he replied “I am only looking for eternal rest”.

He had just finished a Mission to oil-workers in the Persian Gulf and was on route to Ceylon to begin another campaign. The plane he boarded at Karachi on December 27th 1947 blew up after being air-borne ten minutes, and his broken body was picked up some ten miles from the city. He had had a premonition of disaster and had made a general confession in the Franciscans before embarking.

A truly apostolic soul, the fruits of his work are still to be seen, and many a priest thanks God daily at his Mass, that he met John Sloan.

Born: 14 July 1611, Cork City, County Cork
Entered: 30 September 1641, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 30 June 1641, Rome, Italy - pre Entry
Died: 07 December 1642, Naples, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)

Alias Percy

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Slingsby alias Percy
Son of Sir Francis Slingsby (cf Dominic Collins : Captain Slingsby) and Elizabeth née Cuffe (daughter of Hugh Cuffe, of Cuffe Hall, Somerset). Sir Francis’ mother was Lady Mary Percy, the only sister of Thomas and Henry Percy, the seventh and eighth Earls of Northumberland. Thomas led the “Rising of the North” and was executed for treason, and later beatified. Henry, though a Protestant member of the Percy family, also died in the Catholic cause, c 1532. Francis’ father settled in Ireland, and his son, Francis, was born in Cork 1611.
He studied at Oxford and was one of the best mathematicians of his day.
Visiting Rome, he was converted to the Catholic faith at the English College, and entered that College 06/02/1639 as a boarder, to repeat some studies and make Theology. He was Ordained Priest there 30 June 1641. He then entered the Society at St Andrea, Rome three months later 30/09/1641, leaving the English College an example of many virtues.
He was sent then to the Noviciate at Naples for a change of air at the end of his first year noviceship, and he died there soon after, still a novice.
After his conversion, he had returned to Ireland, was arrested and imprisoned at Dublin Castle, and there held the remarkable conference with the Protestant Bishop Ussher, recounted in “Records SJ” Vol V, pp 301 seq (cf also Vol VI, p 348 and Pedigree)
“Esteemed a Saint”; Converted his family; His life is written by Maurice Ward SJ

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Sir Francis and Elizabeth née Cuffe (both English) Brought up and educated in the Protestant faith of his parents.
He studied Humanities in Ireland and later was sent to Oxford University, where he studied Philosophy and Mathematics, showing a special aptitude for the latter.
During a visit to Europe, 1633, he was received into the Church and on his return to Ireland was imprisoned in Dublin for four months but finally released. It was at the insistence of Queen Maria Henrietta, consort of Charles 1, that young Slingsby recovered his liberty, thanks to the efforts behind the scene of Cardinal Barberini and the General of the Society. During his imprisonment, Francis was visited by Protestant Archbishop James Ussher, whose attempts to shake the constancy of the young convert proved unavailing. He was visited also by Robert Nugent, Superior of the Mission, who fervently hoped he would enter the Society.
On his release, Francis expressed his desire to become a priest but gave no indication that he wanted to become a Jesuit. He went to live, however, at the Dublin Residence of the Jesuits, where, with a few other young men, he studied Philosophy under Fr. Henry MacCavell.
Meanwhile, his mother, younger brother and sister followed him into the Catholic Church. As he had now decided to continue his ecclesiastical studies abroad, he made all the necessary legal arrangements for the renunciation of his inheritance in favour of his younger brother.
He entered the English College Rome in February 1639 and was Ordained there 30 June 1641.
The following 30 September 1641 he Entered St Andrea, Rome. At the end of his first year, due to ill health he was sent to Naples to complete his Noviceship, but he died soon after arrival 07 December 1642

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Francis Slingsby 1611-1642
Francis Slingsby was the son of Sir Francis Slingsby, and his wife Elizabeth Cuffe, of Cuffe Hall, Somerset England. His father settled in Ireland and Francis was born in Cork about 1611.

He studied at Oxford and was reputed one of the best mathematicians of his day. While visiting Rome Francis converted and entered the English College there. After his conversion, he returned to Ireland and held a remarkable conference with Bishop Ussher on religious issues. He was ordained in Rome and entered the Society in 1641,

Not being robust in health, he was sent to Naples for a change of air and to make his noviceship. He died soon after at the early age of 31.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SLINGSBY, FRANCIS, converted at Rome in September, 1633, became a Convictor of the English College at Rome on the 1st of February, 1639 : entered the Novitiate of St. Andrew on the 30th of September, 1641. Died at Naples.

Jesuit Youth Apostolate

Born: 25 April 1858, Drogheda, County Louth
Entered: 05 September 1877, St Charles College, Grand Coteau, LA, USA - Lugdunensis Province (LUGD)
Ordained: 1891, St Aloysius, Jersey
Final Vows: 02 February 1897
Died: 03 December 1921, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)

Born: 27 December 1808, Portarlington, County Laois
Entered: 16 March 1844, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Ordained: 1850
Died: 02 April 1852, Holy Cross College, Worcester, MA, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)

Born: 1683, County Galway
Entered: 10/11/1699, Goa, India - Goana Province (GOA)
Ordained: 1708,
Final Vows: 15/08/1717
Died: 02 December 1721, Mysuru, Karnataka, India - Goana Province (GOA)

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ :
1708-1711 After finished studies and ordination he taught at Daman College, Daman and Diu, India for a few years.
1711 Then sent as a missioner to Mysore (Mysuru), Karnataka, India where he died 10 years later

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Francis Skerret 1683-1721
Fr Francis Skerret was born in Galway in 1683 and entered the Society at Goa in India in 1699.

After his studies he was ordained in 1908, and taught for a few years at the College of Daman. He was then sent as a missioner to Mysore, where he died in 1721 after two years evangelising the Indians.

Founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley (1778–1841).

Born: 07 July 1843, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1861, Milltown Park
Died: 20 May 1865, TSt Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Educated at Belvedere College SJ and Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1864 at Roehampton London (ANG) studying

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at Belvedere and Clongowes.

After First Vows he was sent to Roehampton for studies. However, at the end of the year he was recalled to Tullabeg as a Prefect. he spent about eight months in this task when he caught a fever. Nobody, including the doctor doubted his recovery. He, however perhaps knew better, and in order to prepare asked the Rector to hear his Confession. His decline was very quick. He is buried in the old Rahan Cemetery.

Born: 10 August 1791, County Wexford
Entered: 07 October 1821, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Clane, County Kildare
Died: 20 May 1865, Kolkata, Bengal, India

by 1839 in Calcutta Mission; We have a date of death from somewhere and he disappears from the 1844 Catalogue, having been in up to 1841

Born: 10 April 1914, Broadwater Lodge, Lake Road, Wimbledon, Surrey, England
Entered: 07 September 1932, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1944, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1950, Chiesa de Gesù, Rome, Italy
Died: 08 August 1988, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

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

Father was a stockbroker in London and died in 1919. Mother then moved family to Galluny House, Strabane, County Derry.

Older of two boys.

Early education at Dominican Convent, Wicklow he then at age 13 went to Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1939 in Vals France (LUGD) studying
by 1947 at Heythrop, Oxfordshire (ANG) studying
by 1948 at Rome Italy (ROM) - studying

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 21st Year No 4 1946

England :
On September 26th Fr. Simpson went to Heythrop to do special studies in Sacred Scripture.

Irish Province News 63rd Year No 4 1988 (Final Edition)

Obituary

Fr Patrick Simpson (1914-1932-1988)

10th April 1914: born in Wimbledon, England. Schooled at Dominican convent-school, Wicklow, and 1927-32 in Clongowes, his home then being in Derry.
7th September 1932: entered SJ. 1932 4 Emo, noviciate. 1934-38 Rathfarnham, juniorate (at UCD, Latin and Greek to MA). 1938-41 philosophy: 1938-39 at Vals, France; 1939-41 at Tullabeg. 1941-45 Milltown, theology (31st July 1944: ordained a priest). 1945-46 Rathfarnham, tertianship. 1946-47 Heythrop College, Oxfordshire, England: private study of Scripture. 1947-50 Biblical Institute, Rome: study.
1950-88 Milltown, professor of Scripture (1950-60: Parat se ad exam. laur.). 1983-88 Ecclesiastical Assistant to Christian Life Communities (CLC). 8th August 1988: died in St Vincent's hospital, Dublin

It is difficult to write competently or fairly of anyone, even of those with whom we have lived for a long time in close contact. Our perceptions, even of ourselves can be so superficial. Only God can write our biography or autobiography (!). So we are shy to write of Paddy Simpson, but we must do what we can.
We can speak confidently of his wide and deep knowledge and of his willingness to share that knowledge. From his earliest days in the Society we have a picture of him holding forth endlessly, whether to one or to many, on a variety of topics, all the while standing tirelessly on the corridor. Coming into the refectory of a morning you would hear his voice. For Paddy there was no such thing as being off colour before breakfast. He could speak, naturally, of his own speciality, scripture, but also of so many subjects, sacred and profane. Again, he could talk of many practical things with technical knowledge, not least the subject of motor bikes.
In his piety he was not demonstrative. The rosary as a method of prayer did not appeal to him. Yet he surprised many by his enthusiasm for the charismatic movement, and he was much in demand among charismatics in Dublin, and attended Jesuit international charismatic conferences on the continent. He also took an active part in the Christian Life Community.
Although essentially an intellectual, he did not suffer from intellectual snobbery, and he took great pleasure, with no trace of condescension, in talking to and also helping ordinary people and admiring their views and insights. He was a ready learner. He appreciated intellectual honesty and could be blunt in speaking of what he regarded as humbug or pretentiousness.
Looking back over his life I cannot recall any pettiness. He accepted "leg pulling" cheerfully. I never saw him in a huff, or even angry. He may have suppressed hard feelings, but one never got the impression of such suppression or any resultant tension. He was patently honest and sincere, and freely acknowledged the worth of others, even when otherwise they did not appeal to him.
I am sure he had his disappointments, one of which, surely, must have been that he never finished his doctoral work in Rome. Despite his brilliance and capacity and quick understanding, he had great difficulty in protracted study, and apparently took no great joy in writing. A retentive memory and an analytical mind helped him greatly in his reading, An undoubtedly disorderly room, but a very orderly mind. It was always noted in community meetings or Milltown Institute meetings that his remarks were always worth heeding, and the result of clear and unprejudiced thought. He bore no ill-will if his views were not accepted. Many will recall too his cogent views on Six-County affairs.
It is well said that Paddy is remembered with affection - the expression used by the members of the Half-Moon swimming club at Ringsend by whom he was always accepted as one of themselves, and whom he greatly helped. He himself was a man of loyalty and affection, not least towards his own family as we saw in his great concern for his brother who suffered long before dying of cancer about five years ago.
Another aspect of him that always amused and caused gentle chaff was his joy in preparing his itineraries, whether at home or abroad - how to avail of all possible short routes, at the least possible cost. It was said, true or not, that he got more joy out of planning a journey than out of the journey itself.
We cannot speak of his spiritual life, but it was noted that he seemed to have not a few who sought his aid and advice, and we may be sure that he was generous in his sharing with others.
It was hard for him to admit that he had had a small stroke, although for a year or two he had been talking of getting old, and indeed he showed signs of it. In the end when speech had failed, one could not be sure of contact, except for one occasion when he gave his beautiful smile. We miss him in Milltown, but thank God for His eternity where all who are missed will be found.

Born: 31 December 1816, Ardee, County Louth
Entered: 30 April 1856, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare
Final Vows: 15 August 1866
Died: 26 November 1901, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

1901 Census inicates born in Meath.

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
According to himself, a sermon by the famous Dr Cahill was the occasion of his deciding to enter Religion. The key statement by Dr Cahill was “Woe to him who is alone”!

Note from Daniel Scully Entry :
He had a very long illness, and was carefully nursed by his old friend Brother George Sillery, who told many amusing stories about him.

