Born: 23 March 1821, Carlisle, Cumberland, England / County Tyrone
Entered: 17 September 1845, St Mary’s, Montreal, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 15 August 1854, New York, NY, USA
Final Vows: 15 August 1861
Died: 08 May 1904, Hôpital Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, Longue-Pointe, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Canadensis Province Province (CAN)

part of the Collège Sainte-Marie, Montréal, Canada co0mmunity at the time of death

Born in Carlisle, England of Irish parents and brought up in County Tyrone. Emigrated to with family to Canada in the 1830’s.

◆ Woodstock Letters SJ : Vol 34, Number 1

Obituary

“Father Richard Baxter SJ” p167

Father Baxter, born at Carlisle in England on March 28th 1821, was of Irish parentage and received his early training at Tyrone. His father had there enlisted in the 15th Foot Infantry - Cromwell's Own - and afterwards became a convert to the Faith. The future missionary caught, and through life retained, some traits from the medium in which he was
brought up. An erect, soldierly bearing, joined to frankness of manner and directness of speech; the laconic answer ever ready, set off with a rich vein of humor, opened for him the way to hearts and disarmed prejudice. His mother, from the city of Limerick, was a woman of remarkable piety and her influence and example left an indelible impression on his character. It showed itself to his latest years in an almost exaggerated reverence for womanhood, always giving the place of honor, and when remarked on he would say: “How can I forget the Blessed Virgin and my own mother”.

He was gifted with a strong and healthy constitution which he loved in college to exhibit by athletic feats and sometimes by pugilistic encounters, in which he was seldom worsted, but particularly in his long and indefatigable missionary journeys. "God gave me good legs" he would say “and I can do nothing better than use them for his glory”.

In the third decade of the last century young Baxter came to Canada with his father and the other members of the family and settled near Barrie, Ont., where a sister still survives. He began his studies in Toronto and completed his classical course in the Montreal College in 1845. In September of that year he entered the Jesuit Novitiate, then but recently established in Montreal. It was opened at the Rodier residence on St Antoine St, now replaced by a more imposing and academic structure.

Our missionary as well as the other members of the Order who enjoyed the hospitality of that distinguished family, never tired relating on the proofs of kindness they had received from its members.

In 1847 the young religious made the ordinary Jesuit vows at Fordham, NY. His first ministry was a professorship in a grammar class in the college, which was opened that year in Elizabeth Street, New York. When this institution was transferred to more commodious quarters in Fifteenth Street, in 1849, the young professor moved with it. He began his career under the direction of that distinguished priest and famous educator, Father Larkin, who had been professor at the Montreal College, but entering the Society of Jesus, founded in New York the present St Francis Xavier's College, and became a noted preacher and orator. The young teacher was appointed by him to a class of French, and such was the enthusiasm he excited for that particular branch that mothers complained that their boys since they came under Mr Baxter, would only talk to them at home in French. He completed his theological studies at Fordham, in 1854, and on the feast of the Assumption, in the same year he was raised to priesthood by Bishop Loughlin of Brooklyn.

The fresh apostle then started out on an active career of fifty years, over forty of which were to be spent along the Great Lakes within the limits of what is now known as New Ontario. After some time in Troy, NY, where the Jesuits where then engaged in parish work and preaching, in August 1863 he was sent to Sault Saint Marie. During eighteen months he travelled continually along the shores of Georgian Bay and in the present diocese of Marquette, saying Mass in the houses of the settlers, baptizing children, blessing marriages, and giving missions in the white centres of population. In these apostolic works he spent five or six years in the neighborhood of Garden River and the Sault. Here with Brother Reardon he dug the foundations of the church of the Sacred Heart, which Bishop Jamot had just begun to erect, and is now the titular church of the Diocese of Sault Saint Marie. In 1871, we find him in the ministry in Guelph and a few months later in Troy.

During the summer of 1872, he went to Prince Arthur's Landing at the head of Lake Superior. In a letter to the writer of these pages, Father Baxter mentions a few interesting details. “I had everything to begin on my mission at Port Arthur, when I landed there on the fourth of June, 1872. I said Mass in several buildings and sheds, and in Mr Dawson's house, alongside Flaherty's hotel. I finally secured a house, now at the point opposite the depot of the new railway - Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway. I had hard work in erecting St Andrew's church. Mr Dawson's Glengarry men gave me a hundred dollars. That start procured the Scotch titular for the church, which was burnt down and rebuilt immediately”.

The modest pioneer says nothing of the popularity he soon acquired among all classes of that place. He was looked upon as one of the town's valuable assets, and his figure with long beard and straw hat, held the foreground in all the photo's of the booming town. Wives would not follow their husbands to the north shore till assured there was a priest and church for themselves and a Catholic school for their children. Business stifled bigotry in those days.

The dedication of the Church, which was a great event in the young town, was shared in by all, the ladies mostly Protestants, improvised a choir - the motu proprio had not yet appeared - and a decorating committee, while the more prominent officials held places of honor. The occasion was splendid for one of Father Baxter's characteristic traits and uncompromising disposition. After the execution of the Gloria he turned around at the altar to preach the sermon from the text: Out of the church no Salvation. Needless to say the sermon was a forcible one, and from another might have given offence; but from Fr Baxter it was good form and is yet spoken of. “A nice trick” said a prominent citizen on meeting him next day “to invite us all to your church and assistance and then turn on us and send us to ---- in that fashion”.' “'But”' said the priest '”could I show you my gratitude in any better way than, when you were on the wrong road, by warning you”.

Those were the days of the silver excitement, when the precious metal was taken out in such quantities from the solitary islet under the shadow of Thunder Cape, the Sleeping Giant of the Otchipways. Father Baxter was the miners' missionary. “I had often and long to visit and stay at Silver Islet”,' he writes. “I added something to the church built by Captain Frew, and the addition served for cooking, etc. I visited all around Isle Royale and McCargoe's cove, nearly opposite Silver Islet. At other times, I went to the mines over the mountains.....” Father Baxter ministered to the miners' spiritual wants until the flooding of the Silver Islet mine compelled the owners to cease operations indefinitely.

He was, at the same time, the missionary of the workmen employed in the construction of the Dawson route, the highway that was to link the prairies to Lake Superior. When that enterprise was discontinued and the building of the railway from Fort William to Winnipeg was undertaken by the Government, in 1875, Father Baxter started out on his career as a railway missionary. He travelled from camp to camp with his chapel on his back, and said Mass for the natives on Sundays and holidays. Many instances of his charity are still fresh in the memory of the people of Fort William. Let us give one example. When the grading of the new railway had extended fifty or sixty miles west of Thunder Bay, scurvy, familiarly known as “black leg”, spread among the workmen. It was not a rare sight to see the old missionary trudging that long distance over the swampy country with a bag of potatoes on his back, solely to provide vegetable food for stricken men.

Several times he had to swim across streams to carry the consolations of religion to the injured and dying during those strenuous years. He built the church at West Fort William and called it the Nativity, because, as he tells us, the first Mass was celebrated in it on Christmas night. He made his headquarters in the little house in the rear, and there he retired after his long tiring journeys for a few days of well-earned rest. But the holy missionary found his rest in prayer. A light burning in the church one morning at two o'clock betrayed his presence at the foot of the altar.

