Death of a Marist

Fr Allan Connors SM 

Born 6 March 1928

Professed 2 February 1946

Ordained 26 July 1952

Died 30 November 2022

Allan was born at Macksville on the north coast of NSW, from German, French, English and Irish ancestry. After attending local convent schools he completed his secondary education at St John’s College, Woodlawn, from where he proceeded to Marist Seminary, Toongabbie. 

His first appointment was teaching at Woodlawn. After twelve months he was assigned to join the Home Missions band at Glenlyon, Brisbane, where most of the staff were seasoned veterans from New Zealand. This appointment was interesting in the extreme, especially in the ‘outback’.

After six years on the mission staff, first at Glenlyon and later as a foundation member of the Mission House at Malvern in Melbourne, Fr Allan was appointed to St Patrick’s in Sydney where he spent seventeen years. Part of his mission was to set up and run Marist Chapel at Circular Quay and later in this period he was parish priest of St Patrick’s. During this time he completed a six-year course at Sydney University and was admitted to the membership of Registered Psychologists.

At the beginning of 1977 Fr Allan was transferred to the staff of the Aquinas Academy where he spent the last 23 years of his ministry, which included two terms as Director. He inaugurated the Christian Growth Programme, a course in theology, psychology and spirituality which, with the help of other lecturers, was eventually presented in more than two hundred parish centres around Australia, sometimes with a total of more than a thousand participants weekly.

Fr Allan’s other principal concern was bringing in overseas speakers for summer schools. These were presented in most of the capital cities and some regional centres and once, in the early eighties at St Patrick’s College in Wellington, New Zealand.

In retirement Fr Allan lived at Avalon, NSW, before moving to Montbel, Hunters Hill, and finally to Bayswater Nursing Home, Abbotsford, where he died peacefully, after seventy years of priestly life. May he rest in peace.