Born: 23 July 1933, Hazeldene Lodge, Anglesea Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, County Dublin
Entered: 06 September 1952, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 10 July 1969, Milltown Park, Dublin
Died: 10 September 2024, Thailand

Left Society of Jesus: 12 October 1978 from Chiangmai, Thailand

Father, Philip, was a Court Messenger. Mother, Julia Delaney. Parents lived at Vavasour Square, Bath Avenue, Sandymount.

Only child.

Baptised: St Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street, 28/03/1933
Confirmed: Nativity of the BVM, Chapelizod, by Dr Wall, 17/05/1944

Early education at a Convent school and then he went to CBS James’ Street.

1952-1954: St Mary’s Emo, Novitiate
1954-1958: Rathfarnham Castle, BSc at UCD
1958-1961: St Stanislaus College Tullabeg, Philosophy
1961-1966: Campion Hall Oxford (ANG) studying D Phil - Physics
1966-1968: Rome Italy (ROM) studying Theology
1968-1969: St Albert’s, Leuven, Belgium (BEL M) studying Theology
1969-1970: University of Grenoble, France (GAL) teaching and researching
1973-1976: Singapore (HK), Indonesia and Hue, South Vietnam (IDO) teaching
1976-1978 Hong Kong (HK) teaching and at Chiang Mai, Thailand (HK) teaching
1976: Tertianship made with Michael Sweetman in Rathfarnham (Long Retreat) and then a couple of months with guided reading from Michael while he was back in Thailand
12/10/1978- Dispensed from Vows, remained a priest in Thailand

Evening Herald 29/05/1973: Arrested at a protest in Singapore whilst attending a protest at the American Embassy

Message from Fr Liam Egan (HK) saying he was released after a few hours.

https://www.fidh.org/en/region/asia/thailand/thailand-a-tribute-to-danthong-breen-1933-2024

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (FIDH)

Thailand: A tribute to Danthong Breen (1933-2024)
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) mourns the passing of veteran human rights advocate Danthong Breen on 10 September 2024 at the age of 91. Danthong was President of the Thai human rights NGO Union for Civil Liberty (UCL), a member organization of FIDH, from 2007 to 2012.

Paris, 13 September 2024. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1933 as Daniel Breen, he changed his name to Danthong Breen upon receiving Thai citizenship in 1992.

Danthong had a scientific background, having obtained a bachelor’s degree in physics from the National University of Ireland and a PhD in physics from the University of Oxford, UK. He served in various academic and managerial roles at universities in Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. He moved to Singapore in early 1970 and then relocated to Thailand from 1973.

Danthong was well known in international human rights circles for his passionate and tireless work for the abolition of the death penalty, actively participating in several editions of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty.

For several decades, Danthong led UCL’s work to seek an improvement in prison conditions, which included prison visits, assistance to inmates, and a steadfast drive and determination to pursue the abolition of the death penalty in Thailand. He authored various reports that documented conditions in Thai prisons and explored the multiple facets of capital punishment in the Kingdom, with a particular focus on the religious dimension of the death penalty, its application on women, and the disproportionate use of capital punishment in the ethnic Malay-Muslim southern border provinces.

Danthong inspired new generations of activists to work for the improvement of prison conditions, including through his support in recent years to the publication of several FIDH-UCL reports on prison conditions, which eventually led to the decision to publish an FIDH-UCL annual prison report for Thailand.

While much of his work concerned Thailand, Danthong was engaged in various human rights causes across Asia and beyond.

He co-founded the Southeast Asia Regional Institute for Community Education (SEARICE), a Philippines-based regional organization devoted to sustainable and community-based development.

In February 2013, Danthong attended the review organized by the government of Taiwan and a panel of international experts to assess Taiwan’s domestic implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Between February 2014 and February 2015, he travelled to Malaysia four times as a representative of FIDH to observe and report on the politically-motivated trial against former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, which eventually resulted in Anwar’s five-year jail sentence and subsequent imprisonment.

FIDH will always remember Danthong for his altruism, intellectual depth, sense of humor, and unwavering commitment to human rights. Danthong is gone, but his legacy will always be with us.

