Raymond Kennedy: Raymond Kennedy, who has died aged 78, was one of the founders of Africa Concern set up in 1968 to help starving Biafrans during the civil war in Nigeria. It has since grown into the worldwide Concern organisation which has projects in 27 countries, and has brought succour to hundreds of thousands in the developing world.
Those involved will never forget those months in the summer of 1968 when Ireland was galvanised by pictures of starving Ibo children with swollen bellies into contributing money, food and other vital supplies which had to be flown into Biafra in nightly airlifts. Thousands of unpaid volunteers rushed to help, and Africa Concern was the main organisation channelling Irish aid to the famine victims as the civil war raged.
When the war ended in early 1970, Raymond Kennedy, his brother John and his wife, Kay, with other volunteers resolved to maintain Africa Concern but widen its scope to wherever the need was greatest. This was in the days before Trócaire and Goal had appeared.
But expansion brought internal strains and by 1977, Kennedy had left Concern and spent much of his later life working for a separate organisation in Britain called Concern Universal, which he had established before the break.
Concern in Dublin has continued to grow and its official history, Believing in Action, refers, not without some nostalgia to the "creative, but stormy Kennedy years".
Raymond Kennedy was born in Palo Alto in California on January 22nd, 1926. His father Denis Ryan Kennedy, an engineer from Waterford, had emigrated following the Civil War in which he had been wounded while fighting on the Republican side. Soon after going to California, he married his girlfriend, Nora O'Loughlin, who had followed him from Ireland. They had eight children, the first four of whom were born in the US.
Back in Ireland, Raymond was educated in St Mary's College, Rathmines, and its sister Blackrock College run by the Holy Ghost Congregation. In Blackrock, Raymond helped set up the boy scouts troop and also won a scholarship to University College, Dublin.
But he decided to join the Holy Ghost fathers and the scholarship was postponed for a year while he did his novitiate in Kilshane, Co Tipperary.
At UCD he was awarded an MA in Celtic Studies. For his theological studies, he was sent to the Gregorian College in Rome. After ordination in 1954 he was sent to the foreign missions in Owerri diocese in eastern Nigeria.
While there he set up a Catholic newspaper - still operating - called the Leader, using a Linotype machine from The Irish Times which his brother John, who was running the Dublin Mount Salus printing firm, had purchased.
When the Nigerian civil war broke out in July 1967, Kennedy was on leave in the US but back in Ireland his brother, John and his wife Kay, who had both served as lay missionaries abroad in Viatores Christi, were getting reports of a food crisis in the Biafran breakaway region under siege from the Federal forces.
Biafra was now cut off, but Kennedy used his contacts to fly in on an aircraft carrying arms to the rebels, re-establish contact with his Holy Ghost colleagues and get first-hand reports.
He was back in Dublin for a press conference on December 12th with his brother to make an appeal for medical supplies. The first mercy flight, "Peace One", was the result. Through 1968 the aid operation intensified with the co-operation of the Knights of Columbanus and its head Vincent Grogan. The Joint Biafra Famine Appeal, under the patronage of the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Owerri, went on quickly to raise £260,000, equivalent to €3 million today.
Ships were chartered, the Joint Church Aid night flights into Biafra increased to allow tons of vital supplies to reach the starving refugees. Africa Concern was in the front line and flew separate aid flights from Libreville in Gabon.
It was a dangerous business, and one Red Cross flight was shot down.
The Irish Government strongly disapproved of these operations, pointing out that there were even more Irish missionaries in territories controlled by the Federal Government.
The Holy Ghost priests in Biafra went on a Nigerian 'blacklist' and Kennedy was even accused of organising Cuban and American mercenaries to fight in Biafra, a charge he hotly denied.
With the war over, Kennedy and Concern were ready to help in any new emergency situations. Next on the list was east Pakistan, where another breakaway civil war raged in the early 1970s and hundreds of thousands of Bengali refugees needed food and medicine in what was to become independent Bangladesh.
In 1972, he became Concern's field director there, but found himself caught up in boardroom battles back in Dublin where the sudden expansion of Concern was causing strains. Criticism was being voiced of the management style of the Kennedy brothers by some board members, including Michael Fingleton, now head of Irish Nationwide Building Society. Kennedy wrote despondently about his "sickening sense of insecurity" and complained that some persons "have no confidence" in his efforts in Bangladesh.
In 1973 he was recalled to become executive director in place of his brother John who moved to An Taisce.
Father Angus Finucane took over in Bangladesh and greatly expanded relief operations there where he also did his own fund-raising. Relations with Dublin continued to be a problem however.
Kennedy investigated new areas for Concern to work in, such as the Yemen and Ethiopia. He also initiated new Concern offices in Britain and the US. The board continued to worry over the budgetary situation. The Catholic bishops set up a rival aid organisation, Trócaire, for development work overseas.
The Department of Foreign Affairs set up the Agency for Personal Service Overseas (APSO) which regarded Concern as rather amateurish, and acerbic letters were exchanged between Kennedy and the then head of APSO, Bill Jackson.
In May 1977, Kennedy suddenly resigned from Concern leaving the staff in shock. Some resigned as well. Pat Fryer, chairman of the executive committee, expressed deep regret, saying that Kennedy "literally thought, worked and lived Concern for these past nine years and it is largely due to him that Concern enjoys the reputation it does, not only in Ireland, but internationally."
He went on: "I think it a tragedy that so many of those working in Concern, both in the field and in the council at home, have found it easier to concentrate on his shortcomings than on his positive qualities."
It had been nine hectic years, but now he had to find new pastures. He was still a Holy Ghost father but their mission fields had shrunk after expulsion from Biafra after the war. Kennedy worked for several years as secretary of the Irish School of Ecumenics. He continued ecumenical work when in Stockton in California, where he worked in the chancery office of Bishop Mahony. He was chaplain to the University of the Pacific.
Before leaving Ireland, he co-founded Aid Link in 1982 which offers expert advice for aid workers seeking grants and funding for their projects.
In 1987 he became chaplain to the Sacred Heart Convent in Woldingham in the south of England. He now became active in Concern Universal, which he had set up in Britain before leaving Concern.
He had also set up Concern America based in California. His work brought him to Bangladesh where he met Yasmin Khan, a paediatrician.
He decided to leave the priesthood and married Yasmin in 1988. They had two children.
During this period he was closely associated with the Dhaka Ahsania Mission in Bangladesh which grew steadily under his tutelage to include a cancer hospital and a university which helped especially in the higher education of women.
He kept in touch with family and friends in Ireland, and returned for the 30th anniversary of the founding of Concern as well as for the launch of the book on the history of those years, Believing in Action. He believed that its treatment of his own role was fair.
He is survived by his wife, Yasmin; son and daughter; brothers, Colm, Donnacha, John and Declan; sisters Una, Noirín and Peig.
There will be a memorial Mass on December 11th at 11 a.m. at the church of the Holy Spirit, Kimmage Manor, Dublin.
Raymond Kennedy: born January 22nd, 1926; died November 3rd, 2004