Born: 06 April 1901, The Cross, Killygordon, County Donegal
Entered: 28 February 1922, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Left Society of Jesus: 03 July 1926 (from Milltown Park)

Two brothers and one sister.

Educated at Killygordon NS, and then at the Christian Brothers in Gorey and Tipperary, and eventually CBC Cork. Finally he went to St Columb’s, Derry. After school he went to the Royal College of Science of Ireland in Dublin

1922-1924: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Novitiate
1924-1925: Rathfarnham Castle, Juniorate
1925-1926: Milltown Park, Philosophy

Born: 07 January 1940, Ballybofey, County Donegal Donegal
Entered: 07 September 1957, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 17 April 2020, Cherryfield Lodge, Milltown Park, Dublin City

Left Society of Jesus: 21 June 1966 (from Heythrop College, Oxfordshire, England)

Born in Dublin while parents were living at Ballybofey, County Donegal Donegal. Then family moved to North Parade, Gorey County Wexford, and in 1951 to St Anthony’s, Yellow Walls Road, Malahide, County Dublin

Father, Robert Anthony, was a civil servant in the Social Welfare Office, Dublin. Mother was Mary (Quinn).

Eldest and an only boy with two sisters.

Educated for two years at a Convent school in Gorey, County Wexford and then for four years at the Christian Brothers school in Gorey and one year at Malahide NS. He then went to Clongowes Wood College SJ for five years.

Baptised at St Andrew’s, Westland Row, 22/02/1940
Confirmed at St Michael’s, Gorey by Dr Stanton of Ferns, 28/05/1950

1957-1959: St Mary's, Emo, Novitiate
1959-1962: Rathfarnham Castle, Juniorate, UCD
1962-1963: Gonzaga College SJ, Regency
1963-1964: Berchmanskolleg, Pullach, Germany (GER S) studying philosophy
1964-1966: Heythrop Oxford (ANG) studying Philosophy

After leaving he went into the diplomatic service. He was private secretary to Paddy Hillery, and then went to the EEC. Married with children.

Address 2000: Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, Dublin City & Department of Foreign Affairs, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin City

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/john-mccolgan-obituary-diplomat-played-key-role-in-north-south-relations-in-1970s-1.4299290

John McColgan obituary: Diplomat played key role in North-South relations in 1970s
Good listener was renowned for his wise counsel, keen intellect and affable manner

Born: January 7th, 1940

Died: April 17th, 2020

The Irish diplomat and European Commission official, John McColgan, who died recently was born in Dublin, with strong familial links to Donegal. He played a significant role in developing communications with the unionist community in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.

His first diplomatic role was as press officer at the Irish embassy in London in the early 1970s. Back in Dublin in 1974, he became the first Irish government official appointed as a covert contact with the unionist political, religious and paramilitary leaders in Northern Ireland

At that time there was no official home for Irish diplomats in Northern Ireland so McColgan travelled almost daily to the North accompanied by Sean Donlon, then assistant secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs, who was meeting leaders in the nationalist and republican community. Over a period of 18 months, McColgan formed firm friendships with key political figures including Rev Ian Paisley, John Taylor and Bill Craig as well as paramilitaries, Andy Tyrie, Glenn Barr and John McKeague. Donlon recalls that following the murder of the British ambassador to Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs in July 1976, a loyalist hit squad was planning a revenge killing and McColgan was its target. However, Tyrie intervened and stood down the attack, thus blowing McColgan's cover and ending his covert discussions. His work was however deemed to have laid foundations for future negotiations on Northern Ireland which culminated in the Anglo-Irish Agreement between then taoiseach Garrett FitzGerald and British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher in 1985.

Following that testing experience, McColgan returned to the European Commission office of Dr Paddy Hillery where he had previously worked from 1973 to 1974. In that earlier period, his fluency in French and German had greatly assisted Hillary as commissioner for social affairs in the initiation and implementation of the first Social Action Programme for Europe in 1974.

McColgan remained with the commission for the rest of his career and was head of administration at the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) in Dublin, 1976-1995. This agency was one of the first decentralised EU agencies and McColgan was influential in bringing it to Ireland. In European negotiations on workers’ rights and safe working conditions, his linguistic talents, profound interest in European history and experience of being from a small country in the burgeoning European project were assets.

Donegal
The only son and eldest of three children of Robert and Mary McColgan (nee Quinn), John McColgan grew up in Malahide, Co Dublin. Both of his parents were from Donegal: his father, an accountant in the civil service was from Culdaff on the Inishowen peninsula, and his mother a Donegal County Council official before marriage, was from Ballybofey.

At 11, John was sent as a boarder to Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare. He excelled academically and in debating and in 1957 joined the Jesuit order as a scholastic to enter the priesthood. For the next nine years, he studied classics at University College Dublin, philosophy at the University of Heidelberg and philosophy and theology at the Jesuit-run Heythrop College in Oxfordshire. However, in 1966, he left the Jesuit order before his ordination and was hired by the ministry for external affairs (later renamed the Department of Foreign Affairs).

