Generations of schoolboys called him Bonny for his horsemanship. And we admired his appearances with dog and gun through the wooded acres of Garbally Demesne. Years later I asked him to say month's mind Mass for my mother. "Make it 1 p.m. so I can get in a bit of shooting beforehand." It was October.
A native of Woodford, Co Galway, where his family were prosperous farmers and his father was a Justice of the Peace, he told me once that he remembered the day when the first World War broke out - his father brought home a bull. A past pupil of St Joseph's College, Garbally Park, Ballinasloe, Co Galway, and of University College, Galway, he holidayed annually in France. He was appointed to the teaching staff of our old school where he rose to president and was created monsignor by the Pope. He then served as parish priest in Fahy and Quansboro beside Eyrecourt (1963-1989) and retired to Arus John Vianney, attached to Portiuncula Hospital, where he unofficially was chaplain.
I was honorary secretary of the Dublin branch of Garbally Past Pupils Union, when we held our annual dinner dance in the Constitution Room of the Shelbourne Hotel. I invited my fellow-Sydney man, Mgr Edward Cassidy of the Papal Nunciature, and our chairman, Col Dan Corry, invited him to sit beside school president Father Page. Afterwards he joked that I had saved Clonfert. Actually he did, because a new bishop, Mgr Thomas Ryan, was appointed soon after a long interval. So we decided that the future cardinal had saved the historic diocese.
At my mother's Mass he delivered a lovely homily which would have made my mother smile and pleased our relations and friends present. He ended Mass quoting Cardinal Newman: "O Lord, support us all the day long, until the world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging and a holy rest, and peace at last. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen."