WA college loses great Jesuit

WITH the death in December of Father John Begley SJ at the age of 88, St Thomas More College, the Archdiocesan residential college at the University of Western Australia, lost one of its oldest and most dearly loved friends and supporters.

Ordained as a Jesuit priest in the closing days of 1952, one of Fr Begley’s first appointments was as the foundation Dean of St Thomas More College where he assisted Fr Cornelius Finn, the College’s first Rector. 
It was a role to which the young Fr Begley, then in his thirties and only a decade older than the majority of students, was especially suited: It was a role in which he endeared himself to a generation of young Catholic students.
His appointment, which not only included his duties as Dean but also a role as Lecturer in Latin, Philosophy and Apologetics, lasted for six years, concluding in 1962 when he travelled to Rome to complete his own doctoral studies at the Gregorian University.
Fr Begley was far from a stranger at St Thomas More College after 1962, however.  
He often made time to visit the College on his travels and spent a full term there in 1976 while he awaited his appointment to a teaching post in India. 
The author of two short papers on the early history of the College, he visited St Thomas More four times in the course of the last five years, celebrating Mass in the College Chapel, and endearing himself to a whole new generation of “Tommy More” residents with his gentle humour, kindness, and humility. One of the seminar rooms at the College was named in Father Begley’s honour in 2002.
Mgr Kevin Long, Emeritus Rector of St Thomas More College and currently Rector of the Diocesan Seminary of St Charles Borromeo in Guildford, celebrated a memorial Mass in commemoration of Fr Begley’s life and service in the St Thomas More College Chapel on 24 March.