Showing 5823 results

Born: 09 November 1922, Drumcondra, Dublin
Entered: 16 September 1941, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 13 December 1941

Born: 29 October 1937, China
Entered: 05 Novemnber 1958, Cheung Chau, Hong Kong HIB for Extemis Orientalis Province (ExOr)
Ordained: 30 May 1970, Toronto, Canada
Final Vows: 17 August 1978, Toronto, Canada
Died: 27 October 1922, Clarkston, MI, USA - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed HIB to HK 03 December 1966

Born: 01 February 1611, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 28 February 1629, Back Lane, Dublin
Ordained: 1637, Messina, Sicily, Italy
Final Vows: 01 October 1652
Died: 27 July 1671, Dublin City, County Dublin

Alias Nathaniel Hart

Superior of the Mission, 09 February 1658-1663

Sometimes went under the name “Tobias Walker and Nathaniel Hart and also Capitaneus” (HIV III pp 460-464)
Studied Philosophy 3 years and Theology 4 in Society
1633 At Douai studying Philosophy
1636 Not in CAT
1642 Prefect of Irish College Rome (Fr Malone was Rector) Was also Minister and Operarius
1649 Marked at Waterford (1629 after his name)
1650 Catalogue DOB 1607. Came to the Mission 1641. Confessor and Preacher. Age 43. Prof 4 Vows
1666 Catalogue Is dwelling near Dublin. On the Mission 22 years. Consultor of the Mission. Engaged in administering the Sacraments and refuting heretics. After 17 weeks imprisonment he was banished for 6 years.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Two Entries plus one “Nathaniel Hart”
Knew English, Italian and Latin; Four years Theology in the Society; Taught Humanities; Distinguished Preacher and Confessor
1641 Sent to Ireland (HIB Catalogue 1650 - ARSI)
1666 In Dublin and engaged in missionary duties and in controversial disputations with heretics.
After being imprisoned for 17 weeks, he was deported for six years (HIB Catalogue 1666 - ARSI)
Robert Nugent in a letter dated Wexford 28/02/1643 states that he was daily expecting him from France.
Mercure Verdier the Visitor to the Irish Mission names him in his Report to the General 24 June 1649
He had been stationed at Waterford where he had great repute as a Preacher and teacher; A good Controversialist.
He accompanied the Countess of Beerhaven to Spain, and was then about forty years of age, and had spent twenty in the Society;
He died 1671 in Dublin, deserving well of the Society and elsewhere (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS who calls him Robert)
A Belgian Catalogue mentions him as Richard Shelton arriving at the Professed House, Antwerp 12 September 1656, and leaving 24 April 1657

Nathaniel Hart Entry
Ent pre 1649; RIP post 1659
1659 Superior of Mission and wrote a letter to the General 15 June 1659
Probably identical with Mathias O’Heartegan (corrected in pencil beside to “Richard Shelton”) who had good reason to disguise his name.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had already studied Humanities and begun Philosophy before Ent 28 February 1629 Back Lane, Dublin
1631-1637 After First Vows he was sent to Douai for Philosophy and then to Messina in Sicily for Theology where he was Ordained 1637
1637-1641 He made Tertianship and he was sent as Minister and Operarius at Castrogiovanni and Messina.
1641-1644 He was actually sent to Ireland in 1641, but on his way he was kept for a year as Prefect of Studies at the Irish College Rome
1644-1646 Sent to Ireland and firstly to Galway where he taught Humanities
1646 He was sent as Chaplain to Countess Bearhaven on her journey to Spain
When he returned to Ireland he was first sent to Waterford and by 1650 to Dublin
1655 He was was betrayed and arrested in 1655 and deported to the Barbados. There he was not allowed to land there but sent back to Europe. He eventually landed at Antwerp in October, 1656
1657 In spite of his penalties threatened against priests who should care to come back after deportation, he returned to Ireland when appointed as substitute for the Mission Superior Thomas Quin, who had been arrested. He was himself arrested again on his way through England but succeeded in reaching Ireland in the summer of 1657
1658 He was formally appointed Superior of the Mission, 09 February 1658, His term of Office should have ended in 1661 but the newly-designated Superior did not come, and so he continued in office until 1663
He died in Dublin 27 July 1671
He wrote an account of the labours of the Society in Ireland during the thirteen years of the Cromwellian tyranny.
He stoutly opposed Peter Walsh's Loyal Remonstrance.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962
Richard Shelton (1657-1663)
Richard Shelton was born in Dublin on 1st February, 1611. His early studies, as far as logic, were made at our Dublin College, and on 28th February, 1629, he entered the Society in the Novitiate of Dublin, recently established. When the heretics suppressed the Jesuit houses and confiscated them to enrich Trinity College, Richard Shelton had to seek his education abroad. He finished his philosophy at Douay, and then was sent to the Province of Sicily. There he studied theology for four years at Palermo, made his tertianship at Trapani, acted as Minister of the College of Enna, or Castro Giovanni, and as Confessor at the Professed House of Messina. In September, 1641, he left Sicily for Ireland. On his way he spent a year at the Irish College, Rome, as Prefect of Studies, under Fr William Malone as Rector. In Ireland he was stationed at Galway (1644-46), teaching, preaching, and confessing. He went as chaplain to the Irish soldiers that accompanied the Countess of Berehaven on her return to Spain, When he came back he was stationed first at Waterford, and then, at the end of 1650, in Dublin, where he made his solemn profession of four vows on 1st October, 1652. He was betrayed in the summer of 1655, and condemned to transportation to the Barbadoes, but before this sentence was carried out he was put on board a ship for Antwerp, and landed there in October, 1656. In spite of the penalties threatened against exiled priests who returned, Fr Shelton did not hesitate a moment when he was ordered to go and act as substitute for Fr Thomas Quin, Superior of the Mission, who had been arrested. He himself was arrested when passing through England, but succeeded in reaching Ireland in the summer of 1657. From being Vice-Superior he was formally appointed Superior of the Mission on 9th February, 1658. His term of office should have come to an end in 1661, but as the new intended Superior never came he continued as Superior till 1663. He wrote an account of the labours of the Society in Ireland during the thirteen years of Cromwellian tyranny. He also distinguished himself by his opposition to the Schismatical Remonstrance of the friar, Peter Walsh, OSF. Fr Shelton died at Dublin on 27th July, 1671.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Richard Shelton 1611-1671
Richard Shelton was born in Dublin in1611 and received his early education as far as Logic in our school in Dublin. Furthermore he entered the novitiate in Dublin.

On the closing of our houses he went to the continent to complete his studies. He left Sicily in 1641 to return to Ireland, but spent a year en route as Prefect of Studies in the Irish College Rome under the Rectorship of Fr William Malone.

Arriving in Ireland he went to Galway for two years teaching and preaching. When the Countess of Berehaven retired to the continent, he accompanied her as Chaplain to Spain. On his return he was stationed at Waterford, then in Dublin, where in 1655 he was arrested and sentenced to the Barbadoes. However, the sentence was not carried out, but Fr Richard was banished to Antwerp. In spite of the penalties threatened him, he returned to once again to act as Superior for Fr Thomas Quin who had been arrested. He himself was full Superior of the Mission 1658-1993.

In correspondence he went by the pseudonym Nathanial Hart.

To his we are indebted for an account of the labours of the Society in Ireland during Cromwellian times.

He passed to his reward on July 27th 1671.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
HART, NATHANIEL. All that I know of him is from his own brief letter, dated the 15th of June, 1659, which shews that he was then Superior of his brethren in Ireland.

SHELTON, RICHARD. In a letter of Father Robert Nugent, dated Waterford the 28th of February, 1643, he says “I daily expect Father Shelton from France”. From Pere Verdier s Report of the 24th of June, 1649, I collect that he had been stationed at Waterford, where he was in great repute as a Preacher; that he had then quitted for Spain, to accompany the Countess of Beerhaven thither; that he was about 40 years of age, of which he had spent 20 in the Society. He died in Dublin, as I find in Father Stephen Rice s Annual Letters, during the year 1671. “in Missions et alibi de Societate bene meritus”.

Born: 09 October 1922, Melrose Avenue, Fairview, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 16 September 1941, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois

Left Society of Jesus: 01 March 1943

Father was a Civil Servant and died in 1939. Mother then lived by private means.

Older of two boys.

Early education was two years at St Pat’s BNS, Drumcondra and then seven years at O’Connells school.

Born: 1633, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 20 February 1654, Bordeaux, France - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)
Died: 24 February 1663, Bordeaux, France - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)

On Entry, talent very good, judgement prompt and mature - fit to discharge any duty in the Society
1655-1657 At Bordeaux teaching Grammar
1658 At Pau College (or Bordeaux) teaching Humanities
1659-1660 At Angoulême teaching 1st class. “Has a subtle mind - very proficient in Philosophy and Humanities. Polite learning. Prudent beyond his years.
1665 Not in AQUIT Catalogue

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He was probably studying Philosophy at Bordeaux before Ent 20 February 1654 Bordeaux
After First Vows he was sent on Regency to a College in Bordeaux (1656-1658) and then at Angoulême before returning to Bordeaux for Theology. He died before Ordination 24 February 1663

Born: 1564, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 1584, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1597, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 17 April 1641, Clonmel, County Tipperary

Alias Shine

1587: At Coimbra Age 24 Soc 3.25. Studied Humanities
1593: At Angra College, Terceira, Azores teaching Grammar
1597: At Coimbra in 4th year Theology
1603: At Irish College, Lisbon?
1621: Catalogue Age 63 Soc 37 Prof 3 Vows. Talent and judgement good, not sufficiently circumspect. An enthusiastic Operarius
1622: In East Munster
1626: In Ireland. Good in all prudence middling

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica”:
“Of great abilities; had seen a great deal “multa vidit”; came to Ireland c 1607. In Ireland 1617 (Irish Ecclesiastical Record August 1874). Names in a letter of Thomas Lawndry 04 November 1611 (published in Irish Ecclesiastical Record) as then helping Nicholas Lynach in West part of Southern Province. Oliver of Stonyhurst MSS, states that he reached Ireland with Fr Everard before the end of 1607.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ:
He had already done studies in Humanities for five years at Lisbon before Ent 1584 Coimbra.
1586-1591 After First Vows he was sent for Philosophy to Coimbra.
1591-1593 He was sent for Regency to Angra in the Azores.
1593-1597 Sent again to Coimbra for Theology and was Ordained there 1597.
1597-1605 He was sent as Operarius to St Anthony’s Lisbon and Spiritual Director and Confessor at the Irish College.
1605-1609 He was sent as Operarius successively at Faro and Évora.
1609 Sent to Ireland and spent the rest of his life at Clonmel - not least because his travel was restricted due to poor eyesight. He died at Clonmel 17 April 1641.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHINE, THOMAS, reached Ireland from Spain with F. Everard before the end of 1607.

Born: 21 November 1897, Greenmount, Clonsilla, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1920, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1931, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1938, St Mary’s, Emo, County Laois
Died: 09 February 1968, College of Industrial Relations, Ranelagh, Dublin

Father was a solicitor and reace horse owner and trainer. Mother lives mainly in Switzerland, but main address is Westown, Naul, County Dublin, and is supported by private means.

Elder of two sons and he has an invalided sister.

Early education was two or three years at Mount Saint Benedict’s College, Mount Nebo, Gorey, County Wexford, at age 13 he went to Beaumont College, Windsor (1910-1915).

When he left school he went with his invalided sister to Davos, Switzerland and rem,ained there for four years.

by 1927 in Australia - Regency at Xavier College, Kew
by 1933 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship
by 1967 at Mount Street London (ANG) studying

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Leonard Sheil was educated a Beaumont, UK, but joined the Society in Ireland at the age of 23. Following novitiate and philosophy, he left for Australia in 1925, and worked at Burke Hall until 1928. Shell spent most of his life as a missioner in rural parishes in Ireland, and was for a time in charge of a mission team in England. Later he was loaned to Farm Street where he worked amongst the domestic staff of the big hotels, and his knowledge of foreign languages was invaluable.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 4 1948

Fr. Leonard Sheil is working near Doncaster for the spiritual needs of workers in the mines, chiefly Irish immigrants. He reached Askern on 14th August and is residing with a Catholic doctor at Station Road near the miners Camp. “We are installing the Blessed Sacrament on 17th August in the little church”, he writes, “The Camp is not a simple proposition. I'm told there are 700 men, and the great majority seem to be Catholics but most of them know very little of any language but Slav. The Irishmen seem very decent fellows, but I just missed a big batch who left the day I arrived”.

Irish Province News 24th Year No 1 1949

LETTERS :

Fr. Sheil, who is working for the miners near Doncaster, Yorks, writes on 10th October :
“I am still too much up to my neck in miners to be able to give a report of work here. Yesterday a huge Hungarian introduced himself to me during a miners' dance. Said he, ‘my ancestor was Irish. In the 14th century be went to Jerusalem on a Crusade, and returning by Hungary stayed there. My name is Patrick Thomas O'Swath’. He spoke in German, the international language here. The Irish are passing through Askern at present at an average of about 15 per week. They stay for three weeks, and each week brings two or three fine fellows. They are mostly very good compared to the average miners. We have English, Poles, Croats, Slovenes, Hungarians, Lithuanians, innumerable Ukrainians, half Catholic, half Orthodox, but all Greek rite. The P.P, lent me his motor-bike, so I go to the miners hostels around, and in bad German get them out of bed for Mass, eat at their tables, tackle them singly and in groups... At Askern the Irish have done some good work, up on the Church roof, cleaning gutters (me with them !) and with pick and shovel getting Church grounds in order. My chief need at present is a musical instrument, say a concertina. Several men can play but we have no instrument. I wish some of your good sodalists would send us one or the price of one”.

And on the 24th November :
I am in the Yorkshire coalfields now three months. The first month I spent making contacts, the second in regular daily visitation of twelve mining camps within a twenty mile radius of Askern. Now I am beginning a series of one-week missions in the camps, followed by the formation in them of the B.V.M. Sodality. I am in touch with about 4,000 men or more - three quarters at least of them are Catholics. They come from every nation in Europe, and German is the international language, though, as time goes on, English tends to replace it. Of the Catholics I should say that more than three-quarters have not been to the Sacraments for many years.
The English management of the camps does everything possible to help. But the men are in the main tough lads. As a Yorkshire priest said to me, if they weren't tough they'd be dead. The hostels in which they live seem to me almost perfect, and far better than one could expect; but the work is underground, and in heavy air accidents are continual. Lack of home life and glum future prospects make the men downhearted and reckless. I beg prayers of everyone. You would pity these continentals, most of whom were torn from their homes by German or Russian at the age of twelve or fourteen, and have wandered the world since”.

Irish Province News 43rd Year No 2 1968

Obituary :

Fr Leonard Shiel SJ (1897-1968)

An appreciation by Very Reverend Joseph Flynn, M.S.S., Superior, Enniscorthy House of Missions and Chairman of the Committee for Missions to Emigrants in Britain.

So Fr. Leonard Sheil has passed to his eternal reward. Even now I hesitate to use the expression eternal “rest” as that very word would seem incongruous were it applied to the Fr. Leonard that I knew. I knew him only in one sphere of his activities and then only for the last sixteen or seventeen years of his life. Perhaps it was his most notable activity and perhaps they were his greatest years - the years spent working for our fellow countrymen in England. Leonard Sheil was - and is a name to “conjure with” - I personally have no doubt that he was the original pioneer, the real founder of this work; and I would say that it was his extremely personal and delightfully unorthodox approach to this critical spiritual problem that laid the foundation of the whole complex of missions, chaplaincies, social services that blossom so vigorously to-day: they were first rooted in the stubborn soil originally worked by Fr. Leonard.
He drew a few of us, his confreres and others, into the work with him. We had been doing the best we could in the conventional types of mission from the last years of the war; we had seen the problem of enormous numbers of parochially unattached Irish; we hoped they would come to us in the few churches where we were preaching by invitation. It took Fr. Leonard to tell us, with conviction - and abruptness - to go in without invitation and demand an invitation, to go after the Irish instead of waiting for them to come to us, to give them an informal mission wherever we could find them : it was all very much fire first and ask questions after.
It did seem absurd and risky at first, but the point was it worked. So, as he led, we followed into industrial sheds, Nissen huts, Canadian Terrapins, public bars, dining halls, dart clubs, and, at least once to my knowledge, into a disused poultry-house. Perhaps he cast the first stone at the orthodox, conventional mission, but if he did he led the assault. Yes, he led and we followed but few were capable of keeping pace with him. Even physically it was difficult as he whisked about on his motorbike, a debonair, piratical, almost Elizabethan figure. But psychologically his enthusiasm, energy and rare determination gave him a head start over his more leisurely disciples.
I never really understood Leonard Sheil. His background, Mount St. Benedict's and Beaumont, and a few years as a teacher, hardly disposed him, one would think, to attract the “boys” - as he always referred to the Irishmen. Yet somehow he did and did it more successfully than some of us, who, apart from a few years in local colleges, had an identical background with the “boys”. But then Leonard Sheil had something else. When one exhausts all the other possibilities one is left with the conviction that it only could have been a seething zeal to get every soul for God that one man could get in one lifetime. Apparently he never questioned his convictions, he never had any fears about whether he would be well received or not, possibly he never wondered whether the thing was possible or not; he just saw work to be done for God and charged straight ahead to get it done - in top gear and at full throttle. That was Leonard, he swooped on the “lapsed” like a bird of prey.
Year after year at our annual meetings to consider what, if any, progress had been made, he was the life and soul of the party; with his frequent sallies and droll reminiscences he was the real catalyst in establishing dialogue between the many Orders and Congregations who participated. His mind was fertile and inven tive; only a few months before his death, in answer to a request, he sent me from his sick bed a plan for a modernised mission that would bear comparison with that elaborated at a seminar of many experts over a period of several days. And he sent it by return of post. By contrast, he could take up the unusual, the odd; the un orthodox and make it serve his purpose with effortless ease. Those who heard him address the Easter Congress, so frequently and so informally, on every aspect of missions, and generally to bring us back from the realm of fancy to the realm of fact, must have seen that he had enormous intellectual resources so long as the subject was one in which he was really interested - getting the “boys” reconciled with God. Those who saw some of his “Recollection” pieces on television must have noticed how he always got home the missioner's point - conversion to God. His talk on the Bible and particularly his talk on the man in orbit, then very topical, accomplished the same thing by very different means; he made his point like a man wielding a very long, very thin, very sharp dagger, he always penetrated to the inner heart of the matter.
It would seem that he excelled in the use of novelties : the two pulpit sermon, the house-Mass mission, the straight-from-the shoulder talk to the “boys” on a scaffolding five hundred feet above the ground. (I once thought I detected an envious look as I told him of hearing a confession two thousand two hundred feet beneath the surface of Staffordshire, in a coalmine, of course). Yet I am convinced that he was not interested in novelties per se. If any novelty or stunt suited his purpose he was brave enough to use it and had the savoir faire to bring it off with conviction. But all the time the man I knew had only one purpose, to get his “boys” back to God; anything and everything that suited that purpose was grist to his mill. He just wanted souls for God, it was as simple as that.
To those who knew Leonard Sheil well, it is quite useless to speculate about what made him “tick over”; for to them he was simply Leonard Sheil : he was such a character that his name was synonymous with his personality. As I have said, I did not know him well, I only knew one facet of a many-sided personality; but this I do know, where God's work was concerned he was quite without human respect, he was completely fearless, he was utterly brave. In this respect I think he was the bravest man I ever knew.
J.F

Born: 14 January 1831, Ardstraw, Omagh, County Tyrone
Entered: 22 November 1847, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Ordained: 1860
Final vows: 02 February 1869
Died: 08 September 1909, St Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Younger brother of James Sheerin (MAR) - RIP 1854

Born: 09 January 1829, Ardstraw, County Tyrone
Entered: 29 August 1845, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Died: 27 July 1854, Georgetown College, Washington DC, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)

Older brother of Thomas Sheerin (MARNEB) - RIP 1909

Born: 15 July 1811, Ballintaggart, Dingle, Co Kerry
Entered: 22 January 1842, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Final vows:15 August 1860
Died: 08 September 1891, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Archdiocese of Dublin, Archives

Born: 07 March 1807, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 04 October 1825, Montrouge near Paris - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1840
Final Vows: 02 February 1846
Died: 18 December 1850, Pune, Maharashtra, India

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He made his Noviceship and studies on the Continent.
Sent with Father Kyan to India, he reached Bombay 11 November 1848. he was a Military Chaplain at Belgaum and Poona (Pune) where he died 18 December 1850.