That God was pleased to show the efficacy of his prayers we have several proofs. A couple of instances will suffice. An abscess was eating away the life of one of his flock, a young woman of West Fort William. The physicians had abandoned her case as hopeless, upon which the confiding sufferer recommended herself with earnestness to the prayers of Father Baxter. The good missionary betook himself immediately to the church and did not leave it for hours. Next day the patient was out of danger. These details were given to the writer ten years after by the woman herself, who attributed the saving of her life solely to the prayers of the holy priest.

On another occasion the missionary was called to the bedside of a dying woman in the township of Murillo, a few miles west of Fort William. Finding the patient better, and on the way to recovery apparently, he decided not to administer the Last Sacraments. After having reached nearly home, on his return journey, he was impelled by some influence to return immediately to the sick home. He started over the dreary road a second time. When he reached the house it was far into the night. He found the woman on the point of death. After he had given her Extreme Unction, she breathed her last. A consoling fact in connection with this holy man's career is that, notwithstanding the distances, very often hundreds of miles, he had to cover, and the difficulties he had to overcome, no one in his immense district ever died without the Sacraments; this district extended over a territory six hundred miles in length. It is tangible proof that the old priest's guardian angel kept a diligent watch over his ministry.

In 1881, the last stage of his remarkable career began. The newly formed Canadian Pacific Railway Company undertook the construction of the road along the north shore of Lake Superior, and a period of activity unparalleled in modern enterprise opened up. Thousands of men were sent to tunnel out mountains of granite and to bridge those rivers and streams that rush into the lake. Father Baxter was the missionary sent to live with the workmen. He shared their food and their hardships during the years of construction. He followed their camps from point to point, and in his journeys twice narrowly escaped drowning. While crossing a stream near Nepignon, the ice gave way, precipitating the old missionary into the water. His strong lungs did him good service on the occasion; but he was submerged nearly a couple of hours before he was rescued. When asked how he got out of the water, he simply replied : “Head first”. He was chilled through on that occasion, but apparently none the worse for his wintry bath.

Father Baxter stayed in the construction camps until the road was completed. When the workmen employed in the building of the road disappeared, a fresh element came in. Regular trains started to run across the continent and his ministry began among the employees of the railway from Chapleau to Bonheur, the western limit of the diocese of Peterboro. He built churches for their use at the divisional points of Schreiber and White River, and later, a third one at East Fort William.

The completion of the railway did not lighten the burdens of his ministry. He travelled continually up and down the lake shore, living more than half his time on the trains. It mattered little what kind of conveyance led to his destination. Freight cars, locomotives, hand cars, as well as colonist and first-class coaches were patronized by him. He had a particular distaste for Pullmans, giving as his reason that he liked fresh air too well to be cooped up in pillows and cushions. During the last five years of his stay on the Canadian Pacific his mileage record ran into the hundreds of thousands. Those were the years of the development of the road, when slow trains, wearing delays and hardships innumerable were the lot of travellers. He went from station to station and said Mass for the Catholics, rarely spending more than two days at one place. The incommodities of this kind of life were many and bitter. “When there is a family at a siding”, he wrote to the author of this “there is generally a means of having a bed there”. Not always however; for he wrote again recalling his own experiences : “If your Reverence uses more judgment than I did, the want of sleep and cold waiting rooms will not give you as much annoyance as they gave me”.

Father Baxter's affability and his readiness to render a service, no matter how painful, made him beloved by the railway employees and their families. The old man, laden with chapel and sacks which, as we learned from one of his flock, would prevent him from entering anything smaller than a flat car, was always a welcome figure, in his threadbare cassock and well-worn hat. The little children looked for him, for they knew his pockets were filled with candies and toys.

Three times he narrowly escaped being killed in accidents on the railway. One of these episodes he kept vividly ever after in his mind. He was on the baggage car when the train left the track at McKenzie station. The missionary was found under a pile of trunks, and escaped with a few bruises. Later, when he was asked how he succeeded in getting out of the wreck so easily. “Through the door”, was the prompt reply.

The weight of years, and the fatigues of this nomadic life, kept up for so many years, began at last to tell on the vigorous frame of the old priest, and it was felt that the time had come to relieve him of. some of his burdens. In 1893, his superiors sent him to Sault Ste Marie, Mich., where he remained three years, and then back to Port Arthur - both scenes of his former activity. He was now eighty-two years of age, and the state of his health was becoming precarious. He returned to Montreal, where his religious life was begun, to prepare himself in retirement for the moment when he was to go to meet the Master he had served so well. That moment came three years later, May 8, 1904, and the old man carrying with him the merits of fifty-nine years in the Society of Jesus, and fifty years of priesthood, entered into his reward.

The solemn moment of his death had been before him for years; when it came, it did not find him unprepared. In his writings, found after his death, it is remarkable how frequent the value of time, and the right use we should make of it, comes under his pen. Here are a few of the maxims which were the watchwords of his life: “Time flies”; “Time is like a dream”; “Nothing is more precious than time”; “Time is given us to serve and glorify God;” We meet these truths, eloquent in their simplicity, in almost every page of his private papers. In a letter sympathising with a family, bereaved through a railway accident at Gravel River, he writes: “So many accidents on land and water! We should often say the Litanies. From a sudden and unprovided death, Good Lord deliver us”. In another letter, written after his retirement, he writes: “Let us often think of our Father and our eternal home, which, I hope, will be a happy one for all of us, and where we can sing our Father's praises for all eternity. It is really a pleasure to hear the notes of our organ and the singing of our choir. It makes me think of heaven. Earthly pleasures soon cease. The many and sudden deaths along the line ought to make us seriously think of eternity. This should not make us sad or miserable; but ·it should make us act reasonably, as becomes God's children. We have time in order to prepare for eternity”. These extracts give us the clue to the inner circle of the soul of one of the heroes of the Ontario missions, who, in his long career, had in view only the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

(From E J Devine in “The Canadian Messenger”)

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/baxter_richard_13F.html

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

BAXTER, RICHARD (in later life he sometimes signed Richard Xavier Baxter), Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit; b. 28 March 1821 in Carlisle, England, second son of Samuel Baxter and Mary Anne Bennis, both natives of Ireland; d. 8 May 1904 in Montreal.

Richard Baxter’s father worked as a military tailor in England and Ireland, and after the family immigrated to Barrie, Upper Canada, around 1830, he likely continued his trade as a civilian. In Barrie he and the four children converted to Catholicism, the religion of his wife. Love of reading and piety characterized the Baxter home. Young Richard, who had begun his education in Ireland, attended school in Toronto before enrolling in classical studies at the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice in Montreal, where his extracurricular activities included contact sports such as boxing. Upon graduation in 1845 he entered the newly established Jesuit noviciate in Montreal on 17 September as the order’s first English-speaking novice in Canada.