Born: 26 February 1789, Scotland
Entered: 07 September 1810, Hodder, Stonyhurst, England - Angliae Province (ANG)
Ordained: 1820
Died: 12 March 1835, Aberdeen, Scotland

Left Society of Jesus: 1830

in Clongowes 1817;
in Friburg Switzerland 1826

Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Father Murphy says that at the age of 10, he entered the Scotch College at Ratisbonne, at 16 he went to Stonyhurst. His inscription is “Carolus Fraser, Miss : Ap : in Planis Scotiae ob : Aberd. xii Mar 1835, aet xlvii”. (cf FD Murphy’s “Collections”

He belonged to HIB and was very much esteemed by all his brethren in Ireland.
He was a Professor and Prefect at Clongowes and a most distinguished Preacher, as well as the author of a History of the Suppression, which is in the Milltown Park Archives.

Although he left the Society, he kept up a correspondence with the Irish Jesuits.
Loose leaf note in CatChrn : Entitled “Left Stonyhurst for Castle Brown” :

Born: 12 October 1825,
Entered: 02 October 1841, Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria - Germaniae Superioris Province (GER)
Ordained: 1857
Final Vows: 08 September 1861

Left Society of Jesus: 1888

Had been in TOLO Province andf then indicated as being in CAMP Province in 1887, but not in CAMP Cat

1841-1843: Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria (GER S), Novitiate
1843-1847: Fribourg College, Fribourg, Switzerland, Philosophy, then Rhetoric
1847-1848: Fribourg College, Fribourg, Switzerland, Regency
1848-1849: St Servais Collège, Liège, Belgium (BELG), Regency
1849-1851: Collège Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium (BELG), Regency
1851-1852: Collège Notre Dame, rue des Augustins, Tournai, Belgium (BELG), Regency
1852-1853: Collège Saint Michel, rue des Urselines, Bruxelles, Belgium (BELG), Regency
1853-1854: Köln Kolleg, Marcellen Strasse, Köln, Germany, Theology
1854-1858: Roman College, Rome Italy (ROM), Theology
1858-1859: Feldkirch College, Vorarlburg, Austria, Teaching
1859-1860: Bonn College, Bonn, Germany, Teaching
1860-1861: Aachen College, Aachen, germany, Teaching Science
1861-1864: Feldkirch College, Vorarlburg, Austria, Teaching Science
1864-1868: Maria-Laach College, Maria-Laach, Germany, Teaching Science
1868-1885: College Saint Joseph de Tivoli, Boulevard de Caudéran, Bordeaux, France (TOLO), Teaching Science
1885-1886: University College, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin (HIB), Teaching Physics and French
1886-1888: In Campaniae Province (CAMP)

Born: 31 December 1804, Cork City, County Cork
Entered: 02 October 1827, Aix en Provence, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1832, Lucca, Italy
Died: 18 May 1866, Paris, France

Left Society of Jesus: 1830

Journalist in “Fraser’s” pseudonym Fr Prout

1821-1823: Montrouge, Paris, France (GAL), Novitiate
1823-1825: Rome, studying???
1825-1826: Aix en Provence, Regency

https://www.dib.ie/biography/mahony-francis-sylvester-father-prout-a5397

DICTIONARY OF IRISH BIOGRAPHY

Mahony, Francis Sylvester (‘Father Prout’)

Contributed by
Geoghegan, Patrick M.

Mahony, Francis Sylvester (‘Father Prout’) (1804–66), priest and humorist, was born 31 December 1804 in Cork, the second son of seven sons and four daughters of Martin Mahony, a woollen manufacturer, and his second wife, Mary Mahony (née Reynolds). Educated at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, he seemed destined for a career in the priesthood and was sent to St Acheul, Amiens (1819), and then to a Jesuit seminary in Paris. From there he went to Rome to study philosophy (1823–5), before returning to Clongowes to teach. A brilliant student and scholar, he was described as being the same in his youth as he was at his death: ‘caustic, irascible, opinionated, argumentative, [but] with a sharp sense of irony and satire’ (Mannin, 137).

Within two months of his return to Clongowes he was appointed master of rhetoric, but his rapid rise was halted abruptly after an ill-fated class outing to nearby Celbridge, in the course of which both students and master drank heavily and Mahony made a loud attack on the character of Daniel O'Connell (qv). There was uproar when the inebriated class returned past curfew, and Mahony was soon transferred to the Jesuit college of Fribourg, Switzerland. He went from there to Florence, where he was expelled by the Jesuits. Though he was ordained a secular priest in 1832, it seems he had persistent doubts about his vocation, which were shared by his superiors. He returned to Ireland in 1832 to assist in the Cork mission that was treating the cholera epidemic. The conflicts in his character resurfaced, however, and in 1834 he left suddenly after a serious disagreement with the local bishop. He moved to London, where he became a journalist and writer; for the rest of his life he was independent of church authority.