Born: 01 February 1810, Rockmills, Kildorrery, County Cork
Entered: 25 April 1841, Florissant MO, USA - Missouriana Province (MIS)
Final vows: 25 March 1854
Died: 13 December 1879, Osage Mission, KS, USA - Missouriana Province (MIS)

Born: 09 February 1884, Australia
Entered: 07 September 1916, Loyola Greenwich, Australia (HIB)

Left Society of Jesus: 19 April 1924 from Melbourne

1916-1918: Loyola Greenwich, Sydney, Novitiate
1918-1921: St Ignatius College Riverview, Sydney, assists on Observatory
1921-1924: Loyola Greenwich, working

Born: 16 September 1673, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 02 october1692, Paris, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 14 April 1705, Collegium Buntruti, Porrentruy, Switzerland
Final Vows: 02 February 1708 Ensisheim
Died: 01 January 1735, Irish College, Poitiers, France - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)

Taught Humanities and Rhetoric. Talent and proficiency above mediocrity. Capable of teaching, of Mission work, of being Superior.
1714 Teaching at College of Sées CAMP
1714-1722 At Episcopal University Strasbourg teaching Humanities, Philosophy and Theology and was an MA
1723 CAMP Catalogue “de Schée” at Bar-le-duc College teaching. On Mission 1 year
1724-1732 Rector of Irish College Poitiers
1733-1735 AT Irish College Poitiers in infirm health

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1728 Rector and Procurator at Irish College Poitiers
His name was O’Shee, perhaps he is the Capt Thomas Shee of Butler’s infantry, who imitated the example of Captain Clinch - that Captain was from Kilkenny and was attainted c 1716

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had begun Priestly studies, probably at Paris before Ent 02 October 1692 Paris
1694-1695 After First Vows he did a year of Rhetoric at Paris
1695-1697 He was sent to CAMP for Philosophy to Pont-à-Mousson
1697-1702 He then spent seven years of Regency teaching Rhetoric at Charleville and Chaumont
1702-1705 He was then sent to Rheims for Theology and he was Ordained there 14 April 1705
1706-1714 His ability in Philosophy and Theology was noted, and so he taught Philosophy for eight years in various Colleges ending at Dijon.
1714-1723 Sent From Dijon to take a Chair in Moral Theology at Strasbourg. In the last year he was also Spiritual Father.
1723-1732 He was sent to the Irish College Poitiers, and became Rector in 1724. Because of earlier mismanagement, the finances of the Colleges were in a chaotic state, but Thomas managed to keep the College in existence and was even able to carry out improvements to the buildings. He remained at Poitiers after finishing as Rector and he died there 01 January 1735

Born: 28 May 1706, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 28 January 1726, Seville, Spain - Baeticae Province (BAE)
Ordained: 09 January 1735, Seville, Spain
Final Vows: 17 March 1742, Clonmel
Died: 16 May 1773, Waterford Residence, Waterford City, County Waterford

Final Vows made at Clonmel to Fr Thos A Hennessy

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Described as a brilliant scholar and sound divine.
1738 Sent to Ireland from Seville and to Waterford
1752 & 1755 In Waterford and was a distinguished Preacher
(Curiously all his dates are the same as those of Michael Cawood in the HIB Catalogues of 1752 and 1755.)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Nephew of Patrick Shee, Bishop of Ossory
1728-1735 After First Vows he was sent for studies to Granada and then San Hermenegildo's Seville where he was Ordained 09 January 1735
1735-1738 After Tertianshipat Baéza he was sent as Operarius to Granada
1738 Sent to Ireland and Kilkenny, but because of the dispute between Bishop O'Shaughnessy and the PP (a brother of Simon’s) he was sent to the Waterford Residence, where he worked until 1759
1759 Sent to Cork, but returned to Waterford a year later and remained there until his death, which occurred suddenly while preaching a Sunday evening sermon at St Patrick’s 16 May 1773

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHEA, SIMON, of Leinster, was born on the 18th of May, 1706; joined the Order in the Province of Seville, on the 28th of January, 1726, and commenced his Missionary career in Ireland, twelve years later. He was Professed on the 17th of March, 1742. Waterford was the theatre of his zeal, where he was admired as a Preacher. He was living in 1755.

Born: 1583, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 1604, Naples, Italy - Neapolitanae Province(NAP)
Ordained: c 1611, Naples, Italy
Died: 22 December 1634, Cashel, Co Tipperary

Received in Flanders and ended in Naples Novitiate with Neterville and Cusac (Naples Book of Novices)
Educated at Irish College Douai
1611 At Naples College studying Theology and Philosophy
1617 John “Shaeus” in Ireland Age 36 Soc 13
1621 Catalogue Age 38 Soc 17 Mission 7. Talent judgement and prudence good
1622 Catalogue In East Munster
1626 Catalogue In Ireland

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of the famous Sir Richard Shee (Deputy Lord Treasurer of Ireland)
He defended Philosophy and Theology in a “public act” and was a distinguished Theologian
Was Minister in a College in Naples
1614-1626 In Ireland. Was William Boyton’s teacher at Cashel up to 1627
Mentioned in a letter of Christopher Holiwood 30 June 1604, who had left him in Paris studying Theology, and wished much to have him for the Irish Mission.
An esteemed, able and prudent man (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had started his Priestly studies at Douai and continuing them at Paris before Ent 1604 Naples
1606-1611 After First Vows he studied at Naples and was Ordained there by 1611
1613 Sent via Belgium to Ireland and East Munster and was noted as a Preacher
In the 1620s he was sent to Cashel where he taught at school, and the future Jesuit Martyr William Boyton was a pupil. He died at Cashel 1634

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHEA, JOHN. Of whom I find mention in Father Holiwood’s letter, of 30th of June, 1604. He had left him at Paris, studying Theology, and wishes much to have him for the Irish Mission.

Born 30 April 1863, Kilbehenny, Mitchelstown, County Cork
Entered: 04 September 1886, Frederick MD, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)
Ordained 28 June 1898, Woodstock College, Maryland USA
Final vows: 15 August 1903
Died 05 September 1922, St Vincent’s Hospital, Brooklyn NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

part of the Kohlman Hall, New York NY, USA community at the time of death

by 1899 came to Milltown (HIB) studying

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1898

Our Past

Father Terence J Shealy SJ & Father Michael Mahony SJ

Rev T J Shealy SJ, and Rev M J Mahony SJ, were ordained at Woodstock, Md., on June 28th. Both were among the small band of pioneers who laid the first foundation of the Apostolic School in the Sacred Heart College, Limerick, and were afterwards in the first batch of Apostolic students sent forth from Mungret.

Born at the base of the grand old mountain, Galtee-more, near Mitchelstown, and brought up amid its scenes of wilde grandeur and beauty, Terence J Shealy entered the Apostolic School in Limerick on September 4th, 1880. When Mungret passed into the hands of the Society, he read there a very successful course in Arts, and graduated in 1885. During most of his time in Mungret he was employed in the responsible office of prefect of the seminarists and lay boys, and besides reading for his University examinations, he taught a class, for two or three hours a day during the last two years of his course. After getting his degree, he taught the Matriculation class for a year, and finally, in 1886, entered the noviceship of the New York province of the Society of Jesus.

On finishing his philosophical studies in Woodstock, he taught poetry in Fordham College, New York, and afterwards taught poetry and rhetoric in Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. It was in the latter college that Mr Shealy's rare gifts as a master became conspicuous. The literary taste which he imparted to his pupils and the magical influence which he exerted over them were alike remarkable.

We have before us copies of the “Acroama”, published in 1892, and of the “Eutropius”, published in the January of 1895, and newspaper accounts of the representation of the “Sibylla”. The Acroama was originally a class journal which Mr. Shealy, then professor in the Holy Cross College, Worcester, started in the autumn of 1892, to stimu late the literary ambition of his class. The beautiful volume before us is merely a souvenir edition, containing a short poetic extract from each contributor to the Acroama, with a portrait of each member of the class, accompanied by a racy epigram touching off some salient point in his character...

To Father Shealy belongs the credit of being the first master in the United States to attempt an original Greek play. His “Eutropius”, written in Greek, and constructed after the model of an Attic tragedy, created a sensation in the learned world of the States.

“Sibylla”, Father Shealy's next venture, is an original Latin play, in which the pagan King of Erin sends his chief bard to Rome to investigate the Sybil's prophecies about the Virgin and Child.

This play also was publicly represented bythe students of Father Shealy's class, and was highly praised at the time.

After the usual term of teaching, Mr. Sbealy went in 1895 to Woodstock, to enter upon his theological studies. There he was this year raised to the sacred dignity of the priesthood.

Father Shealy is now completing his course of theology at Milltown Park, Dublin.

Most heartily do we wish Father Shealy many a long year of holy work in the Society of his choice. May he ever remain an honour to his country and to his alma mater.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1906

Letters from Our Past

Father Terence J Shealy SJ

Father Shealy writes from New York :

How I should like to give you a long account of my experience in the St Louis Exhibition. I assure you it was inost valuable and most varied. I had to do with all the educational systems of the world, and with many of the educators. Well, I shall not begin description, for it would take a long article, and I cannot afford the time at present. I may say, however, that I never received so much honour and courtesy and deference in my life. I had to exchange views with and co-operate with a body of eminent scholars - mostly all Protestants and nearly half European - and they were most generous in their appreciation of my services. Not, indeed, because of any personal merit of mine, but rather because of the Society I represented

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1921

Letters from Our Past

Father Terence J Shealy SJ

Through the courtesy of Fr Joseph McDonnell SJ, we publish extracts from a letter sent him concerning the wonderful work being done by one of our most distinguished past students, Fr Terence J Shealy SJ.

Overbrook, Pa. USA, 1-12-20

I have read in the “Irish Messenger” the suggestionis from friends, and also of the zealous efforts of the late. Fr Wm Doyle SJ, towards. the establishment of retreats for the laity. To me it is a great pleasure to be able to say a word in favour of such retreats, For two years I have been present at the annual week-end retreats for laymen in the arch-diocese of Philadelphia, which are held at St Charles' Seminary. I have been edified beyond words by the grand spirit shown by the devoted lay men from all walks of life.

For several years the Rev T J Shealy, of Fordham University, NY, has been conducting retreats for laymen. at Staten Island. Some years ago a large house and plot of ground was purchased for this purpose, and to-day he has a regularly established retreat centre with a week-end retreat for at least fifty inen for nine months of the year. Each week Fr Shealy, although he is Dean of the School of Law and Sociology at Fordham, finds time to conduct a retreat from Friday evening till Monday morning. From Staten Island the good work has spread, and from a tiny mustard seed it has grown to a big tree. In 1913 the late Mr J Ferrick, a prominent businessman of Philadelphia, proposed the holding of retreats in Archdiocese. With the approval of Archbishop Prendergast, and with the generous aid of Mgr Drumgoole, Rector of St Charles Seminary at Overbrook, the seminary was chosen as the place of retreat. Two retreats were held in 1913. About one hundred and fifty men made the retreats. Lawyers, doctors, 'school-teachers, politicians - in fact, men from every walk of life - made up, and still make up the list. This year Overbrook was taxed to its capacity when over five hundred men made their retreat under the guidance of Fr Shealy.

Two years ago the movement received a new impetus when the late Mr J Ferrick and Mr J Sullivan, now the President of the Retreats in Philadelphia, made a tour of the principal cities of the USA to make the movement better known. They met the Bishops and talked with them on the subject, and their response was very gratifying. To-day the result is seen when cities like Pittsburgh, Pa, Toledo, Ohio, and Albany, NY, have their own retreat houses where retreats are held throughout the entire year. We hope at no distant date that Philadelphia will also have its retreat home, provision for which has been made in the will of Mr Ferrick. Nor has Philadelphia confined its retreats to its own people. This year at Overbrook, we had men from remote Western cities, and one even from the far-off land of New Zealand, This gentleman, by the way, was a non-Catholic. Judging by what he said at its close, we feel satisfied that the right spirit is back of the movement. We have many non-Catholics at each retreat, and the result is shown in the many conversions, and even if there were not conversions at least an amount of bigotry is removed; Nor are our retreats confined to men of more mature years, we have boys of the age of sixteen making them.

Throughout our Archdiocese, too, in our boarding schools for young ladies, retreats for women are held each year during June, July, and August. In New York City there are also regularly established retreat houses for women; one such is the Cenacle of St John Francis Regis.

Every day we bave new proofs of the salutary effects among the laity. To the devoted sons of St Ignatius is due everlasting gratitude for the unselfish interest they have taken in the welfare of the people in the establishment of houses in which they can spend some time thinking over the one great truth of our holy Faith-save your immortal soul.

The above letter encloses a cutting which relates how Mr M Joyce of Oswego, NY, having made retreats at Staten Island, wished his friends to have the like advantage, Remembering the tale of Mahomet and the mountain, he resolved to bring the retreat to Oswego. The use of a hotel at Mexico Point, on Lake Ontario, being obtained, retreats were given in 1919 and 1920. The extract states that at the closing exercises the retreatants felt reflected in their souls something of the gorgeous beauty and the peace of God that surrounded them in the wilderness of Mexico Point.

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1923

Obituary

Father Terence J Shealy SJ

Last September one of the very earliest and certainly one of the most distinguished of the past pupils of the Apostolic School, Rev T J Shealy SJ, was called to his reward.

The writer of the present sketch has a very vivid recollection of Terence Shealy as a student at Mungret, just forty years ago. He was then a stalwart, athletic young fellow from the country, who immediately attracted attention by strongly-marked features, brilliant eyes and coal-black hair. He was very animated in conversation, while every feature showed expression and life. He was a man of strong convictions and none too tolerant of the views of others. Hence, although respected for his earnestness and transparent sincerity, and admired for his intellectual abilities and high ideals, he was never specially popular with his companions. Still he was acknowledged by all to be generous and unselfish, and was known to be a staunch and faithful friend. Even then he was a brilliant and forceful speaker with great persuasiveness. Altogether, young Shealy was one whose rugged strength of character, deep earnestness and brilliant parts marked him out as one fitted by nature to influence others, and make his mark in life: he did not squander his talents or allow them to lie idle.

A native of Carragane, Co. Tipperary, near Mitchelstown, T Shealy was one of the small band of pioneers that formed the first beginnings of the Apostolic School in the Sacred Heart College, Limerick, He came to Mungret with the others, when at the opening of the latter College, in 1882, the Apostolic School was transferred thither. He was afterwards, in 1886, one of the first batch of Apostolic students sent out from Mungret after the completion of their course.

T Shealy graduated in Arts in the NUI in 1885; but he was not one of the type who do brilliantly in written examinations. After getting his BA degree he taught for a year in the College. On leaving Mungret in 1886 he entered the Noviceship of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus. Already in the “Mungret Annual” a short sketch has been given of Fr Shealy's distinguished record as a teacher in Fordham College, NY, and afterwards in Holy Cross College, Worcester (Mass). These years were distinguished by the public presentation given by the students under the inspiration of Mr Shealy, at one time, of a Greek play called “Eutropius”, and later of a Latin play called “Sibylla”. After his ordination in 1897, Fr. Shealy spent a year at Milltown Park, Dublin, where he completed his Theological studies. Apparently one of the main reasons why his superiors accorded him the privilege of returning for a year to Ireland was to give him an opportunity of visting his aged mother, whom he revered and loved with an almost romantic affection. Some few months previously, on the occasion of his first Mass, Fr Shealy had written a very beautiful little poem voicing the sentiments of his mother away in Ireland and unable to see him offer the Holy Sacrifice, a privilege for which she had yearned for thirty years. This poem, which is entitled “From my Mother in Ireland for my First Mass”, was published in the American “Messenger” in 1898, and has been repeatedly reprinted in many Catholic papers in Ireland and America.

A few years after his return to America we find Fr Shealy, though still comparatively young, chosen as Educational Commissioner for the State of New York at the St Louis World Exposition. During those years, too, he be cane noted as a preacher of remarkable eloquence and power. When the Law School was commenced at the Fordham University, New York, Fr Shealy was appointed as its first Dean; and he filled the Chair of Professor of Jurisprudence for many years. The organisation of the school was due in large part to him.

Fr Shealy's great life-work, however, for which he was well know and esteemed through out the Catholic world of America, and for which his name will probably find a permanent place in the history of the Catholic Church there, was the establishment of the Spiritual Retreats for Laymen. This work he began in 1909, and the first Retreats were held at Fordham College during the summer vacations of that year. The work gained such approval from the Ecclesiastical authorities, and was so evidently aclapted to meet the needs of the time that its success was assured from the beginning. So great were the numbers of men wishing to follow the Exercises that a permanent house specially devoted to the purpose had to be requisitioned. During that year the retreats were held at Manresa Island, South Norwalk (Conn). In April, 1911, Fr Shealy was enabled by generous contributions from friends of the Retreat movement to purchase a small estate at Staten Island in the suburbs of New York City. Since that time these Retreats were given every year from April to December under Fr Shealy's direction. The house can accommodate only about sixty men at a time; but, as the retreats go on continously for nine months, more than two thousand men inake the spiritual exercises there in the course of the year.

From New York the retreat movement quickly spread to other centres in the United States. Where no buildings are yet set apart for that special purpose, colleges or diocesan seminaries are utilised during the summer vacations when the students are away; and there large numbers of men spend a few days in uninterruptect silence, prayer anal meditation, under the direction of the Fathers of the Society. At St Charles' Seminary, Overbrook (Pa), Fr Shealy limself for the past nine years gave every year two retreats, at each of which nearly two hundred retreatants made the Exercise. At other places, such as Malvern (Pa.), special houses have been built for the purpose.

It would be difficult to describe the love and enthusiastic affection which Fr Shealy inspired among the men who followed the retreats under his guidance; and it is impossible to estimate the far-reaching effects the retreats produce in the lives of the inen themselves, and the members of the whole civil community whom these mnen afterwards influence. Since Fr Shealy's death funds are being put together under the caption of the “Shealy Memorial Building Fund”, to erect at Staten Island, which has been the parent house of the American Retreat movement, larger and more commodious buildings at an estimated cost of about £40,000.

In connection with the retreats, a Laymen's League and a School for Social Studies have been founded in New York. These works, also, which are still flourishing, owe their existence and success in large part to Fr Shealy's energy.