His Noviceship was spent first at Clongowes and then at Tullabeg.
1861 He was sent to Belvedere, and was there for 38 years.
1900 He was sent to Tullabeg, and he died there 26 November 1901

His simple homely ways, his unaffected gentleness and piety made him a favourite of everyone. Nothing seemed to affect his mood and temper, even in very trying times. His standard response to anything was a calm “Aye”!
He had a long and fairly uneventful life. He was always either in the Chapel, at Prayer or at Work. At the same time, he was not an austere ascetic, he had a great sense of humour and love a joke. He loved to tell amusing stories from his life, and also quote some of the rhymes he had stored up calling it a “Bit of poethry”!
In his later years he began to dote a bit, and there are a legion of stories on his exploits, one of which included his rousing the Community for prayer in the small hours of the night. The Rector woke one night at 2am to find him standing by his bed, swinging a piece of burning rope around his head and telling him it was time to get up! It was said that on more than one occasion he all but set the house on fire! he had a great affinity for matches, a large quantity of which he kept in his room, and he would journey through the house at midday lighting any gas jet he could find. In the end his memory failed him completely. Often when he had recently completed a meal, he would turn up in the refectory asking what time the meal would begin. Famously, at one domestic exhortation which went on a bit long, he suddenly threw up his hands and spoke in a fairly loud voice “Blessed Mother of God, will he ever stop”! These and many other similar stories made his name a household one, especially in the Novitiate, where he died 26 November 1901.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Brother George Sillery 1816-1901
Br George Sillery was born on December 31st 1916 and entered the Society in 1858. According to himself, the cause of his vocation was a sermon he heard preached by the famous Dr Cahill in Dublin. His text was “Woe to him that is alone”. The preacher dwelt with such persuasive eloquence on the evils of a solitary life, that Br George resolved to seek in religious life a remedy for the loneliness and spiritless derelictions of this world. His noviceship was spent at Clongowes and Tullabeg, after which he came to Belvedere in 1861. In 1900 he was transferred to Tullabeg and he remained there until his death.

His life was long and uneventful. It flowed on its unvarying round of prayers and work till he reached the patriarchal age of 85. In the latter years of his old age he began to dote, and he lost all sense of time. Just when the Litanies were ending in the evening he was often heard asking when they wold begin. Once, when a domestic exhortation lasted rather long, old Br George, sublimely oblivious of his surroundings, suddenly threw up his hands and said in a fairly loud voice “Blessed Mother of God, will he ever stop”. These and a thousand other anecdotes made his name a household word among the novices in the Novitiate, where he died on November 26th 1901.

Born: 16 June 1884, Christ Church Place, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 06 September 1902, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 16 May 1918, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1922, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 28 March 1965, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin

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

Father a paper merchant and printer and living with mother at Pembroke Park, Clyde Road, Dublin.

Four brothers (he is third) and four sisters.

Early education at local day school and then CUS, Dublin. He then spent a year at Belvedere College SJ, then at St George’s College, Webridge, Surrey and then Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1907 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying
Came to Australia for Regency 1909

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Thomas Shuley entered the Society in 1902, and came to Australia in 1909. From 1910-15 he was a regent at Xavier College, working at various times as second and first division prefects, but his name is misspelt in the lists from the college history. After ordination in Ireland, he worked mainly in the pastoral ministry.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 40th Year No 3 1965
Obituary :
Fr Thomas Shuley SJ
Fr. Tom Shuley was born in Dublin on 18th June 1884. He was one of five brothers, of whom three, Tom, George and Arthur, came to Clongowes in 1899. Tom was then fifteen years old, having been for some years previously at St. George's College, Weybridge, Surrey, conducted by the Josephite Fathers. He completed his last year in Rhetoric class in 1902 and entered the noviceship at Tullabeg on 6th September of that year, Fr. Michael Browne being his master of novices and Fr. Richard Campbell socius. Of his immediate contemporaries the only survivors are Fr. C. Byrne and Fr. E. Mackey.
After two years juniorate in Tullabeg and three years philosophy in Stonyhurst, he went to Australia for colleges, and was prefect at Xavier College, Melbourne, for five years. He apparently filled the position with great success. When Fr. Paul O'Flanagan was in Australia in 1950, he was impressed by the number of old Xaverians who, after that long lapse of time, enquired for Fr. Shuley and spoke of him with esteem and affection.
During his last two years at Xavier, he was in charge of the cadets. In connection with this activity, he used to tell a good story. On one occasion, he accompanied the cadets to an inter school shooting competition. After the competition, the sergeant in charge brought the boys up to the targets and showed them how the signals were worked. He than announced that, as a finale to the day, there would be a match between himself and Mr. Shuley, ten shots each. Mr. Shuley was quite a good shot and accepted the challenge, the stakes being half-a-crown. The contest was thrilling : Each contestant scored an “inner” until the very last shot, when Mr. Shuley just failed with an “outer” and duly handed over the half-crown. The boys, of course, were greatly impressed by his prowess. The party then went down to the railway station. The sergeant shook hands with Mr. Shuley and whispered : “There's your half-crown back, sir. I had that all arranged with the markers”.
He returned to Ireland in 1916 and, after theology in Milltown Park, was ordained in 1919. He taught for a year in Mungret before doing tertianship in Tullabeg. Four years as Higher Line Prefect in Clongowes were followed by seven years in Mungret, at first as First Prefect, then as Minister. In 1933 he went to St. Ignatius', Galway, where he was Procurator and then Minister until 1939. After a year on the staff at Gardiner St. there began his long connection with the mission staff, which lasted from 1940 to 1953. At the close of this period he was over seventy, but remained remarkably active, and acted as Minister to the end of his life, in the Crescent, Limerick, 1953-55, in Rathfarnham 1955-59 and in Leeson Street 1959-64. During the last year or two in Leeson Street his health had been failing, and in 1964 he was transferred to Milltown Park. On 18th September he had a stroke and was brought to St. Vincent's nursing home. He recovered to the extent of being able to move about with assistance, but his condition never gave much hope of recovery. On 28th March 1965 he had a second stroke and the end came peacefully within a few minutes.
When one thinks of Fr. Shuley's long and active life, the first characteristic that one recalls is his complete devotion to the work he had in hand. He is, perhaps, best remembered as a Minister, in which office he spent twenty-three years, and in which he displayed remarkable efficiency. He took a keen interest in the details of housekeeping, was well informed in business matters, knew where to buy to the best advantage and where to get the best advice concerning work to be done. He was not, however, engrossed in business. He enjoyed pleasant relaxation when it came his way no one was a better companion on an outing or holiday - but he never lost sight of the main purpose, the material welfare of the house where he was in charge and the comfort of his community. As a missioner, he was most methodical and painstaking. One of his former fellow-missioners recalls that, at the outset, his sermons were not very effective. He realised this, and set to work to improve them, making copious notes of his reading, and seeking advice from others, with the result that he soon became a really first class preacher.
This devotion to duty was what one might call the outstanding exterior feature of Fr. Shuley's character. It flowed naturally from a corresponding interior feature, his complete selflessness. No man was ever so free from what has so well been called “the demon of self-pity”. It was not that he had no feelings. He would, indeed, talk freely to his intimate friends about the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” which had come his way during his life in the Society. But he treated all adversities with a good-humoured, almost light-hearted courage, and his attitude was that the past was the past and the thing to do was to get on with the next job. In his latter years he had a good deal of illness, which he endured in the most matter-of-fact manner, conscientiously taking the necessary measures for his recovery, and resuming his work in the quickest possible time.
Fr. Shuley was a wonderful community man. He had a great capacity for friendship, and a special gift for seeing the humorous side of life whether within or without the walls of the monastery. He was an excellent raconteur, and had a power of making a good story out of some incident that would have appeared featureless to others.
His deep, though unobtrusive piety was shown by the regularity of his religious life and by his constancy in spiritual reading. One would often find him in his room delving into some spiritual author, old or new, and he would give one the gist of what he had been reading, accompanied by his own shrewd and humorous comments on its application to actual life. At no time was the depth of his spirituality so evident as in his last days, when, helpless to a considerable extent and suffering much discomfort, and obviously knowing that the end was not far off, he displayed complete resignation and that good-humoured courage that had been such a feature of his whole life.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1965

Obituary

Rev Thomas Shuley SJ (OB 1890)

The Rev Thomas Shuley SJ, who has died in a Dublin nursing home, was born in Dublin on June 16th, 1884.

He was educated at Belvedere, St George's College, Weybridge, and Clongowes Wood College, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1902. Having studied humanities and philosophy at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore, and Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, he spent six years as teacher and prefect at St. Xavier College, Melbourne.

He returned to Dublin in 1915 for theological studies at Milltown Park, where he was ordained in 1918.

Father Shuley was stationed for 17 years in the Jesuit secondary schools at Clongowes, Mungret and Galway. During a further 17 years he was engaged in giving retreats and missions throughout the country or in church work at St Francis Xavier's, Dublin, and the Sacred Heart Church, Limerick. During the last 10 years of his life he was Vice Superior and Bursar at Rathfarnham Castle and 35 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin.

Irish Times, 30/3/65

Born: 1627, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 01 January 1624, Villarejo, Spain - Toletanae Province (TOLE)
Died: 19 December 1629, Murcia, Spain - Toletanae Province (TOLE)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had begun his Priestly studies at Irish College Salamanca 01 January 1622, two years before Ent 01 January 1624 Villarejo
After First Vows he was sent to Murcia to continue his studies and showed himself there to be a student of high promise. Although he had been expected to eventually go work on the Irish Mission, he died at Murcia 19 December 1629

Born: 24 June 1833, Clane, County Kildare
Entered: 14 September 1860, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 15 August 1871
Died: 02 November 1887, Milltown Park, Dublin

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He was an excellent cook, and he looked after the communities of Milltown, Gardiner St and Tullabeg to great satisfaction.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Cook before entry

Born: 04 March 1791, Killarney, County Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1809, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1822, St Patrick's College, Maynooth, County Kildare
Died 05 August 1834, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin

in Clongowes 1817

John Shyne
Ordained at St Patrick’s College Maynooth, on a Saturday within the octave of Pentecost 1822, having studied Theology at Clongowes

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was a zealous Missioner, and engaged in the Confessional until 10pm the night before his death, and had the reputation of an edifying religious man.
He was regarded as the life and most efficient supporter of the new Day Schools in Dublin, and was esteemed as a very superior classical scholar - “sit propitius amico veteri et Praeceptori!” (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
“He was a man of considerable talents, and taught with great success” (Fr Curtis)
1814 He was one of the first three Professors at Clongowes
1830 He commenced the “day school” in Hardwicke St, Dublin
Note from the Robert O’Ferrall Entry :
Died a victim of charity from cholera, while attending the sick bed of Father John Shine, who died from the same disease, at Gardiner St.
Loose leaf note in CatChrn : Entitled “Left Stonyhurst for Castle Brown” :
10 May 1814

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
1814 He was one of the first three Professors at Clongowes.
1850 (should read 1830) Started the Day School at Hardwicke St
“He passed among his brethern for a very superior classical scholar” (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
Had the reputation of an edifying and religious man.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father John Shine 1791-1834
On March 4th 1791 was born Fr John Shine. He entered the noviceship at Hodder in 1809.

He was one of the first three professors at Clongowes in 1814, where he taught for many years with great success. Among his brethren he was considered a very superior classical scholar. But his talents were not constrained to the classical languages, for he translated a drama from Italian for the use of the pupils at Clongowes.

In 1830 he was sent to Dublin where he taught in the school at Hardwicke Street and worked as an Operarius in the Church.

Not being of robust health he fell victim to cholera, then raging in Dublin, and he died in 1834 with the reputation of an edifying religious.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHINE, JOHN. This zealous young Father (for he was ordained Priest but at Pentecost 1822) was cut off in the flower of usefulness by cholera, in Dublin, on Sunday, the 3rd of August, 1834. aet. 43. Soc. 25. He had remained in the Confessional, busily engaged until 10 o clock of the preceding night! His remains were deposited in the Cemetery of Glasnevin. Amongst his brethren he passed for a very superior Classic Scholar; and the New Day Schools of the Society in Dublin, justly regarded him as their soul and their most efficient supporter. Having had the honor of numbering him amongst his pupils at Stonyhurst during the years 1806 and 1807, the Compiler of these Notices may be allowed to adopt the language of F. Edmund Campian, on hearing of the happy death of the Reverend Cuthbert Mayne : “Sit propotius Amico veteri et Prceceptori : horum enim nominum gloriola perfruar nunc ambitiosius quam antea."