In 1847 he was sent to New York City. After taking his first vows there, he taught grammar and French for four years at a boys’ school opened by Father John Larkin*. He then studied theology at St Francis Xavier College until his ordination to the priesthood on 15 Aug. 1854. Two years of teaching at St John’s College, now Fordham University, ended his academic career (except for further study in Montreal in 1859–60). He would take his final vows in the order on 15 Aug. 1861.

Father Baxter’s pastoral career began in 1856 at Troy, N.Y. Seven years later he was posted to the Jesuit mission at Garden River, Upper Canada [see Frederic Baraga*]. His large size, physical stamina, driving energy, and ready wit made him well suited for the frontier, as did his fluency in English and French and his familiarity with Ojibwa. Except for visits to Troy and to Guelph, Ont., in 1871–72 and in 1878–79, he would spend the rest of his working life in the Georgian Bay and Lake Superior region. At his first missionary posting he celebrated mass, taught catechism, and performed baptisms, marriages, and funerals for settlers there and at Bruce Mines, Serpent River, and Sault Ste Marie, Mich. Travelling usually by boat or on foot, he always wore the voluminous black cassock of his order and carried packsacks containing a portable altar, vestments, altar cloths, candles, and other necessities.

In June 1872 Baxter was transferred to his second posting, Thunder Bay, where he would remain until 1893. Before his arrival in the district, the small group of Catholics at Prince Arthur’s Landing (later Port Arthur and now Thunder Bay, Ont.) had been served by occasional visits from Father Dominique Du Ranquet, a Jesuit posted to the Indian mission of the Immaculate Conception on the Kaministiquia River [see Nicolas-Marie-Joseph Frémiot*]. Baxter himself spent a good deal of his time until 1876 at Silver Islet, which was becoming an important mining centre, and from there visited neighbouring mining communities such as Isle Royale (Mich.), Silver Harbour, and Vert Island. He ministered regularly at Prince Arthur’s Landing, saying mass at the house of engineer Simon James Dawson until a church was erected. Named St Andrew’s in honour of a group of Scottish Catholic workers on the Dawson Road who had contributed $100 toward its construction, the church was dedicated in 1875 and rebuilt in 1881 after a fire. Baxter helped found a convent for the Sisters of St Joseph, who came to Prince Arthur’s Landing in 1881 to teach school and three years later opened St Joseph’s Hospital.

With the onset of railway construction in 1875, Baxter had begun the ministry that would earn him the sobriquet Apostle of the Railway Builders. He shared their hardships, following them from camp to camp, and brought them potatoes to prevent scurvy. After the completion of the railway he travelled by train to serve communities between English River and White River, covering a distance of about 420 miles. Several churches were built in the area during his incumbency, including St Rose of Lima at Silver Islet in 1873, St Patrick’s at Fort William (Thunder Bay) in 1882, and the Church of the Nativity and St Agnes at Fort William West in 1884. His accounts of life along the line frequently appeared between 1876 and 1878 in the Thunder Bay Sentinel, edited by the Catholic layman Michael Hagan*.

Although he was expected to retire in 1893, at the age of 72, he transferred instead to serve as pastor at Sault Ste Marie, Mich., until 1897, and then back in Port Arthur until 1900. His last years were spent at the Hôtel-Dieu du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus in Montreal. He suffered from a progressive mental disorder and in 1903 was moved to Hôpital Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, where he died the following year.

Father Baxter not only acted as a catalyst in the development of northwestern Ontario’s Catholic institutions, but he demonstrated the practical workings of Christianity to everyone he met. Essentially a man of the people, he was renowned for his great generosity and his sense of humour. Official recognition came in 1978 when a provincial plaque was erected in his memory at St Andrew’s Catholic Church, Thunder Bay.

Elinor Barr

An undated letter addressed by Richard Baxter to the mission procurator has been published under the title “Requirements for a mission” in Martyrs’ Shrine Message (Midland, Ont.), 31 (1967), no.1: 22–23.

An obituary article by Edward James Devine*, Baxter’s successor as railway missionary in the Thunder Bay area, appeared in the Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart (Montreal), 15 (1905): 259–67, and was reprinted, with the exception of a brief introductory note, in Woodstock Letters (Woodstock, Md), 34 (1905): 167–72.

ASJCF, BO-5-2; BO-19-16; BO-19-19. Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Garden River, Ont.), Diary, 1868–92; RBMB, 1856–87. NA, RG 31, C1, 1861, Barrie: 22. Private arch., Elinor Barr (Thunder Bay, Ont.), Fort William Mission, diary, 1874–82 (photocopies). St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church (Thunder Bay), RBMB, vol.1 B. Sisters of St Joseph of Sault Ste Marie Arch., St Joseph’s College (North Bay, Ont.), “Father Richard Baxter, s.j.,” in Sister Mary Evarista Walsh, “The annals of the Sisters of St Joseph, 1881–1939” (typescript). Soc. of Jesus, Upper Canada Prov. Arch., Regis College (Toronto), B-B-9 (Richard Baxter file). Daily Times-Journal (Fort William [Thunder Bay]), 13 May 1904, 14 Dec. 1929. Weekly Herald and Algoma Miner (Port Arthur [Thunder Bay]), 26 May 1893. R. J. Baxter, The Baxter family history (Pembroke, Ont., 1981). Dictionary of Jesuit biography: ministry to English Canada, 1842–1987 (Toronto, 1991). Michael Nash, “Reminiscences of Father Michael Nash,” Woodstock Letters, 26 (1897): 268–82. F. J. Nelligan, “Catholic beginnings at Port Arthur,” Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart, 67 (1957): 384–93, 437–46, 516–21, 594–600. St. Andrew’s Catholic Church centennial, 1875–1975 (Thunder Bay, [1975]). S. [C.] Young, “The life and work of Father Richard Baxter, missionary,” Thunder Bay Hist. Museum Soc., Papers and Records, 11 (1983): 49–52.

Born: 21 August 1904, Grandes-Piles, Québec, Canada
Entered: 07 December 1921, Sault-au-Récollet, Montreal - Canadensis Province (CAN)
Ordained: 12 August 1934
Final vows: 23 March 1939
Died: 10 December 1979, Saint-Jérôme, Québec, Canada - Canadae Inferioris Province (CAN)

by 1951 came to Aberdeen Hong Kong (HIB) working 1950-1956

Born: 02 February 1813, Fyanstown, County Meath
Entered: 28 May 1857, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Professed: 15 August 1867
Died: 12 February 1873, Fordham College, NY, USA - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

Born: 01 August 1849, Belz, Morbihan, Brittany, France
Entered: 15 October 1869, Angers, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1883
Professed: 15 August 1903
Died: 16 November 1909, Guelph, Ontario, Canada - Canadensis Province (CAN)

Part of the College of the Immaculate Conception, De Larimer, Montreal, Québec, Canada community at the time of death

Transcribed FRA to Camp : 1887; CAMP to CAN 1891

by 1885 came to Mungret (HIB) teaching 1884-1885

Born: 28 October 1846, Killina, Rahan, County Offaly
Entered: 18 August 1875, Sault-au-Rècollet, Canada - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)
Ordained: 1881 Leuven, Belgium
Died: 20 July 1885, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Originally joined the New York / Canada Province, but belonged to New York, and was then assimilated into the Maryland / New York Province of 1880.