In 1966, John met Jane Hyland, who also grew up in Malahide and played hockey with his sister, Annie. The couple married in 1969, the same year that McColgan was appointed as a private secretary to the new minister for foreign affairs, Dr Paddy Hillery.

In their early married life, the McColgan family moved between London, Brussels and Dublin but then settled in Donnybrook where their children grew up and attended school. When the children were young, they returned to Donegal for family holidays and then as they became older, the family spent long summer holidays in France.

Outside of work, he enjoyed golf, played poker and bridge, and hosted and attended dinner parties with his wife, Jane. His keen intellect was shaped by an affable manner and strong interest in cultural and political affairs. A good listener, he was renowned for his wise counsel. His friendships spanned the worlds of politics, media and the arts and he was a good source of information for many political journalists.

Following his retirement in 1996, John and Jane continued to travel throughout Europe and spend time with their adult children and grandchildren. McColgan’s health declined in latter years and he spent his last 11 months in the Jesuit run Cherryfield Lodge nursing home in Milltown where he died.

John McColgan is survived by his wife, Jane, his children, Mark, Garth, Kate, James and Robert, his sisters, Mary and Annie and nine grandchildren.

Born: 29 April 1906, Bray, County Wicklow
Entered: 31 August 1922, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1935, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1938, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: 04 January 1971, Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin

by 1937 at St Beuno’s Wales (ANG) making Tertianship

Mother died when he was young. Family then moved to Gorey supported by private means.

Second of four boys with one sister.

Early education at a Convent school in Gorey, and the at the Christian Brothers, also in Gorey

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 46th Year No 2 1971

Obituary :

Fr William R Prendergast SJ

Fr Prendergast died on January 4th this year. His death ended a long period of chronic if sometimes mysterious ill-health, under which he never gave up but continued to the last the sort of exacting work which had occupied so much of his life, facing gallantly never-ceasing demands on his failing energy.
His loss, when he might in happier circumstances have expected a continuing or perhaps growing capacity for good was a loss to the Society, the Church and even to the country.
One of three very able brothers he did not come under Jesuit influence until he joined the Order and was fortunate in finding in Fr Frank Ryan and still more in Fr J Canavan, men who appreciated and helped him, and won his undying gratitude. A practical rather than an academic-minded man he did not have much early opportunity to reveal his special quality. This, and perhaps his early training at home, made his deep humility something of a handicap. He was more than different. He had an obvious inferiority complex, thinking so little of his own powers that he needed the stimulus of praises, and this quite mistakenly gave the impression that he was vain. There was nothing remarkable about his formative student years, if one excepts the fact that he was sent, as might have been expected, to be First Prefect in Mungret immediately on its completion. The school was then smaller in numbers and had only recently begun to compete in rugby, a game which he had never played. Yet during his five years he saw his teams bringing home on more than one occasion the Munster Rugby cups which larger and longer-established schools sought for eagerly.
In 1943 he was appointed to the small mission staff and there, for more than twenty years, he found full scope for his gifts. A tireless worker he was also a natural orator of unusual quality with a fine presence and a good voice --- almost too powerful a voice. But that was only a foundation for a style which was dramatic and picturesque, if perhaps old-fashioned, but which was to the end most effective. He had also a remarkable power of illustrating and an excellent, though controlled sense of humour and a talent for exposition of even complicated thought. There was an other and perhaps equally important quality which made itself felt. Travelling one day in a town when Fr Prendergast had just given a big Mission, the present writer heard of the impression made during this mission from an enthusiastic taxi-driver. “You know, Father”, he said, after his account of the Mission, “every man and woman in the town knew that he really wanted to help them”. His busy mission periods were interspersed with continuous retreats to priests that were equally fruitful. Of one of them (to the clergy of a Northern diocese) a parish priest wrote in a letter to me: “He paid us the compliment of being very carefully prepared; he was refreshingly rude and his doctrine and advice were a grand blend of the practical and the ideal”.
It is not, one hopes, beside the point to record his personal influence. More than once miracles were attributed to him, a notion that he found ridiculous and suspect. But to see him in a crowd of gay children after an instruction, to hear the invariable tributes to his self-sacrificing efforts to help, both temporally and spiritually, was to understand the largeness of his heart. He was a delightful companion, the most tolerant and kind of friends, quick to share the joys and sorrows of his beloved priests and people. In the end ill-health forced him off the hard road of the Missions. But, both in our church in Galway and in the Rathfarnham retreat house where he was working until just before his death, he had devoted clients. Unmethodical and terribly busy as he was, he might at times seem to neglect even close friends. But he never forgot them. Though they might have grudged him to others for the most part, they knew him, and in their hearts relied on him if need arose, and they can now surely rely on his assistance from heaven. To his brothers and nephews we offer our sincere sympathy.