Fr Shealy's health had been failing for some time, owing principally to the continual strain of his busy and crowded life. “Far better to wear out than to rust out”, he used to say; and he followed that principle in practice. · The end came rather rapidly, and his happy death occurred at St Vincent's Hospital, Brooklyn, NY, on September 5th, 1922, at the comparatively early age of 59 years. He had been Director of the Staten Island Retreat House for thirteen years and had finished the last retreat he conducted eight days before his death.

During these years some 386 retreats had been given there, most of which Fr Shealy himself directed. His unexpected death aroised quite an “enthusiasm” of sorrow and regret, especially among his numerous spiritual children of the Catholic laymen of New York, by whom he was loved and venerated in an extraordinary degree RIP

Born: 11 June 1846, County Limerick
Entered: 08 January 1873, Sevenhill - Austriaco-Hungaricae Province (ASR-HUN)
Died: 29 July 1884, St Aloysius, Sevenhill, Adelaide, Australia - Austriaco-Hungaricae Province (ASR-HUN)

Early Irish Mission to to Australia 1880 - 3rd Scholastics with James Power, and Henry O’Neill

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Daniel Sheahan was received as a novice at Sevenhill, 8 January 1873, along with James Power. From 1873-80 he was at Sevenhill as a novice, teacher and philosopher. From 1880-82 he was teaching and sacristan at Xavier College, Kew, but had to return to Sevenhill in 1882 because of ill health, and he died of a sudden haemorrhage. At the time he was studying theology.

Born: 01 April 1789, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1810, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Died: 04 April 1819, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was a good religious and always ready for any work.
Loose leaf note in CatChrn : Entitled “Left Stonyhurst for Castle Brown” :
16 May 1814

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHEA, WILLIAM, a most promising Scholastic, who died at Clongowes-wood, 4th of April, 1819, Soe.9.

Born: 29 May 1881, Ennis, County Clare
Entered: 06 September 1902, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1915, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1921, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 14 January 1924, Dublin

Chaplain in the First World War.

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

Father was a merchant and died in 1883. Mother died in 1890. She was a Protestant before her marriage.

Two brothers and three sisters (one deceased)

Early education was a a convent school and a Christian Brothers school. Then he went to Castleknock College

by 1906 at St Aloysius Jersey Channel Islands (FRA) studying
by 1908 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying
by 1917 Military Chaplain : No 17 Casualty Clearing Station, France
by 1918 Military Chaplain : c/o Archbishop’s House, Wodehouse Road, Bombay, India
by 1919 Military Chaplain : 16th CCS, Mesopotamia, EF

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at Castleknock.

After his Novitiate he was sent to Jersey for Philosophy and then to Clongowes for a Regency of some years Teaching and Prefecting.
1912 He began Theology at Milltown.
1917 He was appointed Military Chaplain to No 17 Casualty Clearing Station, BEF, France. He was for some time later In India and Mesopotamia.
After the War ended he was sent to Mungret. he was attacked by some virulent growth and died after much suffering in hospital in Dublin 14 January 1924. He is buried in Mungret.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Electrical Engineer before entry

◆ The Clongownian, 1924

Obituary

Father Frank Shaw SJ

Father Frank Shaw SJ, was not himself an “old Clongownian”, but there must be many old Clongowes boys who would find it difficult to remember their time at Clongowes without recalling “Mr Shaw”. Third Liners of the years 1909-'11 especially will remember him, for he was our Prefect during that time. Many of these Third Liners must have gone to Heaven before him, for they were just the right age to be called upon to take their share in the Great War. Indeed, Father Shaw, who was a chaplain in the Navy for a time, met more than one of his former charges in India or some other of the many places where his duty brought him. But we thought little of wars during 1909-'11, and we remember Father Shaw best as being a bit of a puzzle. From one point of view he was quite intelligible to us; we understood him and sympathised fully with him when he would go in to bat some scorching summer day and scatter the visiting team's best bowlers to the boundaries. We used to thrill with pride - for, of course, we looked upon our Prefect as the product of our training - at his exquisite late cuts and glides, or his powerful straight drives, and shout ourselves hoarse in friendly triumph over the discomfiture of the “enemy” bowlers. But Father Shaw puzzled us by what now we should call his idealistic side: he was a very silent man, yet very humorous when he liked, and sometimes when he did not like, he would be stirred to a slow smile by the whimsical seriousness with which some Third Liner viewed the minor problems of life. He nearly always seemed shy with us boys, but we knew him for a gentle, patient, just man, and I think we half sympathised with his somewhat tired demeanour. We sensed vaguely the fact that he possessed an artistic temperament, and some of us knew how to lure him to the library door by, putting on some of his favourite records. He was a poet, too, and he used to confess how jealous. he was of the phrase, “Our tainted nation's solitary boast” having been written by a Protestant.

He died a most holy death on 13th January, 1924, after weeks of intense pain, He used to murmur, towards the end, to those who visited him, “J'ai fini”, but most of us knew that he was not thinking so much of the close of his old life as of the opening of his new; and his real thought would be rather Nunc coepi”.
E J C RIP

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1924

Obituary
Father Frank Shaw SJ

Born in Ennis, Co. Clare, on May 29th, 1881, Fr Francis Shaw lost his father and mother while still young. Fr D Fogarty was named as guardian of the five children - two girls and three boys - and on his death the present Bishop of Killaloe, Most Rev Dr Fogarty acted as guardian - always an ideally kind one - especially to Fr Frank, his favourite.

In 1892 Fr Shaw was sent to Castleknock College where he remained till 1901, winning a name for himself already in cricket and football. From there he went to Newcastle-on-Tyne for a course of engineering. Here, wishing to be in a position to answer the religious difficulties of his Protestant fellow-students, he got into touch with the Jesuit Father's, with the result that he gave up Engineering and entered the Jesuit noviceship at Tullabeg on September 6th, 1902.

He received his vows on September 8th, 1904, and after studying Philosophy in Jersey and at Stonyhurst, England, he was stationed in Clongowes Wood College from 1909-1913. Coming to Milltown Park in 1913, he was ordained in 1916.

As the call for chaplains was urgent he volunteered immediately, and was appointed chaplain to the British Forces soon after. He served in that capacity till the War was over - in fact till 1920.

His work as chaplain was for some time in France, but mainly on the Eastern Front in Mesopotamia. Here he had a severe attack of malaria and dysentery, and it was here that at odd moments and in odder places he wrote most of his papers on Our Lady.

Demobilized in 1919, he made his tertianship in Tullabeg and in August, 1920, came to Mungret College. He took his final vows on February 2nd, 1921, in the College chapel and remained here till his health gave way in September last. It was then judged expedient to send him to a specialist in Dublin. From the first the doctors had not much hope; and an exploring operation confirmed their worst fears. Cancer was diagnosed, and it was clear he could only last some months.

Sister Ignatius broke the news to him a week or two after the operation; and soon after found him crying - but as he hastened to reassure her - for joy that he was to “go home so soon”. Everyone who came in contact with him - Sisters, nurses, doctors, visitors - all were amazed at his cheerful patience and his simple manly holiness.

A prominent Dublin doctor who had attended many saintly people in their last illness stated Fr Shaw was the holiest of them all. The terrible disease wore him slowly down. He hoped to get “home with the Kings” he said; and the day after the Octave of the Epiphany news came of his happy release. And so his body was brought to Mungret, “the old spot” he loved, coming in the train that brought the boys back from Holidays. He had gone on the unending Holiday. And the boys with their keen intuition of things, said openly and half-enviously that he was in Heaven - for he was a saint,

Judged by ordinary standards his death seems naturally premature - yet he said himself before leaving for Dublin that he had seen and had as much of life as he wanted. And the circles in which be moved - his old school, the communities in which he lived, the regiments of which he was in spiritual charge, and most of all, Mungret, both the school and the Community - know and feel his life has not been in vain and will not forget how he brightened life for them, always full of playful whimsical humour, always doing what he had to do conscientiously and well. His disposition was essentially kindly and amiable. He was a splendid athlete, and in all games maintained his reputation till the very end. They speak of his batting and football yet in Clongowes. In France he shot the winning goal for his regiment after he had received a nasty “ankle-tap” which kept him prone for six weeks. In India they would hold up cricket matches till the Padre's boat came in from Basra. And in Mungret he proved himself as skilled in hurling and rounders as in the other games.

He liked simple things and candid people, and never was afraid to hear or speak the truth. He was a great lover of Nature and his hobbies included Astronomy and Botany. His chief characteristic, however, was a love for Our Lady that glowed all his life at white heat. He sang Her praises in prose and in verse, hunting up every text of scripture that referred to Her, ransacking every Doctor of the Church who spoke of Her. He seemed to see all life through Her, and so to the poor, to women and children he was wonderfully gentle and courteous as beloved our Lady's knight.

He was as well a passionate lover of Ireland, of Clare, and of Mungret. When in a base hospital over in Mesopotamia some English officer's made disparaging remarks of the 1916 men, the quiet Padre faced a ward-full of them, and an icy frightened silence followed! He sensed the truth out there; he never swerved for one half-second from the head line set by Pearse, and McSwiney through all the later tangled times.

Mungret seemed somehow to be waiting for him, and he for her. As spiritual Father to the boys, her “holiness and homeliness” appealed to his manly piety and sincerity; and as teacher he revelled in the Gaelic national tradition here. Going through his papers, one finds the list of the Mungret wild flowers and the date on which he first sees them every year, and then the Gaelic name side by side with the high-sounding Graeco Latin botanical term. He loved everything and everyone that was in Mungret or loved Mungret. The evening that in a tense silence the hearse came crunching and creaking up the avenue - one of the little birds he used to feed from his window kept flying from it to the writer's and back again. At last after tapping impatiently with its beak on the panes of the closed window next door, it flew away. The hearse had stopped. The coffin was being borne to the chapel.

Yet the “Father, Who is in Heaven” will care for the little feathered friends of Fr Shaw in Mungret, and Father Shaw will remind Him even of them because they are of the Mungret he loved, and for which he worked and prayed and works and prays that she still may be “kindly Irish of the Irish”, full of the old homely holiness, the natural super naturalness of the Gael - and with some at least of his splendid love for Muire Máthair.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam!

To his brothers and sisters and to, Most Rev Dr Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, who was nearer and dearer to him than anyone on earth, we offer our sincere sympathy.

Born: 26 March 1907, Mullingar, County Westmeath
Entered: 01 September 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1939, Milltown Park. Dublin
Final Vows: 24 December 1945, St Ignatius, Leeson Street, Dublin
Died: 23 December 1970, St Vincent's Nursing Home, Leeson Street, Dublin

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

by 1932 at Valkenburg, Limburg, Netherlands (GER I) studying

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - LEFT for a period and returned. Took First Vows 21 November 1926

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Shaw, Francis
by Patrick Maume

Shaw, Francis (1907–70), Jesuit priest, Celtic scholar and historical polemicist, was born 26 March 1907 in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, the fourth child among four sons and two daughters of Patrick Walter Shaw (1872–1940), merchant, and his wife Mary 'Minnie' (née Galligan). The Shaws were a leading Mullingar business dynasty; Patrick Walter Shaw owned several premises in the town (and a number of racehorses) and sat on a number of public bodies, including Mullingar town commissioners and Westmeath county council; he chaired Westmeath county board of health. In local politics, the Shaw family formed a distinctive faction independent of both the local Redmondite organisation and the radical dissident group led by Laurence Ginnell (qv). P. W. Shaw, however, endorsed the support expressed by John Redmond (qv) for the allies in the first world war and addressed several recruiting meetings. He was a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for Longford–Westmeath (1923–33).

From an early age Francis Shaw took a strong interest in the Irish language, and was awarded fifteen prizes and medals at local and national feiseanna. He was educated at Mullingar Christian Brothers' School and Terenure College, Dublin. The latter school was chosen because its Carmelite proprietors were willing to make allowances for his frail health by letting him sleep in a single room rather than a dormitory. Shaw's health problems were chronic; late in life he stated he had hardly ever had a pain-free day.

On 1 September 1924 Shaw entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tullabeg, Rahan, Co. Offaly, and after his first profession (21 November 1926) undertook his juniorate studies at the Jesuit residence in Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, where Fr Lambert McKenna (qv) encouraged him to pursue a career in Celtic studies. In 1929 Shaw graduated from UCD with first-class honours in Celtic studies, winning a postgraduate scholarship and a Mansion House Fund scholarship in Irish language and literature; at UCD he wrote for the college magazine, the National Student. In 1930 he won a travelling scholarship in Celtic studies, and in 1931 graduated MA with first-class honours (his principal areas of study being Irish history and the Welsh language). He studied philosophy at the Ignatius Kolleg (the German Jesuit house of studies) at Valkenburg (near Limburg) in the Netherlands (1930–32). His scholarly mentors included Osborn Bergin (qv); Eoin MacNeill (qv), whose lectures Shaw recalled as 'unorthodox and unpredictable … they taught in action the way of research' (Martin and Byrne (1973), 303); Rudolf Thurneysen (qv), under whom he also studied at the University of Bonn (1932–3; he returned to Ireland prematurely because of ill health); and T. F. O'Rahilly (qv).

Shaw's presence in Germany during the Nazi seizure of power contributed to his abiding distaste for that movement. In 1935 he sparked public controversy by suggesting at a meeting in UCD that advocates of Irish-medium education for English-speaking children displayed a narrow nationalism comparable to Nazism; in April 1936 he published an article in the National Student denouncing Nazi persecution of catholicism, the regime's general lawlessness, and the writings of Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946): 'this farrago of impiety, stupidity and ludicrous ignorance of history … a religion of race and racial hatreds, founded on pseudo-scientific theories which are discredited by all serious historians and ethnologists'.

Shaw undertook further study at UCD (1933–6); in 1934 he produced a highly praised edition of the Old Irish text Aisling Oengusso. During his studies at UCD he regularly presented papers to the Irish-language student society Cumann Liteardha na Gaeilge and taught at the Irish-language summer college in Ballingeary, Co. Cork. He studied theology at the Jesuit faculty in Milltown Park, Dublin (1936–40), where he was ordained priest on 31 July 1939. He was allowed to substitute a long retreat for tertianship studies because of his ill health, and became a professed Jesuit on 24 December 1945. From autumn 1940 until his death Shaw lived in the Jesuit community at 35 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, of which he was superior (1945–51); he annually constructed the Christmas crib in its chapel. He was also a consultor of the Irish Jesuit province (1947–53).

Shaw initially expected to spend some years on research after ordination. In March 1941, however, he was appointed professor of early and mediaeval Irish at UCD in succession to Bergin through the influence of D. A. Binchy (qv), and held this post for the remainder of his life. Later in 1941 he was appointed to the board of the Institute for Advanced Studies, and in 1942 was elected MRIA. Shaw was a painstaking teacher, and assisted foreign students with evening tuition, often in their own languages. His sense of humour and combative argumentation brightened his lectures and survives in such published remarks as his dismissal of the wilder theories of the archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister (qv) regarding cross-cultural parallels: 'The swastika in Dublin is associated with laundrying [a reference to the well-known Swastika Laundry]. Therefore the Nazi movement is the cult of hygiene and Hitler is a soap-and-water god!' (Studies (June 1935), 320).

Shaw's devotion to teaching, combined with his poor health, meant that his research interests (mediaeval Irish medical tracts, whose significance in pioneering a simplified Irish free from the inflated rhetoric of the bardic schools he held to be greatly undervalued; ancient Irish clothing, houses and social life generally; the history of Celtic scholarship) found expression only in occasional publications, including articles and book reviews, in the Jesuit journal Studies and similar outlets. Shaw remarked that whenever he set about reducing his collection of typewritten transcripts of medieval medical texts to coherence he had to go to hospital.

Shaw was an outspoken opponent of T. F. O'Rahilly's thesis on the existence of two St Patricks, both on scholarly and devotional grounds: he held that mediaeval miracle tales and scholarly positivism alike hindered recognition of the deep interior spirituality found in the 'Confession' and 'Letter to Coroticus'. He was scathing about scholars who (unlike his hero MacNeill) relied on printed editions (often outdated) rather than reading manuscripts. A recurring theme is that vague and ignorant romanticisation hinders the Irish nation from recognising authentic heroes such as George Petrie (qv), Eugene O'Curry (qv) and Johann Kaspar Zeuss (qv).

Shaw held the view, common among social historians, that history paid too much attention to the powerful and articulate and should explore the experience of the common people. He was encouraged in this by love of country sports and the fields and rivers of his native lake country; he praised his fellow Westmeath man Fr Paul Walsh (qv) for supporting his topographical studies by walking the land, and claimed that MacNeill, as an Antrim 'countryman', understood Ireland better than did the urban Patrick Pearse (qv) and James Connolly (qv). As he grew older, he felt his own lifetime had witnessed the end of an immemorial rural Irish way of life, whose traces, he hoped, would at least be preserved in the records of the Folklore Commission. He thought that popular commercial culture, particularly from America, was debasing public taste, and lamented that the authentic romance and heroism found in lives of saints and missionaries were being eclipsed by the synthetic Hollywood varieties. In 1942 he published a pamphlet criticising the novel and film Gone with the wind for excessive 'realism' in their depictions of sexuality and childbirth and for superficiality in their depictions of catholicism. This rousing defence of literary censorship against 'long-haired intellectuals' appealed to readers to keep the faith even if the European war subjected Ireland to the same devastation as that suffered by the defeated states of the American south.

Shaw attributed the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century to the efforts of ideologues to force common humanity into utopian projects. His scepticism of state power was influenced by contemporary catholic social thought, and he saw Irish identity as essentially catholic; but, though this forms a subtext in his 1963 article on the essentially Roman nature of early Irish spirituality and his analysis of the 'Celtic twilight' of W. B. Yeats (qv) as owing more to Macpherson's Ossian (mediated through Arnold and Renan), the rhetorical inflation of Standish James O'Grady (qv), and 'the charlatan Blavatsky and Brahman philosophers' than to the authentic past as revealed by Celtic scholarship, Shaw was not a bigot. Throughout his career he lauded protestant scholars such as Edmund Curtis (qv), Edward John Gwynn (qv), and Douglas Hyde (qv); he admired Pope John XXIII and welcomed his attempt to open the catholic church to the world.

Shaw took a strong interest in radio for religious purposes and popular education; he gave several 'retreats for the sick' on Radio Éireann, encouraging listeners to mentally re-enact, in Ignatian style, the life of Jesus, and he contributed to the Thomas Davis lecture series on early Ireland. He also wrote on spiritual and other matters for the Jesuit devotional magazine, the Sacred Heart Messenger, and was active in An Rioghacht (the League of the Kingship of Christ) and the Sodality of the Sacred Heart. His illness gave him a particular interest in ministry to the sick; he was a frequent hospital visitor, and directed the sodality of the nursing staff at St Vincent's Hospital (1944–59). He was popular as a confessor and spiritual adviser, and frequently mediated family disputes in local households.

Dean of the faculty of Celtic studies in UCD (1964–70), he served in the NUI senate (1963–70), and was spoken of as a possible successor to Michael Tierney (qv) as president of UCD; he served as interim president after Tierney's resignation in 1964, but did not seek the post. During the 'gentle revolution' protests of the late 1960s, Shaw supported the 'establishment' group around President J. J. Hogan (qv), and his defeat in UCD governing body elections in December 1969 strengthened advocates of greater student participation in university governance. After a year's illness, Shaw died in a Dublin nursing home on 23 December 1970, and was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery.