In 1834 Mahony began writing for Fraser's Magazine, and, like the other distinguished contributors, adopted a pseudonym – ‘Father Prout’; he also published as ‘Don Jeremy Savonarola’. Mahony had known a real Father Prout – Daniel Prout (qv), the parish priest of Watergrasshill, in his childhood – but in all other respects the character was the creation of his imagination. He invented biographical details and even a biographer; The reliques of Father Prout was published in 1837. His writing at this time was sharp and acerbic, and often brilliant: Thomas Moore (qv) was accused of plagiarism, O'Connell was regularly abused, and Prout won a wide readership. After a while Mahony's inspiration faded, and he moved to the staff of Charles Dickens's Bentley's Magazine. Conviviality was never Mahony's problem, but it seems alcoholism was, and in the engravings of the literary dinners, Thackeray, Coleridge and Carlyle are each shown with a glass of wine, whereas he is shown with three.

Deciding to travel on the Continent in 1837, from then on he lived abroad. He was Rome correspondent for the Daily News (1846–58), and Paris correspondent for the Globe from 1858 until his death. His health failed in the early 1860s and he became lonely and irritable. He burned his papers in his final days, and died 18 May 1866 at Paris. His body was brought back to Cork and he was buried in the vault of Shandon church. After his death he was remembered chiefly for ‘The bells of Shandon’, a nostalgic poem about Cork that may have been written when he was at Clongowes. It was the least of his works, but it achieved an enduring fame and became a popular song. Mahony was an erratic character, and his writing, sometimes spectacular, sometimes mediocre, reflected this.

Sources
Allibone; Webb; Cork Hist. Arch. Soc. Jn. (1892), 76–7; DNB; O'Donoghue; Ethel Mannin, Two studies in integrity: Gerald Griffin and the Rev. Francis Mahony (1954); D.Cath.B.; Robert Hogan (ed.), The Macmillan dictionary of Irish literature (1979) (under Prout); DIH; Welch; Boylan; Fergus Dunne, ‘A critical reappraisal of the texts and contexts of Francis Sylvester Mahony’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, Brighton, 2003)

Born: 07 August 1906, Waterford, County Waterford
Entered: 01 September 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1940, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1944, Mungret College SJ, Limerick
Died: June 1978, South Avenue, Mount Merrion, Dublin, County Dublin

Left Society of Jesus: 13 December 1968

Father (Thomas) was in police and later a clerk. Family lived at St Teresa’s Road, Glasnevin. Mother was Katherine (Carey).

Early education at O’Connells School, Dublin

Confirmed at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Carlow, 12/11/1916

1924-1926: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Novitiate
1926-1930: Rathfarnham Castle, Juniorate, UCD
1930-1933: Mungret College SJ, Regency
1933-1934: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Philosophy
1935-1936: Mungret Colklege SJ, Regency
1936-1937: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Philosophy
1937-1940: Milltown Park, Theology
1941-1942: Rathfarnham Castle, Tertianship
1942-1945: Mungret College SJ, teaching
1945-1962: Belvedere College SJ, Teaching
1962-1967: Sacred Heart College Crescent SJ, Teaching
1967-1968: Sir William Collins Secondary School, Edgeware London (ANG) working for Westminster Diocese project in County Schools at the invitation of Cardinal Heenan. Address Hartland Drive, Broadfields, Edgeware, London. Attached to the Stamford Hill Jesuit community, London

New address on leaving, Thornton Drive, Chislehurst, Kent, England.

Information saying that he had married Christmas 1968, and was teaching at Centro Linguistico Italo-Americano, Via Stoppani, Bergamo, Italy, but that their address was still st Thornton Drive, Chislehurst.