Born: 18 July 1898, Altmore, Pomeroy, County Tyrone
Entered: 15 September 1919, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1930, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1934, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 07 February 1986, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin

by 1933 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

Parents were farmers.

Eldest of two - sister and brothers.

Education at St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon (1911-1913) and then at Blackrock College CSSp in Dublin. He then went to the National University for three years obtaining a BA.

Chaplain in the Second World War.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 16th Year No 4 1941

General :
Seven more chaplains to the forces in England were appointed in July : Frs Burden, Donnelly, J Hayes, Lennon and C Murphy, who left on 1st September to report in Northern Ireland, and Fr Guinane who left on 9th September.
Fr. M. Dowling owing to the serious accident he unfortunately met when travelling by bus from Limerick to Dublin in August will not be able to report for active duty for some weeks to come. He is, as reported by Fr. Lennon of the Scottish Command in Midlothian expected in that area.
Of the chaplains who left us on 26th May last, at least three have been back already on leave. Fr. Hayes reports from Redcar Yorkshire that he is completely at home and experiences no sense of strangeness. Fr. Murphy is working' with the Second Lancashire Fusiliers and reports having met Fr. Shields when passing through Salisbury - the latter is very satisfied and is doing well. Fr. Burden reports from Catterick Camp, Yorks, that he is living with Fr. Burrows, S.J., and has a Church of his own, “so I am a sort of PP”.
Fr. Lennon was impressed very much by the kindness already shown him on all hands at Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh and in his Parish. He has found the officers in the different camps very kind and pleased that he had come. This brigade has been without a R.C. Chaplain for many months and has never yet had any R.C. Chaplain for any decent length of time. I am a brigade-chaplain like Fr Kennedy and Fr. Naughton down south. He says Mass on weekdays in a local Church served by our Fathers from Dalkeith but only open on Sundays. This is the first time the Catholics have had Mass in week-days

Irish Province News 17th Year No 1 1942

Chaplains :
Our twelve chaplains are widely scattered, as appears from the following (incomplete) addresses : Frs. Burden, Catterick Camp, Yorks; Donnelly, Gt. Yarmouth, Norfolk; Dowling, Peebles Scotland; Guinane, Aylesbury, Bucks; Hayes, Newark, Notts; Lennon, Clackmannanshire, Scotland; Morrison, Weymouth, Dorset; Murphy, Aldershot, Hants; Naughton, Chichester, Sussex; Perrott, Palmer's Green, London; Shields, Larkhill, Hants.
Fr. Maurice Dowling left Dublin for-Lisburn and active service on 29 December fully recovered from the effects of his accident 18 August.

Irish Province News 61st Year No 2 1986

Obituary

Fr Daniel Shields (1898-1919-1986)

18th July 1898: born. 15th September 1919: entered SJ. 1919-21 Tullabeg, noviciate. 1921-24 Milltown, philosophy. 1924-27 Clongowes, regency. 1927-31 Milltown, theology (31st July 1930: ordained a priest). 1931-32 Clongowes, teaching. 1932-33 St Beuno's, tertianship.
1933-37 Mungret, teaching, 1937-41 Clongowes, ditto. 1941-46 chaplain to British army. 1946-47 Clongowes, teaching. 1947-52 Galway, retreat-giving. 1952-55 Leeson St, teaching in Kevin street technical school. 1955-57 Gardiner St, church work and director of “Penny Dinners” (the direction of which he retained till the end). 1957-60 Loyola, Superior, 1961-86 Gardiner St, church work: besides the “Penny dinners” he was associated with “Catholic Stage Guild”. 7th February 1986: died.
On his army chaplaincy see his article “Fading memories” in Interfuse no. 41 (February 1986), pp. 35-38.

◆ Interfuse

Obituary

Fr Daniel Shields (1898-1919-1986)

18th July 1898: born. 15th September 1919: entered SJ. 1919-21 Tullabeg, noviciate. 1921-24 Milltown, philosophy. 1924-27 Clongowes, regency. 1927-31 Milltown, theology (31st July 1930: ordained a priest). 1931-32 Clongowes, teaching. 1932-33 St Beuno's, tertianship.
1933-37 Mungret, teaching, 1937-41 Clongowes, ditto. 1941-46 chaplain to British army. 1946-47 Clongowes, teaching. 1947-52 Galway, retreat-giving. 1952-55 Leeson St, teaching in Kevin street technical school. 1955-57 Gardiner St, church work and director of “Penny Dinners” (the direction of which he retained till the end). 1957-60 Loyola, Superior, 1961-86 Gardiner St, church work: besides the “Penny dinners” he was associated with “Catholic Stage Guild”. 7th February 1986: died.
On his army chaplaincy see his article “Fading memories” in Interfuse no. 41 (February 1986), pp. 35-38.

Born: 25 March 1931, Pembroke Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1948, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 31 July 1962, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February1966, Chiesa del Gesù, Rome, Italy
Died: 03 April 2005, Wah Yan College, Hong Kong - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed HIB to HK : 03 December 1966; HK to CHN : 1992

Father was a Professor at UCD and this parents had business interests.

Only boy with three sisters.

Early education was at St Michael’s CBS, Eblana Avenue, Dun Laoghaire., and in 1943 he went to Belvedere College SJ for five years.

by 1957 at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong - Regency studying language
by 1965 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Father Bernard Joseph Shields S.J.
R.I.P.

Father Joseph Shields of the Society of Jesus, died in his sleep on 3 April 2005, he was 74.

Father Shields was born on 25 March 1931 in Dublin, Ireland and was a much-loved volunteer staff member of the Sunday Examiner. He will be sorely missed. He was ordained a priest on 31 July 1962 in Dublin.

There will be a Requiem Mass to be celebrated by Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun at Christ the King Chapel, Causeway Bay, on 16 April at 10am with vigil prayers on the previous evening at the Hong Kong Funeral parlor, North Point. The Jesuit community will welcome visitors from 5:30pm. He will be buried at St. Michael’s Catholic Cemetery, Happy Valley.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 10 April 2005

Mourning a quiet Jesuit

“I first met ‘Father Joe’, as we fondly called him, in the early 1980s at Holy Spirit College,” reminisced Chan Sui-jeung. “I was looking for research materials on Judaism and he directed me to Matteo Ricci’s dairy, a copy of which was in the college library.” Chan said that their common interest in classics and Chinese history led them into the first of many long conversations.

Chan related that he next came into contact with the Irish-born Jesuit, Father Bernard J. Shields, about 10 years later at the office of the Sunday Examiner. Father Joe did the proofreading and I came as a volunteer,” said Chan. “Office space was at a premium. At times we even shared the same desk!” He said that the always thorough and meticulous “gentle priest with the unusual turn of phrase” was a great asset to the editorial staff, especially when the chase was on for the “right turn of phrase.”

Chan said their quiet moments together produced stories about Father Joe’s student days under the late Father Edward Collins SJ, how he had assisted in sorting Father Turner’s manuscript on Tang Dynasty poetry and his three or so years in Taiwan at the Fu Jen University, where he had met distinguished Jesuit scholars like Father Fang Chi Yung and Father Simon Chin. Chan also noted that he learned to complement his Cantonese language skills with a “quite acceptable Putonghua.”

His long-time friend pointed out a little known fact about Father Joe. “He was a considerable authority on history and the works of Giuseppe Castiglione. When one of the animal heads of the Yang Ming Garden in Beijing went on sale in Hong Kong, it was Father Shields who informed the auctioneer that their historical write up was inaccurate.”

Born on 25 March 1931, he attended Christian Brothers and Jesuit schools in Ireland and joined the society in 1948, taking first vows in 1950. Three years at University College Dublin gave him a first class honours degree in Latin, Greek and ancient history. He came to Hong Kong in 1956 and returned home for theology studies and later ordination in Milltown, Dublin, on the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, 31 July 1962. He then studied Sacred Scripture in Rome and returned to Hong Kong in 1973. He taught at the diocesan seminary in Aberdeen, the Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Anglican Theological Seminary.

He was also a mentor in Hebrew at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and took students to visit the synagogue in the Mid-Levels on more than one occasion. Chan said,

“I had plans to introduce him to the well-stocked library at the Jewish Community Centre.”

He recalls him as humble, soft-spoken with a gentle smile, popular and loved. Shy and retiring by nature, Father Shields nevertheless stood up and spoke boldly when interviewed on television while participating in a street rally in Hong Kong, on 11 April last year, in defence of his much loved brother and sister Catholics on the mainland.

Chan has fond memories of wine, beers and cheese in the newspaper office at the end of a hard day, when the then editor, Maryknoll Father John Casey, would jokingly accuse Father Shields of being “un-Irish” for taking “water only” during the sacred office ritual.

Father Bernard Joseph Shields died in his sleep on Sunday, 3 April. His three sisters came from Ireland to attend his funeral, celebrated by Bishops Joseph Zen Ze-kiun and John Tong Hon with some 35 priests, at Christ the King Chapel, Causeway Bay, on 16 April. Approximately 400 people came to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. Fellow Jesuits, Fathers Robert Ng and John Russell paid tribute to him at the Mass. He was buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery in Happy Valley.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 24 April 2005

◆ Biographical Notes of the Jesuits in Hong Kong 1926-2000, by Frederick Hok-ming Cheung PhD, Wonder Press Company 2013 ISBN 978 9881223814 :
He was born in Dublin in 1931 and educated at Belvedere College SJ. His father was Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, bequeathing to his son a love of scholarship and books.

He joined the Society in 1948 and followed the usual course of studies, including a Degree in Classical Latin and Greek, and he was sent to Hong Kong for Regency in 1956.

He wanted to master Cantonese spending two years at Cheung Chau and was then sent to Wah Yan College Hong Kong, teaching for a year before returning to Ireland for Theology at Milltown Park, and he was Ordained by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in 1962. He then made Tertianship, and after that was sent to Rome for a Doctorate in Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

The intention was that he would remain in Rome to teach, but then he was invited by the Chinese Provincial Frank Borkhardt to teach instead at the Theology Faculty of Fujen Catholic University in Taiwan. To prepare for this he undertook Mandarin studies at the Jesuit language school of Hsinchu for 18 months.

1973 He returned to Hong Kong teaching Scripture at the Regional Seminary at Aberdeen, and he also became its librarian for many years. On return he was also briefly Master of Novices in Cheung Chau.
1977 He was invited to teach Theology at Chung Chi College where he taught New Testament Greek and Studies.

Over his time in Hong Kong he also taught at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Shatin, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, SKH Ming Hua Anglican Theological College.

He also served as Socius to the Regional Secretary for Macau-Hong Kong, William Lo (1991-1996).

Light-hearted and willing to help in any way he could, he also proof-read the Sunday Examiner, as well as normal priestly ministries, such as the Adam Shcall residence once a month.

He was scholarly and keen on accurate information. He was also modest and well mannered, eschewing argument or controversy, preferring to be a conciliator, seeking understanding and peace.

He was especially dedicated to the Church’s Mission in China and its people.

Born: 23 August 1891, Lisheenabrone, Swinford, County Mayo
Entered: 06 September 1908, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 24 August 1923, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Final Vows: 02 February 1929
Died: 02 December 1969, Jamalpur, Bihar, India - Kolkata Province (CCU)

Transcribed HIB to BELG : 1911; BELG to CCU

Father is a Book keeper at a general grocery and bakery (J & E Dolphin). Mother is National School teacher. They have resided in Swinford Town for fourteen years.

Third of four sons (2nd and 4th deceased) and has a sister who is now also a National School Teacher.