Ordained in 1881 and sent to St Joseph’s Church in Philadelphia.
1884-1885 Sent to Roehampton (ANG) for Tertianship, he became ill and came to Tullabeg, where he died 20 July 1885.

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

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

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

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

Transcribed HIB to CAL : 1929; CAL to ORE

by 1928 at Eegenhoven, Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◆ Irish Province News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Born: 22 May 1891, Bailieborough, County Cavan / Birr, County Offaly
Entered: 15 October 1910, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 30 June 1924, Montreal, Canada
Final Vows: 02 February 1928
Died: 19 June 1966, Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL, USA - Neo-Aurelianensis Province (NOR)

Transcribed HIB to NOR : 1911

Father was Head Constable in the RIC at Birr, County Offaly.

Eldest of five brothers and three sisters.

Educated at an NS in Cavan he then went to the Presentation Brothers in Birr and then went to theApostolic School at Mungret College SJ

◆ The Mungret Annual, 1967

Obituary

Father John Deignan SJ

Very Rev John V Deignan died in June, 1966, at Springhill College, Mobile, Alabama. He was aged 75.

Fr Deignan was a native of Birr, Co. Offaly. Educated at the Presentation Brothers' School, Birr, and at Mungret College Limerick, he entered the Society of Jesus at Tullabeg, Offaly, in 1911; and the following year he joined the American Province of the Order. He was ordained in 1924.

Fr Deignan was for some years on mission work in St Joseph's Church, Bronx, New York, and on retreat ministry at Newark, New Jersey, but he spent most of his life at Springhill College, Mobile, Alabama.

He established the faculty of Science at Springhill College, and was Dean of the Faculty for many years. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Chemical Society and of the Association of Chemical Education.

Fr. Deignan celebrated his Golden Jubilee as a Jesuit în 1961. His last visit to Ireland was in that year.

He was brother of the late Rev Francis Deignan, Pastor of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, USA, of Sister Mary Imelda, Convent of Mercy, Swinford, Co Mayo, and of Mrs Lillian Mary Buckley. To all his surviving relatives we extend our sympathy. May he rest in peace.

Born: 02 February 1819, Cloonygormican, County Roscommon
Entered: 09 November 1854, St John’s, Fordham, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 02 February 1865
Died: 22 June 1888, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Missions Canadiensis (CAN)

Born: 25 July 1832, Drumshambo, County Leitrim
Entered: 15 July 1855, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 15 August 1865
Died: 10 May 1908, St Andrew on Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 13 July 1832, Blackditch, County Wicklow
Entered: 21 August 1857, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1865
Final Vows: 15 August 1878
Died: 31 October 1880, Fordham College , NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 12 September 1916, Joliette, Québec, Canada
Entered: 07 September 1933, Sault-au-Récollet, Canada - Canada Inferiors Province (CAN I)
Ordained: 08 June 1946
Final vows: 17 September 1978
Died: 23 February 2002, St Jérôme, Québec, Canada - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed CAN I to ExOr; app HK 1952-1960

by 1953 came to Aberdeen Hong Kong (HIB) teaching 1952-1960

Born: 22 August 1912, Sorel-Tracy, Québec, Canada
Entered: 30 July 1933, Sault-au-Récolle, Canada - Canada Inferiors Province (CAN I)
Ordained: 07 June 1944
Professed: 03 February 1947
Died: 09 April 1973, Taipei, Taiwan - Sinensis Province (CHN)

Transcribed : CAN I to CHN 1992

by 1958 came to Aberdeen Hong Kong (HIB) working 1957-1961

Born: 06 January 1819, Ballyroebuck, County Wexford
Entered: 30 August 1857, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Professed: 15 August 1868
Died: 03 November 1876, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

Part of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, Manitoulin Island, Killarney, Ontario, Canada community at the time of death.

Born: 22 December 1822, Magerafelt, County Derry
Entered: 12 August 1853, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Professed: 15 August 1863
Died: 06 May 1897, St Ignatius, Park Avenue, New York, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 30 April 1825, Keady, County Armagh
Entered: 07 August 1850, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1858
Professed: 15 August 1864
Died: 21 October 1866, Montpellier, France - Campaniae Province (CAMP)

Part of the Issenheim, France community at the time of death

Born: 24 June 1889, Annagh House, Birr, County Offaly
Entered: 31 August 1921, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 18 October 1926, Fourvière, France
Final Vows: 02 February 1932, Holy Spirit Seminary, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Died: 06 February 1949, St Francis Xavier, Lavender Bay, North Sydney, Australia - Australiae Province (ASL)

Father was a farmer and died in 1907. Mother now resides at Darrinsalla House, Birr supported by private means.

Youngest of secen sons with two sisters.

At 13 he went to Knockbeg College, Carlow until 1907. Then went to UCD to study medicine, qualifying in 1913. He then took medical postgraduate studies.

He then worked as Medical Officer at Silvermines Dispensary in Nenagh (1913-1914); House Surgeon at Royal Hospital Wolverhampton and North Ormesby Hospital in Middlesbrough (1914-1915); Lietenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps (1915-1916); Ships Surgeon, Cunard Company (1916-1917); GP in Nenagh (1917-1918)

In 1918-1919 he studied 1 year of Theology at Dalgan Park, County Meath with the Columban Fathers and was destined for Chinese Mission

Medical Officer at Terryglass Dispensary, Borrisokane, County Tipperary.1920-1922

by 1927 at Paray-le-Monial France (LUGD) studying
by 1929 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) making Tertianship
by 1930 third wave Hong Kong Missioners
by 1934 at Gonzaga College, Shanghai, China (FRA) teaching
by 1938 at Wah Yan, Hong Kong - working

Served as Medical Doctor in RAMC during the First World War.

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280
Gerald Kennedy served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW1 in Flanders and on a ship on the Atlantic. He entered the Society 31 August 1919 (1921 in fact) at Tullabeg with a medical degree, and after Philosophy at Milltown Park, 1923-25, and Theology at Ore Place, Hastings and Fourvières, 1925-28, completed Tertianship at St Beuno’s, 1928-29.
He was then sent to the Hong Kong Mission 1929-1945, and spent these years at Ricci Hall, the university residence, the seminary (at Aberdeen) or Wah Yan College, lecturing and teaching as well as doing pastoral work, but he never learned the Chinese language. He was popular with the students in the seminary, entertaining them with his charm. He gave the Jesuits their hints on how to be successful classroom teachers, and wrote a textbook in Chemistry and Physics whilst at Wah Yan.
He spent 1934 with the Jesuits and Shanghai, in Gonzaga College. From 1938 he worked with refugees in a hospital in Canton. Medical supplies were scarce, but he discovered a partial cure for cholera. He worked as rice-forager, money collector and spiritual guide to the sisters who ran the hospital. During 1941 he was at St Theresa’s hospital Kowloon, but he was worn out. He had fought the good fight.
As a result, he was recalled to Ireland, where he recovered his former vigour sufficiently to give Retreats in Galway, 1945-46, and did pastoral work in Tullabeg. He was sent to Australia and the Lavender Bay parish 1948-49, where he worked for six months in the chapel of the Star of the Sea, at Milsons Point. He was remembered for having a dry, searching humour, and a mixture of kindly trust and breeziness.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Doctor before Entry

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 21st Year No 1 1946

Arrivals :

Our three repatriated missioners from Hong Kong: Frs. T. Fitzgerald, Gallagher and G. Kennedy, arrived in Dublin in November and are rapidly regaining weight and old form. Fr. Gallagher has been assigned to the mission staff and will be residing at St. Mary's, Emo.