Later address (1971) Rebmatt, Oberwiel, Zug, Switzerland.
(1975), South Avenue, Mount Merrion, Dublin

◆ The Belvederian, Dublin, 1978

Obituary

Father Tom O’Callaghan

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. Tom was rarely still in life. He rarely spoke sotto voce. Pacing, pacing, up and down outside the rail in Donnybrook, chain-smoking cigarettes and matches; intense and often very individual instructions to the team at half time... Did Tom ever sit behind the wheel of a car? Little things like traffic jams and speed limits must have sent up his blood pressure if he did. An unbroken Arab horse and a wilderness would have suited him better.

Apart from being a trainer of distinction, Tom was thought to be an outstanding mathematician when we were boys. Whether the latter is true it is impossible to discover now. Boys like to invest their teachers with what they take to be Einsteinian qualities. He was certainly a very intelligent man but he was unable to take his degree. At different stages during his university studies, usually around examination time, he had to sit near the door of the refectory in Rathfarnham Castle. This was because he would suddenly, through nervousness, find himself unable to swallow, and have to run choking from the room. He could talk very interestingly on any subject, even though he might naturally gravitate to discussing rugby. He liked to consult encyclopaedias in the middle of an argument to show he was correct on a point of historical or literary fact.

Fr Tom had very many devoted friends among the Past, but, almost certainly, some who bore a grudge as well. He seemed to work off his frustrations in sarcasm against “enemies”, and, whom he took to be fools, he did not suffer gladly. The result was that those who were on the outside could not see how the devotion of the others arose. Happily the mystery of life is deep and complicated enough to encompass different types. Tom was either a stone in your shoe or a stone in your oyster; he could not be ignored.

For almost twenty years, 1946-1962, Fr Tom O'Callaghan SJ, was teacher, trainer, sometime assistant disciplinarian in Belvedere. He was moved by the Canonical Visitor to Crescent College Limerick. From what we hear, things were not the same there. He was approaching sixty years of age and his once dominant personality was losing its force. He did not have a reputation he could call on, as the pupils of Crescent had not heard of him before. In a few years he was teaching in a school in London and while there he met his future wife. At what stage he decided to leave the priesthood it is impossible to say.

When they returned to Dublin he took up teaching for a while in St. Conleth's. This did not last very long as his health was disintegrating. During a long and sporadic illness his wife took devoted care of him. He died in June of this year aged 72 years. RIP.

Every Christian life is a sad life. Every Christian life is a failure. A web of disappointments and of goals unachieved. We cannot say, and it is futile to guess, whether some things might have been better if some other things had been otherwise ... We do not know. That is all we can say. We offer our sympathy to his wife, Barbara, May the Lord look mercifully on all of us, and on the soul of Fr. Tom O'Callaghan, one-time Jesuit, sacerdos in aeter num.

BK, SJ

Born: 04 May 1930, Carrigfern, College Road, Cork City, County Cork
Entered: 06 September 1947, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 28 July 1960, Milltown Park, Dublin
Final Vows: 02 February 1966, St Ignatius, Lusaka, Zambia
Died: 20 May 2012, Enstone, Oxfordshire, England

Left Society of Jesus: 25 February 1972

Transcribed HIB to ZAM 03 December 1969

Conor Simon Reilly was born at Stella Maris Nursing Home, Wellington Road, Cork City

Father, Joseph, was a Professor of Chemistry at UCC (lived at Woodlands, St Anne’s Hill, Cork City). Mother, Susan (O’Brien) lived at Nowlan Avenue, Dundrum, Dublin, County Dublin. Growing up Conor’s family lived at Beaumont Avenue, Dundrum, Dublin

Youngest of three boys with two sisters.

Five years were spent in various Convent and National schools in Cork - which he left in 1933 - he then went to Synge Street for nine years.

Baptised at Immaculate Conception, St Finbar’s West, The Lough, Cork City, 19/08/1940
Confirmed at St Kevin’s Harrington Street, Dublin by Dr Wall of Dublin, 19/02/1942

1947-1949: St Mary's, Emo, , Novitiate
1949-1953: Rathfarnham Castle, Junorate, UCD (BSc in Biochemistry)
1953-1956: St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Philosophy
1956-1957: Clongowes Wood College SJ, Regency
1957-1961: Milltown Park, Theology
1961-1963: Rathfarnham Castle, studiying for a PhD in Biochemistry at UCD
1963-1964: McQuaid Jesuit High School, Clinton Avenue South, Rochester NY, USA (BUF) on a Fulbright Scholarship studying Biochemistry at University of Rochester, Wildon Boulevard, Rochester NY
1964-1965: North American Martyrs, Auriesville NY, USA (BUF) making Tertianship
1965-1971: Lusaka, Zambia, lecturing Biology an Biochemistry at University of Zambia, attached to St Ignatius community
Was at Unversität Bern, Hochschulstrasse 4, 3012 Bern, Switzerland, Sept 1969- January 1970

