Monastery Friends & Family

The Slavik family of Metz in France, the family of Br Gabiel Marie, C.SS.R. (second from right)
visited Sheppey last Summer and were able to make a pilgimage to the Tower of London,
where several Catholic Saints repose. At far right is Reémy, now studying at Ecône.
Not present is the eldest son, Frere Laurent, who is a Capuchin friar at Morgon, France.
Mrs Slavik is taking the picture!

Navigatio ad Terram Novam
by Mrs Elizabeth Brice-Dallas

Last month Catholic printed a poem by Mr Duncan Dallas about his family’s trip to Papa Stronsay.
This month we are pleased to offer you this Latin poem by Mrs Dallas.

	Rev. Fr Edward Black and his mother, Mrs Black of Dundee, Scotland, at Father’s priestly silver jubilee in Glasgow on 22 June.

September 2002

The Mother of a Priest

“If God speaks to the heart of your child, do not smother that calling in him. Encourage him, pray that God will tell Him more clearly what to do and give him the strength and the grace to do it.

True,the day will come when the son you love will leave his father’s house to go into the world in search of souls. On that day you will suffer in your own torn heart, but by giving God the one He asks of you, you will soon realise that he will be returned to you.

No son will be closer to you than that one, and your joy will be endless for having presented the Church with an ‘ambassador of God’, and the world with a redeemer.
The priestly vocation is a pure gift from God, but it passes through the heart of mothers, and that will constitute their greatness and thanksgiving throughout eternity.”

Cardinal Suhard

In memoriam: Rev. Fr Patrick Cosgrove, C.SS.R. (1916-2002)

Father Patrick Kevin Cosgrove was born in the small mining town of Consett in north-east England on 8 November, 1916. When he was just eleven years of age he attended a Mission given by the Redemptorist Fathers, an event which was to determine the rest of his life. He later related how it had been his elder brother who had first heard the call, and who had wanted to join the Redemptorists.

When the moment to depart had come, however, he no longer wanted to go. One of the Fathers giving the mission came to discuss the matter with the youth. On learning that the latter had changed his mind, the missioner was about to leave, when he saw young Patrick. Something moved him to ask the eleven-year old whether he might not like to become a priest. Inspired by grace, Patrick answered in all simplicity that he did. As a result, he was accepted, and went to the Redemptorist Junior Seminary in Bishop Eton, Liverpool. Six years later he entered the Novitiate in Kinnoull, Perthshire, Scotland. A year later he took his first vows there on the feast of the Assumption - as was then the tradition in the province - in 1934. He then studied at the major seminary in Hawkstone, Shropshire. He was ordained a priest on 26 March, 1940.

He worked in England for six years preaching missions and retreats and also teaching at the Junior Seminary in Liverpool. He was also permitted to make a second novitiate in Kinnoull in 1942.

In 1946 he was appointed for work in South Africa. For the first four years he was stationed in the monastery in Bergvliet. He did much for the youth of the parish and also founded the St Gerard’s Association for Women. In 1950 he moved north to work in the Rustenburg area. He had not been there very long when the Redemptorists were given a country property by the Archdiocese of Pretoria. Fr Ord, then Superior of the Redemptorists in South Africa, asked Fr Cosgrove what they could possibly do with such a remote piece of land. In his typical enthusiasm, he replied that he could build a monastery, a convent, a school, a hospital and a junior seminary. And with the help of some of the Redemptorist Brothers he did just that. The area was given the name Modimong, which means ‘God’s Place’. In his labours his constant companion was Br Edmund Keighren, C.SS.R., who had been a childhood friend.

He invited the Selly Park Sisters from England to run the school, and in 1953 he travelled to Ireland to find candidates for a community of Sisters he was to found under the patronage of St Brigid. In 1960 he went to the West Indies for a couple of years to give missions and retreats with the late Fr Mark Flynn. He then returned to Rustenburg.

In 1969 he was appointed to work in what was then Salisbury in Rhodesia. He was there for four years and was the first parish priest of what is now the well-known mission of Tafara on the outskirts of Harare before returning to South Africa.

As the Church plunged into crisis, Fr Cosgrove remained faithful to the Mass of his ordination. Only once was he lured into a concelebration of the Novus Ordo Missae at the monastery. He returned from the altar in a towering rage and berated his own superior with the words, “Never pull that stunt on me again!” It was clear that he needed to be removed from the public eye lest his example be too influential, and so, in 1981 he was given a completely new mission. The Archbishop of Cape Town sent him to work in the rather remote town of Lambert’s Bay. He made a virtue out of necessity, and over the following 15 years he laboured to build up the parish and its outstations, which were spread out over a huge area. He extended the church and built a lovely sanctuary, a convent for the Holy Cross Sisters, and also a magnificent parish centre with a fine nursery school.

In 1996 he retired to the Redemptorist Monastery in Bergvliet. He remained active, especially in the confessional, and worked hard as a prison chaplain, an apostolate which won him the respect of correctional authorities and inmates alike. His superiors permitted him to continue to say the Tridentine Mass, and these final years of his life saw him travelling from one private home to another in the Cape Town region to offer the Mass of All Time for a wide circle of Traditional Catholics.

In the last few months his health began to deteriorate. On Monday, 6 May, at 2.30 am, he knocked on the door of one of his confreres and asked to be anointed. The doctor was called and thought that he should be taken into hospital, but before he could be moved, he died peacefully. The day before, his superior had been talking to him in the refectory and had asked him if there were anything he would like to take with him when God might call him. After some consideration, Fr Cosgrove said: “If I am going to Heaven, all will be provided. If I am going to hell, I would not be able to use what I took, and it would be a further persecution to me! All I ask is that, when Our Blessed Lord comes to take me, He deals with me gently.”

A great crowd of people attended his funeral Mass on Friday, 10 May. Present in the congregation were parishioners from Lambert’s Bay, three Sisters of St Brigid who had travelled all the way from Modimong, a Sister from Selly Park and several Holy Cross Sisters. The number of priests, sisters and people present was a tribute in itself to a zealous and hard-working priest.

His relations with our community were always warm and enthusiastically supportive. He followed our work of restoration of the Rule of St Alphonsus and the expansion of our community with great enthusiasm, and only ill health prevented him from visiting Golgotha Monastery Island in person. We were privileged to inherit the Tridentine Missal he used as a pledge of continuity and a memorial of this valiant son of Our Holy Father Alphonsus. May his soul rest in peace!

November 2002

We were visited by Mr & Mrs Raymond Dennison and Mr & Mrs Thomas Stout recently.
Mr Stout was born in Stackaback, and Mrs Dennison in the Big House on Papa Stronsay.

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