Educated at the local Convent School Swinford from 9 to 14, and then the Marist Brothers at Swinford. In 1905 he went to Mungret College SJ

Irish Province News 52nd Year No 2 1977

Calcutta Province

Extract from a letter from a Jesuit of Calcutta Province, Darjeeling Region (Fr. Edward Hayden, St. Joseph's College, North Point, Darjeeling, Western Bengal)

I was one of the old “Intermediate” boys of the Christian Brothers, Carlow. I left off in 1910, 67 years ago, at the end of June. Yes, we learnt the Gaeilge. The Brothers - or some I met, one in particular, a Brother Doyle, was very keen on it. The others didn't teach it as it was only in the “Academy” that they began with languages: French, Gaeilge, Algebra, Euclid and of course English. (5th Book - Senior Elementary Class - was followed by the “Academy”). The Brothers had dropped Latin just before I joined the “Academy”. We were living at a distance of 5 Irish miles from Carlow, and I was delicate, so I often fell a victim of 'flu, which didn't help me to make progress in studies - made it very hard: but at that time the rule was “do or die”. There was only one excuse for not having home work done – you were dead! That was the training we had: it stood me in good stead through life; it is the one thing I am grateful for.
We had a number of Irishmen here, a handful: Fr Jos Shiel, Mayo, died in Patna. Fr James Comerford, Queen's County, died in Bihar. I met the Donnelly brothers, they were Dubliners. The one who died (Don) was Editor of the Sacred Heart Messenger. Many of his stories were about horse-racing - he must have read plenty of Nat Gould when he was a boy! (Nat wrote a number of horse-racing stories supposed to have been in Australia). There are three Irishmen in Ranchi: Frs Donnelly, Phelan and Lawlor. Fr Phelan has spent nearly his whole life in India. As a boy he was in North Point, and after his Senior Cambridge he joined the Society. At that time there was only the Missio Maior Bengalensis of the Belgian Province. The Mission took in half or more of north-east India - Patna, Ranchi and south of it, Assam, Bhutan and Sikkim - an area four or five times that of Ireland! Needless to say, there were parts of it which had no SJ within a hundred miles ...Down here in the Terai where I am “hibernating” out of the cold of Darjeeling, some forty-five years ago there was no priest. One or two of the professors of theology from Kurseong, some 40 miles away, used to visit this district at Christmas and Easter. It was very malarious. Catholics from Ranchi came here to work on the tea plantations. Then a Jesuit was sent to reside in it. Now the district has schools and Jesuits galore, also non-Jesuits. Great progress has been made. The Salesians took up Assam, the American SJs took over Patna. The Northern Belgians took over Ranchi and the Southern Belgians took Calcutta. (The Belgian Province grew till its numbers reached 1400. Then, about 1935, Belgian separated into Flemings - North - and Walloons - South). Ranchi was given to the North and Calcutta to the South. On the 15th August last year (1976) Calcutta was raised from being a Vice Province to be a full-blown Province. 100% of those joining the SJ now are sons of India. Madura in the south has been a Province for years. Nearly all the Europeans are dead: no more are allowed to come permanently unless for a very, very special reason, India has begun to send her sons to East Africa in recent years.
Fr Lawlor is Irish-born but somehow joined the Australian Province about the time it started a half-century or so ago.
Brother Carl Kruil is at present in charge of an ashram: a place for destitutes, in Siliguri. Silguri is a city which grew up in the last forty years around the terminus of the broad gauge railway and the narrow (two-foot) toy railway joining the plains with Darjeeling - one of the most wonderful lines in the world, rising from 300 feet above sea-level, 7,200 feet in about 50 miles and then dropping down to about 5,500 feet in another ten. Three times it loops the loop and three times climbs up by zig-zags. I seem to remember having met Fr Conor Naughton during the war. Quite a number of wartime chaplains came to Darjeeling. The mention of Siliguri set me off rambling. Br Krull remembers his visit to Limerick. (He stayed at the Crescent, 11th 13th June, 1969). He is a born mechanic. Anything in the line of machinery captivates him. He has to repair all the motors and oil engines – some places like this have small diesel generators which have to be seen to from time to time and all other kinds of machinery: cameras, typewriters etc. At present he comes here to do spot welding (electric welding of iron instead of bolts and nuts.
The PP, here is replacing an old simple shed with a corrugated iron roof by a very fine one with brick walls and asbestos-cement roof. Two years ago or so, the roof was lifted by a sudden whirlwind clean off the wooden pillars on which it rested. Since then he has been saying the Sunday Masses on the veranda of a primary school. In this school 235 children receive daily lessons and a small mid-day meal. The Sisters are those of St. Joseph of Cluny – all from South India. They are really heroines: no work is too difficult for them. They do all their own work and cook for us. Their Vice-Provincial is from somewhere in the centre of the “Emerald Gem”. They are growing in numbers and do great work, running a dispensary amongst other things. The church is very broad, approximately 90 by 60 feet. As no benches are used - people sit on the floor - it will hold nearly 450 people at a time. The altar is in one corner. :
Fr Robert Phelan (Ranchi Province) had a visit one night from dacoits (armed robbers), but with help managed to beat them off.
Ranchi had several of these raids last year. In nearly every case the dacoits managed to get some cash.
One night about two weeks ago a rogue elephant (one that is wild and roaming away from the herd) came to a small group of houses close by. A man heard the noise and came out. The elephant caught him by the leg and threw him on to a corn stack - fortunately. The corn stack of rice waiting to be thrashed was quite broad and flat on top! He was very little the worse for the experience. And that is the end of the news.
One more item: please ask the new Editor of the Irish Province News to let me have copies as (?) and send them by overland (surface mail). Even if they are three months coming, they will be news. God bless you and reward you handsomely.
Yours in our Lord,
Edward Hayden, SJ (born 15th October 1893, entered S.J. 1st February 1925, ordained 21st November 1933, took final vows on 2nd February 1936. Now conf. dom. et alumn. and script. hist. dom. at the above address).

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1913

Letters from Our Past

Father Joseph Shiel SJ

Rev Joseph Shiel SJ, writes from Shembaganur College, January 3rd, 1912.

I am now over a year in India, and.on the whole I find the climate agreeable. I am ever so pleased with my surroundings. The scenery is delightful, with cascades, forests and panoramic views, enough to please the most fastidious. There is a great mixture of nationalities in the College, but the spirit of charity is supreme.

This, or rather last year has been an eventful one for India. The Country is seething with excitement owing to the sweeping changes of Government made alter the Durbar. The Anglo Indians are not too well pleased with the change of capital; but of course time only will reveal whether their displeasure is reasonable or not. The Mahommedans are beside themselves with joy to have Delhi as capital again, and the Bengalis are settling down to quiet life again after the re-uniting of the two Bengals. For us Catholics the year was not without interest. St Francis Xavier's College, Calcutta, celebrated its Golden Jubilee last year, and a very big event it was. The past boys, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus and Mahommedans came together, subscribed generously and made the celebrations a great success. St Xaviers' is an institute of very high repute in India, “The Catholic Association of Bengal” was inaugurated on November 12th, by His Grace Dr Meulmans SJ, Archbishop of Calcutta. Over 10,000 catholics were present on the grounds of St Xavier's College, to take part in the proceedings. It was a very great manifestation and everything went off successfully.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1923

Our Past

Father Joseph Shiel SJ

In a letter of January, 1923, from Kurseong, India, to the Rector of Mungret, Rev Joseph A Shiel SJ (M L S, 1905-'08), gives news of the mission in Bengal. He writes :

After the novitiate at Tullabeg, in 1910, I came out to India as a member of the Bengal Mission (the only one from Mungret).

Our Belgian confreres are very modest as to their doings in Bengal. Yet, since the days of the great Fr Lievens SJ, they have been working real wonders. Conversions are increasing to all extraordinary extent. Not only villages, but whole districts in Chota Nagpore are desirous of coming over to the Church. We are not too short of men, but since the world-war our finances have been in a very poor way. Some of us here have published a little pamphlet, entitled, “Voices from India”, which gives an outline of our missionary work. It is wonderful and most consoling - this work of rescuing souls from paganism and slavery; and, if I may judge by the remarkable progress of the Maynooth Mission to China, there is no people in the world more eager to help foreign missions than our own Irish people, once they know what mission work means. I am myself specially interested in the opening of one new station in Chota Nagpore. The work is of pressing necessity, as it means the acquisition of thousands of new converts. But the missionary responsible for its opening is destitute of all that is necessary to make a start. I have described the place and its needs in a pamphlet under the heading, “Waiting for the Dawn in Katanga”. I have, as we say, “adopted” Katanga. If Mungret and my old friends there can “adopt” me, they shall have the deepest gratitude, not only of myself but of the Katanga missioner and his converts. With every good wish for the prosperity of dear old Mungret, which has acquired missionary fame, I am, etc, etc

Born: 17 March 1920, Dundrum, Dublin
Entered: 10 February 1939, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Final Vows: 15 August 1950, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin
Died: 05 November 1983, Sacred Heart, Monze, Zambia - Zambiae Province (ZAM)

Transcribed : HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

by 1955 at Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) working

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
“We imagine his going left many hearts empty and evoked memories of all kinds of services and kindnesses, not least his unfailing patience and cheerfulness”. With these words Fr John Fitzgerald, writing from the Seychelles, summed up well the immediate aftermath of Br Sherry's death on the night of Saturday 5 November 1983.

Br Sherry's passing was sudden. On Friday ‘Sher’ (as he was known to his friends) stayed in bed for the greater part of the day. He came to meals and evening prayer. The following morning saw him as usual at the early Mass. At about 1300 hours on Saturday he phoned the Sisters in the hospital. The Sisters and doctor came over. The crisis came at about 22.50 when Sher struggled to the door of Fr Jim Carroll’s room to say that he could not breathe. Sr Grainne arrived and started cardiac massage. But the Lord had called Sher to himself.

Br Sherry was born in Ireland on 17 March 1920. He entered the Society on 10 February 1939 and arrived in Zambia on 1 September 1953. For the next 30 years he served the young Church in Zambia selflessly and with unbounded generosity. In Chikuni he served as a kind of ‘minister of supplies’. Fr MacMahon would lean heavily on him but Sher had his little hideouts which constituted his survival kit! He finally moved into the field of mechanics and water pumps. After Chikuni he moved to Chivuna where he was engaged in the trade school and with odd jobs of maintenance. Then he started to be a sort of “move and fix it” on a diocesan level. About 1965/66 he moved into the Bishop’s house in Monze from where he continued his 'move and fix it’ campaign. He loved to colour these trouble shooting journeys with a touch of drama and life and death urgency;

”Sher is a great loss. Apart from his work, he was a great community man”, said the Bishop of Monze. “He was part and parcel of everything that went on in the community. He was interested in parish affairs. He never stinted himself in anything he did. In community discussions he often brought them back to some basic spiritual principle’.

He was a gentle, understanding, thoughtful and patient man. He was both candid and open with the ability to talk about the small things of life. People appreciated this and were greatly saddened by his death. He was loyal to the group of men who worked with him and was ready to defend them when criticism was levelled against them. They, on their part, appreciated this and made his coffin when he died, planed and varnished it, washed and shone his vanette and drove him to his grave to show the fellowship they enjoyed in his company.

Perhaps it was his generosity that shone most brightly. He had no hours. He once said, “My Philosophy of Life is to try to help everyone as best I can”. He liked praise and a pat on the back but he never worked for it. He was a self-made man. He battled with great courage against illness and disability. Without any chance of professional training, he became proficient in general mechanics, electricity and plumbing. But he specialized in water pumps where he often succeeded where more professional people failed! He had well developed hobbies, stamp collecting being close to his heart and he left behind him quite a valuable collection. ‘If you want your watch repaired, Sher's your man’ indicates his other hobby.

His religious life and Jesuit vocation were something very dear to him. He never had an identity crisis. He was a fully convinced and dedicated religious. His was a deep and direct faith, a gospel faith, which led him directly to the person of Christ in His church, in His sacraments and in His People. This faith enriched his many human qualities and his selfless service of others.