Irish Province News 23rd Year No 3 1948

Frs. Kennedy G., O'Flanagan and Saul leave for Australia on 9th July.

Irish Province News 24th Year No 2 1949

Death of Fr. Gerald Kennedy :
Fr. G. Kennedy died in Australia on February 6th. He had been in failing health for a considerable time, and it was hoped that the Australian climate might restore his former vigour. But in China, before and during the war, he had been prodigal of his energy in the service of others. He did wonders during the cholera outbreak at Canton he accomplished wonders, not only by his devoted attention to the sufferers, but by his medical knowledge. Out of the very limited resources available he compounded a remedy which saved many lives and achieved better results than the Americans were able to obtain with their vastly superior equipment.
To know Fr. Kennedy was to love him. He has left to the Province a fragrant memory.

Irish Province News 24th Year No 3 1949

Obituary

Fr. Gerald Kennedy (1889-1921-1949)

When Gerald Kennedy became a Jesuit, he was already a mature man of thirty-two. Born in 1889, he took his medical degree at the National University in Dublin, went through World War I in the R.A.M.C., and then settled down to a dozen years of country practice in Nenagh and Birr. Having spent a few months at Dalgan Park, he entered the Society at Tullabeg in 1921. His noviceship over, two year's philosophy at Milltown Park were followed immediately by theology at Hastings and Fourvière, where he was ordained on December 18th, 1926. After making his tertianship at St. Beuno's (1928-1929), he sailed for Hong Kong. He remained on the Mission until his return to Ireland in November, 1945. He then spent a year on the retreat staff. The 1946 Status found him once more back in Tullabeg as Prefect of the Church, in which office he continued until June, 1948. That same summer he made his last trip - to Australia, which he reached in August. He was assigned to parish work in Melbourne, and there he died on February 6th, 1949.
In his twenty-eight years as a Jesuit, Gerald Kennedy won the esteem and affection of all who lived with him. The measure of that warm respect may be found in the name by which he was universally known : “Doc”. It was a term that did more than merely remind us that he had lost none of the shrewd skill and observation of the country practitioner. It held a far richer connotation. “Doc” was, in the best sense of the world, a character. There was nothing dark about his dry, searching humour-a mixture of kindly thrust and breeziness (no one who heard it will forget his cheery salute to the company : “God save all here - not barring the cat!”). In spontaneous mood he was inimitable for his humorous description of situations and personalities. His account of a Chinese banquet will be remembered as a masterpiece of gastronomic analysis. For all his sense of fun, however, “Doc” had a deep and steady seriousness of mind - his very gait was purposeful. A constant reader, his main interests were biography and history with a particular leaning towards French culture. Both as a doctor and as a Jesuit, he was for years keenly preoccupied with the psychological problems of the religious life and of spiritual experience. One of his many obiter dicta was to the effect that no Jesuit should be allowed on the road as a retreat-giver or spiritual director, who through ignorance or prejudice was incapable of helping souls in the higher forms of prayer. His own spiritual life was simple, direct and matter of fact. A strong yet gentle character, his unobtrusive simplicity went hand in hand with a certain blunt forcefulness of purpose. Outstanding among his virtues were a remarkable sense of duty and an unfailing charity.
Of his life as a Jesuit, Fr. Kennedy spent more than half on the Hong Kong mission. Over forty when he arrived in China, be never acquired a grip of the language. This did not prevent him, however, from quietly poking fun at the advanced students and old hands, to gravely correcting their tones or shamelessly manufacturing new phrases for their puzzlement and exasperation. Nor did his ignorance of Chinese materially lessen his usefulness. During his early years on the mission, he was in turn Minister in the Seminary and on the teaching staff of Wah Yan, His Ministership coincided with the period of the building and organisation of the Seminary - a harassing time. His cheerfulness was well equal to it. As an extract from a contemporary letter puts it : “In spite of many inconveniences of pioneering (e.g. the absence of a kitchen and a water supply) the Minister's sense of humour remained unshaken”. While at Wah Yan, he found time and energy (and, considering the steam-laundry quality of the climate for many months of the year, that says much) to compose a small text-book of Chemistry and a further one of Physics for his class. He was always on the job.
It was from 1938 onwards, however, that “Doc” really came into his own. In the November of that year a food ship was sent from Hong Kong to the relief of the refugees in Japanese occupied Canton. Fr. Kennedy travelled up as one of the organising committee, On account of his medical experience he was soon attached to the Fong Pin hospital, run by the French Canadian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. Here he found full scope for his doctor's knowledge and for his untiring charity. There was work for a dozen doctors and for as many administrators. Fr. Kennedy was alone. He had to deal with a hospital overcrowded beyond all reasonable capacity, to refuse patients was to let them die on the streets and to incur the censure of the Japanese. The nursing staff was pitiably inadequate and could not be made good even by the heroic devotion of the Sisters. Sufferers were two and three in a bed, and on the floor of the wards, the dead, awaiting removal and burial, lay cheek by jowl with the dying. All medical supplies were scarce - some were unobtainable. It was in such conditions that “Doc” had to treat his patients. Yet, amazing as it may seem, it was in the midst of such killing and stupefying work that Fr. Kennedy discovered a partial cure for cholera. He did some thing more amazing still - with his work as doctor he managed to combine the offices of rice-forager, money-collector and spiritual director to the Sisters. Both in Canton and in Hong Kong he went the rounds raising supplies and funds for the hospital, and gave the Sisters regular conferences and an eight-day retreat-in French. He kept up this pace for over two years.
He was back in Hong Kong for the outbreak of war in December, 1941. During the hostilities and for the most of the subsequent Japanese occupation of the Colony, he was in St. Teresa's Hospital, Kowloon. His work there was much the same as he had had in Canton, although the conditions were slightly better. He was doctor, administrator and again, spiritual guide and consoler to the French Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres. With his fellow Jesuits he underwent all the strain, mental and physical, of those three and a half years. More than others, perhaps, he suffered from the almost starvation diet. Yet, his cheerfulness never failed nor his unremitting devotion to his work. The same cannot be said for his health. When the peace came, he was a tired man, worn out in mind and body.
Fr. Kennedy was always a fighter. Back in Ireland, he recovered some of his old vigour - sufficient, at all events, to urge him to volunteer for Australia. He must have suspected that he had not very long to live, for shortly before sailing he expressed the hope that he might be given two or three years of work in which to justify the expense of his passage out. He need not have worried. Six months was all he had in Australia, it is true. But by his whole life in the Society, by his fund of good humour, by his charity, by his immense labours on the mission, by his deep, simple spirituality, “before God and men”, “Doc” more than paid his way.

