St Joseph's Society
Monsignor Jack Kennedy was well known in Catholic circles in England and Wales, not least from the period of his rectorship of the Venerable English College in Rome between 1984 and 1991.
To a generation of seminarians he provided challenging, yet fair, leadership as he sought to stretch aspiring candidates to the priesthood. Many of those who trained during his period as Rector are now providing invaluable service to the church in England and Wales.
He had been ordained nearly thirty years by the time he assumed leadership of the English College and first took on responsibility for the formation of future priests. It is rather ironic then that in the 1960s Archbishop Beck twice refused requests, first from Mgr Leo Alston and later Mgr Jim Sullivan, for the then Fr Kennedy to take up a position on the seminary staff either at Rome or at Lisbon. Writing to Mgr Sullivan in August 1967 Archbishop Beck observed, “I am pretty confident that Father Kennedy would not be very happy about undertaking seminary duties.”
Having refused to release Fr Kennedy for seminary duties, Archbishop Beck did allow him to become involved in a different kind of formation, that of Catholic teachers. From 1968 until his appointment as Rector in Rome he served in the Department of Divinity at Christ’s College, Liverpool, a college affiliated at that time to the University of Liverpool and later a constituent part of what we know today as Liverpool Hope University. From 1980 to early 1984 he served as Head of the Department of Divinity. He was therefore very well known to a whole generation of Catholic teachers, most of whom will now be retired, but who provided such an important component of Catholic life in this country.
As well as having a prominent role in the formation of priests and Catholic teachers, Mgr Kennedy was also involved in the early responses of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to the dreadful scourge of child abuse. He was for a number of years the child protection co-ordinator in the Archdiocese and he spoke passionately at various meetings of the clergy in Liverpool about the steps that would need to be taken to safeguard children and to deal with allegations of abuse. He was a member of the Nolan Review Committee, the independent body that Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor invited in 2000 to review child protection in the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Mgr Kennedy was certainly a once-met-never-forgotten kind of person; someone who was filled with joie de vivre. He was an extremely generous and charming host who loved the company of friends and fellow priests. At one turn he might speak eloquently and excitedly about something cultural, a glass of fine wine or his favourite stuffed courgette flowers; at others rather more bluntly about the vagaries of golf. Beneath it all, however, he remained a dedicated priest still trying to live out the vocation to which God called him. He always gave himself entirely to whatever he was asked to do over the course of his ministry, not least to the people of Holy Family, Southport, to whom he dedicated the last twenty-one years of his active ministry.
John Kennedy was born in Chorley on 31st December 1930, the son of James and Alice Kennedy. His early education took place at Sacred Heart, Chorley, and he studied for the priesthood at St Joseph’s College, Upholland, and the Venerable English College, Rome. He was ordained priest on 25th November 1955 at the Church of the Twelve Apostles, Rome.
He had three appointments as assistant priest: St John’s, Wigan (August 1956); St Austin’s, St Helens (September 1964) and St Edmund, Waterloo (September 1966). In 1968 he was appointed to the staff of Christ’s College, Liverpool, serving as the Head of the Department of Divinity from 1980 to 1984. In February 1984 he was nominated by the Bishops of England and Wales as Rector of the Venerable English College, Rome, and on 3rd April that year he was named by Pope John Paul II as a Prelate of Honour. He returned to the Archdiocese of Liverpool in 1991, when he took up his appointment as Parish Priest of Holy Family, Southport. This was to be his one and only appointment as Parish Priest, serving his people until September 2012. In retirement he remained in the Southport area.
His funeral Mass was celebrated at Holy Family, Southport, on Monday 26th September 2016 by Archbishop Malcolm McMahon with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor preaching the homily. The Mass was followed by burial at Sacred Heart, Ainsdale.
May he rest in peace.