A great crowd thronged the Church in Monze for his funeral Mass. They came from every corner of the diocese to pray for Br Sher and to offer thanks for his life. Fr Dominic Nchete, the VG, at the graveside voiced the official thanks of the diocese for Br Sherry's life of service and dedication to the church in Zambia. The leader of the Salvation Army in Monze offered a prayer and thanks to God for Sher. As the 28 concelebrants left the altar, the leading priests lifted his coffin and carried it to the waiting vanette – a last gesture of closeness to him.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Clerk in Pim’s of Dublin before entry

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 59th Year No 1 1984
Obituary
Br Patrick Sherry (1920-1939-1983) (Zambia)
I first made the acquaintance of Br Sherry in the summer of 1938 when he came down to Emo to visit the Novitiate for a day or two before deciding to finalise his decision to enter. It was a fine summer's day and we were all out at recreation when we met this quiet, shy young boy sitting on the bench in the “pleasure grounds” at the back of “this ancient house”. We had many a good joke over this in later days as it was unusual (if not unique) for a “Brother” novice, in those far off days, to come to come to see what he was letting himself in for. It seems to me that Paddy Sherry remained this same quiet, shy person all the days of his Jesuit life. Officially he entered in February 1939 but actually he came as a postulant in the August of 1938. So I had about seven months with him during the Emo days and then did not live with him again for another 25 years or more.
Meantime he spent a year in Belvedere, three in Tullabeg, six in Rathfarnham one in Mungret and one in Milltown Park; always as “cook” with several “minor” offices tagged on in case he should not find enough to keep him busy in the kitchen.
Various stories are told about him in those more or less uneventful days (if one forgets the various crises the six years of war in the early forties occasioned in the running of kitchens in particular) - when some of his time to repairing watches, experimenting with the use of oil and water gadgets for cooking during the fuel shortages of the war period. Also his taking apart the Aga cooker in Mungret College to replace the defective asbestos packing and even prepare it as the future oil-burning cooker, which many came to see and admire : with the intention of acquiring a similar cooking apparatus.
Where Paddy Sherry really found his scope and outlet for his yet undiscovered talent was in what was then the Chikuni He was among the pioneering brothers in these first few years of the Irish Province entry into what is now the Province of Zambia. The need for the ability they had to offer was very real and urgent as there was much to be done and a whole structure to be built up so that the actual missionary activity could take place. Brother Jim Dunne was the precursor of such as Pat McElduff, Paddy Sherry and Charles Connor; men who left their stamp on the Mission and on whom the Mission left its stamp too. The great need tested the yet unknown talent of these men and they were not found wanting. It was a talent that the Hong Kong Mission had not given an opening to and could have remained undiscovered had not the Chikuni Mission cried out for it. At the time there was no way it was going to show itself in Province. his The variety of jobs that Paddy was called on to do after he went on the Chikuni Mission in 1953 was to reveal what great ability of mind and hands were his despite the early years of a somewhat handicapped and educationally deprived young boy; educationally deprived because of these defects of hearing and speech that were his from the cradle to his early teens. I came to know of this only in later years when he spoke to me about it to praise all that the doctors had done for him the way they cared for him in the various hospitals, the he was giving prayers that were offered by his own family and others that helped him to reach normality. He called it a miracle and I think that is what brought him to his vocation.
When Paddy went to Africa the Chikuni Mission was seething with building plans and future development in the yet undeveloped missionary area but the funds were as scarce as the plans were plentiful. At that time Jim Dunne was devoting his time to developing the manual talents of the local Africans in the “Trade School” in Chivuna; he himself was only a short time after taking his first Vows having gone out while yet a novice: to finish his second year as Novice under Fr Joe McCarthy. Many of those he trained in brick-laying, carpentry, plastering etc. were later on to become the nucleus of the many building teams of the mission. Paddy Sherry was into building from the start and his training was simply on-the-job experience, moving from the shovel, pick and wheel barrow stage, to the more skilful areas as his experience of what was needed grew and his own personal skill was given a chance to practise and develop. There were incidents too that could have been harmful to him: such as when he was on a roofing job on the great assembly hall being built for Canisius College he inadvertently stepped on the end of a loose asbestos sheet which he was laying out in groups on the roof preparatory to fixing them in place. The sheet tilted and Paddy was launched into space, coming through the roof to fall on the concrete floor some fifteen feet below. Everybody was horrified and he was rushed off to hospital but was back on the job in a few days and trotting about the roof again as if nothing had ever happened to him.
He was ten or eleven years on the Mission when it was decided to allow him to give his full time to electrical work for which he had shown a decided talent; a talent he attributed to his early home days in Dundrum when he used fill in the days with “messing' around with electrical things. He proved more than a success at this and did many highly complicated electrical jobs (apart from the routine wiring jobs on the various new buildings and teachers houses), such as making the connections in Monze Hospital for X-Ray units, Sterilisers etc. and at the same time was on call for the various bore-hole pumps (for water supplies) around the Mission area, which were often very troublesome. He had many emergency calls when the pump failed to deliver the precious water and on one particular occasion. he got an emergency call from Chivuna Girls' Secondary School. Their pump had “conked out” and the situation was serious for the following morning with such a large number of pupils and people depending on the supply, apart from the sanitary problem. He set out at 9 pm on a dark African night to go 25 miles away to settle the problem before the next morning dawned and was really pleased with himself. There was nothing he enjoyed more than an emergency call and it did not matter how long the hours were that he had already been working, he set out at once. It wasn't always realised by the recipients of his attention that he had cheerfully made such a sacrifice without fuss.
Paddy Sherry was indeed a humble person in the real sense of the word, a person with a great sense of personal dignity who while very sensitive to any sort of criticism was indeed very careful not to criticise others whatever the circumstances. He might complain of being somewhat misused but never was he inclined to make it a personal issue. What struck me about him was his innocence; he was uniquely innocent and yet very perceptive. I have never met anyone like him in this unconscious innocence and the way he would instinctively recoil from anything said or done that would seem to threaten this in any way. The Lord did indeed reveal many things to this “innocent and lowly”.

Obituary
Br Patrick Sherry : continued
Zambia, † 5th November 1983
“I can imagine his going left many hearts empty and evoked memories of all kinds of services and kindnesses, not least his unfailing patience and cheerfulness”. With these words Fr John FitzGerald, writing from the Seychelles, well summed up the immediate aftermath of Br Patrick Sherry's death on the night of Saturday, 8th November 1983. An emptiness certainly prevailed.
His passing was very sudden. He is not known to have complained of feeling unwell until the very last day of his earthly life. On Friday he stayed in bed for the greater part of the day, but came to meals and evening prayer. The following morning saw him as usual at the early Mass. At about 13.00 hours on Saturday he 'phoned the Sisters in the hospital. He is reported to have said to them that he could not go through another night of what he had gone through the previous night. The Sisters and doctors came over at least twice if not thrice between then and his death but did not detect anything serious. The crisis came at about 22.50 when Br Sherry himself struggled to the door of Fr Jim Carroll to say that he could not breathe. The doctors were again called. Sr Gráinne arrived and started cardiac but the Lord had called Br Sherry to Himself.
Br Patrick Sherry - known to his Jesuit confrères as “Br Sher” or simply “Sher” - was born in Ireland on 17th March 1920, entered the Society on 10th February 1939, made his final profession on 15th August 1951 and arrived in Zambia with Fr John FitzGerald on 1st September 1953. For the next thirty years he served the young church of Zambia selflessly and with unbounded generosity. In Chikuni he served as a kind of Minister for Supplies and store manager, finally moving into the field of mechanics and water-pumps. After Chikuni he moved to Chivuna where he engaged in the hundred and one jobs of maintenance. It was during this period that he started to be a sort of miss excurr, on a diocesan level - shooting trouble-spots all over the diocese but returning to base every Friday evening. About 1965 or 1966 he moved into the Bishop's house, Monze, still serving as miss. excurr. He loved to tint these trouble-shooting journeys with a touch of drama and life-and-death urgency.
"Sher' is a great loss. Apart from his work, he was a great community man. He was part and parcel of everything that went on in the community. He was interested in parish affairs, never stinted himself in anything he did, and at community discussions often brought us back to some primal spiritual principle. He was gentle, understanding, thoughtful and patient, candid and open. He had the ability to talk to people about the small things of life: they appreciated this and were greatly saddened by his death.
Perhaps it was his generosity that shone most brightly. He had no hours. He once said "My philosophy of life is to try to help everyone as best I can.' He liked praise and the pat on the back, but never worked for it. A self-made man, he had battled with great courage against illness and disability. Without any chance of professional training, he became proficient in general mechanics, electricity and plumbing. He specialised in water-pumps, in which he often succeeded where more professional people failed.
In another way too Br Sherry was a self-made man: he had quite well developed hobbies. I doubt if he really knew the total number of stamps in his collection or its value. He also developed a taste for music and was able to relax with it.
His religious life and Jesuit vocation was something very dear to him, His was never an identity crisis. He was a fully convinced and dedicated religious. His deep faith led him directly to the person of Christ in his Church, in his sacraments and in his people. This faith enriched his many human qualities and his selfless service to others.
A great crowd thronged the church in Monze for his funeral Mass. They came from every corner of the diocese to pray for Br Sherry and to offer thanks for his life. The Vicar-General, Fr Dominic C Nchete, voiced at the graveside the official thanks of the diocese for Br Sherry's life of service and dedication to the Church in Zambia. The leader of the Salvation Army in Monze offered a prayer and thanks to God for Br Sherry. As the 28 concelebrants left the altar, the leading priests lifted his coffin and carried it to his waiting vanette - a last gesture of closeness to him.
(From Jesuits in Zambia: News, slightly adapted).

Born: 17 April 1870, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 03 October 1887, Drongen Belgium - Belgicae province (BELG)
Ordained: 27 June 1901, Woodstock College MD, USA
Final Vows: 15 August 1907
Died: 08 January 1917, Loyola College, New Orleans, LA, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)

Transcribed HIB to NOR : 1889

Sherry & Sons (1949-) amalgamated with FitzGerald & Partners (1972-) in 1982.

Born: 01 May 1781, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 01 February 1817, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Died: 04 January 1822, Clongowes Wood College, Naas, County Kildare

Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Being asked on the night before his death if he wanted anything, he replied, looking up to Heaven “What can I want but to be united to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”.

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He was a man of great innocence and saintliness of life, and was remarkable for his obedience and for his charity to the poor. To help them in their necessities he scraped every little fragment of food he could find and gave it to them. He was fervent in every practice of piety.
He died on the Octave of the Feast of Holy Innocents towards whom he had always manifested a special devotion.

Note from John Cleary Entry :
He took his First Vows at Clongowes 02 February 1819, and Charles Aylmer said the Mass. There were six others with him : Brothers Egan, Nelson, Plunkett, Mulligan, Bennett and Sherlock, all who persevered happily in the Society to the end.