Born: 08 July 1826, Athy, County Kildare
Entered: 18 September 1858, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Professed: 15 August 1869
Died: 06 June 1901, Fordham College, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 15 February 1828, Ballyshannon, County Donegal
Entered: 19 July 1851, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Died: 18 May 1853, Fordham College, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)

Born: 07 March 1823, Tonavoher, County Clare
Entered: 18 September 1857, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 15 August 1868
Died: 26 December 1898, Sacred Heart, Edgegrove, Conewago, PA, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 01 February 1817, Butlerstown, County Waterford
Entered: 06 September 1857, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 15 August 1868
Died: 08 September 1887, Montréal, Quebec, Canada - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Part of the Xavier College, New York City, NY, USA community at the time of death

Born: 17 March 1827, Glaslough, County Monaghan
Entered: 06 June 1854, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1865
Professed: 15 August 1875
Died: 09 October 1885, New York, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Part of the Boston College, Boston MA, USA, community at the time of death

Brother of John McQuaid (MARNEB) - RIP 1904

Born: 24 June 1822, County Armagh
Entered: 14 November 1851, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: - pre Entry
Final vows: 15 August 1866
Died: 14 January 1891, Fordham College, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 01 March 1834, Ballymahon, County Longford
Entered: 06 June 1858, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 07 May 1869
Died: 23 March 1891, Holy Cross College, Worcester, MA, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 24 November 1831, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh
Entered: 19 May 1855, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1866
Died: 05 October 1870, Brooklyn, NY, USA - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

1870 Tertianship at Drongen, Belgium

Born: 19 July 1859, Rathmines, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1877, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 26 July 1891, St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, Dublin
Final Vows: 15 August 1898, Clongowes Wood College SJ
Died: 09 April 1936, St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin

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

Early education at St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg

by 1905 at St David’s, Mold, Wales (LUGD) studying
by 1897 at Drongen, Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 11th Year No 3 1936
Obituary :
Father Thomas Murphy was called to his reward on Holy Thursday just at midnight. He would not have selected another day, for his great devotion was to the Blessed Sacrament. We miss his cheery presence in the Community , and his Sodality working men - proved their affection by walking in his funeral to the number of 400, many losing their day's wages.

Obituary :

Father Thomas Murphy
Fr. Murphy was born in Rathmines, Co. Dublin, on the I9th July, 1859, educated at Tullabeg, and began his novitiate at Milltown Park on the 7th September, 1877. After a year's juniorate he was sent to Belvedere as master, thence, after another year to Clongowes as prefect, where he remained three years. In 1885 he began philosophy at Milltown, but with 1886 came the amalgamation of Clongowes and Tullabeg, and it was considered that Mr. Tom Murphy was just the man to fill the place of lower line prefect during that critical year, and to Clongowes he went. Next year he resumed philosophy, this time at Mold, the French house in England. Philosophy over, 1889 saw him once more a prefect at Clongowes. The following year a novel arrangement was tried at Clongowes, not attempted either before or since The Minister, Fr. Henry Fegan, appears in the catalogue as “Praef gen Mor” and only three prefects are mentioned instead of the customary four, Fr. Murphy was amongst them. For the next two years he was " Praef aul max”.
He began theology at Milltown in 1893, and in 1896 went to Tronchiennes for tertianship. When it was over he began his remarkable missionary career.
1897 - Belvedere, Miss. Exeurr
1898-99 - Gardiner St, Miss. Excurr
1900 - Gardiner St, Minister, etc
1901 - Gardiner St, Miss. Excurr
1902-04 - Tullabeg - Miss. Excurr
1905-16 - Gardiner St - Miss. Excurr
1917-36 - Gardiner St - Oper etc.
He died Thursday, 9th April 1936 at St. Vincent's, Dublin
There is no doubt whatever that Fr. Tom Murphy was amongst the most successful and helpful men that the Irish Province had for a great many years. Yet, as was evident from his early school days, he was not anything like a brilliant scholar. This is said to his great credit, for, though he quite realised it himself, it never deterred him in the very least from throwing himself heart and soul into whatever work he was given to do. The care he brought to the preparation of his, missionary sermons was marvellous and their success fully repaid his strenuous efforts. Perhaps his greatest gift was the power to catch the ear and arrest the attention of the people. He often used their own familiar language, and the gravest charge brought against his preaching was that at times he went too far in this direction and used it a little too much. Be that as it may the fact remains that he won their confidence as few
other men ever did, and worked a world of good amongst them. No wonder that the great big sodality of working men he had conducted for years in Gardiner St. gathered round his coffin and accompanied it to Glasnevin where they said prayers and sang hymns over the grave of their father and their friend.
His Superior in Gardiner St, for many years, Fr. Macardle, has kindly sent us the following :
His habit appears to to adopt and incorporate into his sermons the best passages and thoughts he could find in eminent authors, He had a power of bringing together these thoughts in ordered sequence, and, being gifted with a good voice and presence, he gave out what he had to say with great courage and verve, and succeeded in producing an excellent impression on his audience. He always tried to import something humorous into his remarks and appealed to the human side of those listening. He certainly acquired great influence over his various sodalities, and was held in great veneration and love by them. Outside the pulpit he always interested himself in their welfare and tried to get them work. He had a great power of organisation, and left no stone unturned during the course of a mission to bring about the best possible results.
During his missionary career he was in close touch with Fr Cullen, and adopted his pioneer pledge. Sometimes in delicate circumstances, and before the new idea had taken root, he carried off the people with him by liveliness and humour when the more ponderous eloquence of his chief would have failed. He enjoyed his tour with Fr, Cullen in South Africa. Another big adventure of his was a visit to Canada where he preached a series of sermons in Montreal.
His later years, spent in Gardiner St., were occupied in fostering his sodality of working men. Under his care the numbers gradually increased until there was scarcely room for them in the Church. He preached the Seven Last Words on Good Friday at least six times, and also all the other special sermons that occur during the year. He had charge of “The Bona Mors Confraternity” which he made a huge success, with a membership of over a quarter of a million.
He often gave “The Holy Hour,” when the Church would be overcrowded twice the same day. He had to separate the men and the women.
It is interesting to note that Matt Talbot was a member of Fr. Murphy's sodality. It erected a tombstone over his grave and Fr. Tom kept in close touch with all that has been done to sanctify his memory.
In conclusion it may be said that Fr. Murphy is one who without evidence of that book learning which is so often associated with success, did enormous work for God during his life, and has left after him an enduring memory.
Our veteran and popular missioner, Fr. Michael Garahy, has very kindly sent us an appreciation of Fr. Murphy :
It must be surely 19 years since I worked with Fr. Tom Murphy on the missions. One's impressions of a personality, even so original as Fr. Murphy's, are naturally a little blurred with the passing of the years. None the less certain memories have survived.
What stands out most vividly in my recollection is the intense earnestness of the man. Given a work to do he threw himself with a passionate energy into its accomplishment. This, naturally was most evident in his preaching. Here there was nothing left to chance. I should say that every thought was well weighed and every sentence carefully prepared. Whether he had the gift of improvisation I cannot say. My impression is that he rarely risked it. Some of his sermons were marvellously effective, notably a sermon on drink and one on hell. His instruction on the Ten Commandments was the finest thing I ever heard in that line. His action in the pulpit was, when occasion called for it, intensely dramatic, so much so that I fear he injured his heart in consequence.
He was most faithful to his duty as a confessor, even when the long hours in the confessional told severely on his failing strength.
Taking him all round he was one of the most successful missioners of his time, His memory is revered in every parish in which he worked, and there are few parishes in Ireland in which he did not labour at one time or another.
For a considerable time before Fr, Murphy's death his health was wretched, heart trouble, shingles, etc., yet he never complained sought no exemption, allowed himself but few comforts, and continued to preach almost to the very end. The people did not always hear what he said, but they were delighted to see him in the pulpit. Towards the close of March he caught a bad cold that developed into cardiac asthma. He was taken to St. Vincent's where despite the greatest care, he rapidly got worse and died on Holy Thursday, 9th April.
The coffin was brought to Gardiner St. on Good Friday, where a huge congregation awaited the arrival of the remains. They all marched past the coffin, each person touching it as he passed. He was buried on Holy Saturday. The Office and Requiem took place on the following Tuesday, his nephew, Fr. Curtis, C.C., being Celebrant, the Milltown Park Community did the rest. R.I.P

