Fr Kieran McIvor, who has died in Durban in his 94th year after a short illness, established a Passionist mission in South Africa in the 1950s and ministered there for almost 60 years.
Born in Quigley's Point, Co Donegal, the fourth of 10 children to James P McIvor and his wife Elisabeth Martin, he joined the Passionist novitiate at the Graan, Enniskillen, in 1940, following in the footsteps of his elder brother James.
He was ordained in 1947, and later that year went to Rome for two years to study for his doctorate. Among his classmates was a young Polish priest Karol Józef Wojtyla, later to become Pope John Paul II.
On his return to Dublin he became chaplain to the Dublin Metropolitan Garda for the next five years. In 1955 Bishop Boyle of Johannesburg invited the Irish Passionists to establish a presence in South Africa and Fr Kieran, together with fellow Passionist Fr Augustine Bermingham, travelled to Bank in the Western Transvaal, where they established their first mission. It was to become the driving force of his life.
Later he moved to Carletonville, a new gold-mining town in the Western Transvaal. This was the period when apartheid was at its most oppressive, and he frequently came into conflict with the system, sometimes illegally ferrying African postulants and nuns from one location to another at night, in the boot of a car.
Close bonds
He had to maintain two separate churches, one in white Carletonville, the other several miles away in the black township. He formed close bonds with the African community and greatly admired and supported their courage and fortitude in the face of the harsh and oppressive apartheid regime.
In 1986 Fr Kieran was appointed judicial vicar for the diocese of Johannesburg, where he adjudicated on annulment requests from Catholic couples whose marriages had irrevocably broken down. He brought a caring and humane approach to the task, endeavouring to cut through the bureaucracy to resolve issues in the shortest possible time.
He was a low-key, self-effacing man who eschewed the limelight. In his humorous way he attributed his longevity to having no worries, no wife, no children and no material possessions – he was asleep each night as soon as his head hit the pillow.
He was a man of unshakeable faith, whose life was dedicated to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Addressing the large congregation at his funeral in the Church of the Resurrection in Bryanston, Johannesburg, the vicar general, Rev Duncan Tsoke, said that perhaps half the congregation present were either baptised by him, taught by him or married by him.
He retained all his vital faculties to the end, and on the night before he died, having received the last rites from his Passionist confreres, he turned to his carer and announced: “I am going home tomorrow.”
Fr Kieran is survived by his sister Marie and his brothers Seán and Neil. His brother, fellow Passionist Fr James, predeceased him in 1978.