Born: 25 September 1820, County Kilkenny
Entered: 20 May 1839, Hodder, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1850
Final vows: 02 February 1852
Died 07 October 1910, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Born: 14 August 1595, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 30 September 1612, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: 05 June 1621, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Final Vows: 18 October 1628. Irish College Salamanca, Spain
Died: 08 August 1646, Irish College, Salamanca, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Alias Sherlog

1614-1622 At Valladolid Age 18 Studying Theology, proficiency above mediocrity
1617 In CAST Age 18 Soc 4
1625 At Compostella Age 28 Soc 13. More than ordinary ability for preaching. He is confessor and Preacher
1626 In Spain
1633-1645 Rector of Irish College Salamanca. Has been Lecturer on Controversial subjects. A man of much learning with a talent for composing commentaries on the Scriptures. Excellent disposition, talent and judgement. Best talent for Government, teaching and commenting on Scriptures. In addition excellent at conducting business with people of the world. Much prudence and learning, firmness in dealing with others. Talent for writing and governing. A Religious spirit.
Left his books to the Irish Jesuit Mission, but especially for the Residence at Waterford.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Was of a Waterford family, but it has been seen stated that he was born in Wexford; Writer of commentaries on Holy Writ; Professor of extraordinary virtue and held in great esteem in Spain. (Foley’s Collectanea)
He obtained a high repute both as a Theologian and Administrator, and was Rector at Salamanca and Compostella for twenty years.
1631-1646 Rector of Salamanca (Irish Ecclesiastical Record September 1874). he was also a Professor of Controversy for seven years, and also for a time of Sacred Literature and Theology, wit a great repute for learning. As a result he was chosen as Censor of Doctrine by the Sacred Inquisition. he assiduously applied himself day and night to a study of the ancient Fathers. Weak health prevented him from leaving even more evidence of his learning and erudition.
He was a man of austere life, who subjected his body to severe inflictions in daily disciplines, hair-cloths and other practices; was much given to prayer and devoted to our Blessed Lady, fasting and other mortifications on the vigils of her feasts. Some are of the opinion that he received Divine Illustrations in prayer, and assistance in the rapid composition of his writings.
A Catalogue of Irish Jesuits for 1617 ((Irish Ecclesiastical Record August 1874) states his age at that time to be 18, and four years in Society.
He is identical with a Fr “Paul Shirley” noticed in “Records SJ” Vol V p 475, in a note citing Dodd’s “Church History”, who mistranslates the name given by Southwell as Sherlogus into Shirley.
Southwell in “Biblio Script SJ” makes an interesting note about him : he was of a family of clan of Waterford (Menapiensis); born on the vigil of the Assumption 1595, of devoted Catholic parents; was admitted to the Society on the day before the Kalends of October 1612 at the Irish College Salamanca
(In pencil) Wrote a sketch of William Bathe
(cf de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ” for his writings) (cf Archivum Hibernicum Vol VI pp 157-74 for a biography)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Walter and Bela (Beatrice) née Leonard. Brother of Patrick
He had spent three months at Irish College Salamanca before Ent 30 Septmber 1612 Villagarcía
He completed his Noviceship at Medina del Campo
1614-1617 After First Vows he was sent to St Ambrose, Valladolid for Philosophy.
1617-1621 he then was sent for Theology first at Valladolid and then to finish at Compostela where he was Ordained 05 June 1621, and graduated with a “Grand Act”
1621-1622 He was then sent to Valladolid to teach
1622-1624 He taught at Monterey and Pamplona
1624/25-1628 Rector of Irish College Santiago after the death of William White
1629-1646 Rector of Irish College Salamanca 01 May 1629, succeeding Thomas Briones. For most of his active life in the Society he was occupied with administration but this did not prevent him from engaging in the deeper study of theology, particularly in Holy Scripture. (His published works are listed in Somervogel) For the historian, however, the 'autobiographia' written in 1643 is of most interest. He died in Office at Salamanca 08 August 1646
Like his brother Patrick, Paul also volunteered for service on the Irish Mission

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Sherlock (Sherlog), Paul
by Deirdre Bryan

Sherlock (Sherlog), Paul (1595–1646), Jesuit priest and theologian, was born in August 1595 at or near Waterford city, reputedly the son of Walter Sherlock and his wife Beatrice Leonard. He was a descendant of James Sherlock of Gracedieu who, in 1494, was granted extensive lands in Co. Waterford by Henry VII in reward for his family's loyalty to the Tudor monarchy. The Sherlocks, who served frequently as mayors of Waterford city between 1492 and 1642, were one of the foremost catholic mercantile and landowning families of east Waterford.

As a young boy Sherlock attained a proficiency in Latin under the tutelage of a catholic schoolmaster in Waterford. Like many of his contemporaries, he left Ireland for Spain, aged 16, to study at the Jesuit-run Irish College at Salamanca. He landed in Bilbao in May 1612 and reached Salamanca at the beginning of July. Together with Thomas Vitus (Wyse), a fellow-student from Waterford, he was admitted to the Society of Jesus at Salamanca on 30 September 1612. He spent the first two years of his novitiate at Villagarcia and Medina del Campo before travelling to Santiago de Compostela in 1614. Over the next seven years he studied philosophy and theology at the Jesuit college at Valladolid and at Santiago, where in 1621 he was ordained. In 1624 he succeeded Thomas White (qv), who had died in 1622, as rector of the Irish college at Compostela; four years later he was appointed rector of the Irish college at Salamanca, where he remained until his death in 1646.

A highly educated man, Sherlock taught scholastic theology and divinity both at Salamanca and Compostella. He published many theological works which earned him considerable praise from scholars in Spain and France. His most important work was a combination of ecclesiastical history and devotional commentary based on the text of the Song of Solomon; it was published in three folio volumes: Anteloquia ethica et historica in Canticum Canticorum (Lyons, 1634), Commentarium in duo priora capita Cantici Canticorum (Lyons, 1637), and Commentarium in reliqua captia Cantici Canticorum (Lyons, 1640), all three volumes being reprinted in Venice in 1641. He dedicated the work to Fernando de Vera, bishop of Cuzco, whose financial generosity, combined with the earnings accrued through publication, were sufficient to enable Sherlock to found a library at the Irish college at Salamanca. Two other works, written under the pseudonym of Paulus Leonardus, were also published: Responsio ad expostulationes recentium quorundam theologorum contra scientiam mediam (Lyons, 1644) and Antiquitatum Hebraicarum Dioptra (Lyons, 1651).

In April 1642 and again in February 1643, Robert Nugent, superior of the Jesuits in Ireland, wrote to the general of the order, Viteilleshi, requesting the return to Ireland of Sherlock and another Irish Jesuit, Luke Wadding (a professor at Salamanca and cousin of the Franciscan Luke Wadding (qv) (1588–1657)), declaring both priests to be ‘absolutely necessary to this mission’ (Grogan, 94). Neither priest returned.

Sherlock's religious practices of flagellation, wearing hair shirts, and fasting eventually eroded his health. It was believed by some that he received direct communication from heaven while praying and writing. He died 9 August 1646 at the Irish college, aged 50 years, and was buried in Salamanca.

After his death the Jesuits claimed that the library he founded at the Irish college was the property of their society and not the university. Four Irish students of the college took proceedings in the court of the chancellor of the university, successfully recovering the books acquired by Sherlock. In 1919 a six-foot brass plaque was erected in Waterford's catholic cathedral commemorating a unique group of priests, native to the diocese, who were eminent in the church both at home and abroad. Paul Sherlock is among those commemorated.

J. Ware, The writers of Ireland (1764), 120–21; DNB; Anon. [attributed to Mother Mary Berchmans / Margaret Mary Sherlock], ‘Distinguished Waterford families: Sherlock’, Journal of the Waterford and South East Ireland Archaeological Society, ix (1906), 120–28, 171–5, x (1907), 42–4, 171–83; Amalio Huarte (ed.), ‘El. P. Paulo Sherlock: una autobiografia inédita’, Archiv. Hib., vi (1917), 156–74; P. Power, Waterford saints and scholars (1920); K. Kelly, ‘Father Paul Sherlock S.J.’, Decies: Journal of the Old Waterford Society, i (1976); William Nolan and Thomas P. Power (ed.), Waterford: history and society (1992), 189, 218; Patrick Grogan, ‘The Sherlocks of Waterford’, Decies: Journal of the Old Waterford Society, lvi (2000), 81–94; ODNB

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Paul Sherlock 1593-1646
Paul Sherlock of Waterford entered the Society at the age of 17 at Salamanca. As a Theologian he gained a great reputation, and was equally successful at government. For twenty years he was Rector of the Irish Colleges at Salamanca and Santiago.

He had very weak health, nevertheless he led a very austere life, and subjected his body to severe inflictions in daily disciplines, hair cloths and other penances. He himself says in a diary meant for publication :
“Here in Santiago I determined to wrote on the Canticles of Solomon, and to that end I have studied indefatigably, desiring in this way to imitate the Fathers of the Church. I did without a great part of my sleep at night. I continued in Salamanca for two or three years with greater rigour, for the cold nights of that place were especially mortifying. In 1629 I began to prepare the first volume of the work on the Canticles of Solomon for the press. To this end I received great strength from a vision of St Brendan the Irish Abbot”.

He died on August 9th 1646 at the age of 51, with a great reputation for holiness.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHERLOCK, PAUL, was born at Waterford, on the 14th of August 1595. Well grounded in Classical literature, he entered himself in the Irish College at Salamanca, in 1612, and on the 30th of September the same year enlisted under the banner of St. Ignatius. As a Theologian he attained to the highest reputation; for his ability in governing he was equally distinguished; and for the long period of 20 years, during which he was Rector at Salamanca and Compostella, he secured the esteem and attachment of his Brethren and Subjects. Application was made to the General of the Order on various occasions by F. Robert Nugent, the Superior of the Irish Mission, that his services might he confined to his native country; but, under the circumstances, it was judged expedient to continue F. Sherlock in Spain, and at Salamanca he terminated his useful career on the 9th of August, 1646. Gifted with talents of the first Order, and indefatigable in labor, he would have left numerous evidences of his genius and erudition, if his constitution had been stronger, or his life more extended; still we had from his pen,

1. “Antiloquia in Canticum Canticorum”. 3 vols. fol. Lyons, 1633, 1637, 1640, under the borrowed name of Leonardus Hibernicus.
2. “Vindiciae Scientiae Media”. 4to, Lyons. 1644.
3. A posthumous work, “De Hebraeorum Republica”. Fol. Lyons, 1651
   *I believe the Family of Sherlock or Schyrlock came from Chester, with the Bagots. - From Devonshire emigrated the Cogans, and Fitz-Stephens.

Born: 1583, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 10 April 1602, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: c 1612, Salamanca, Spain
Died: 18 August 1614, Irish College, Santiago de Compostela, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

1607 At Compostella College
1611 At Salamanca College
1614 Age 30 Soc 13 has studied Theology 4 years - died suddenly

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
RIP in Spain probably between 1609 and 1617

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Walter and Bela (Beatrice) née Leonard. Brother of Paul
Had begun his Priestly studies at Irish College Salamanca before Ent 10 April 1602 Villagarcía
After First Vows his career is not clear but he was sent to Royal College Salanmanca for Theology and was Ordained there c 1612
After his formation was complete he was sent to teach Philosophy at Irish College Santiago, and died suddenly there 18 August 1614
From the contemporary correspondence we learn that he had volunteered to serve on the Irish Mission

Born: 14 February 1831, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 04 October 1853, Angers, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1858
Final Vows: 15 August 1871
Died: 16 August 1872, Guelph, ONT, Canada - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

Born: 03 February 1881, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1898, Roehampton London - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 31 July 1915, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1918
Died: 15 July 1946, Glasgow, Scotland - Angliae Province (ANG)

by 1917 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 21st Year No 3 1946
FROM OTHER PROVINCES :
England :
Fr. Thomas Sheridan died on July 15th. He was born in Dublin in 1881, educated by the Christian Brothers, entered the Society at Manresa in 1898, did theology at Ore Place, but was ordained at Milltown in 1915, and did tertianship in Tullabeg 1916. He taught at Preston till 1938 and then at Glasgow till 1938, continuing there as Prefect of Studies till 1945.

Born: 16 September 1908, North Circular Road, Phibsborough, Dublin
Entered: 30 September 1927, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1940, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1943, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 14 December 1970, La Ignaciana, Pasay City, Manila, Philippines - Hong Kong Province (HK))

Transcribed : HIB to HK 03 December 1966

Parents were shopkeepers.

Eldest of three boys with one sister.

Early education at a private school and Holy Faith Convents, he then went to Belvedere College SJ for ten years (1918-1927). Took a year away haveing had a heart issue which was resolved.

by 1935 at Catholic Mission, Ngau-Pei-Lan, Shiuhing (Zhaoqing), Guandong, China (LUS) Regency
by 1936 at Wah Yan, Hong Kong - Regency
by 1967 at Manila, Philippines (PHI) working

◆ Hong Kong Catholic Archives :
Father Terence Sheridan, S.J., died in Manila on 11 December 1970, aged 61.

Father Sheridan was born in Ireland in 1908. He first came to Hong Kong as a Jesuit scholastic in 1934. He studied Chinese, taught in Wah Yan College, wrote one book and many articles, and returned to Ireland in 1937 for theological studies and ordination.