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Tom Murphy SJ 1859-1936
The name of Fr Tom Murphy was well known and beloved in his day. He was not a highly gifted man, but he had one talent which he developed to its utmost for the greater glory of God. He was first and foremost a preacher and missioner.

He made no secret of the fact that he plagiarised wholesale for matter for his sermons. As he himself used to say “My sermons are a bit of Newman, a soupcon of Lecordaire and a smattering of Murphy”. His sermons on Hell and Drink were especially effective and his instruction on the Ten Commandments was unforgettable. He was proud to have had Mat Talbot in his Sodality in Gardiner Street, and was instrumental in having a tombstone erected over that holy man’s grave.

He died on Holy Thursday April 9th 1936 and the tribute paid by the huge congregation at his obsequies (they all filed past the coffin and touched it in passing) speaks eloquently of the love and veneration the people had for him.

He was 77 at his death.

◆ The Clongownian, 1936

Obituary

Father Thomas Murphy SJ

During 1870, when in his 11th year, Thomas Murphy entered St Stanislaus College and continued as a pupil there until 1877. Two of his brothers, Michael and William Grace, had preceded him at the College and the first-named had vivid recollections of their days at Tullabeg.

Tom's career at school was uneventful. He was fairly good at the games and especially good during the “Stilting” days. When in the Higher Line he was one of the officials in “the Shop” and a great salesman, giving good example himself by his love for toffee. Before leaving Tullabeg he presented him self to his adviser, then Provincial, Father Nicholas Walshe, for admittance into the Society, and was told to wait like another of his companions until his 18th year. Accordingly he presented himself to Father Walshe's successor, Father A Sturzo, and was admitted into the Society of Jesus on the 7th April, 1877. He had four other companions - Mr O'Gorman, who died at Woodstock, the saintly Mr Michael Browne, and two others, Messrs N J Tomkin and C Farley, who survive him.

During his Juniorate he was afflicted with headaches and was sent, in 1880, to Belvedere College. The following year he was on the Clongowes Staff. He was Prefect there for over 12 years. Earnest and vigorous, he was a Prefect with “wrist” - more than he needed at times - some of the Boys of those days thought. In the interval he was sent to Mold, North Wales, for his course of Philosophy. After this he commenced his course of Theology and was ordained in 1891 by Most Rev Dr Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin. 1896-7 was spent in Belgium, and in 1898 he was in full swing at his great work - the work of his life as a most successful Missioner and giver of Retreats. In a word, he was a man of heart and his heart was rightly directed in Mission and Retreat work whether at home in Ireland or in South Africa, whither he went with Father James Cullen, or in Canada where he gave a very successful course of Lenten Lectures in Montreal. He was, for about 21 or 22 years, one of the Missionary Staff and by his example and extraordinary zeal brought it to great perfection.

One of the secrets of his successful work in so many fields was that he always was a boy at heart. There was nothing stand-off about him. Those in his Line as well as the Members of his Sodality later at Gardiner St, the boys to whom he gave Retreats as well as the many priests whom he helped in the Clergy Retreats, all felt his fresh enthusiasın. As the years added themselves to his score, one felt no change in his heart, just as one saw little trace of white in his coal-black hair. Near the end it was characteristic of him to love to talk, not of the recent years and persons, but of the days some 20 years ago. The names of Fathers Conmee, Verdon, Henry Lynch, Bannon and the Kelly trio would crop up in his talk and his anecdotes, as of those he had but just met in the street.

In the popular lectures and addresses which he was often called on to deliver, he showed a true Irish humour. He particu larly excelled in the art of making some absurd statement with a face which pre served solemnity up to the last moment, when a humorous twinkle in the eye and the dawning of a smile on the face would reveal to the audience that they had been “had”. Many will recall the famous statement which he more than once made that his only claim to greatness was that he was the grandnephew of the two Father Murphys who fought at Vinegar Hill.

About 1917 he joined the Staff at St Francis Xavier's, and at once took up the work of the Bona Mors Confraternity. On the death of Father Fottrell he took charge of the Mens' Sodality of the Immaculate Conception and immediately his vital force was visible in results-he had scarcely room enough for his vast audience.

Referring again to his work as Missioner, it is always safe to avoid superlatives in dealing with one we esteem and adrnire. I have no hesitation in saying he stood in the foremost rank of popular preachers. His impassioned eloquence was heard in very many of the pulpits of nearly every diocese in Ireland and he was requested time after time to come and renew the fervour of the people, who were never tired of hearing him. His dramatic power and eloquence had rather the effect of rousing them to enthusiasm.

For years past, but especially from 1932, ill-health dogged him, but he still continued to work in the church and pulpit. Up to the very end-January and February, 1936 - he continued to thrill his hearers of the Sodality and the Bona Mors Confraternity. He knew for a long time that death was knocking at his door daily, hourly, but the thought cast no gloom on his mind. He smiled at the thought of death, not as those who do not believe, but as one who is at home with the thought and to whom death is not an end, but a beginning.

The numbers at his funeral surprised even those who knew how well he had been loved, especially by his Men. Never since the days of the great Father Henry Rorke was such a throng seen. It rivalled even the stream of mourners that followed to the grave that other well-beloved man, Father John Conmee.

