Obituary: Bishop John O’Riordan

John O'Riordan, who has died aged 92, was a Spiritan missionary who spent almost 50 years ministering to the people of Sierra Leone, in West Africa. He became bishop of Kenema, the third-largest city, in 1984.

To his family he was John, but in Sierra Leone he was Bishop Johnny and his mission had highly practical aspects. In addition to tending to the spiritual welfare of his flock, and training community workers, he built schools, hospitals and pastoral centres. “When it came to mixing concrete, reinforcing pillars, determining the width or depth of foundations, the strength of trusses to hold roofs and the strength of pillars to hold trusses and how far apart they should be – Johnny was your man”, a colleague said.

In retirement in Dublin, he spoke with great pleasure about his time as a young priest and later as a bishop – “going on trek” for a week or so, packing the pickup truck for a trip over dirt roads to far-flung villages, going from one to the next, sleeping on a camp bed, saying Mass with them the next morning and moving on to the next. For him, being in the village Barrie, a central open-sided hut for public gatherings, with the chief and elders – surrounded by the men on one side and women on the other, the children on the ground in the middle, all listening to suggestions for the development of the area, each having a voice; the story-telling, the laughter, the prayer, the growing friendship, the common purpose – these were his most abiding memories of a place where he always felt he belonged.

Civil war

It grieved him to see those communities ravaged by the civil war which spilt over from Charles Taylor’s activities in neighbouring Liberia, and raged from 1991 to 2002. Sierra Leone, which became independent from Britain in 1961 when prime minister Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” transformed Africa forever, should be a wealthy country. Its mines contain diamonds, gold and bauxite.

Yet 70 per cent of its population lives in poverty. More than 1,000 primary schools were destroyed during the civil war, thousands were killed, women were mutilated and young boys forced to become soldiers.

Bishop Johnny was not afraid to speak out against the war, challenging high-ranking army officers to stop the killing when he met them at the inevitable funerals that were a consequence of the conflict. A Sierra Leone-born priest recalled: “He stood with us in war and walked with us in peace.” Despite these difficulties, relations remained good between the Muslim majority population and the Christian minority, and missionaries spoke of the gentle and welcoming nature of their hosts.

Kilmallock

Life in a humid country eight degrees north of the equator was a far cry from growing up in rural Co Limerick. The family lived near Kilmallock, where his father David was a creamery manager and his mother Mary (or Maura) Murphy was a primary teacher. Of their nine children, three became priests.

John was the second youngest and he boarded at Blackrock College, Dublin, run by the Spiritan order, from 1937 to 1943. He took part in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado as one of the chorus of "nobles, guards and coolies". He went to the Spiritan novitiate at Kilshane, Co Tipperary in 1943, was ordained a priest in 1952 and was sent to Sierra Leone the following year.

In 2001 John Christopher O’Riordan was awarded Sierra Leone’s Commander of the Order of the Rokel for outstanding pastoral and humanitarian services. The following year he returned to Ireland for good. He was predeceased by his sisters Sheila and Gobnait, and his brothers Fr Paddy, Charlie, Denis, David, Jim and Fr Joe.