The Very Rev Dr Jack Shearer, Dean of Belfast, who died on January 12th, aged 74, will be primarily remembered as the city's "Black Santa".
During his 15 years at St Anne's Church of Ireland cathedral, he raised more than £2 million for a variety of charities. For some 12 hours every day in the week before Christmas, he would swathe himself against the weather in several layers of clothing, a black cloak and balaclava, and hold a sit-out on the church steps. Sipping soup or hot drinks, he used to joke with those who came from far and wide to donate money that he was the only man who could safely wear a balaclava on the violent streets of Belfast.
Dean Shearer often recalled the occasion when a man emerged from the darkness outside the cathedral and left a plastic bag on the table behind him, which turned out to contain £30,000 in bank notes and a note saying it came from a man who had just died and left instructions with his neighbour to deliver it to the Black Santa. The following year a gift of £15,000 was handed over anonymously.
Although he received some huge donations over the years, he most valued some of the smaller amounts. He took particular pleasure in meeting a busload of children from the Fleming Fulton special school who unfailingly turned up to support him. He always expressed special appreciation for an unemployed man in his 30s who arrived with his two young sons and apologised because he could only give £5. "That was the biggest amount I ever received," he would say.
It was the late Very Rev Sammy Crooks, his predecessor, who came up with the idea of the sit-out but when Dean Shearer inherited the job, and the collection barrel made by the skilled coopers at the Old Bushmills whiskey distillery in Co Antrim, he maintained the tradition and, heavily on account of his popularity throughout the entire community and the force of his twinkling personality, year after year exceeded even his own most optimistic targets.
From £15,000 raised the first Christmas, he was ecstatic that last month's total exceeded £400,000, not least because he intended to retire this year, having ensured the church hierarchy had imposed the duty of continuing the sit-out in the job specification for the incoming dean.
John Shearer was born on December 30th, 1926, and educated at Belfast Technical High School and then Trinity College Dublin, from where he graduated in 1948. He was a Theological Exhibitioner at TCD in 1950, the year he was ordained into the Church of Ireland for the parish of Magheralin, Co Down. In 1952, he moved as curate to St Patrick's, Ballymacarrett, in east Belfast, where he remained until 1959.
He next served as rector of Magheradroll, Ballynahinch, Co Down, for five years before becoming rector of Seagoe, Portadown, and Archdeacon of Dromore. There, faced with paramilitary trouble, he set up the Killicomaine Residents' Association and founded the Seagoe Youth Group.
In 1985, he became Dean of Belfast but his financial acumen, unusual for a clergyman, went far beyond his charitable mission. He set himself the task of building up the cathedral's equities and other investments to secure its survival. In 1989, he directed a major repair of the roof at a cost of £300,000 and in 1998 inaugurated a £250,000 restoration of the building which was completed, debt-free, last year. Some £500,000 funds are already in hand for another renovation.
Although he never used the word ecumenism, he was deeply committed to bridge-building and reconciliation, values he tried to weave into the daily life of the cathedral. In particular, he sought to draw clergy of all denominations into civic and community services.
In 1998, with Mgr Tom Toner, he initiated a partnership between St Peter's Catholic cathedral and St Anne's, holding annual carol services and other events alternately in each location, a major achievement in a deeply divided city where 14 "peace walls" delineate its rigid sectarian geography.
In line with his innovative approach to his work and his life, Dean Shearer, quickly embracing the power of information technology, listed computing as his recreation in Who's Who and encouraged others to do so through his membership of the Churches Computer Users' Group. He was awarded the OBE in 1994.
He married Morag (nee Williamson), a teacher, in 1956. She predeceased him in 1999 and he is survived by his son Marc and daughter Michele.
The Very Rev Dr John (Jack) Shearer: born 1926; died, January 2001