Here is a sweet irony for you to savour. Someone who was a Protestant for almost half his life has been beatified by the Catholic Church.
I like Blessed John Sullivan for several reasons. First of all, he is a Jesuit. Secondly, he is a warm-hearted Irishman. Thirdly, in spite of all his gifts and achievements, he was rather quiet and a little shy. More importantly, his life was marked by a deep, loving concern for the sick.
John Sullivan was born in Dublin, Ireland, on May 08, 1861 as the last of five children to Sir Edward Sullivan, a Protestant, and Elizabeth Josephine Bailey, a Catholic from a prominent, land-owning family. In such mixed marriages those days girls were raised in the faith of their mother and boys in that of their father. So, John and his three brothers were brought up as Protestants, while Annie, the eldest and only daughter, was reared as a Catholic. Sir Edward, his father, a successful barrister, later became Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
With such a privileged background, John, after his schooling, went to Trinity College, Dublin, to study Classics. When he completed his studies in 1885, he was awarded the Gold Medal. He went to London to study for the English Bar at Lincoln’s Inn and travelled a great deal, opting for walking tours of Macedonia, Greece and Turkey. He spent many months in an Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, called ‘Holy Mountain,’ where he contemplated becoming a monk. But he returned to Dublin and lived the life of a rich, highly educated young man in such a way that people called him ‘the best dressed man in Dublin.’ But they did not know he helped a lot of people anonymously and visited the sick and dying, taking with him apples, oranges, tea, sugar and clothes.
When he was 35 years old, he shocked his family and friends by announcing he wanted to become a Catholic. Four years later, wanting to be a Jesuit, he joined the Jesuit novitiate. When he completed his Jesuit formation, he was ordained a priest on 28 July 1907. He was sent to teach at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit-run all-male boarding school. He spent his life here, except for five years when he was the rector of the Juniorate and Retreat House at Rathfarnham Castle, near Dublin. While his learning and amiable nature drew everyone he came into contact with, he travelled miles, mostly on foot or on an old, battered bicycle, to visit the sick. For this reason some called him the ‘bicycle priest.’ Those who wondered when exactly he prayed were surprised to learn from a worker that he saw Fr Sullivan around 2.00 am on his knees, praying in the school chapel. On Holy Thursday every year, he spent five or six hours kneeling in prayer before the altar.
There were many who claimed he had the gift of healing. One of the most talked about incidents had to do with a nephew of the famed Irish patriot, Michael Collins. One night in October 1928 the child woke up in extreme pain and the doctor, who was summoned, diagnosed the problem as infantile paralysis. The child’s mother drove to the school to ask for Fr Sullivan’s prayers. He rode his bike to their home and prayed for two hours, with his hands on the child’s leg. The child was cured.
On 17 February 1933, he was admitted in a nursing home, as he had severe abdominal pain. Fr John Sullivan died at 11.00 pm on 19 February 1933 with his brother Sir William Sullivan at his side. He was buried in the Jesuit cemetery in Clongowes Wood College where he served for so many years. In 1960 his remains were exhumed and transferred to St Francis Xavier Church, Dublin, where he was beatified on 13 May 2017. He was the first to be beatified in Ireland.
We, religious, should remember what he said about religious houses: “Religious houses where charity had grown cold were hell upon earth.”
To subscribe to the magazine Contact Us