Shaw's posthumous fame rests on an article published two years after his death. He had been invited to contribute an essay to the spring 1966 issue of Studies (commemorating the 1916 rising), but his 10,000-word article, 'Cast a cold eye … prelude to a commemoration of 1916', was turned down by the journal's editor (Fr Burke Savage) and the Jesuit provincial as over-long and inopportune. Shaw acquiesced, but prepared a 20,000-word version which circulated in typescript. In 1971 a copy was acquired by the New Ulster Movement (precursor of the Alliance Party), which saw the piece as directly relevant to the developing Northern Ireland troubles, and gave it further informal circulation. Under these circumstances, Fr Troddyn (editor of Studies) and the provincial decided that official publication would reassert their copyright and assist understanding of Irish current affairs; the article appeared in the summer 1972 issue of Studies (vol. lxi, no. 242, pp 113–53) under the title (chosen by Troddyn) 'The canon of Irish history: a challenge'.

In 'The canon of Irish history', Shaw attacks the four last pamphlets produced by Patrick Pearse in 1915–16 to justify the forthcoming Easter rising. The pamphlets, Shaw contends, equate the Gaelic tradition with physical-force separatism as the 'gospel of Irish nationality', with Wolfe Tone (qv), Thomas Davis (qv), James Fintan Lalor (qv), and John Mitchel (qv) as its 'four evangelists'; claim that John Redmond and his political allies committed national apostasy in accepting home rule rather than full independence as a final settlement; and equate the rebels, precipitating war and their own deaths to redeem a corrupted Ireland, with Jesus crucified to redeem sinful humanity. Shaw argues that Pearse projected Standish James O'Grady's essentially pagan concept of heroism and a modern republican ideology essentially alien to Irish society onto the Gaelic past; that Pearse and his allies denied and betrayed the concrete achievements and genuine patriotism of others, particularly Redmond and MacNeill; that Pearse, and by extension the whole physical-force republican tradition, engaged in blasphemous self-deification to justify imposing their will on the majority in a manner reminiscent of twentieth-century fascism and communism; and that the independent Irish state owes more to an older and broader popular sense of Irish nationality, which Redmond and MacNeill represented, than the irreligious and destructive mindset of Tone and Pearse.

'The canon' sums up the concerns of Shaw's lifetime. Its critique of Pearse resembles his 1930s critique of Yeats; its invocation of the horrors of twentieth-century European history reflects his longstanding sensitivity to those horrors; its vaguely defined but essentially catholic and rural-populist version of Irish identity reflects Shaw's lifelong self-presentation as spokesman and servant of the plain people of Ireland; and Redmond and MacNeill are cast, like Zeuss and Petrie, as heroes unjustly forgotten by those enjoying the fruits of their labours.

In 1966 Shaw had concluded his essay by hoping that recent moves towards north-south reconciliation indicated that both parts of Ireland, north and south, as well as Ireland and Britain, might recognise their commonalities and join in preserving the best in their cultures from American commercial cosmopolitanism. The essay's publication six years later, at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles, coincided with intensive debate (associated with such figures as Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008)) about whether traditional Irish nationalist self-images had contributed to the conflict in Northern Ireland and threatened to unleash similar conflict in the Republic; this context gave the essay an explosive impact. An Irish Times editorial (11 September 1972) noted that Shaw's view of Pearse as a destructive ideologue comparable to Rosenberg raised awkward questions about numerous eulogies of Pearse as a model Christian patriot: 'Has every other cleric been wrong and only Father Shaw been right?' The Jesuits were accused by Cruise O'Brien of opportunism in suppressing Shaw's piece until it became convenient to distance the catholic church from militant nationalism (New York Review of Books, 25 January 1973), and by an Irish Press editorialist (1 September 1972) of re-enacting previous clericalist betrayals of Irish nationalism: 'The name of Pearse will easily survive this modern Shavian broadside.'

Shaw's essay has been subjected to extensive critique (Lyons, Lee, Ó Snodaigh) over its failures to place Pearse in context and to address the place of Irish protestants and unionists in Irish nationality; its dismissive attitude to republicanism and socialism; and its over-simplistic view that pre-1916 Ireland was a democracy. (Shaw also unduly minimises the political differences between Redmond and MacNeill.) It is still, however, regularly cited in debates about the relationship between nationalism and Irish historiography; when Studies marked its centenary by publishing a selection of essays from past issues, Shaw's essay was singled out by former Taoiseach John Bruton as 'the most startling essay in the volume'. Some who praised Shaw's critique of Pearse's sacrificial politics were advocates of a secularist liberalism which would have horrified Shaw, and the essay survived, when the man behind it was virtually forgotten, into an Ireland whose social and political attitudes he would have found unrecognisable.

Shaw's papers are held at the Irish Jesuit Archives, 35 Lower Leeson Street (reference J451), which also has files concerning the 1972 publication of 'The canon of Irish history' (CM/LEES/359, 383). A miniature plaster side-portrait by the sculptor Gary Trimble is held in the same building.

Westmeath Examiner, 24 Oct., 8 Nov. 1931; 28 July 1934; 16 Mar., 21 Sept. 1940; 15 Mar. 1941; Ir. Times, 10 Sept., 2 Oct. 1964; 11 Dec. 1969; 11 Sept. 1972 (includes F. S. L. Lyons, 'The shadow of the past', p. 12, on Shaw's 'The canon'); Marian Keaney, Westmeath authors: a bibliographical and biographical study (1969), 174–6; Ir. Independent, 25–8 Dec. 1970; obituary, by Fr Francis Finnegan, Irish Province News (1971), 76–8; M. Proinséas Ní Catháin, 'The academic and other writings of Rev. Professor Francis Shaw, SJ', Studies, lx, no. 238 (summer 1971), 203–07 [list is incomplete]; Studia Celtica, vii (1972), 177; Francis Shaw, 'MacNeill the person' in F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (ed.), The scholar revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867–1945, and the making of the new Ireland (1973), 299–311 (includes note on contributor, p. 300); Lochlann, vi (1974) [supplement to Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, xi], 180–81; Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Two godfathers of revisionism: 1916 in the revisionist canon (1991); Diarmuid Breathnach and Máire Ní Mhurchú, 1882–1982: Beathaisnéis, iii (1992), 152–3; J. J. Lee, '“The canon of Irish history: a challenge” reconsidered' in Toner Quinn (ed.) Desmond Fennell: his life and work (2001), 57–82; Philip O'Leary, Gaelic prose in the Irish Free State 1922–1939 (2004), 52; Michael Wheatley, Nationalism and the Irish party: provincial Ireland 1910–1916 (2005); Bryan Fanning (ed.), An Irish century: Studies 1912–2012 (2012); John Bruton, remarks at launch of Bryan Fanning (ed.), An Irish century, 21 Mar. 2012, www.johnbruton.com/2012/03/irish-century-studies-1912-2012.html (accessed 27 June 2012)

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 46th Year No 2 1971

Obituary :

Fr Frank Shaw SJ

The death of Father Shaw which took place at “96” on 23rd December, 1970 was not altogether unexpected. The news of his condition throughout the spring and summer was none too reassuring. He left us for the James Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, in March and during his stay there met with some minor accidents because of physical weakness. Later, while convalescing, he broke a leg and had to be transferred to the hospital at Navan. It seemed little less than a miracle that he should have returned to UCD. to lecture in the autumn. He paid us what proved to be a farewell visit in October. After some weeks of class-work at Belfield he had once more to go into hospital, at St. Vincent's, Elm Park, whence he was transferred to “96”, Father Frank had made many a recovery from serious illnesses over the years but this time it seemed presumptuous to expect a further prolongation of his life. The end came peacefully and painlessly just on the eve of Christmas Eve. His last thoughts may well have been that the coming Christmas Eve should be the first in so many years that he did not spend the day just outside our domestic chapel putting together the Christmas Crib.
Frank Shaw was born in Mullingar on 26th March, 1907 and was educated at the Christian Brothers' school in that town and afterwards at the Carmelite College, Terenure. He entered the novitiate at Tullabeg on 1st September 1924. After his first religious profession two years later he began his juniorate studies at Ratharnham. He had the good fortunate to meet at Rathfarnham Father Lambert McKenna who discerned in the young scholastic the desire and ability to engage in Irish studies. In after-life, Father Frank never failed to acknowledge the wholesome advice of Father Lambert whom he affectionately referred to as “The Bard'.
His success in the First Arts examination was such that he was advised to study for his degree in Celtic Studies. He graduated B.A. with First Class Honours in 1929 and at the end of the following year won the much coveted Travelling Studentship. But immediately after this success he set off for Valkenburg for his philosophy course. He completed this latter branch of studies in two years, 1930-32, and half-way through graduated M.A.
In the autumn of 1932 he set out for Bonn to enter on his higher studies. Here he had the good fortune to have Professor Rudolf Thurneysen to guide him. Professor Thurneysen, who had reached the age-limit, no longer held the chair but continued to lecture at the University. Frank, however, was not fated to complete his Travelling Studentship course under the celebrated professor. The following year he had to return to Dublin as the regime of life in Germany did not suit his delicate health. For the next two years, 1933-35, he was a member of the Leeson Street community and then spent a further year in private study at Rathfarnham before he went for theology to Milltown Park in the summer of 1936. Three years later he was ordained priest on the Feast of St. Ignatius. On the completion of his theology he once more joined the Leeson Street community where he was to spend the rest of his life. Because of his very frail health, he was excused from making the usual tertianship but did the Long Retreat at Rathfarnham.
When Father Frank returned to Leeson Street in 1940 it would seem that for the next ten or fifteen years he would be a research worker while gradually moving up the ranks of teaching responsibility. But early in 1941 the chair of Early and Medieval Irish was vacated by his former professor, Dr Osborn Bergin. So far as Father Frank or the rest of the community was concerned his elevation to the vacant post was not seriously considered. It was only when Professor Daniel Binchy suggested that he should present himself for the chair that Frank put his name forward. Thanks to so eminent a supporter as Professor Binchy, together with other admirers of the young Jesuit's ability, he was nominated Professor at a meeting of the Senate of the National University held in March, Thereafter he had to abandon any further extensive researches as his little energy had to be carefully husbanded to enable him to do justice to his students in the Celtic faculty.
His major published works were his critical edition of the early Irish text, Aislig Oenguso', which appeared in 1934 and his Medieval Medico-Philosophical Treatises in the Irish Language, an essay contribute to the Féil-Sgribhinn Eoin Mhic Néill (1940). Yet, making due allowance for the ill-health which never ceased to try him and the scrupulous care with which he imparted know ledge to his students, it is remarkable how much writing of lasting value he was able to achieve during all his professional career. His writing is to be found in many essays and reviews he contributed, chiefly to Studies. Some of his most searching reviews were written in his early student days but already he was giving advance notice of the interests in Celtic Studies that particularly attracted him. In 1930 appeared his pamphlet The Real St. Patrick, a best-seller ever since. Later critical essays were The Linguistic Argument for Two Patricks (1943), The Myth of the Second Patrick (1961), Post mortem on the Second Patrick (1962) and Early Irish Spirituality (1963). These are but a selection of the ably-presented essays from the pen of a scholar who at the end of his life could scarcely ever remember a day free from some pain or ache.
On 17th April, 1945 he was appointed Superior at Leeson Street and held office for the next six years. It was as Superior he made his final profession in the Society on Christmas Eve 1945. For the last ten years of his life he was spiritual father to the community who will long remember the devotion and high intelligence he brought to bear in presenting the word of God.
From his earliest years in the Society his superiors were aware that his health would always be cause for concern. Even in his days at Terenure College he had to be excused the usual dormitory regime of the other boarders and have a room to himself like the members of the community. It was the provision of this facility that determined Frank's parents to send him to school with the Carmelite Fathers rather than to Castleknock, where other members of his family had been educated. Yet, it should be said at once that Frank himself was never selfishly concerned about his health. Indeed, he had to be reminded frequently by superiors to spare himself. The preparation of lectures and the holding of classes cannot but have made heavy demands upon his fragile resources of strength but this sickly scholar was made of heroic stuff.
The boredom of being obliged to pass weeks on end at convalescent homes made him early in life aware of the misery of his fellow-patients. So it is not matter for surprise that throughout his priestly life of thirty years he became something of a legend in the Dublin hospitals for his devotion to the sick. Not a few Jesuits he helped in his time to face up to an unfavourable medical diagnosis and meet the supreme hour with gentle resignation to God's will. Scarce a day ever passed that inquiries did not reach Leeson Street, asking whether Frank could call at one or other of the city hospitals to solace the sick and their afflicted dependents. It was known also that he was frequently called upon to settle family disputes and restore harmony.
Inevitably the newspapers carried reports of his attendance at this funeral or that wedding or the baptism of the children of friends he had made in the academic world and the professional classes generally. What did not appear in the papers, however, was his attendance at the wedding of some poor artisan's daughter or the christening of his child, or his visits to the poor in their bereavements. He knew for instance that the newsboy's little son was about to make his First Holy Communion and not once or twice from his sick bed he would commission a member of the community when down town to buy some little memento appreciated on these occasions. His entering a sick-room gave one the feeling of something sacramental. The 'Retreats for the Sick which he broadcast in Holy Week are still spoken of by those whom they helped. Even when he himself was in hospital he was more concerned with the spiritual and physical health of his fellow-patients than he was with his own troubles.
His piety was simple. Like his own patron saint, Francis of Assisi, Father Frank had a great devotion to the mysteries of Christmas. Patients in St. Vincent's Hospital in the Green and in Blanchardstown Hospital will remember the loving care that he spent on building the magnificent cribs there. They were the out ward sign of his desire that others should share in that devotion, If they have a Christmas Crib in heaven, then Frank was busy his first Christmas there.
His devotion to the dead was remarkable. In all weathers when ho could manage to be out of bed he was off to a funeral to bring solace to the desolate. Like the Divine Master, he went about doing good.
There was a very human side to Frank. He was an intelligent man and could not fail to realise the fact. He was also a born dialectician and enthusiastically defended the weaker case in an argument. When he was up and about his presence at community recreation radiated sheer delight. In debate he was unyielding. One instance made history at Leeson Street. He was defending a patently weak case with his customary bravura when his contestant vigorously rejoined “Can't you keep to facts”. To this Frank replied “Can't we leave facts aside and keep to the argument?” He was also generous to a fault. If he felt that someone took hurt in an argument he spared no pains to explain matters and see to it that charity did not suffer.
For many years he was spiritual director to the Nurses' Sodality at St. Vincent's Hospital. One might well wonder whence came the energy to sustain him in keeping up to a routine of sermons or lectures ... a wearing experience even for those blessed with good health. But Frank was of that unselfish stuff that did not reckon the cost. The miracle of his life is that he accomplished so much in spite of so much ill-health.
A little-known side of his apostolate was his instruction of those intending to enter the Church. Only the recording angel will ever . be able to say how many wearying hours he spent in the parlour
in this very rewarding but exacting form of the ministry. His advice was frequently sought by those intending to enter the religious life. He was a much sought-after confessor and spiritual adviser. To the last he was extrovert, helping others to bear the daily cross in the following of a crucified Master. It is almost needless to be labour the point that in leaving us he has gone up with full hands to the judgement seat of that Master whom he so generously served.
FJF

Born: 22 January 1917, Inch House, Balbriggan, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1935, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1948, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 05 November 1977, Canisius College, Chikuni, Zambia
Died: 28 October 1980, Lusaka, Zambia - Zambiae Province (ZAM)

Part of the Mukasa Seminary, Choma, Zambia community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to ZAM : 03 December 1969

Father was a gentlman and family lived at Mullafarry, Greystones, County Wicklow supprted by private means.

Ony boy with two sisters.

Early education was for five years at a Convent school in Greystones, and then he went to Belvedere College SJ for three years, and finally to Clongowes Wood College SJ for five years.

by 1951 at Chikuni, Chisekesi, N Rhodesia (POL Mi) working - third wave of Zambian Missioners

◆ Companions in Mission1880- Zambia-Malawi (ZAM) Obituaries :
Fr Brian entered the novitiate at Emo on 7 September 1935 and went through the usual Jesuit formation. The war determined that the scholastics of these days would receive their academic and spiritual training – sound though perhaps unimaginative – within the shores of holy Ireland, uncontaminated by the philosophical stirrings on the continent. The utter dependability that was to be a characteristic of Fr. Brian's priestly life was noticeable during those years. Here was someone ready to help in picking potatoes on a cold November day, to rake the autumn leaves off the gravel in Rahan, a 'he-man' to fill up a crew for the row down the canal and the River Brosna to Shannon Harbour – the congenial Brian would never let you down.

In 1950, the Irish Province committed itself to the short staffed Polish African Mission, and, at the end of his tertianship, Brian was assigned to Zambia. For thirty years he labored in that field. He did not leave any lasting monument of brick and mortar, but no one could quarrel with this assessment written years after he had left Kasiya: “none of us touched the hearts of the people as Fr Brian did”.

His successors on the mission would be reminded again and again, 'Fatha Shaakee baptised me', 'Fatha Shaakee married me'. This was the more remarkable as Brian did not acquire a fluency in their language. The reason for their response and the depth of their feelings towards him may be gathered from this letter of sympathy from a Form 2 boy who met Brian once, on retreat. He wrote: “It's very sad that such a man should pass away. He was so kind and such a peace-loving man. He was always so eager to help the students. Even though we never lived together, my life has been changed by him”.

The most striking quality in Brian Sharkey that everyone noticed during his 30 years in Zambia, was what may be summed up as his benevolence. The list of places where he served is alone enough to show his availability: Chikuni 1950 to ‘53, Kasiya 1953 to ‘63, Namwala 1963 to ‘70, then, between 1970 and 1974 Civuna, Kasiya again, Fumbo, Kizito and finally Mukasa where he remained until his life ended. After one such sudden switch he remarked to a colleague, ‘You know, there can be the last straw’! But for him, his vows were a sure guide. At a discussion on obedience, he once said, ‘One may always state objections but if the superior holds to his decision, the subject should lay aside his objections and throw himself unreservedly into the task’. St. Ignatius, who wished his sons to be outstanding in obedience, would have been pleased with Brian's performance. He was pre-eminently 'the man in the gap', who could be called upon when there was an emergency to be coped with, an awkward vacancy to be filled, or a contrary person to be accepted.

His devotion to duty resulted in his having a remarkable personal interest in all those committed to his care, whether as parishioners or pupils. He knew each one by name as well as all the other members of that family, the places from which they came and their cross-relationships with other people. Detailed information of this sort was very valuable to him in his apostolate and was a matter of admiration and, at times, of surprise to his brethren. His devotion to duty likewise kept him working to the last. He was carrying a full teaching load of 24 periods a week with exam classes, right up to eight days before he died. He gave no indication that he was ill during the preceding months. The only thing that the community at Mukasa noticed as different from usual about him, was that he tired easily and went to bed early and that he was eating less and sometimes did not appear at meals.

As a result, his death, coming so quickly and without any apparent period of illness beforehand, was not only a great shock but a real puzzle to his colleagues at Mukasa. Yet, during the greater part of that year, he must have been suffering considerably at least from internal upsets and physical exhaustion, if not from actual pain.

His benevolence showed itself in many ways. His kindness to all was common knowledge and there was no limit to the trouble he would take to oblige anyone. His tolerance of the shortcomings of fallen humanity, both within and outside the Society, seemed almost a reflection of the Divine magnanimity. Consequently, he was hardly ever heard to utter a critical word about anyone. Finally, he was renowned for an unruffled calm which was proof against even the most provoking situations, or people. His keen sense of humour which led him to savour and to recount little human tales, if they hurt no one, kept him chuckling good-humouredly to himself.