To very many within and without the Society, Father Tom Murphy's death leaves a blank that will not soon be filled. RIP

Born 01 July 1831, County Cavan
Entered 26 August 1852, St John’s, Fordham, NY, USA - Franciae Province (FRA)
Died 18 February 1855, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)

Born: 29 August 1852, County Limerick
Entered: 07 February 1870, Milltown Park, Dublin
Ordained: 1889
Final Vows: 02 February 1891
Died: 12 June 1913, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada - Belgicae Province (BELG)

Part of the L’Imaculée Conception, De Lorimier, près Montréal, Canada community at the time of death

Transcribed HIB to BELG : 1888

Educated at Belvedere College SJ and St Stanislaus College SJ, Tullabeg and Stonyhurst College SJ, Lancashire

by 1880 at Stonyhurst England (ANG) studying
by 1884 at Oña Spain (CAST) studying
by 1885 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) studying
by 1888 at Leuven Belgium (BELG) studying
by 1890 at Drongen Belgium (BELG) making Tertianship
In India for many years before Canada
1894 St Francis Xavier College, Chowringhee India (BELG) Rector
1896-1904 St Joseph’s, Darjeeling, India (BELG) Parish Priest
1904 St Francis Xavier, Liverpool
1905-1909 Holy Name Manchester ,

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - Transcribed into BELG Province 1888, and went to India

◆ The Clongownian, 1914

Obituary

Father Vincent Naish SJ

Advices from Canada in the June of last year brought the unexpected announcement of the death of the above-named distinguished ecclesiastic. Although born and educated in Ireland, the greater part of Father Naish's life was passed in foreign lands. Belvedere and Tullabeg Colleges were accountable for his early education, and in the latter establishment he was fellow student with many men whose public life is familiar to our readers, and among his class-fellows was the late Mr Alfred Blake, of Cork, whose rather sudden death caused such a sensation in the Four Courts two days ago. Father Naish came from an ancient and distinguished stock well known in Co Limerick, of whom the late Lord Chancellor Naish was not the least distinguished member. Early in his career as a Jesuit, after teaching for some six years in Clongowes and Tullabeg, he volunteered for work on the foreign mission, and although Irish by sympathy and every tie, he was attached to the Belgian Province of the Order, and consequently his work lay principally in India, which is one of the mission fields of that province. For several years Father Naish was engaged in that missionary work, and directed with distinguished success the great Catholic College of Calcutta. Later on he was recalled to Europe, and was well known as a preacher of eminence all over the North of England. As a missionary in Canada he laboured among his own countrymen in almost every town of any note from Labrador to Vancouver. He was a man of remarkable presence and of most distinguished gifts, both as a scholar and a preacher, and his loss will be deeply felt by those to whom he gave the unstinted labour of his later and riper years. With his immediate relatives much sympathy is felt, and those with whom his name was familiar thirty years ago will feel a pang of regret as they breathe a prayer for the eternal rest of a friend of very noble and winning character.

“Freeman's Journal” June 19th, 1913.

-oOo-

Rev Vincent Naish SJ, a distinguished Churchman and scholar, passed away at Moncton, NB, shortly after six o'clock last night (June 12th), death ensuing after an illness of three days' duration, Ten days ago the deceased went down to that city in company with Rev Father Gagnieur SJ, to conduct a mission in St Bernard's Church. At the close of the spiritual exercises last Sunday he contracted a severe cold, which later develop into pneumonia. On Monday he was removed to the City Hospital for treatment, but yesterday his condition became such that no hopes could be held out for his recovery. He remained conscious to the end, and was attended in his last moments by Father Gagnieur, as well as by the priests of St Bernard's. During his sojourn in India he made exhaustive studies of the Buddhistic, Islamistic, and other Oriental religions, and became authority on these branches. But it was as a missionary that he excelled. A powerful speaker, lucid of argument, with an eloquent and easy flow of language, backed by a seemingly inexhaustible fund of knowledge of men and things, he had that quality which made him tower far above many engaged in mission work. A man of deep piety and religious conviction, he was an inspiration his fellow members of the Jesuit Order, as well as to all those with whom he came in contact in the course of his missionary labours. Since his arrival in Canada, some six years ago, Father Naish was engaged exclusively in missionary work, and in the course of his activities along this line he has been heard in Catholic pulpits of almost every Canadian city from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

“Montreal Gasette”, June 13th, 1913.

Born: 15 August 1841, Firies, County Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1859, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Died: 03 August 1862, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Quebec, Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)

Born: 01 June 1814, Moyne, County Tipperary
Entered: 01 February 1855, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 02 February 1865
Died: 16 January 1876, Sault-au-Récollet, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Neo-Eboracensis-Canadensis Province (NEBCAN)

Born: 26 November 1878, Puebla, Mexico
Entered: 07 September 1897, Loyola Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST for MEX)
Ordained: 30 July 1911, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final vows: 25 February 1916
Died: 05 April 1953, Residencia de la Votiva, Mexico City, Mexico - Mexicana Province (MEX)

by 1912 came to Tullabeg (HIB) making Tertianship

◆ David Strong SJ “The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography 1848-2015”, 2nd Edition, Halstead Press, Ultimo NSW, Australia, 2017 - ISBN : 9781925043280 :
He Entered the Society 1897 at Loyola Spain for the Province of Mexico.
After First Vows he studied Rhetoric at Burgos and then Philosophy at Oña, Spain.
1904-1906 He was sent to Mexico for regency at Mascarones College and Guadalajara College
1906-1911 He returned to Oña and Hastings, England for Theology
1911-1912 He made Tertianship at St Stanislaus College Tullabeg, Ireland
1913-1915 He was sent home to Mexico and Mascarones College, Mexico City, and he also worked around the city.
1916-1924 He was sent to teach Theology in Montreal, Canada
1925-1931 He came to Australia and Corpus Christi College, Werribee to teach Theology. He was lent to Australia to give some strength to the Diocesan Seminary when it was in its infant stages. He was a man of keen intellect and considerable learning, and was a good Professor. He could be a little oversensitive and downcast when things did not go as he wished. He asked on a number of occasions to leave Corpus Christi, but was, with difficulty, persuaded to stay. He was also highly valued as a retreat giver, especially to Priests.
1931-1932 He was engaged in pastoral work in Toronto, Canada
1932-1941 He returned to Mexico as a Chaplain to English speaking Americans and doing pastoral work
1941 He was Superior at the Enrico Martinez Residence, and held the same office at Residencia de la Votiva in Mexico City from 1952

His contemporaries believed him to be a great Jesuit., very intelligent, a good and generous friend with a large heart. he had a strong character and somewhat austere appearance. He made a good impression on all he met.

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 6th Year No 3 1931
Werribee :
Fr. de la Peza has been recalled to Montreal. When the hour of his departure arrived a very large contingent of the students gathered on the railway platform. With them were all the available Fathers of Corpus Christi and representatives of other houses. Fr. de la Peza was evidently moved at the kindness shown to him. A rousing three cheers accompanied the moving off of the train.
At Sydney there were other demonstrations of farewell, particularly an entertainment given by the Rector of Riverview, in which the Apostolic Delegate and other representative clerics took part, and in which complimentary speeches were made referring to the departing Father's success as a preacher, professor, and giver of clerical retreats.

Born: 15 March 1825, County Monaghan
Entered: 11 February 1857, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Final vows: 15 August 1868
Died: 12 August 1903, St Andrew on Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA - Marylandiae Neo-Eboracensis Province (MARNEB)

Born: 01 August 1823, Scrahanfadda, County Kerry
Entered: 06 August 1855, Sault-au-Rècollet Canada - Franciae Province (FRA)
Professed: 15 August 1865
Died: 01 July 1889, Montréal, Québec, Canada - Missions Canadiensis (CAN)

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)