He came back to Hong Kong after the war and was stationed here until 1960, boldly combining his duties as senior English master in Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, with apostolic and pastoral work and energetic participation in the cultural life of the community. Almost immediately after the war he started a series of annual Chinese operas in English - a daring and successful venture into Anglo-Chinese cultural relations. He also produced many plays for the Stage Club, including a long remembered ‘Othello’ From 1952 to 1954 he edited Outlook - a lively cultural review - so lively indeed that it once brought him before the Supreme Court in a contempt of court case that won him many new admirers.

In 1960 he went to Singapore as editor of the Malaysian Catholic News. In 1964 he joined the Pastoral Institute in Manila to work on the use of modern communications media in Catechetics and in general radio and TV.

He died suddenly at his table, when busily at work editing a film record of the Pope’s visit. He would probably have chosen such a death if the choice had been his.

These dull details seem totally inadequate in a notice on Father Terry. They point to the intellectual gifts and the energy and initiative that he had in abundance; they give no idea of the friendliness and the astonishing ever-fresh charm that brightened every group that he joined, whether he joined for a few moments or for a span of yeas. Very fittingly, his death came in Gaudete week, Joy Week.
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 18 December 1970

Requiem for Father Sheridan

Friends of the late Father Terence Sheridan, S.J., filled the chapel of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong, on 18 December for a Requiem Mass concelebrated by about twenty of Father Sheridan’s fellow-Jesuits.

Few people will be so sorely missed as Father Sheridan. Nevertheless there was no appearance of gloom in the congregation before or after Mass. They had gathered to pray for the repose of the soul of a man who spent his life spreading happiness and high spirits in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Many of those present stated explicitly that mourning would be out of place on such an occasion.

The chief celebrant, Father Fergus Cronin, Provincial Superior of the Hong Kong Jesuits and one of Father Sheridan’s oldest friends in Hong Kong, paid the following tribute.

I suppose all of us here are people who knew Father Terence Sheridan so it is not necessary for me to say who he was nor to mention many of the things he did.

Indeed it would be difficult to do this for he did so many things, and all of them with some distinction.

He was first of all a priest and a Jesuit. He prized his priesthood and his membership of the Society of Jesus above everything else.

He came to Hong Kong and the East because he was sent here by his superiors to be a living witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

He came to this part of the world joyfully, eagerly, and he did not preach so much in words as by living his faith and by letting what he was come through all that he did.

He taught. I suppose he would have thought of himself for many years as primarily a schoolmaster, but his interests went beyond the classroom to the playing fields for he was a sport master and a good athlete himself, to the production of plays. Many who were boys in Wah Yan when he was a teacher would think of him as an inspired producer.

But he was more of a writer than a teacher and, as in teaching, his writing overflowed into action. He wrote and produced plays, Chinese operas in English, religious plays such as his play for the Marian Year 1954, spectaculars such as the pageant he produced in the Racecourse (on another occasion) and good drama in English such as so many Shakespearean plays and The Lady is not for Burning for the Hong Kong Stage Club.

He was a good writer – first of all an editor – and he founded outlook, Tsing Nin Man Yau, Eastern Messenger. He wrote for all sorts of periodicals. He wrote books. He wrote the text of his Chinese operas in English. If he had been only a writer he would have quite a creditable amount of good writing, as much as many whose sole work was writing.

He was a critic of events. His pungent writing in Outlook pointed out many of our local weaknesses. The same was true in his writings in the Malaysian Catholic News. After he left here and went to Singapore he became interested in film criticism, in making people critical of what they saw on the screen or on the stage.

He was all these things and so much more. I thing you will agree with me that he was the most alive person you have known. Wherever he went he had people laughing. He was able to spread most of his ideas by making people laugh while they read them or listened to them. He had also a genius for friendship and comradeship. In any company he was the centre of laughter, of discussion, of song. Frequently he burst into song. I suppose he took at least one shower a day and he never took a shower without singing.

It is hard to think of one who was as alive as now being dead. In the words of one of the songs from Gilbert and Sullivan, which he loved so well: “Is life a boon, then so it must befall that death whenever it calls, must call too soon?” But do not think of him as not being alive. He is in peace and happiness we trust, and we are here to pray God to bring him to the eternal happiness of heaven. It seems a strange thing to ask that God might give him eternal rest if by rest we mean inactivity, but if we mean that he is a valiant soldier of Jesus Christ who has returned from battle and is now with his Master enjoying himself, relaxing after the years of struggle on earth, then we are closer to the reality. In Irish, “Ar deas De go raibh a anim.” May his soul be on the right hand of God.”
Sunday Examiner Hong Kong - 25 December 1970

Note from John Moran Entry
He then took over editorship of the Far East Messenger, a monthly magazine started by Father Terence Sheridan SJ. It ceased publication in 1953.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 22nd Year No 1 1947

Departures for Mission Fields in 1946 :
4th January : Frs. P. J. O'Brien and Walsh, to North Rhodesia
25th January: Frs. C. Egan, Foley, Garland, Howatson, Morahan, Sheridan, Turner, to Hong Kong
25th July: Fr. Dermot Donnelly, to Calcutta Mission
5th August: Frs, J. Collins, T. FitzGerald, Gallagher, D. Lawler, Moran, J. O'Mara, Pelly, Toner, to Hong Kong Mid-August (from Cairo, where he was demobilised from the Army): Fr. Cronin, to Hong Kong
6th November: Frs. Harris, Jer. McCarthy, H. O'Brien, to Hong KongIrish Province News 46th Year No 2 1971

Obituary :

Fr Terry Sheridan SJ

The news of Fr Terry Sheridan's death in Manila arrived as a shock in Honk Kong on the evening of December 14th. His body had been discovered that morning in his locked room at the East Asian Pastoral Institute on the Ateneo de Manila campus; and a spate of rumours about the circumstances of his death soon found echoes in newspapers in Hong Kong and even more luridly in Ireland Investigation established that Fr Terry had died, of “cardiac failure with coronary failure with coronary insufficiency”, during the night of 10th-11th. He was last seen on the Thursday evening when he dined late with Fr Leo Larkin and some of the staff of the ETV Institute of the Ateneo. Thus abruptly, at the age of 62 with drama and in tragedy came the end of a life that had been full of incident and colour, laughter and varied achievements. Fr Sheridan was buried in the novitiate cemetery at Novaliches, Quezon City, on December 18th mourned by a host of friends he'd made during his four years' residence in Manila, after a magnificent funeral.
One of Fr Terry's fellow-novices, Fr. Tom Barden, who was on his way back to Australia after visiting Ireland and Hong Kong, arrived in Manila the day Fr Terry's death was discovered. He'd been looking forward to meeting him after so many years, and planned to stay some days with him, and was rather puzzled and disappointed at not being met at the airport. In a letter to Fr Provincial he wrote: “I stayed for the funeral and during the intervening days was struck by the great love everyone had for Terry. I have written to Marie (Terry's sister) and tried to convey in some measure the reactions of the people at the Institute and the magnificent ‘Mass of Resurrection’. It was a unique experience and made one feel proud of the little man who had earned so much love and so much esteem. I know he will be missed not only in Manila but even more in his province to which he has brought no little fame."
Fr Terry was born in Dublin on September 16th 1908, and went to school first at the Holy Faith Convent, Glasnevin, then in Kilkeel, and finally to Belvedere College. He was always full of life, and it's been said of him that he was the best known schoolboy in north Dublin in his day. At school he was particularly well known for his prowess in games - swimming, water-polo, hockey, and of course rugby in which he played for the Schoolboys of Ireland and on the Leinster interprovincial schools' team. Years later in Hong Kong, an Ulster schoolboy of those days, the then Commissioner of Police, Mr. Maxwell, discovered Terry after dinner one evening in one of our houses and told him the Ulster team considered Terry and his brother Dick (scrum- and out-halves respectively) were “the two roughest players we had ever played against”.
In 1927 Terry joined the Society, arriving in Tullabeg on the night the Long Retreat was to begin, and going straight into it without time to get anything from his Angelus, Fr Sean Turner, but a bar of soap, as he recalled afterwards. After about a week of the Long Retreat he told his novice-master, Fr Martin Maher, that he'd known the novitiate would be a bit hard but he thought he could take two years of that kind of life - and was then re assured that the Long Retreat would last just a month.
During his Juniorate which followed, at Rathfarnham Castle, Fr Terry began his lifetime career as a writer and editor being a leading light of the subsequently suppressed Broken Delph. Having been more noted for games than for study at school, he did not take a university course in Rathfarnham, and later felt that he had been deprived of something that he could have benefited from and certainly would have enjoyed. From 1931 to 1934 he studied philosophy as well as producing plays each year and topical sketches at frequent intervals. A superb comic actor, he was also interested in the art of stage production, and he wrote many of the Tullabeg parodies of well-known songs which survived to later generations. Assigned to Hong Kong after philosophy, he was the outstanding personality on board the German ship on the 42-day voyage from Dover, bubbling with life and endless philosophical argument and fun. On the morning of his birthday the ship's band insisted on playing outside his cabin at 5.30 a.m., and later in the day a mammoth tea-party with plenty of Munich beer was given for him and all the passengers by the ship's company.
At Shuihing on the West River, where Fr Terry was sent along immediately after his arrival at Hong Kong, he got his first taste for the Cantonese Opera, for which in his inimitable English adaptations he was later to become well known in Hong Kong. In his year in the Portuguese-province house at Shiuhing, besides studying Cantonese and gaining a fair command of the colloquial language, he also did a fair amount of writing on various topics, some of which was published in The Rock, and began his first book, Letters to Bart, a series of letters of advice to a young man on the various practical problems of life. From 1935 to 1937, Fr Sheridan was on the staff of Wah Yan College, Hong Kong as as teacher and sportsmaster, and produced school plays climaxed by a famous production of scenes from the Merchant of Venice in which some who are today leading citizens in Hong Kong took part.
Humorous stories about Fr Terry abound at every stage of his career, perhaps the best known (which he always vehemently denied) being about Fr Kenny, the Minister at Milltown Park, where he studied theology from 1937 to 1941, finding him piously at his priedieu with his hat still on his head, after an unsuccessful surreptitious return “from abroad” during time for Examen. With the 2nd World War at its height, Fr Terry went to Gardiner Street after completing his Tertianship, and there spent some of the happiest years of his life, giving retreats and missions all over Ireland, doing church work and working for the Pioneers. It was not until 1946 that he could return to Hong Kong.
Almost immediately be became involved in the cultural life of post-war Hong Kong, and began his series of Cantonese operas in English, which became an annual “event”; they are Sheridanesque translation-adaptations of the well known themes of Cantonese opera. For these, he collected a team of former students of his. to form the Wah Yan Dramatic Society, which still holds together and is now preparing to produce the latest of Fr. Terry's scripts quite recently completed, One of his greatest fans was the former Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Alexander Grantham, to whom was dedicated the printed version of the most famous of the operas, A Lizard is No Dragon. In 1952 Fr. Sheridan left the classroom, to launch two periodicals, a fortnightly Chinese magazine for young people Tsing Nin Mar Yau (later taken over by Fr. Peter Dunne), and Outlook which ran for two years and ended in a blaze of glory which Fr Sheridan as its editor being cited for contempt of court because of some editorial comment on the newly introduced system of district judges in Hong Kong. He lost the case and was fined a nominal sum, which was paid by a friend. As the magazine, (intended to be a literary and cultural magazine for Hong Kong as a successor to the very successful pre-war Jesuit publication, The Rock), wasn't paying its way and there didn't seem much likelihood that it ever could, it was discontinued and Fr Sheridan went back to the classroom for a few years. But all this time he was also producing plays, and was a leading member and one-time chairman of the Hong Kong Stage Club for whom he produced numerous presentations, among his best being Othello and The Lady is not for Burning. He also wrote a number of religious plays, school plays and film scripts and scenarios, as well as pageants for the Marian Year of 1954, and on the history of Hong Kong and Macao.
In 1961 Fr. Terry was assigned to Singapore to take over the fortnightly Malaysian Catholic News, started some years previously by Fr J Kearney (California and Far East provinces). It became a different, lively paper in his hands; and again he became a well known and loved personality in his Singapore setting. It was he who drew up for the Singapore defence forces their official Code of Conduct. In 1966, after difficulties about his editorship of the newspaper, he resigned from the post, and was sent to Manila to work for the overseas programme of the newly established Radio Veritas. After a short while there he went to the East Asian Pastoral Institute to which he remained attached, writing, teaching and editing, until his death. He was also teaching at the Ateneo, and last year spent some months in Saigon training the staff of the community development TV enterprise there in TV script-. writing and production techniques. Film appreciation and TV, especially for education and religious purposes, were dominant interests of his last years, together with modern catechetics and audio-visual methods. He travelled over much of the Philippines introducing teacher-groups to the study, evaluation and use of film, and at the time of his death had almost completed a book on this subject. When he died, he was working on a film record of the recent visit of Pope Paul to Manila, commissioned by the Bishops' conference; it was but one of many irons in his fire.
The tremendous achievement he left behind will be long remembered; but it is his personal charm and gaiety, the impression he made as a priest and Jesuit that will remain in the memory of all who had the privilege of knowing him, and of all whose lives were brightened by his cheerful presence. It is impossible to record even a fraction of the amusing and outrageous incidents which happened to him, in which he was involved or took part; they happened all the time, and in various places all round the world in which Fr Terry found himself at one time or another he nearly always seemed to fall on his feet, meet the right person at the right time, improvise brilliantly. He will be missed, for many reasons by many people, as Fr Provincial said in his address at the memorial Mass for Fr Sheridan at Wah Yan, Hong Kong; he would surely also appreciate the quotation from his beloved Gilbert & Sullivan operas, used on the same occasion: “Is life a boon? If so it must befall, that death whene'er he call, must call too soon”.