When he was dying, he said to the rector of Mukasa, showing his concern for both the Rector and the boys: “I am letting you and the boys down”. He then went on to give him details of what he had planned to do in the classes that remained before the exams began and explained where his notes could be found. Long before the words ‘a man for others' became a catch-phrase, Fr Brian was a living example of such a person.

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 56th Year No 1 1981

Obituary

Fr Brian Sharkey (1917-1935-1980)

I saw hardly anything of Brian Sharkey for the last thirty years or so while he was in Zambia. Although we spent all our scholasticate together, detailed memories of those fifteen years cannot be recalled easily at this distance. Many things have happened since 1950 and much has changed; including ourselves. However, some impressions of Brian are crystal clear to me and of importance. I may have forgotten the details but I remember the meaning. His life and attitudes revealed certain things to me so that I remember Brian with gratitude and pleasure. My memories, like the man, are of one piece. He appeared to me, remarkably, as a man of integrity and wholeness.
We met first in the Higher Line pavilion at Clongowes. The day was sunny and warm. Both of us - in the slightly dishonourable role of “twelfth man” in the senior cricket teams were “scorers” in the annual match between Clongowes and Belvedere. Brian, I remember, was very pleasant, welcoming and civilised; something I appreciated even then. I suppose there was a maturity about him which impressed even the very callow youth I then was. As I came to know him better I never had any occasion to alter that judgment.
We met again, to our mutual surprise at the portals of Emo. Although objects and events in that undoubtedly grace filled but quite fantastic noviceship are blurred in the memory (fish-bath, blue gravel, ice-pits, ambulacrum) I remember Brian, who was physically strong, as a great man with a mattock on sycamore roots and as a terrifying inside forward.
Much more importantly, I remember his as someone utterly reliable and stable at all times. Brian gave the impression from the beginning that he knew exactly why he was in Emo and had no doubts about it. Of course, everyone must have some doubts and I am sure Brian was no exception. He seemed however to be able to master the 'blues' better than the rest of us. Even then, I think the reason must have been apparent: he prayed much, perhaps constantly, with deep concentration. Prayer was an occupation at which he was at home.
The years of studies must have been difficult for Brian. He was an intelligent man, sensitive in judgment particularly where people were concerned, but he never made any claims to being academic. During the dark years of 1937 to 1940 when we were juniors in Rathfarnham, Brian bore himself cheerfully and honourably and encouraged others. He was present, at the little cove near Skerries, when Peter Cush was drowned. Brian was a strong swimmer and, if he had not been there, others perhaps would also have been lost.
I found it disturbing to discover - many years later, when it was too late to do anything - that Brian, during his philosophy in Tullabeg and his theology in Milltown, had to translate painfully the Latin textbooks into English before he could start work. He had particular difficulty with Génicot's moral theology: where, of course, he was concerned to be accurate. Then he had to sit out the lectures which, for the most part, were in uncompromising Latin, My heart bleeds for him and for the others who also suffered.
Yet Brian never complained or lost his air of stability and peace. His cheerfulness and sense of humour was constant and never seemed to wear thin, At the time, for everybody, obstacles in studies were many and by no means easy to overcome; for him they must have been enormous. He overcame them all.
Once again, the explanation must lie in his prayer; the quality of which one could guess at from his stillness and obvious concentration. His constant joy, cheerfulness and kindness too must have been the fruit of his inner union with the Lord. From his first day in Emo on, as I have said, Brian seemed to be quite sure why he was in the Society; to serve the Lord in His people. He went to Zambia in the calm certainty that he was called and sent by the Lord. The world was a better place for his being in it. May he rest now in peace!
J C Kelly

Fr Brian entered the noviceship, Emo, on 7th September 1935 and went through the usual Jesuit formation. The war determined that the scholastics of those days would receive their academical and spiritual training, sound though perhaps unimaginative, within the shores of holy Ireland, uncontaminated by the new philosophical stirrings on the continent. The utter dependability that was to be a characteristic of Fr Brian's priestly life was noticeable during those years – one to help in picking potatoes on a cold November day; to rake the autumn leaves off the gravel in Rahan; a “he-man” to fill up a crew for a row down the canal and the Brosna to Shannon Harbour - the congenial Brian would never let you down.
When Frs Paddy Walsh and Paddy O'Brien volunteered for the Polish Mission in Zambia, back in 1946, not one of us young Jesuits dreamed that their action would affect us. We were Mission-minded, but Hong Kong was Our Mission. In 1950, however, the Irish Province committed itself to aid the inadequately manned Polish Mission, and at the completion of his tertianship Brian was assigned to Zambia.
Most of the early Irish activity was centred on an area stretching from the Kafue river towards Livingstone, 200 miles to the south, and from Namwala on the Zambesi to 150 miles east. The district had but one Mission station, Chikuni, an important centre then but rather small in the light of later developments. The Christians then numbered a few hundreds; now they are numbered in thousands. The build-up was not easy, Cycling out on roads that were dusty in the dry season, clinging mud in the rains, to see to the burning of bricks for new schools, encouraging the teachers, organising the catechumenates, then back to Chikuni with its pit-latrine and solitary tin-bath, a struggling paraffin fridge and the tilley lamp, Brian and his associates of those early days faced, literally, the weariness, the fever and the fret, but through their tireless perseverance, in thirty years the Church has been transformed. As one not directly involved in the ceaseless activity but more or less sitting on the sideline, I feel free to express my deep admiration for their devotion.
Remarkable projects and impressive buildings now mark the diocese - churches, halls, schools of varying levels of education, hospitals and clinics - but not one of these is the work of Fr Brian. Has he then left no lasting monument? He certainly has. I do not think that anyone would quarrel with the assertion that none of us touched the hearts of the people as Fr Brian did. Years after he left Kasiya Mission, his successors would be reminded that “Fahta Shaakee baptised me ... Fahta Shaakee married me ...” This was the more remarkable as Brian did not acquire a fluency in their language. The depth of and the reason for their response may be gathered from a Form I boy's letter of sympathy (he had met Brian on retreat once). He wrote and I leave his words untouched), “It’s very sad that such a man should pass away. He was so kind and peace loving man. He was always so eager to help the students ... Even though we never lived together my life has been changed”.
In the expansion, manpower was often stretched thin and harassed Superiors often had to fill a gap at a moment's notice: but Brian was there. He was switched from Chikuni to Kasiya, back to Chikuni, to Fumbo, to Namwala, to Civuna, back to Namwala, etc. Yet he was no automaton: he felt it. After one sudden transfer he said to me, “You know, there can be the last straw”, and on another occasion, “I find this assignment very hard”. But for him, his, Vows were a sure guide. At a discussion on obedience, he once said, “One may always state objections, but if the Superior holds to his decision, the subject should lay aside his objections and throw himself unreservedly into the task”. St Ignatius, who wished his sons to be outstanding in obedience, would have been pleased with Brian's performance
When I was a first-year Junior, I remember a senior Junior (I) whose words of wisdom we held in reverence (and still do) saying, “Gosh, I'm convinced that the strength of the Society lies in the ordinary Jesuit”. The life of Fr Brian Sharkey would be a forceful argument in favour of that proposition.
He was always contented, and particularly so during his last years in Mukasa. It was a time of shortages but Brian was largely responsible for ensuring that things ran smoothly; and they did. When the end suddenly came, he worried that he was letting Jerry O’Connell and the boys down just before their exams. Long before the words became a catch-phrase, Fr Brian Sharkey was a living example of “living for others”.
D C

Born: 12 March 1831, Dromore, County Down (Ballykelly, County Derry)
Entered: 16 May 1856, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 15 August 1866
Died: 16 July 1874, Fordham College, New York, NY, USA - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

Born: 21 November 1818, Pilltown, County Kilkenny
Entered: 09 June 1840, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Final vows: 15 August 1851
Died: 26 July 1906, Georgetown College, Washington DC, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 03 April 1836, Moyne, County Tipperary
Entered: 07 September 1857, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Final vows: 02 February 1868
Died: 25 May 1902, New York, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

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

Born: 13 September 1853, Clondalkin, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 14 September 1872, Milltown Park, Dublin (HIB for TAUR)
Ordained: 1885
Final Vows: 02 February 1891
Died: 27 January 1898, Santa Clara College, CA, USA - Taurensis Province (TAUR)

Transcribed HIB to TAUR: 1874

Early education at St Joseph’s Carmelite College, Clondalkin

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - For American Mission

Parish Priest, St Patrick's Presbytery, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork.

Sevenhill, in the Mid North of South Australia, was the birthplace of the Jesuits in Australia after they arrived in Adelaide as chaplains to a group of Austrians that fled Europe to escape political and religious oppression. The immigrants settled near the township of Clare and the Jesuits purchased 100 acres of land in 1851, naming it Sevenhill after the Seven Hill district of Rome.

In addition to serving Catholics as the population grew in the north of South Australia, the Jesuits of Sevenhill planted vines, built a church and opened a college, which became the first Catholic boys' school in the colony and also served as a seminary for the training of priests.

Sevenhill Cellars, St Aloysius' Church and the College building remain today as integral parts of the Jesuit community, with the Sevenhill property regarded as a site of spiritual and historic significance.

From their beginnings at Sevenhill, the Jesuits' presence in Australia expanded to include the eastern colonies, with the Austrians of South Australia joined by the Irish in Melbourne and Sydney. Both groups worked industriously to expand their role in education, missions, parishes and retreat houses. In 1901, an Australian Mission was formed and this became a fully constituted Jesuit Province in 1950.

◆ CATSJ I-Y has
1612 Sent from German Province to Ireland on July 18th. While on the way he died at Rouen in Oct

◆ In Old/15 (1) and Chronological Catalogue Sheet

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SETON, ALEXANDER. I meet with two Fathers of this name. The first was in Germany, 11th March, 1612, when F. Gordon recommended to the General C. Aquaviva to recall him, and send him to cultivate the mission of Scotland “qui omnium aptissimus ad hanc Missionem videtur”.

Died: 01 November 1612, Rouen, on way to Ireland - Franciae Province (FRA)

Born: 22 October 1806, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 24 March 1828, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 24 September 1836, Stonyhurst
Final Vows: 15 August 1847
Died: 13 February 1869, Stonyhurst, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Studied Humanities at Stonyhurst and then graduated BA from Trinity College Dublin (28/02/1828) before Ent

After studies and Regency at Stonyhurst he was Ordained there 24 September 1836 by Bishop Briggs.
Served various offices at Stonyhurst, then at Preston and was then appointed Rector of the English College Malta, where he served for six years. He then returned to the London Mission for two years.
1857 He was sent to Barbados.
He then returned to England again, and was sent to London, and for a short time was at Wardour Castle, Wilts, and later as Spiritual Father at Beaumont College.
He was sent to Stonyhurst with broken health and died there 13 February 1869 aged 63

Born: 1560, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 14 August 1582, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae province (ROM)
Ordained: pre Entered
Died: 30 October 1586, Pont-à-Mousson, France - Franciae Province (FRA)

1584 At Bourges College FRA Age 23 (Franciae Catalogue)
He was a good religious - fit to teach

Born: 10 January 1603, Cabra, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 04 October 1625, Tournai, Belgium - Belgicae province (BELG)
Ordained: 1630/1, Douai, France
Final Vows: c 1641, Kilkenny Residence, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Died: 23 September 1652, Kilkenny Residence, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny

Vice-Superior of the Mission March 1652

Parents were John and Joanna Fagan
Studied Humanities at Antwerp and Philosophy at Douai - was an MA and Doctor
1637 ROM Catalogue Good in all things - fit to teach Humanities. Colericus,
1649 At Kilkenny (45 after his name)
1650 CAT DOB 1604 of Dublin; Ent 1627; Came to Mission 1633. Was Procurator of the Mission for several years, Master of Novices 4 years. Is Confessor and Preacher. Prof of 4 Vows
“I think this is the man referred to in the ‘Aphorismical Discovery’ (Gilberts Pt 5 p75) - observe the author’s words on Augustinians

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Studied two years Philosophy and three Theology. Knew Irish, English, Spanish and Latin
Taught Humanities, was Confessor and Director of the BVM Sodality
1631/1633/1635 Came to Irish Mission; Was Rector of a Residence, Procurator of Mission and Socius to the Master of Novices. Esteemed and good Preacher.
Appointed to report on Stephen White’s works.
At the celebrated meeting of Theologians with Dr Rothe, he said nothing - “nihil dixit” - on the dispute with the Nuncio (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of John, of Cabra, and Jane née Fagan
Early classical education was received at Antwerp, and then he went for Priestly studies to Douai, where he graduated MA and D Phil before Ent 04 October 1625 Tournai
1627-1631After his First Vows he was sent for studies to Douai and was Ordained there 1630/31
1631-1646 He was then sent to Ireland and the Dublin Residence. He was procurator of the Mission there for many years
1646-1650 Socius to the Novice Master and Procurator of the Novitiate in Kilkenny
1652 When the Mission Superior Robert Nugent was summoned to Europe, he was appointed Vice-Superior of the Mission in March 1652. We are indebted to him for the account of Father Nugent's last days which he wrote at Waterford 16 June 1652.
He seems to have died in Kilkenny in 1652 himself, as his name is not in the 1653 lists

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962
Christopher Sedgrave (1652)
Christopher Sedgrave, son of John Sedgrave, of Cabra, Co Dublin, and Jane Fagan, was born on or about 10th January, 1603. After studying classics at Antwerp and Douay, and philosophy at Douay, where he gained the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy, he entered the Society in the Novitiate of Tournay on 4th October, 1625. When he had completed his theology at Douay in 1631, he returned to Ireland, where he was first engaged in teaching and preaching. He made his solemn profession of four vows about 1641; was Procurator of the Mission for many years, and then Socius of the Master of Novices and Procurator of the Novitiate of Kilkenny for four years (1646-50). When Fr. Robert Nugent was summoned to Europe in March, 1652, Fr Sedgrave was appointed Vice-Superior in his stead, and it is to him we are indebted for the account of Fr Nugent's last days, which he wrote at Waterford on 16th June, 1652. He does not seem to have survived long, but in the confusion of the times the notice of his death has been lost.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Christoper Sedgrave 1603-1652
Christopher Sedgrave, son of John Sedgrave of Cabra County Dublin and Jane Fagan, was born on or about January 10th 1603. After studying classics at Antwerp and Douai, he entered the Society at Tournai in 1625.

He returned to Ireland in 1631 where he was first engaged in teaching and preaching. He was Procurator of Mission for many years, and then Socius to the Master of Novices and Procurator at Kilkenny from 1646-1650.

When Fr Robert Nugent was summoned to Europe in 1652, Fr Sedgrave was appointed Vice-Superior in his stead, and it is to him that we are indebted to for an account of Fr Nugent’s last days, which he wrote in Waterford on June 16th 1652.

Fr Sedgrave does not seem to have survived long after that, but in the confusion of the times, the notice of his death has been lost.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SEGRAVE, CHRISTOPHER, was one of the Examiners of the MS work of Father Stephen White, “De Sanctis et Antiquitate Hibcrniae” as I find in Father Robert Nugent’s letter, dated Kilkenny, the l0th of January, 1646-7. Two years later, he was the Procurator of the Novitiate at Kilkenny. There Pere Verdier saw this Professed Father, and states that he was about 45 years of age, and “vir optimi judicii”. What became of him later, I have yet to learn.
N.B. A gentleman of the name of Patrick Segrave, had been a special benefactor to the Irish Mission of the Order, as I find in a letter of F. Holiwood, dated 30th June, 1606.

Born: 22 December 1825, Rush, County Dublin
Entered: 25 April 1845, Amiens, France (FRA)
Ordained: 1860
Final vows: 15 August 1872
Died: 29 August 1891, Tienen (Tirlemont), Brabant, Belgium

Younger brother of Matthew Seaver - RIP 1872, and Uncle of Elias Seaver - RIP 1886

by 1853 at Montauban France (TOLO) studying Theology
by 1857 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) Studying Theology
by 1865 at Rome Italy (ROM) making Tertianship
by 1878 at Fourvière France (LUGD)
by 1878 at Mount St Mary’s - Spencer St Chesterfield (ANG) working
by 1880 at St Joseph’s, Glasgow Scotland (ANG) working
by 1882 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) working
by 1883 at home - health

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Younger brother of Matthew Seaver - RIP 1872, and Uncle of Elias Seaver - RIP 1886

Studied Philosophy at Toulouse
1856 He was sent for Regency teaching at Clongowes and then as Prefect at Tullabeg
He studied Theology partly at St Beuno’s, partly in Hardwicke St, and finished at Tullabeg.
1861 He was sent as teacher and Prefect to Tullabeg
He then was sent to Rome for Tertianship
1865-1866 He was sent as Minister to Tullabeg.
He then taught in Belvedere for many years.
1875 he was Minister at Milltown.
Failing in health he was sent to Fourvière, and worked for a while in Chesterfield, England. Becoming mentally affected he went to Belgium and died there 29 August 1891

Born: 28 September 1816, Rush, County Dublin
Entered: 02 October 1835, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1851
Final vows: 02 February 1860
Died: 26 February 1872, St Francis Xavier's, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin

Older brother of William Seaver - RIP 1891, and Uncle of Elias Seaver - RIP 1886

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Older brother of William Seaver - RIP 1891, and Uncle of Elias Seaver - RIP 1886
Early eductaion was at Clongowes.
After First Vows and studies he was sent to Clongowes, as prefect and teaching Grammar for a umber of years. He was also Minister there for a time.
1855 He was appointed Rector at Tullabeg, succeeding John Ffrench, who had been appointed Rector of Belvedere.
1861-1864 Joseph Dalton succeeded him at Tullabeg, and he was appopinted Rector of Belvedere.
1864 He was appointed Procurator at Clongowes, and later also as Minister.
1866 He was sent to Gardiner St, where he remained until his death 26 February 1872.

He contracted small pox from one of his penitents, and indeed died before she did. A large number of people attended his funeral.

He was a man of great administrative capacity. he built the large wing at Tullabeg, which bore his name, and he was admired by everyone who knew how a College ought to be built. He was very zealous and kind to the sick. He also kept many from souperism (during the famine times, accepting food along with Protestant instruction). During an outbreak of small-pox in Dublin, he showed heroic charity and zeal. With his own hands, he placed many people who had died from the disease in their coffins, when friends and family had fled. he ultimately succumbed to this disease himself.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Matthew Seaver 1816-1872
Born in Dublin on September 28th 1816, Matthew Seaver was educated at Clongowes. He entered the Society in 1835.

When Fr Ffrench became Rector of Belvedere in 1855, he was succeeded by Fr Seaver as Rector of Tullabeg. In 1861 he was Rector of Belvedere until 1864. He spent the remainder of his life at Gardiner Street.
He was a man of great administrative ability. He built a large wing at Tullabeg, which to this day bears his name and is admired by everybody who knows how a College ought to be built.
He was very zealous, extremely kind to the sick and especially successful in rescuing souls from the snares of “souperism”.
During an epidemic of small pox in Dublin, he displayed heroic charity. With his own hands he coffined several victims of the disease, when all others had fled in terror. He contracted the dreaded disease himself and died a true martyr of charity on February 26th 1872.

Born: 13 January 1865, County Dublin
Entered: 22 October 1883, Milltown Park, Dublin/Loyola House, Dromore, County Down
Died: 28 June 1886, Loyola, Dromore, County Down

Nephew of Matthew Seaver - RIP 1872 and William Seaver - RIP 1891

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Nephew of Matthew Seaver - RIP 1872 and William Seaver - RIP 1891
He entered at Dromore and died there within three years of his Entry. He was buried in the Catholic Cemetery attached to the Church there.

