THE DEATH of Father Joseph Dunn marks the end of an era in Irish religious broadcasting. For 35 years the documentary films which he produced under the title of Radharc (Irish for vision) were a staple and much valued feature of Irish television. Many of them won international awards and were shown on foreign stations.
Joe was born in Dublin in 1930 and educated in Belvedere College. He entered Clonliffe College, the Dublin diocesan seminary, in 1948 and continued his studies in UCD and Maynooth. He was ordained priest in 1955.
In 1959 Archbishop McQuaid, aware of the plans to start an Irish television service, sent two young priests, Joe and Des Forristal, to New York for a three month course in television techniques. Back in Ireland, they set up a small film unit and started to experiment with religious documentaries.
From the beginning, Joe aimed at making programmes which would deal with religious topics in an accessible and attractive way. Three of these programmes were screened during the first months of Telefis Eireann and were an immediate success with the critics and the public. It was the beginning of a life long relationship be tween Joe and Irish television.
In 1964 the Irish bishops asked him to set up a national office for the media. He worked wonders against impossible deadlines. In two years, he built the Communi cations Centre began to run courses in television, radio, film, journalism and other forms of communication. Many of his students came from the Third World and brought back their newly learnt skills to serve the Church in their own counties. He amalgamated the Irish Catholic Church Society with the Communications Centre and formed the Catholic Communications Institute of Ireland. He expanded the publishing and bookselling operations and produced a monthly magazine for priests, Intercom, which still flourishes.
Having finished his task, he returned full time to Radharc and resumed his globe trotting. The list of places he visited and of people he met and filmed is mind boggling. To his disappointment, he never got an interview from a Pope, but with that exception everyone who was anyone in the Church featured sooner or later in one of his programmes.
He filmed in some of the world's most dangerous places - the refugee camps on the Thai border, the terrorised villages of Guatemala. He interviewed Archbishop Romero of San Salvador a few days before his assassination. The 450 or so films he has left us are a unique visual history of the Catholic Church in the wake of Vatican II. He was still full of plans for new programmes when he was suddenly struck down by the illness that was to claim his life.
In his last ten years, he published three books, No Tiger in Africa, No Lions in the Hierarchy and No Vipers in the Vatican based on his experience of Christianity in every corner of the world. His love for the Church was the driving force behind everything he wrote and did. He worried about the human faults that weaken it, and he was anxious to correct them. He was saddened when others cast him in the role of an energy of the Church and a scourge of bishops. No man was more loyal to his priesthood and his Church.
A quiet, thoughtful, private man, he never sought the limelight. Only those closest to him knew the warmth and wit and humour that made him such a delightful companion. May god grant the reward of all his goodness.