Tributes
Though it is nine years since Fr Sheridan left Hong Kong, a large gathering of friends and acquaintances from all walks of life attend ed the Requiem at Wah Yan, including many non-Christians who had been associated with him at some stage. A number of letters paying tribute to Terry were received by Fr Provincial and others, from individuals and groups like the Stage Club, who heard of his death with shock and sorrow. An old friend of the stage, Mr. Rei Oblitas, now director of cultural services for the Hong Kong government, paid this tribute on the radio:
“At midday today, I was told of the death that has just occurred suddenly in Manila of Fr T J Sheridan, SJ. The news came as a shock to me, and I felt at first as if a thick and lowering cloud had suddenly swept over the sun. Terence Sheridan was born 62 years ago on the 16th September, 1908. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1927 and came to Hong Kong first in 1934, where he was occupied in learning Chinese. He returned home to Ireland in 1937 to study theology, and was ordained priest in 1940. He returned to Hong Kong immediately after the war, early in 1946, to teach at Wah Yan College, both in its early site in Robinson Road and at its new premises at Mt Parrish. In the early 1960's he left Hong Kong to work at Kingsmead Hall of the University of Singapore, and he edited a diocesan paper there. About 1964 he moved to Manila to concentrate upon work concerned with television and lecturing at the University Ateneo de Manila, where he was working until his recent death. Within his vocation to the priesthood he used his considerable talents as a teacher, a writer, editor, dramatist and producer, both for radio and for the stage. In Hong Kong he was particularly notable for his activity both as chairman and as producer for the Hong Kong Stage Club, and for productions for many other societies in the colony as well. I have myself, personally, very vivid recollections of the splendid productions he engaged upon for the Stage Club, and particularly for his ‘Othello’, which was staged at the Lee Theatre, ‘The Lady's not for Burning’, ‘The School for Scandal’, ‘Treasure Island’ and a host of others. And he was of course concerned with the revival of interest after the war in Gilbert & Sullivan's operettas, by a most successful production of ‘The Mikado’. His productions were always alive, exciting, very colourful; and he also initiated productions by the Hong Kong Stage Club especially directed for the enjoyment of local children studying English, of extracts or whole passages from the English classics. He didn't do this with any sense of over serious didacticism, as is illustrated by the fact that one of his first potpourri productions of this kind was entitled ‘It's a School Cert’. But it is for his very free translations and productions of Chinese opera in English, which he did with the Wah Yan Dramatic Society, that I think he will probably be best remembered by many in Hong Kong. For those who had never seen a Chinese opera, it was a delightful and heartwarming experience to find the full richness, gaiety and movement of the Chinese theatre presented with a fine Gilbertian wit in the translated versions of English dialogue. Even after he left Hong Kong, he returned on more than one occasion to reproduce one of these operas with the Wah Yan Society, usually for the benefit of some charity of the colony. It is saddening to think that if one of these works is ever produced again, we shall not find him before the curtain rises, moving to the foot-lights for his brief and good-humoured exposition to explain one or two of the conventions of the Chinese theatre for the benefit of those who are experiencing it for the first time”.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1970

Obituary

Father Terry Sheridan SJ :

It is impossible to do Fr. Sheridan justice within the limits of an obituary notice. He was so versatile, so energetic, so amusing and so zealous that to leave anything out is to mar the general portrait.

After a school career which was more noteworthy for prominence in sport than for progress in studies, he joined the Society and after his philosophy course set sail for Hong Kong in 1934. Though still a Scholastic, he was the outstanding personality on board the German liner, so much so that on his birthday the ship's band insisted on serenading him and the ship's company threw a huge party for all the passengers.

On his arrival in China, he was posted to the language school at Shiuhing. There he gained a fair command of Cantonese and learned to appreciate the Cantonese opera. For the secondary school pupils, struggling with their English texts he staged scenes from Shakespeare or from other English classics.

He returned to Ireland for theology and did not get back to Hong Kong till 1946. Once more he interested himself in the stage and initiated the foreign element in the colony into the meaning of the Chinese theatre. The former Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Alexander Granthan, was an enthusiastic supporter of Fr Terry.

The schoolmaster and producer had now to turn his hand to journalism. He launched two periodicals in 1952 and then in 1961 was assigned to Singapore to take over Malayasian Catholic News. While he was there he drew up for the Singapore defence forces their official Code of Conduct. After a short while he was sent to work for the overseas programme of the newly established Radio Veritas. He spent the rest of his life training priests and laymen to write and adapt audio-visual aids to the defence and spreading of the Church. .

His death came when least expected and alarming rumours were spread that he had met a violent end. This was not so. Fr Terry had died of heart disease, but his body was not discovered for a day. Hence the inevitable crop of lurid tales. We offer our sincere sympathy to his sister Maria.

◆ Mungret Annual, 1938

Mungret Mewn in South China

Father Terry Sheridan SJ

The last account of this mission to appear in the “Mungret Annual” was written by Father Joseph McCullough from the mission field itself. He, with Father Michael Saul, another Mungret man, was at that time in Canton, the capital of South China. His account of the Mungret men who were helping him was probably the last article that Father McCullough ever wrote. For the very time when it was published here June 1932, Father Saul was dying from cholera and Father McCullough was courageously attending to the needs of his friend. On June 21st, Father Saul died. On the evening of the funeral, Father McCullough himself went down with the awful sickness that was sweeping away hundreds at that time. He fought the disease out of his system, but on June 27th his heart gave way and he was laid beside Fr Saul in the little Catholic cemetery by the Pearl River. It was the end of the first gallant attempt of Irish Jesuits to help in the establishment of a Catholic school in Canton. Two old Mungret men gave their lives for that cause. They were the first of the Irish Jesuit mission to die in China.

The pioneer and founder of the mission was Father George Byrne. He landed in China in 1926, on the Feast of St. Francis Xavier. His first concern was to build a University Hostel where, in a Catholic atmosphere, Chinese Catholics might live while attending the Hong-Kong University. To-day Father Byrne is professing in the University and is known familiarly to the students, Catholic and pagans alike as “Grandfather”. That is a title of honour and affection in China.

The second work he was bold enough to undertake was the Regional Seminary for South China. Here the future priests for a region with a population of nearly fifty millions get their training right up to ordination. As native priests are one of the primary needs in China to-day, it can be seen how important the success of this work was and is. At present there are more than sixty Chinese students in the Seminary, where their spiritual needs are catered for by Father Dick Harris.

In 1933 the Irish Jesuits took over Wah Yan College, which is now, with over 900 boys on the rolls, one of the largest colleges in Hong-Kong. Here, almost from the beginning, Father Richard Gallagher has been in charge. If he was popular in Mungret as a teacher he is even more popular among the Chinese boys. They say of him that he is “hó hó sam”, which means that he has a very kind heart. And all who work with or under him know that this is true. At present he is the acting Superior of the Mission; an arduous task on top of his other responsibilities.

With him in Wah Yan, also from the beginning, is Father Eddie Bourke, who had been First Club Prefect in Mungret just before he went to China. He has been in charge of the boarders all the time and his influence over them has been so great that it is from among these boarders that we draw the greatest number of converts. One has entered the Jesuit Novitiate in Manila while another is going soon to the Regional Seminary to start his studies for the priesthood.

Besides those actually working in the front-line trenches, so to speak, there are others preparing themselves by the study of the language. And what a language! The Jesuits have a special school for its study about twenty miles from Hong Kong. Here Father Albert Cooney looks after the wants of those who are learning to write with a brush and to speak in lilting monosyllables. Father Ned Sullivan, his old school-mate, is with him there, striving to “Kong Tong wa”, which means simply, but not too simply, to speak Chinese. Mr Patrick Walsh has now reached such proficiency in the language that he is staying on there simply to perfect himself. Mr George McCaul, who was in Mungret a year after him, is still that time behind him in the study of the native tongue. Soon he, and all the others in the Language School, will be out teaching in Wah Yan, the Seminary or the University, or, be it whispered, in our new village mission. They will be replacing the Mungret men, and, of course others, who have gone before them.

Next September, Father T Fitzgerald, who edited the 1932 Jubilee “Mungret Annual”, and Mr John Carroll will be going out with six other Jesuits to swell the ranks and carry on the good work in South China. Mungret is prominent in the Irish Jesuit Mission to China as in so many other mission fields. May we ask that you will not forget that little Mission in South China, and that you will help to protect it, by your prayers, now that war and unrest threaten that kind Chinese people who must be won to Christ.

Born: 20 October 1840, Trim, County Meath
Entered: 04 September 1863, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 23 July 1871, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 23 February 1877, Milltown Park, Dublin

by 1865 at Bordeaux Residence France (TOLO)
by 1869 at Rome Italy (ROM) studying Theology
by 1870 at Angers France (FRA) health

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Had studied Humanities and Philosophy at Maynooth before Entry.

After first Vows he was sent to Clongowes for Regency, and here it emerged that his health was not very robust, and so he was sent to France for rest.
He was then sent to the Roman College for Theology, but he had to stop that and went to Aix-en-Chapelle (Aachen) recovering his health.
He then returned to Milltown to complete his studies and was Ordained there 23 July 1871.
Until his death 23 February 1877 he was a confirmed invalid, and so he remained at Milltown for the rest of his days.
He was very gently and remarkable for his devotion to the Holy Angels.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father John Brinsley Sheridan 1840-1877
Fr Sheridan was born in Trim County Meath on October 26th 1840. He studied Humanities and Philosophy at Maynooth, where he was distinguished for his piety He entered the Society at Milltown Park in 1863.

The years spent at Clongowes showed that his health was far from robust, and he was sent to France for a change and rest. He then went on to Rome to study Theology, but was compelled to give up study, and he retired to Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) for a year.

He returned to Milltown in 1870, and the following year he was ordained priest. Until his death seven years later, he was a confirmed invalid.

He died in February 1877, being remarkable for his devotion to the Holy Angels.

Born: 25 January 1920, Gortmore, Omagh, County Tyrone
Entered: 28 September 1940, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 27 June 1942

Family moved when he was aged 3 to Lackaboy, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. Father was a Guard on the Great Northern Railway.

Family of four, three boys and one girl.

Early education at the Convent of Mercy Enniskillen and then at the Presentation Brothers, Enniskillen. After school i 1939 he went to UCD on a scholarship and studied Engineering. Also studied violin and piano at the RIAM.

Fr General's English Assistant, Curia Generalizia Compagnia di Gesù, Borgo Santo Spirito, Rome, Italy.