Born: 17 March 1818, Annascaul, County Kerry
Entered: 02 August 1851, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Final vows:15 August 1861
Died: 03 May 1913, Georgetown College, Washington DC, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

39B Henry Street, Dublin.

Born: 07 May 1922, Menlough, Ballinasloe, County Galway
Entered: 07 October 1945, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1955, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1963, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 20 January 1968, Mater Hospital, Dublin

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

Father was an Inspector at the Department of Agriculture.

Third in a family of two boys and two girls (1 deceased)

Early education was at St Joseph’s College (Garbally) Ballinasloe

He then went to UCG to study Engineering, graduating BE in 1942 and BSc in 1943. After qualifying he worked in Dublin and County Wicklow as a Civil Engineer.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ : Admissions 1859-1948 - B.E and BSc at UCG before entry

In 1968 the galloping cancer which killed 46-year-old Tom Scully SJ must have been nourished by the tension in which he lived: between the demands of full-time science teaching in Belvedere, demands that were sharpened by an exigent headmaster, and the needs of the poor which Tom saw outside his door. When he died, the flats which he had funded and planned for the aged poor and for newly weds, were given his name. They have served their purpose for forty years, and now, they are being tossed with a view to replacement. https://www.jesuit.ie/news/father-scully-house-comes-down/

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 43rd Year No 2 1968
Belvedere College
On January 20th, Fr. Tom Scully who had been in the Mater Hospital for about three weeks, passed quietly away. For the previous fortnight he had suffered a great deal but remained ever cheerful at all times. Right up to the end he showed an active interest in all college affairs. The day before he died a group of the boys (from one of the three St. Vincent de Paul Conferences which he directed) visited him and he wished to know whether certain cases had been visited during his absence. On the same day he spoke to Fr. Rector in a moving way of his appreciation of the charity and kindness of the community to him and stressed how much he was indebted to them. His passing will leave a great void to be filled not only in the various activities in which he immersed himself in the College, but also in his St. Anne's Housing Aid Society which was his brain-child and of which he was the mentor in all its developments, material and financial.
January 23rd. Requiem Mass for Fr. Scully at which practically all the school participated. It was one of the largest funerals from Gardiner St. for some time with representatives from all walks of life. Various tributes to him appeared in the Press, all written in the same key - “to the memory of a kind and gentle Priest”. It is only since his death that we realise what a prodigious amount of work he fitted into his already overcrowded daily schedule. R.I.P.

Obituary :

Fr Thomas Scully SJ (1922-1968)

A writer of obituaries is often faced with the task of reconciling kindness with the truth. In writing of Tom Scully no such problem arises. To say that he was an exemplary religious, loved by his family and his friends, popular in Belvedere both among the community and the boys, cherished by those who shared his social work is not a kindly half truth, masking the darker side of his character. There simply was no dark side to Tom's character. Doubtless being human, he had his faults but they were mere trifling imperfections that flesh and blood must live with and accept.
Tom was born in Menlough, Co. Galway in May 1922. He attended the local National School and then spent a very happy period in secondary school at St. Joseph's, Ballinasloe. He was immensely proud of being educated at St. Joseph's, now called Garbally Park, and often remarked on the happy casualness of school life there in the golden thirties.
At U.C.G. he took, without undue effort his B.Sc, as well as a degree in civil engineering. He enjoyed the University, especially its social life, picking up at this time the bad habit of being a very good card player.
After leaving the University, he spent some time as an engineer in the Board of Works, before being appointed an Assistant County Surveyor for Co. Wicklow.
He entered the Society in October 1945, taking in his stride the traditional noviceship regime, which is now in process of being changed. In Tullabeg he enjoyed life greatly, philosophy, his new companions, card playing, talking, walking, boating, designing and building a swimming pool, in fact the lot! He was by temperament a Celt, but of the cheerful variety, full of fire and fun, quick and clever in everything, a strong personality with a most unCeltlike ability to control his moods. In this, he was helped by his temperament which was basically optimistic and cheerful.
He spent two years in the Crescent as a scholastic. He found teaching no problem, enjoyed the boys and in a different sort of way, the community. He had some good stories about those days, featuring the escapades of a bizarre contemporary, still alive, but alas no longer with us.
In Milltown he worked conscientiously, passed all the exams, accepted all the doctrines, had no doubts as far as one could see, played his game of bridge once a week and above all remained the same, vivacious, lively and reliable. He was, perhaps, by nature a conservative. He respected and admired the religious traditions of his country and in a sense it could be said that his piety was more Irish than Jesuit, more redolent of Croagh Patrick and Lough Derg than Farm Street or, dare we say it, Milltown Park.
He spent almost his last ten years in Belvedere as science master and had become one of the pillars of that great college. He taught his classes with great care and was respected by all his students. One of the greatest signs of his interest in teaching was the way in which he successfully obtained his H.Dip. in Ed. only two years ago. Some years previous to that he went to America for a summer-course in the teaching of science. The tidiness of the physics laboratory and his care of its instruments were other indications of his deep love for this work. His devotion to the school was very real, he liked both the community and the boys and greatly admired the past pupils, especially those in the Vincent de Paul Society and the Newsboys Club. He showed many of the signs of that devotion, varying from a certain deep contentment in his surroundings to a shared sympathy in all the joys and sorrows of the school. His intelligence, however, tempered the narrowing effects of devotion and he retained to the end a genuine interest not only in the other schools of the Society but in all the problems peculiar to Irish education.
His life work was in a sense crowned by his activities in the Catholic Housing Association. This group was founded by a number of Catholic laymen in order to provide homes for the aged poor of Dublin. Tom was invited to join the group as chaplain. In a short time he found himself playing a very important part in running the new organisation. Every spare moment was devoted to it, and he loved the work. In fact towards the end his greatest interest was in this problem of housing the poor and the old of Dublin. He felt deeply that a Christian country should above all else, aid its elderly impoverished citizens, whose misery we see all around us in the Ireland of today. Tom did not want to die. He had too many interests, too many friends, too much work on hand, to wish to leave this world. But when he was told the truth, he did not seem to mind. I think he had long suspected it and had already turned his mind away from this life and its seismic disturbances to the contemplation of eternity. It was in this spirit that he died, an outstanding Christian and a great priest.
His funeral was immense, a tribute from the good people of Dublin to an exceptionally good man. Those, whom he knew well, will never forget him. May he rest in peace.

An Appreciation

The following is part of an appreciation of Fr. Scully by one of the officials of the Catholic Housing Aid Society. Fr. Scully was the chaplain of this Society and often acted as its spokesman and advocate of its cause.
“He loved the poor. It was through his association with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul that he came to realise their many needs. It can truly be said that he was one of the first to pull back the curtain in Dublin City on the appalling conditions of cold, hunger and loneliness in which a large number of old people were forced to live. The lowliest were his friends, because he did not forget that the most humble piece of human flotsam is the dignified possessor of an immortal soul. He had a special gift for using all of his time. If it was even a half hour between classes in Belvedere, he used to drop in with equal facility on a leader of industry or an old person in a tenement. If it was the former, he might come away a little richer for the Catholic Housing Aid Society, or if the latter 10/- (very often his last 10/-) poorer. His dedication was to the aged poor of Dublin. He gave them everything he had, including his heart through the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and through our Catholic Housing Aid Society.
When we set out to collect £120,000 in the daring social experiment of building a block of flats for the old and the young (St. Anne's Court in Gardiner St.) we had little money and few helpers. However in just close on three years we had collected over £60,000 from rich and poor-company directors, trade unionists, workers in factories and in business houses and even the widow's mite. As well as that we had arranged for £33,000 in grants and received promises of another £15,000. It was a long, hard road. Fr. Scully spent every Wednesday afternoon (his half-day from classes) begging here and there. He went to the leaders of Unions and Industry and into the factories and workshops of the workers in his quest for funds. He was always happy to speak to factory workers. He called them the salt of the earth. He always stressed that his scheme was non-sectarian and many of his biggest subscriptions came from Protestants. In doing all his great charitable work he shunned publicity with the result that it was only the few he had around him who knew the colossal amount of work he put into his task. To the members of the Catholic Housing Aid Society he was a lovable leader. He never drove anyone to do anything; you were attracted towards him and felt that you had to do it. Just before he died this gentle and lovable Jesuit in a message to the members of the Catholic Housing Aid Society told them that this year would be a crucial one for the Society and he asked them to redouble their efforts to gather in the balance of the money. The members have already set about the task because they feel that the success of the venture will be a fitting tribute to the unselfish and inspiring work of Fr. Scully for the lonely and necessitous aged. It was a privilege and joy to have helped him and those who knew him will always remember him. Let our continuing work insure that his memory is perpetuated in the only memorial he would wish for a home for his poorer brothers and sisters. We are all sorry he did not live to see his dream take shape in bricks and mortar. We shall miss him on this earth, but it is good to know we have such a friend in Heaven."
J. Macs.

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1968

Obituary

Father Thomas J Scully SJ (Master in Belvedere 1957-1968

Father Thomas Scully was born in Menlough, Co Galway, in May 1922. He was educated at St Joseph's, Ballinasloe and later went to University College, Galway, where he obtained the BE degree (Civil) in 1942 and the BSc degree in the following year. After graduation he worked for some time as an engineer in the Board of Works and later obtained appointment as Assistant County Surveyor for Co Wicklow.

He entered the Society of Jesus on 7th October 1945 and studied Philosophy at St Stanislaus College, Tullamore, for three years, after which he spent two years teaching in Crescent College, Limerick. He then went for his theological studies to Milltown Park, Dublin, where he was ordained in 1955. He spent the last 11 years of his life as a science teacher in Belvedere College. During that period (in 1964) he attended a Physics course at the Rutgers University summer session in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. This seven week course was sponsored by the American National Science Foundation.

In Belvedere Fr Scully was regarded as a very competent teacher. He had the gift of winning the confidence and loyalty of his pupils. Never robust - he was not an active games man - he was nevertheless a staunch supporter of the School Teams in their annual Cup-winning quests. He appreciated the finer points of Rugby and never failed to appear at the Schools Cup matches. But it is perhaps for his work in the social field that he will be most remembered. In the school he had the direction of the two Conferences of the St Vincent de Paul Society and the enthusiasm he inspired among the members was apparent to all. He was also the Director of one of the Old Belvedere Conferences of the Vincent de Paul Society. He was not content with interesting the boys of Belvedere in the plight of the poor under his inspiration a wide circle outside the College came to share in his Christlike attitude to the suffering, for whom, as he himself put it : “Pity is not enough”.

For some years the plight of the aged poor of Dublin, living on their own, had come very much to his notice. With the help of the boys in the school conferences he did what he could to help with this problem in the locality. Much more important, however, was the fact that he initiated some surveys of the conditions in which old people are living on their own in Dublin and published a number of articles calling attention to their plight. Thus it was that at an early stage he became associated with the Catholic Housing Aid Society which is planning a number of flats to accommodate some of the aged poor, as well as newly-wed couples. Fr Tom devoted a great deal of the time and energy of his last years to this work. The importance of what he was trying to do was recognised by the Lord Mayor when he dedicated this year's annual Lord Mayor's Ball (on St Patrick's Day) to the memory of Father Scully and appealed for support so that the proceeds might be greater than usual and could be used for the projects of the CHAS. After his death, the Lord Mayor, in a letter to his sister, paid tribute to Fr Tom's work for the aged poor of the city.

We have already mentioned his writings on social questions which aroused a good deal of interest; for instance his advice was asked and generously given to the Limerick Housing Aid organisation and to the Methodist work on the same line in Dublin. But Father Scully over the years produced a number of other items which were published, both of a spiritual and engineering nature. First we should mention his booklet on “The Mass in Your Life” and the series of articles which he contributed in 1963 to the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart on “The Devotional Life of the Soul”. In the now defunct publication “The Irish Monthly” there appeared under his name (in 1949) articles on such diverse topics as “Peat Electrical stations”, “Arterial Drainage”, “The Tennessee Valley Authority” and “New Land for Old”. He was certainly a man who made the most possible use of his talents and energies in good causes but particularly in the field of social problems.

So far this tribute has been mainly factual and may have given little impression of Father Scully the man. To say that he was a gay companion and an edifying religious may sound trite, but it was true - as those who lived with him can testify. He was generous, sympathetic and interested in the work and problems of everyone, and this despite his own very busy life and the many cares that burdened him increasingly. It was perhaps only at the end that we really appreciated his qualities and the amount of work that he had been doing.

Fr Tom became ill last summer, and serious illness was diagnosed. Those who were close to him knew that it was very probable that he had not long to live. Still, he went back to the classroom and continued to work with increasing fervour for the aged poor. Just before Christmas he became ill again and died most peacefully after some weeks in the Mater Nursing Home. But during those weeks, in spite of devoted nursing, he suffered very greatly and those who visited him will not forget the example of fortitude that he gave and his continued interest, up to the day before his death, both in the affairs of the school and in the social work to which he was so deeply committed.

Father Tom died on Saturday, January 20th 1968. The removal took place on the following Monday at 5.15 to the Church of St. Francis Xavier and the remains were preceeded and followed by a large attendance on foot. They included many of the old people for whom he had worked so hard. Among the attendance was the late Minister for Education, Mr. Donogh O'Malley, an old friend from University days in Galway.

There was a very large attendance at the Office and Requiem in St. Francis Xavier's on Tuesday at 10.45, and at the funeral which followed to the Jesuit Cemetery in Glasnevin. Some of the Belvedere boys who had been in the Vincent de Paul Conference carried the coffin from the hearse to the mortuary chapel and many of the school lined the path to the grave.

Our sympathies go to Father Tom's sister and brother Sr Colombière, Presentation Convent, Galway, and Dr Eamonn Scully, Moycullen, Co. Galway.

Born: 26 November 1826, Philipstown, County Offaly
Entered: 13 September 1852, Amiens France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1861, Laval, France
Final vows: 02 February 1876
Died: 19 June 1892, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin

by 1854 at Laval, France (FRA) studying Theology
by 1857 at Amiens, France (FRA) studying
by 1858 at Laval, France (FRA) studying Theology
by 1860 at Leuven, Belgium (BELG) studying Theology
by 1873 at Laon, France (CAMP) making Tertianship

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
Early education was at Tullabeg first and then Clongowes.

He studied Theology and Philosophy at Laval, and was ordained there 1861.
He was a Teacher and Prefect at Clongowes for five years and just over a year at Tullabeg.
The rest of his Jesuit life was spent teaching in Belvedere, with the exception of tertianship at Drongen. He was also a Minister for three years.
He had a very long illness, and was carefully nursed by his old friend Brother George Sillery, who told many amusing stories about him. He died 19 June 1892. His funeral was a very representative one in attendance.
He was for many years the fast friend of the Christian Brothers, whose Spiritual Director he had been for a long period.
He was very quick tempered, but thoroughly goof-hearted, and generous to the extreme. He usually heard Confessions in Gardiner St at night, and here it was clear the esteem in which he was held by both Priests and lay people. He was a man of lively faith and devoted to the interests of Belvedere. He always offered the Mass of each First Friday for the intentions of the Sacred Heart. His devotion to the sick and dying was admirable, and he often remained up the whole night with some of his penitents, in order that he might bring them comfort in their last moments.
He lived 41 years in the Society.

Born: 17 October 1826, Tintern, New Ross, County Wexford
Entered: 12 September 1853, Amiens, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Died: 22 February 1858, Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France - Franciae Province (FRA)

Born: 25 February 1793, Shevington, Wigan, Lancashire, England
Entered: 07 September 1815, Hodder, Lancashire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: September 1822, Dublin
Died: 17 December 1854, Boston, Lincolnshire, England - Angliae Province (ANG)

Born: 26 January 1835, Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Entered: 02 May 1856, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare
Final vows: 02 February 1868
Died: 11 May 1894, Clongowes Wood College SJ, Naas, County Kildare

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He was a tailor by trade. He worked at Milltown as a tailor for many years. He was later sent to Tullabeg, and when it closed in 1856, he went to Clongowes, where he worked until his death 11 May 1894. He was a model of industry.

Born: 18 December 1853, Rhineland-Palatine, Germany
Entered: 29 July 1874, Sankt Andrä - Austriaco-Hungaricae Province (ASR-HUN)
Final vows: 03 December 1884
Died: 09 December 1926, Xavier College, Kew, Melbourne, Australia

Transcribed ASR-HUN to HIB : 01 January 1901

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He remained in Australia when the Mission was handed over by ASR to HIB.
He was Sacristan at Norwood and later transferred to Xavier College Kew. He died happily there 09 December 1926
He was a Carpenter by trade - the boys called him St Joseph.

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Frederick Schwarz entered the Society 29 July 1874, and arrived in Adelaide with Josef Conrath and Vinzenz Scharmer, 13 December 1883. He went to the parish of Norwood, 1889-1903, as sacristan, gardener, cook and domestic helper. Later he went to Xavier College, Kew, 1903-26, as carpenter, storekeeper and other general duties.
His life was a busy but happy one of constant routine. At Xavier College, it was noted that he only left the school once in 24 years, on the occasion of an accident, and superiors decided he should have a rest.
Each morning, at 5.30 am, he would be in the chapel for meditation and then serve Masses. After breakfast, he went to his workshop where he worked as a cabinet maker. He worked slowly, but well. He hated slip-shod work. Between his workshop and jobs around the school, he spent his day. At 5 pm he locked the chapel and spent more time in prayer. On occasions, he would draw up plans and design work in his room. He was very careful to save the college as much money as possible - his designs involved minimal expense.
Towards the end of his life, because of trouble with feet, he was confined to his room. This gave him more time for prayer. He died a man of great faith.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 2nd Year No 2 1927
Obituary :
Br F Schwartz
He was born in 1853, and entered the Society (Austrian Province) in 1874. He remained in Australia when the Austrians left in 1901. For two years he was sacristan at Norwood, and was then transferred to Kew. There he remained, doing carpentry work, until his death on the 9th December. Owing to the nature of his work, he was known to the boys as “St Joseph”.

◆ The Xaverian, Xavier College, Melbourne, Australia, 1926

Obituary

Brother Friedrich Schwarz SJ

(At XC 1902-26).

“Grave on the stone ye give to me: “Faith once was mine; lo! now I see”

Brother Schwarz was born on the 18th of December 1853. He entered the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus in 1874. In 1883 he came to the Australian Mission which was then in the care of the Austrian Fathers, and was stationed at Norwood, Adelaide, for nineteen years. In 1902 he came to Xavier College where he prayed and worked and worked and prayed till God called him home to his big reward on 9th of last December. The portion of this long life of 73 years that naturally falls into these pages is the part led at Xavier, thougtı indeed his whole life was all of a piece since those who knew him sum up his younger days thus: “Brother Schwarz in the making!”