Married Anne Drew, a widow with four children and Conor’s lab assistant 17/03/1972 (having “married” her in Zambia 22/12/1971). Left Zambia in summer 1973 and began work at Oxford Polytechnic (Oxford Brookes University, Headington Road, Headington, Oxford, UK

Interfuse No 149 : Autumn 2012

CONOR REILLY

John J Moore

Another ex-Jesuit deserves a mention in Interfuse: Conor Reilly is remembered with affection and respect by those who knew him in Dublin and Zambia. He entered the Society in 1947, left in December 1971, married the following year, and died in May 2012 aged 82 at his home in Enstone, Oxford, UK. John Moore was two years ahead of him in the Jesuits, but since they studied science together at UCD, they were good friends, and John has recorded these memories of Conor.

It was when “googling” to get information about Conor that I suddenly got the death notice from the London Times on the screen. We were very good friends. Being the only scientist in Rathfarnham at that time was a rather lonely assignment. When Conor joined me in the College of Science, our friendship blossomed. His father was Professor of Biochemistry in UCC, so it was not surprising that he opted for Biochemistry as his major subject; but actually his first appointment in Zambia was as Lecturer in Botany. During Philosophy and Theology he turned his talents to the history of Jesuit scientists, and published two well-known historical works. (There certainly were a few others, but I do not have the bibliographical information.): Francis Line, SJ: An Exiled English Jesuit (1969). Vol. 29 of the Bib. Inst Hist SJ.; Athanasius Kircher S.J.: Master of a Hundred Arts. 1602-1680. (1974) Band I of Studia Kircheriana, Wiesbaden-Rome. (This is a standard reference on Kircher).

He did his Ph.D, at UCD immediately after Theology, and managed to get it in two years, the only case I know of for an experimentally based Ph.D in UCD - normally it took three years and often longer if the write-up was giving difficulties. In his fourth year in Milltown he had already worked out in detail his plan of research and ensured that the Dept of Biochemistry had all the equipment in place to start his work as soon as he finished in Milltown. He got a job as lecturer in the Biology Dept of UNZA (University of Zambia) in 1965 before they started taking students – the idea was to get courses and equipment organised in time for the arrival of the first students. I became a lecturer (later Professor) at the Botany Dept of UCD.

He left the Society in 1971, married and transferred to Food Science in Oxford Polytech, UK. He later moved to Brisbane, Australia where he became the expert in Trace Metals in Food, and I lost personal contact with him. He wrote the work on Kircher while a Jesuit scholastic before doing his Ph.D. in biochemistry. He is the author of a standard book on metal contamination of food whose third edition was published in 2002.

At an early stage he got interested in “heavy metals in plants” which became his speciality - his books on the subject are standard references in the field. He got interested in the subject when some of his medical colleagues mentioned to him that they were getting abnormally high incidence of mouth and throat cancer among Zambian males living in the rural villages. Jointly they discovered that the cancer was correlated with the use of metal barrels for making traditional beer. Those who used earthenware pots for brewing the beer were not suffering from mouth cancer. Conor found that Zinc or Lead leached from the inner surface of the metal drums proved to be carcinogenic. He then turned his attention to the Copperbelt and the mines which then (and now) were “environmentally unfriendly”. He discovered that some plants managed to grow on the copper waste, and then showed that these could be used in prospecting. The rocks beneath the places where they grew in abundance usually proved to have copper veins running through them.

Conor did not share with me the circumstances of his leaving the society and Zambia, but as soon as I got the news in Ireland I wrote to him saying I hoped our friendship would not be broken by his decision to leave. In fact it was not – when he moved to Oxford he would sometimes come to Ireland for Summer Holidays along with his wife and her four children. We used to arrange “a day in the hills” as in the old days. After our picnic with his wife and the children, we would excuse ourselves and go off for a walk together in the woods, sharing all sorts of things – except his new married life, or what exactly happened in Zambia!"

May the Lord be good to Conor and comfort his wife and step children.