Rut and routine is one of the things that most people cannot stand. They must have change - usually given by means of a holiday - or else they'd go mad. Yet here was a man who for four and twenty years led a most routinary yet very active life and was the soul of happiness and contentment in and through it all. Only once can we remember his leaving Xavier and that was when, having slipped and fallen from a ladder, Superiors said he must go with the Community for a little change to the seaside. He did what he was told and was quite as happy as if he was hammering in his carpenter's shop. Two litle things occurred during his one and only seaside visit, and as they illustrate his cliaracter they are worth recording. The first showed his childlike joy in a joke: the second his great and simple faith. The villa or community vacation was at Clifton Springs and the last part of the journey was by coach. The Scholastics gathered round the dear old man on his arrival and asked him how he came, hoping to hear him reply: “I came by ze buzz”. However, contrary to expectations he said: “I came by the Cab!” At that there was a roar of laughter which no man enjoyed more than the old Brother himself, especially when he learned the trap that had been laid for him. “Yea, Father, Thou hast hidden it from the wise ones and revealed it to the little ones!” Into the other scene there came no less a personage than the late Archbishop Carr, God rest his kindly soul. His Grace was staying at the Clifton Springs Hotel and was wont to say Mass each morning in the little chapel of the Villa house. Well, the morning after his arrival Brother Schwarz met his Grace returning to the hotel and right or wrong, he was for going down on his knees on the public road and getting the saintly Archbishop's blessing. The latter however wouldn't have the kneeling part at all. It was a struggle between humilities and authority alone finally won the day. Shortly after he returned and thus ended the only time, as far as we know, that Brother Schwarz ever left Xavier during his 24 years of life there. It was that

“Here he ran his godly race Nor changed, nor wished to change his place”.

Morning by morning would see him up at half past five o'clock and along to the Chapel where he made his meditation and served Masses. After breakfast, down to his little workshop where he would put his hand to accomplish work that any cabinet maker night be proud of. He worked slowly, true, but well. It was a case of “slow to begin, but never ending”. He hated slip-shod jobs, holding that whatever was done for the Master should be done well. Between this little shop - a small Nazareth of its own - and places about the house wanting repairs, he would spend the day. With 5 o'clock gone, he would close down and come up to the Chapel to continue in the presence of the Master and with more concentration the prayers he had been saying off and on during the whole day. Beads, Ways of the Cross, and long prayers - more likely conversations - with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, these filled many an hour of his evenings. On occasions, however, he would give some of this time to planning and designing work in his room. There with his pencil and compasses he would draw things to scale with the accuracy of a draughtsman. It was at moments like these that he used (to use a word often on his lips) to “speculate”. Likewise he “would make a remark” which “remark” would be always very sound though it might and very often did, run into the plural number. The work that he did here was always very practical and the amount of money his thinking out of things saved the College would run into many figures if it were all totted up. One interesting feature about such undertakings was this. He would go to all trouble about exact measurements, prices, tenders and, that done, stop and say: “Now let us go and see the Rector”. The blessing and guidance of obedience meant everything for him and readily and uncomplainingly would he drop any work, no matter how much there was of it, if those in authority did not think well of it.

Thus passed the working day of the week and when Sunday came, well, he too went on Sunday to the “Church”, and there he stopped, morning and evening especially. In the afternoon he would sometimes go out to Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which night happen to be in a Chapel close handy or he might go to the hospital to visit some sick friend whom he had been too busy to look up during the week. Towards tlae end he began to suffer very much from his feet and he found it difficult to get any rest at night. This only brought forth the smiling remark; “All the inore time for prayers!” Never was complaint heard from his lips though the suffering was very acute. At last he had to keep to his room - a big cross for him who had been so active all his life. However, he began on a more wholesale scale than before, the work of novenas, starting with Our Lady, to whom he had a childlike devotion, and going the round of his special saints in heaven, Finally, Superiors decided that it was wisest for him to go to hospital where every care could be given to him. To this he acquiesced, just as he did to the going to the seaside, saying with a smile as he went off “If I don't come back, I'll meet you in heaven”. Thie saintly old man spoke more truly than he thought. He was never to come back for, despite all the skill and care that was bestowed on him day and night, sickness and old age had their way and his saintly soul passed to his Master very peacefully on December 9th - the day following the feast of Our Lady's Inmaculate Conception,

Thus ended a life of great love and great faith, and straigiitway for him at least, came the “vision splendid”. His heart was always “God's alone”. Hence has he gone straight to where “No need to chase away the hour of sadness, No fear of disappointment or of moan. But only thrills of that ennobling gladness That live in hearts that are but His alone”.

Born: 02 December 1909, Řetenice, Teplice, Czech Republic
Entered: 07 September 1929, Trnava, Czechoslovakia - Cechoslovacae Province (CESC)
Ordained: 31 July 1939, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 03 February 1947, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin
Died: 15 August 1992, Belvedere College SJ, Dublin

Transcribed CESC to ASR; ASR to HIB 1952

by 1937 came to Milltown (HIB) studying

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 22nd Year No 2 1947
Belvedere :
The Times Pictorial of March 8th devoted its front page to photos of the German children who are under the zealous care of Fr. Schrenk. Photos showed them receiving religious instruction from Fr. Schrenk, at Mass and Communion in the College Chapel, at breakfast, etc.

◆ Interfuse No 82 : September 1995 & ◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1993

Obituary

Fr Franz Schrenk (1909-1992)

2nd Dec. 1909: Born in Czechoslovakia
7th Sept. 1929: Entered the Society of Jesus at Velehrad, Moravia
1931 - 1934: Studied Philosophy at Pullach
1934 - 1936: Regency in Duppan
1936 - 1940: Studied Theology at Milltown Park
31st July 1949; Ordained at Milltown Park
1940 - 1941: Tertianship at Rathfarnham
1941 - 1992: Belvedere-Teacher (Philosophy/Russian/German), also Spiritual Welfare of German-speakers in Dublin.
1951: Transcribed to Irish Province in 1951
15th Aug, 1992: Died at Bon Secours Hospital

The story of Franz's life is quite quickly told. He did not speak much of it himself, although sometimes with a glass of whiskey he would indulge in a little reminiscence about his family and his experiences. He was gently critical of his Jesuit friend and compatriot Max Prokoph who spent his life in Africa and who wrote a small volume of reminiscences published shortly after he died. (”That he should be so foolish”). He always refused to give the boys an interview for the school annual, The Belvederian, if the subject matter was to be his own life, which is, of course, what they were really interested in. As a result of all this, some of the information I will mention has been gleaned from the archives and is mentioned among us now for the first time.

In stressing Franz's reluctance to speak of himself, I do not wish to convey an impression of any kind of neurotic self-depreciation - he was the most un-neurotic person you could ever meet.

He was born in Settenz, in what was then Czechoslovakia, in 1909 and entered the Jesuit novitiate at Velehrad in Moravia in 1929. He studied philosophy with the German Jesuits at Pullach, outside Munich where Fr. - now Blessed - Rupert Mayer was living at the time. (One of the most moving and memorable occasions in community in Belvedere was Franz's address to us about Fr. Mayer at the time of his beatification, when the rector managed to persuade him to take the unusual step of talking to us in this way). In 1936 he made the fateful move to Ireland to study theology, just as the war clouds were gathering over Europe. By the time he was ordained in 1939 and had completed his tertianship at Rathfarnham in 1941, there was no longer any possibility of going home, first because of the war itself, later because of the communist take-over in his country and the expulsion of his family. And so he was forced to stay.

In 1941 he began the longest continuous membership of the Belvedere Community in history (though Fr. Peadar MacSéumais is - if the image isn't too bizarre and he doesn't object - coming up fast on the rails!). He was chaplain to the German speaking community in Dublin (there is a touching picture in The Belvederian about this time of Franz shepherding three German war-orphans across the snow filled school yard in Belvedere, after giving them their First Holy Communion in the Boys' Chapel). He taught German and Religion in the school. He took charge of the Philosophy course from 1942 until it died out in the 1970's. He even taught some Russian, before school in the mornings, for a few years in the 1960's. As a teacher, he was intelligent, capable, solid and fair-minded. Through his German contacts, he was able to obtain substantial financial assistance from the Archdiocese of Köln for the building of the new Kerr Wing in the 1970's although - typically - he never spoke of this. In the early 1950's he began his European tours for senior boys, which were such a pioneering venture in Ireland at that time. They were gratefully remembered by all who took part and they allowed him to slip across the border in Berlin to visit his family behind the 'Iron Curtain'. He was to remain an intrepid traveller to the end of his life. In 1989 we had the joy of celebrating with him his eightieth birthday, the sixtieth anniversary of his entry into the Society of Jesus and the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination as a priest.

With such a history Franz might have been something of an exotic in the surroundings of Belvedere - yet he was the most unexotic person imaginable. He never drew attention to himself, he was always unobtrusive, ordinary. His room was typical of himself - furnished with the simple amenities he required, no more and no less. He was sane and balanced in his views. He was rarely outspoken and impressive when he was. He was patient and undemanding even when, in his last years, he was unwell. He bore his deafness without complaint - we would be forced to remember his difficulty by the whistling sound of his hearing aid as he adjusted it, but there was never any criticism of others implied. He simply never complained about his life or the lot which had condemned him to live in exile from his country and his family.

He was never changed from Belvedere over a period of 51 years and there was never any need to change him: he was a free man. He was open to new ideas (he told me once how his sister had said to him, at the time of the Second Vatican Council: 'This is not new for you - you always thought this'). Yet he was no faddist, not a man to espouse popular ideas just because they were popular, He was his own man. He would have appreciated the praise of one of the Christian Brothers at Marino, where we used to say Mass on a regular basis: “Fr, Schrenk knows which side of the altar he belongs to”! On the other hand, he willingly concelebrated on special occasions, until a few years ago, when deafness made this too difficult. (He would tell you about this quietly, undemonstratively). He said Mass with quiet, unspectacular reverence and absolute fidelity to the very end of his life. He had a genuine, well-informed and intelligent interest in world events, especially in Eastern Europe, where he and his family had endured so much. He watched the collapse of communism with initial scepticism and then lost no time in using the opportunity this gave him of visiting his brother and sisters outside Berlin and he would go not only in the summer, as was his custom, but at Christmas as well. (He made all his own travel arrangements and headed off with the courage and intrepidity that characterised everything about him). He took Irish citizenship in 1953 and the measure of his interest in his country of adoption was the strength of his republicanism and his support for Fianna Fail (the virulence of which sometimes surprised us!). He heartily disapproved of Mrs Thatcher! For recreation, he liked to watch football on television - any football anywhere! You would even find him viewing obscure matches in the Argentinian First Division, beamed on one of the new satellite stations. But, with Franz, if someone else wanted a different station, that was always negotiable - and those who live in community will know what heroic virtue such freedom can sometimes entail!!

It is impossible to think that Franz Schrenk left a single enemy behind him, not because he was the kind of person who would seek peace for peace's sake or was a time server of any sort - he was an utterly truthful, real person, with no pretence. His own man - but because of the spontaneous benevolence which he radiated to everyone, I think of the shy smile with which he would greet you, his quiet charm towards strangers and visitors to the community. For all the independence of mind with which he lived his life, he was very much in community and observed the brethren with wry but completely unmalicious humour, An example of his dry observation after one of the older fathers had described how all the lady-teachers on the staff had given him a kiss to mark his jubilee - “They call that sexual harassment!” He was very much in the community but he also got on with the quiet pastoral service with which he filled his spare time and the years of his retirement and about which we knew little enough. He was still driving a borrowed car in the final weeks of his life - to visit his friends and those he had committed himself to look after. His care for his family was with him to the very end. He admitted with gentle guilt that he had managed to skip the queue in the Mater Hospital to get his cataract operation done sooner, so that he could go to Germany and visit his family - a visit he was never able to make.

Franz died as he had lived, unobtrusively. His death marked the end of a long, contented, extraordinarily good life. It is hard for us to convey how deeply sad we are today, even though we are not sad for him. We know now it was a very great privilege to have lived with him. For me myself (I first met him when I was seven and he taught me English in Elements class), it is an inestimable privilege to say these few words for Franz, my father, my brother, “good faithful servant”.

Bruce Bradley

Born: 12 August 1878, Elberfeld, Rheinland, Germany
Entered: 03 April 1894, Limburg, Netherlands - Germaniae Inferiors Province (GER I)
Ordained: 20 August 1909
Final vows: 02 February 1912
Died: 01 September 1960, Bad Godesberg, Rheinland, Germany - Germaniae Inferiors Province (GER I)

by 1939 came to Milltown (HIB) studying and also taught in Tullabeg

◆ Jesuits in Ireland : https://www.jesuit.ie/news/jesuitica-jesuits-name-bugs/

JESUITICA: The flies of Ireland
Only one Irish Provincial has had a genus of flies called after him. In 1937 Fr Larry Kieran welcomed Fr Hermann Schmitz, a German Jesuit, to Ireland, and he stayed here for
about four years, teaching in Tullabeg and doing prodigious research on Irish Phoridae, or flies. He increased the known list of Irish Phoridae by more than 100 species, and immortalised Fr Larry by calling a genus after him: Kierania grata. Frs Leo Morahan and Paddy O’Kelly were similarly honoured, Leo with a genus: Morahanian pellinta, and Paddy with a species, Okellyi. Hermann served Irish entomologists by scientifically rearranging and updating the specimens of Phoridae in our National Museum. He died in Germany exactly fifty years ago.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 36th Year No 2 1961
Obituary :
Fr Hermann Schmitz (1878-1960)
Fr. Schmitz was born on 12th August, 1878, and before his seventeenth birthday he entered the Society on 3rd April, 1894, at Blijenbeek in Holland. After thorough studies in the classical languages and in philosophy at Dutch and German houses of study, he taught for four years, 1901-05, at St. Aloysius College, Sittard, Holland. Then under superiors' orders he devoted himself to the natural sciences under the direction of the famous biologist, Fr. E. Wasmann, S.J. Having completed his theological training at Maastricht, he studied biology at Louvain and Bonn. He received his doctorate in 1926 at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Meanwhile he had been working as a teacher in St, Aloysius College, and as an assistant to Fr. Wasmann. He then went on to spend fifteen years as Professor of Cosmology in the philosophates at Valkenburg and in Ireland. During these years he carried on his researches in the family of Diptera or Flies, which is known to science as Phoridae. He came to Tullabeg in 1937, and at once he began to discover Phoridae not hitherto recorded in Ireland. In 1938 he published a paper “On the Irish Species of the Dipterous Family Phoridae” (Proc. R.I. Academy, Vol. 44. B. No. 9). This has been regarded as the most scientific treatment of the subject. It was the first work undertaken on Irish Phoridae since Haliday an Irishman and an outstanding entomologist of his day, had compiled his list more than a hundred years previously. Fr. Schmitz, ably assisted by Fr. P. O'Kelly, increased the known list of Irish Phoridae by more than one hundred species. He immortalised the Provincial of that time by calling a genus after him - Kierania grata. He also named a species O'Kellyi after Fr. P. O'Kelly. More recently he honoured Fr. Morahan by calling a genus Morahanian pellinta. In 1939 Fr. Schmitz appears in the Irish Catalogue as: Prof. cosmol, organ, et biol, at Tullabeg. It was probably during this year that he did the kindly and invaluable service to Irish entomologists by scientifically rearranging and bringing up to date the specimens of Phoridae in the National Museum, Dublin.
From 1942 on he worked for four years in Austria, then was called to St. Aloisius College at Bad Godesberg, where he carried on with some intensity his researches into the Phoridae, which he published in scientific journals. He personally discovered six hundred sub-species of Phoridae.
This busy and fruitful life in the service of science and the education of youth was maintained by a happy temperament, great intellectual gifts and a warm and vigorous religious vocation based on faith. His acquaintances knew him as a stimulating, emotional and often uproariously humorous human being, who treasured his religious calling with a deep interior earnestness. So he was quite composed when on 1st September, 1960, after a successful operation for cataract, a sudden heart attack brought his life into extreme danger; he immediately asked for the last sacraments, and a few hours later died piously and peacefully in Our Lord. R.I.P.

Born: 24 January 1892, Siġġiewi, Malta
Entered: 15 October 1914, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly (HIB for Siculae Province - SIC)
Final vows: 02 February 1926
Died: 11 February 1979, Naxxar, Malta

by 1916 at Tullabeg (HIB) working 1914-1923

Born: 19 July 1858, Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria
Entered: 14 August 1879, Sevenhill, Australia - Austriaco-Hungaricae Province (ASR-HUN)
Final vows: 08 September 1890
Died: 23 January 1923, Xavier College, Kew, Melbourne, Australia

Transcribed : ASR-HUN to HIB 01 January 1901

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
He was an Austrian Province Brother whom elected to stay with the Irish Fathers when they took responsibility for the Australian Mission in 1901.
1910 He was at Sevenhill
1912 He was at Xavier College, Kew, and he died in Melbourne 23 January 1923

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Vincent Scharmer entered the Society at St Andra, 14 August 1879, and after vows worked as a carpenter at Kalocsa, Hungary He arrived in Adelaide, 13 December 1883, and, with Josef Conrath, went to the Northern Territory Mission, 24 January 1884. He worked as a builder and carpenter during his time in Australia, first at Rapid Creek, 188489, and then at the Daly River, 1890-99. He also performed whatever domestic duties were required, which included caring for the Aborigines and sacristan. He went to Sevenhill, 1899-10, and finally to Xavier College, Kew, 1910-23.
He was a man of powerful physique, and an excellent carpenter. He was most valuable building structures on the Northern Territory Mission and had a reputation among the Aborigines for proficiency in the use of firearms. He saved the mission station on one occasion from the attack of some Aborigines by firing over their heads.
He had a most picturesque and unusual personality. At Xavier College he was so good with finances that he saved the college large sums of money. He carried out every duty entrusted to him with great thoroughness and even combativeness, for which he was known as “the Old Watch Dog”. He had a rugged appearance and an iron will. in performing functions he cared not for anyone except superiors. Directions were carried out to the letter. He even refused entrance at the Xavier gates to the current mission superior, until his identity was made clear.
There was something of the Prussian drill-sergeant in him. He kept four cats for his cellars, and they were all drilled like dragoons. He did much business over the telephone, and hearing him issuing orders gave one an admiration for the interpretative powers of Australian tradesmen. He was not easy to understand, yet the goods always appeared at the college.
He was also a skilled mechanic, a strenuous worker, and orderly to the last degree. His somewhat dour character was enlivened by a grim kind of humour. He loved a joke. Despite increasing sickness, he continued working for as long as he could stand on his feet. He was, indeed, a true and faithful soldier. with genuine kind-heartedness and much generosity.

Note from Friedrich Schwarz Entry
Frederick Schwarz entered the Society 29 July 1874, and arrived in Adelaide with Josef Conrath and Vinzenz Scharmer, 13 December 1883.

◆ The Xaverian, Xavier College, Melbourne, Australia, 1923

Obituary

Brother Vincent Scharmer SJ

(Born in the Tyrol, July, 1858;. entered the Austrian Province of the Society, August 14, 1879; came to Australia and spent some years on the Austrian Mission to the blacks in the Northern Territory; came to Xavier in 1910 and died there on the 23rd of January, 1923.)

In Brother Vincent Scharmer the College lost a most useful and devoted servant and a picturesque, if somewhat unusual, personality. In charge of the commissariat department, he saved the College large sums of money by his excellent management and avoidance of all waste. He carried out every duty entrusted to him with such thoroughness and, at times, combativeness, that he was popularly known as “the Old Watch Dog”. He liked that title, and it truly described him. He was somewhat rugged, both in appearance and in character, and had a will - or an obstinacy - of the wrought iron quality.

In carrying out instructions he cared not a jot for anyone except his superiors, and it was felt by all that to make him swerve from his instructions it would be necessary to pass over his dead body. If he was told to allow no one through a certain gate on a certain occasion, the Prime Minister or the Governor-General himself would have sought admittance in vain. In carrying out even such a task on one occasion he “put his foot in it” very badly. During the College Sports he was sent to the Minister to hold the gate on the back avenue and to allow no one through without a ticket. This was a precaution against the admission of undesirables. Brother Vincent made no invidious distinctions: he carried out his instructions to the letter, Several meritorious visitors without tickets had to look for admission elsewhere. Whether they were doctors or lawyers or members of Parliament mattered not in the least to Brother Scharmer. Then came along a tall and stately reverend gentleman, no less a personage than his own highest superior, Father T Brown, the head of all the Jesuit houses in Australia, but whom Brother Vincent had never seen before. “Tickets; please!” said he, blocking the way. Father Brown was highly amused, and not yet revealing his identity, maintained that he had no need of a ticket, “Your Reverence can't pass!” he said. And the sentry barred the way to his general! Father Brown tried every argument to effect an entry, but in vain. Only when he revealed his identity were the gates thrown open.

Brother Scharmer was a Tyrolese, but he had something in him of the Prussian drill-serjeant. He kept four cats for his cellars, and they were all drilled like dragoons. Every evening he whistled for them at a certain hour, and they came tumbling over one another to be at their posts on time. Not exactly that they loved him, but because they were trained on the strict military plan and dared not violate the regulations. Then they followed him down to the cellars, and each was locked into its respective dungeon. He gave away nothing to the mice.

He did a lot of business on the telephone. To hear him issuing orders gave you a high idea of the interpretative powers of our Australian tradesmen. It was little short of the miraculous that any of them ever understood a single word of his mumblings through the phone. Yet the goods came in all right - as a rule; but not always. One day le ordered as follows: “Ten backs off flour fifty pounds eack-ke”. This meant, “Ten bags of four of fifty pounds weight each”. He repeated the order five times, and the Kew grocer, despite his remarkable powers of interpretation, despatched 10 bags of four and 50 pounds of treacle!

He was a skilled mechanic, a strenuous worker, orderly to the last degree in all his business arrangements, and, as we have seen, faithful to a fault in all his appointed tasks. His somewhat dour character was enlivened by a grim kind, of humour; he loved a joke. His manful and religious disposition shone out conspicuously in the closing year of his life. He suffered much, but never repined. While clearly a dying man and unable to retain solid food in his stomach, and later on unable to swallow anything but liquid nourishment - and that with the greatest difficulty, he continued to work as long as he could stand on his feet. Undismayed by the approach of death, he treated in his grim way the break down of his physical forces almost as a joke.

He was a true and a strong man, a faithful soldier who never faltered at the word of command, and his genuine kind heartedness endeared him to everyone who knew him long enough to get a glimpse of the sterling qualities that lay beneath his rugged and unbending exterior. May the Lord rest his soul!

E Boylan SJ

Born: 20 September 1894, Roches Row, Cobh, County Cork
Entered: 07 September 1912, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1926, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1931, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Died: 23 May 1972, Loyola House, Eglinton Road, Dublin

Father works in HM Customs..

he is the youngest of three boys and has four sisters.

Educated at a convent school in Cobh until aged 8 and then went to Presentation Brothers NS in Cobh. At 12 he spent two years in Presentation Brothers Cobh. In 1909 he went to the Apostolic School at Mungret College SJ

Editor of An Timire, 1928-29; 1936-49.

Studied for BA at UCD

by 1924 at Leuven, Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1930 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 47th Year No 3 1972

Loyola House
Father Scantlebury's sudden death on 23rd May came as a major shock to the community. Father Charlie was a “founder” member of Loyola House. The first entries in the Minister's journal are his and he tells how he (the first Minister') joined Father McCarron there on 19th November, 1956 - “for a week Father McCarron cooked all the meals most efficiently”.
Particularly since his retirement from the Messenger Office, Father Charlie was rarely absent in his fifteen years and his sudden disappearance from the Community has left a notable void - and many chores, kindnesses, daily routine jobs, willingly undertaken now to be left undone or taken on by others.

Obituary :

Fr Charles Scantlebury SJ (1894-1972)

Had he lived a few more months, Fr Charlie Scantlebury would have celebrated his diamond jubilee as a member of the Society on September 7th of this year. He was born on September 20th, 1894, in the Cove of Cork, Cobh to us and Queenstown to our fathers. It was the chief transatlantic port of call in the Ireland of those days, a bustling, busy place of rare beauty. He was, and not with out reason, proud of his native place. Having begun his schooling with the Presentation Brothers in their College at Cobh, he came to Mungret at the age of fifteen in 1909. He entered the noviceship at Tullabeg, direct from Mungret, in September 1912. Fr, Martin Maher was his Master of Novices, and for his first year Fr. William Lockington (author of “Bodily Health and Spiritual Vigour”) was Socius. From the first day of his religious life, he was a model of orderly living, up with the lark and “busy as a bee” all day long, most exact in all practices and absolutely indefatigable.
Having taken his first vows on September 8th, 1914, he went to the new Juniorate at Rathfarnham where he spent four years, the first year in what, at that time, was called “the home juniorate”, and the last three at University College. He was awarded his B.A. degree in the summer of 1918. It was during his Rathfarnham years - years that witnessed so many manifestations of patriotic endeavour - that what was to be one of the abiding interests of his life began, the revival of Irish as the spoken language of the people. Facilities for developing a blas' in those days were few enough but later, when improvements came, Fr Charles was to use them to the full. He spent many holidays in the Gaeltacht and became a fluent speaker, After Philosophy at Milltown Park, 1918-21, he wsa assigned to Belvedere. Here another side of his character became evident, his apostolic zeal, then manifested by unremitting interest in and concern for the boys under his care. In the extra curricular activities, particularly the Cycling Club and the Camera Club, he found an ideal method of meeting and influencing boys from various classes in the school. Some of the pupils whom he helped in those days love to recall his name with reverence. After Theology in Milltown Park, 1925-29, where he was ordained in July 1928 by Archbishop Edward Byrne, and the Tertianship, 1929-30, at St, Beuno's, he returned to Belvedere, to be Editor of the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart. Thus began what was to be the great work of his life. For the next thirty-two years he was Editor of the Messenger and National Director of the Apostleship of Prayer. For a dozen or so of these years he was Editor of An Timthire as well. Under his editorship, the circulation of the Irish Messenger continued to grow until in the early nineteen-fifties it reached a record height. In his later years he had, like other Editors and publishers of religious magazines, to face new and wearisome difficulties, That he found all this work easy or particularly to his taste would be a false assumption but the strain did not diminish in any way the vigour with which he applied himself to it. He had, of course, the consolation of knowing that he was, in all this, working not only for the holy Catholic faith but for the motherland also. From every point of view his work at the Irish Messenger Office was a real success.
If there is any mystery in Fr. Scantlebury's life it lies in the amount and the variety of his extra-editorial activities. He was a popular giver of the Spiritual Exercises, A member of the Old Dublin Society since the early forties, he was Council member in 1949-50, Vice-President from 1951 to 1955 and again on the Council 1961-62. He was a regular contributor to the Society's proceedings: papers read by him included “Lambay”, “Belvedere College”, “Lusk”, “A Tale of Two Islands” and “Tallaght’. He was the second recipient of the President's Medal (now known as The Society Medal) which he was awarded for his paper on Lambay”, read to the Society on February 26th, 1945. Fr Scantlebury was granted Life Membership of the Society in 1971. He illustrated his lectures by slides made by himself. Of such slides he had a large collection, Patriotism for him consisted largely in helping to conserve what was best in the things of the spirit. He wished to preserve to his generation something of the glories of his country's past, Four of his talks appeared in booklets, published by the Messenger Office. These were entitled : Ireland's Island Monasteries; Saints and Shrines of Aran Mór; Treasures of the Past; Ireland's Ancient Monuments. He was never flamboyant, nor was he ever a bore.
To himself he remained true to the end. He continued to be a model religious, given selflessly to Christ Our Lord, intent only on the expansion of His Kingdom, Had the Rules of the Summary and the Common Rules been lost, they could almost be reconstructed from a study of his daily conduct. One could not imagine a situation in which he would hesitate to obey the known will of his Superior. At all periods of his priestly life, he was most active as a Confessor, The number of those who came to him for spiritual direction was remarkable. In the last decade of his life when, as a member of the community at Eglinton Road, he took his turn as Chaplain to the nuns at the New St. Vincent's Hospital, he was held in the highest esteem by all. As a neighbour said on the day of his funeral: “he knew everybody and was every one's friend”. He died on May 23rd. RIP

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 2002

Farewell Companions : Dermot S Harte

Fr Charles Scantlebury SJ

Fr Charles Scantlebury SJ was from Cork and he was born in the town that was host to much drama. Queenstown (now Cobh) was the last port-of-call for the ill-fated 'Titanic'. It was also a silent witness to the mass emigration of thousands of our fellow Irish men and women who sailed from the port to create a better life for themselves in the New World.

Charlie was the editor of the Irish Messenger for many years and lived a large part of his working life within the College. He was our guide in the Touring Club, and with him we visited such places as Jacob's Biscuit Factory, the Guinness Brewery, Harry Clark's Stained Glass Studios - Harry, that Irish Master of the Art of Stained Glass Creations - the various Newspaper Offices, the Urney Chocolate Factory in Tallaght (that visit went down extremely well!), the Irish Glass Bottle Company, the Hammond Lane Foundry and numerous other centres of interest. He was also a popular confessor who was noted for the leniency of the penances that he dished out in very small doses!

But I remember him best for the introduction that he gave me to the elegance of Georgian Dublin on which subject he was an expert. But he did not spare us from the sight of Dublin's Georgian slums (many located within the shadow of the College) where we were appalled to see the beauty of the architecture so wantonly decayed. He instilled in me, and in many others, a sense of value, and I like to think that he made us better people and better citizens.

He died many years ago. Those who knew him will remember him with deep affection.

Born: 15 February 1840, Ennis, County Clare
Entered: 28 July 1859, Frederick, MD, USA - Marylandiae Province (MAR)
Ordained: 02 April 1875, Woodstock College MD, USA
Final vows: 15 August 1881
Died: 24 March 1914, St Mary's, Cooper Street, Boston, MA, USA - Marylandiae Neo-EboracensisProvince (MARNEB)

Born: 12 August 1902, Cloneygowan, County Offaly
Entered: 01 September 1919, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 14 June 1932, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1935, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 30 January 1948, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin

Father was a shopkeeper.

Eldest of three boys and there are four girls.

Early education for twelve years at the Presentation Convent in Portarlington and then eight years with the Christian Brothers also in Portarlington. In 1918 he went to Clongowes Wood College SJ

by 1924 in Australia - Regency at St Aloysius College, Sydney
by 1927 at a Sanatorium in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
by 1934 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
James Scally entered the Society aged sixteen, in 1919 at Tullabeg. He went to Australia after only a year of juniorate for his health in late 1922, where he taught and was assistant prefect of discipline at St Aloysius' College. By 1926 his health seems to have recovered sufficiently to return to Ireland for philosophy and theology, followed by tertianship at St Beuno's 1933-34. His health thereafter became indifferent, but he undertook administrative posts such as minister of Tullabeg until his death at a relatively young age.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 23rd Year No 2 1948
Obituary
Fr. James Scally (1902-1919-1948)
Fr. James Scally died at Our Lady's Hospice, Harold's Cross, Dublin on January 30th. He was born in 1902 at Cloneygowan in Laoighis. He went to school first to the Christian Brothers in Portarlington and then to Clongowes. He entered the Society in 1919. From 1911 to 1926, he taught at St. Aloysius' College, Sydney. He studied philosophy and theology at Milltown Park and was ordained there in 1932. After his tertianship at St. Beuno's, he was master in Clongowes until 1936 when he went to Tullabeg. He remained there for five years during which he was Minister. He came then to Belvedere where he was at first associate-editor of the Irish Monthly and ‘The Madonna’ and then master until 1945. During the last years he was in Rathfarnham. His health, which had never been robust, forced him in the end to give up all active work.
These dates and places give a cold record of Fr. Scally's life. They reveal little of the friend whose early death we keenly mourn. They tell nothing of the high courage which made possible their record of work undertaken and accomplished.
Fr. ‘Jim’ Scally was gifted by God with an unusually attractive character. He certainly had no enemies, even in the very mildest meaning of the word. Rather was he loved by all who knew him, Without the slightest affectation or conscious effort on his part, he quickly won the sympathy and friendship of those he net. Some twelve years ago he met friends of the present writer, and then only for a few brief days, and after that never saw them again. They never forgot him, never failed to ask for news of him; they were deeply grieved at the news of his death. His serious illness at Christmas caused sorrow to his friends in the Community at Tullabeg, a sorrow which was shared at more than one hearth in the neighbourhood where each year the same question was asked with unaffected feeling: ‘Will Father Scally never come back to us again’??
It is not easy to describe or disengage the qualities which thus attracted. Father Jim or Seamus, as he was known to many, was naturally shy and reserved - though not unduly so - and he was modest almost to the point of diffidence. Those natural qualities he transformed and raised through his piety to the level of good, round Christian humility, still unforced and still attractive. He was sensitive, too, and this quality God was to use to his sanctification. He was intensely and transparently sincere, and to those who knew him well, that sincerity was very deep and very real. It was closely allied to a great earnestness in his life, the unfailing consciousness which he ever had of the high ideal of his priesthood and of his religious calling. At the back of everything he did and said, and not far back, there was always that great seriousness of purpose, that concern about the things of God. I can certainly recall many conversations with Father Scally from which I came away not only edified, but inspired. The Exercises of St. Ignatius and the matter of his own retreat were subjects on which he would speak with enthusiasm and eagerness. In Tullabeg in the years after his ordination, he planned great things which God did not ask him to accomplish. True to the spirit of the second and sixteenth rules of the Summary, he was far from neglecting the sanctification of himself, applying himself seriously to that most difficult pursuit, and the years that followed gave him rich opportunity. For years he kept at the work allotted to him when true zeal only and a deep religious spirit could have supplied for fast failing physical strength. When he could do nothing else, he prayed, and two days before he died, when his physical suffering and discomfort were intense, he was still striving to read his Office, and his only anxiety was that he would not be able to receive Holy Communion every day. Unconsciously, as I imagine, repeating the words of Father Damien, he said : “Without Holy Communion I do not think I would be able to carry on at all”.
It was Father Plater, I think, who threatened to haunt to his discomfort whoever would dare to write his life. On reading what I have written here, I confess to the fear of some such visitation if I leave it at that. For no one would repudiate more vehemently than Fr. Jim, any attempt at ‘saint-making’ in his regard. He had his faults and no one was more conscious of them than he, and none more concerned about them. Further, to those who knew him not, these words picture one who was dull and grim and deadly serious, my only excuse is that words cannot capture things so elusive and immaterial as the sparkle of the eye and the playful chuckle which told of a keen, fresh, though quiet, sense of humour which never left him even when illness pressed most heavily on him. Father Scally was laid to rest on the second of February. On that Feastday of Our Blessed Lady, thirteen years before, he had taken his final Vows in religion. When he died, though young in years, he was mature in the things of God. The way which God had chosen for his sanctification was the difficult road of sickness. As the years went by God asked more and more from him, and to the end he gave generously and courageously. In him the offering of the Sume ac Suscipe - that consummation of the Exercises - in a very literal sense was given and received. He was a model to us all.
Suaimhneas síorraidhe d'á anam, agus leaba i measg na naomh go raibh aige

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1948

Obituary

Father James Scally SJ

We learned with deep regret of the death of Fr James Scally SJ, which took place on January 30th this year, He had been on the staff of Belvedere for some years before going to Rathfarnham Castle in 1945. He had been at school at Clongowes and entered Tullabeg, at that time the noviceship, in 1919. As a scholastic he had spent some years in Australia, chiefly at Riverview; and was ordained at Milltown Park in 1932. After his tertianship, which he made at St Beuno's, Wales, he was. appointed to teach at Clongowes; but the work in the class-room was too exacting on his strength, which was not at all robust; and in 1936 he was appointed Minister of Tullabeg, which in 1930 had been made the Philosophate of the Irish Province. He held that office for five years.

He made an excellent Minister. He was painstaking, methodical, very practical, pleasant and easy to deal with, and very considerate and kind. He was very popular with the Philosophers; and did all he could to make life pleasant in that remote region. The Philosophers of that date will remember what a genial Master of Villa he made ; and they were grateful for all he did to help the games, the plays, the boating. They will remember the canoe which he got Fr Vincent Conway, of the Australian Province, to construct - which some wit called “The Scallywag” - in which he used to navigate the network of waterways, which surround Tullabeg, the canal, the Brosna, the Cloddagh, the Silver, with their diminutive, meandering tributaries. In due season he did a bit of shooting or fishing. He was very happy at Tullabeg.

But all his life he had to struggle against a weakness of the lungs. As a Scholastic he had spent some months in a sanatorium. The disease gained ground and he had to curtail his activities. To his energetic and zealous temperament this enforced inactivity grew very trying. He liked to give retreats and do other spiritual work; and after his death his voluminous, methodical, collection of spiritual notes showed what attention he had given to qualify himself for this ministry. In the last few years the disease gained ground rapidly. He was always courageous and uncomplaining, and struggled on against his growing weakness. In the last few months the disease had attacked his throat, and he suffered greatly. He received the news that he was dying with perfect resignation. He was anointed on the afternoon of January 30th, 1948, and two hours later death came to release him from his sufferings. By his patience and constant prayers he had greatly edified all who came near him in his illness. He was only 45 years.

To his parents, his brother and sisters we offer our deepest sympathy.

◆ The Clongownian, 1948

Obituary

Father James Scally SJ

Father James Scally died at Our Lady's Hospice, Dublin, on January 30th. He as born in 1902 in Cloneygowan in Offaly, He went to school first to the Christian Bothers in Portarlington and then came to Clongowes. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1919. From 1922 to 1926 he taught at St Aloysius' College, Sydney. He studied philosophy and theology at Milltown Park and was ordained there in 1932. Soon he came as master to Clongowes, staying until 1936 when he went to Tullabeg as Minister. He then went to Belvedere as associate-editor of the “Irish Monthly” and “The Madonna”. The last years of his life he spent in Rathfarnham Castle. His health, which had never been robust, forced him in the end to give up all active work.

These dates and places give a cold record of Father Scally's life; they reveal little of the friend whose death we keenly mourn; they tell nothing of the high courage which made possible this record of work undertaken and accomplished.

Father Scally was gifted by God with an unusually attractive character and was loved by all who knew him. Without the slightest affectation or conscious effort on his part he quickly won the friendship and sympathy of those he met. People with whom he came in contact only for a very short time never forgot him, never failed to ask for news of him, and were deeply sorry when they heard of his death. When news of his last serious illness came, it brought sorrow to many homes where the same question was often asked with unaffected feeling: “Will Father Scally never come back to us again?”

In the years after his ordination, Father Scally planned great things which God did not ask him to accomplish; but he did seize the rich opportunity of self-sanctification and sacrifice that was offered to him and for years he kept at the tasks allotted to him, when, certainly, true zeal only and a deep religious spirit can have supplied for fast failing plıysical strength. To what degree of perfection he attained in the end God alone knows but I venture to say it was a very high degree indeed.

If, to those who knew him not, these words picture one who was dull and grim and deadly serious my only excuse is that words cannot capture things so elusive as the sparkle of the eye and a playful chuckle which told of a keen, fresh, though quiet sense of humour which never left him even when illness pressed most heavily upon him. But at last that illness came to an end and it was on the Feast of Our Blessed Lady, the second of February - the feastday on which thirteen years before he had taken his final vows in religion - that he was laid to rest.

Suaimhness síorraidhe d'á anam agus leaba i measg na naomh go raibh aige.

St Ignatius College, Galway