Category Archives: Gerry McLaughlin’s Mirfield Story

Comboni Missionaries Seminary | The Daily Grind

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Comboni Missionaries – The Daily Grind

One thing that struck me at the reunions was how well many of the Boys had done. Many of them had become successful entrepreneurs or had become successful within their chosen professions. When you think of it, it isn’t really surprising.

Here is a bunch of people, who, at the age of eleven volunteered to leave behind their families and friends and to move to a part of the country that many of them didn’t know, to live with a bunch of strangers with the end result of joining the priesthood and going out to the missions in Africa.

That’s got to take a bit of balls. I’ve got a 16-year-old daughter and by her age I’d already done all of his and been kicked out and was back in the system again.

I’ve also got a 11-year-old son who is a few months older than when I volunteered for this lifestyle and I couldn’t dream of sending him off to another country away from family and friends to live amongst strangers, to live amongst them for many years, only coming back to visit during the holidays and then going off to a life in the missions of Africa. I couldn’t even think of volunteering him for that or even approving it of he suggested it himself.

So, it’s not surprising that many of those who did volunteer for just such a thing at the age of eleven became entrepreneurs or pursued successful careers.

If people were looking for potential risk takers of the future that would have been a good place to go hunting.

Mick Wainhouse

One guy, who became an extreme risk taker but in a different way, was Mick Wainhouse.

Mick was actually a bit of a quiet guy in school and a bit of a gentle giant but he went on to join the Paras in Northern Ireland, got kicked out for robbing a Post Office whilst pretending to be the IRA, serving five years in jail.

He went on to become a mercenary in Angola serving as Captain with the notorious mercenary Colonel Callan, dispensing rural justice and shooting to death at least one inexperienced mercenary and then fleeing Angola whilst Colonel Callan and others were being captured and sentenced to death.

Verona Fathers Regimented Life

Mick would have fitted very well into the very regimented life of 1st Para after the grounding he had at the Verona Fathers. Every weekday was the same. It went:-

6:35 – Bell goes and everybody gets up and washes. Bedclothes pulled down
7:00 – Mass
7:45 – Bedclothes pulled up, get changed into shorts, T shirts and plimsolls and run around the building down to the seniors playground followed by PE in the cold morning air
8:15 – Breakfast
9:00 – School starts
13:-00 – School finishes
13:00 – Lunch
13:40 – Work
14:15 – Recreation
15:00 – Study
16:00 – Meditation
16:20 – Tea
17:00 – School starts again
19:00 – School finishes
19:00 – Supper
19:40 – Recreation
21:00 – Evening Service
21:40 – Wash and get ready for bed
22:00 – Lights Out

It was a little different at the weekend when he would have been allowed a lie in till 7am.

Mealtimes at the Comboni Missionaries Seminary

The spartan food would also have been an ideal preparation. Mick was tall for his age and even the smaller boys went a bit hungry.

There was a priest in charge of the junior boys, a Father Pinkman, who was later to be moved from his duties after some of older boys led a deputation to the Spiritual Advisor to prevent him doing to the new junior boys what he had done to some of them when in the juniors.

Let’s leave it at that for the moment!

Fascist Sympathies

The rules were very strict. The order was Italian and many of the priests at Mirfield were Italian including the Father Rector. Some of them expressed Fascist sympathies. After all, this was only 18 years after the end of the Second World War.

They liked rules. Indeed, they liked strict rules.

It was only really during Recreation, Work and Mealtimes that you could talk to one another.

Books at Mealtimes

Even during Supper they would get a guy to read from a book for a while before the two priests, the one in charge of the Junior Boys and the one in charge of the Senior Boys, rang a bell to say you could talk.

Even when the book reading finished they sometimes delayed ringing the bell and even made motions as if to ring it before pulling back. It was all about power and control.

The books were always boring and they would be about things like Good Manners and Etiquette. We were dying to talk. When the book reading had ended everyone had their eyes on the two priests to see when they would ring the bell and they could then start chatting with their pals.

Great swathes of the day were spent with The Boys unable to talk. It was a great release when they could. As you can imagine a lot of whispering was done.

No Talking or Whistling

You couldn’t talk in the corridor. Whistling was completely banned.

The senior Boys and the junior Boys were not allowed to talk to each other even though they often encountered each other. They would be in the Refectory at the same time but with the juniors on one side of it and the seniors on the other.

They would also be in church at the same time – but with the seniors on one side of the church and the juniors on the other.

They had separate recreation Rooms and had separate dormitories.

Seminary was Good Training for Paras

When young guys join the Paras, many of those who do may have come from home comforts to a strictly regimented regime – but for Mick it was very much a home from home.

Mick used to team up with a guy called Mick Palmer who was in the same year as he was. When he moved up to second year the two of them teamed up with a guy called John ‘Titch’ Carey who was from Doncaster.

The three of them were inseparable. As you can guess ‘Titch’ was one of the smaller Boys. It was strange to see them walking around together. Mick was slightly above medium height but it was like seeing a Little, Medium and Large walking around.

Gentle Giant

Mick Wainhouse was very much a gentle giant, though. He seldom got into any trouble or scrapes. He was a nice guy and I don’t think anyone disliked him at all.

It still seems very strange that he later joined the Parachute Regiment, went to Northern Ireland and his regiment were involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre of unarmed Catholics on a peaceful protest march.

An embargo has been put on the names of the Paras who were actually engaged on Bloody Sunday so we won’t know whether Mick was there on that fateful day or not, but as he was in the regiment and there at the time of Bloody Sunday, it is almost certain that he was.

It is even more strange to think of him as one of the big four Angolan Mercenaries. Indeed Colonel Callan, Costas Georgiou, even made him his captain.

It seemed totally unlike the Mick Wainhouse that we knew and liked.

Arrival at Mirfield | Comboni Missionaries

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Arrival at Mirfield

In those days the train journeys were very long. My memory was that the train journey from Glasgow to Leeds lasted for 7 hours.

It was the start of a great adventure. I remember it was a very sunny and hot day (aren’t all your favourite days that way?).

Some of the parents came down to drop us off. We were in one compartment of the train and they were in the one next door.

Even Better

I remember arriving at the bus stop called ‘Robin’ presumably called after Robin Hood who was supposed to have had some connection with the area.

The place was even better than Fr. Tavano had described. It was in quite a few acres of ground. There was a woods – or a Copse as they called it. There was three different football pitches. There was a Grotto to our Lady on the lawn with Primula all around.

There was Fr. Cerea’s garden where he grew all sorts of flowers and vegetables.

There was a Recreation room where you could play Table Tennis, Snooker, Billiards, Chess or Draughts.

And to cap it all it was where the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne went to school.

Holiday Camp

This really was different from Greenock. This really was like a holiday camp. It was going to be fantastic. We were now living in a really great place and we were going to become priests and go to Africa to teach the natives about God at the end of it.

Little did we realise that the holiday camp would turn out more like a prison camp.

After our parents had departed on the first day I asked one of the 2nd year boys if we could have a look around outside and perhaps go down to the local town.

We couldn’t.

We were not allowed to leave the grounds. There was a wall about four feet high surrounding The College.

It might as well have been 40 feet.

Comboni Missionaries Vocations – The Cash Benefits

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Cash Benefits

A new unexpected bonus from having a vocation was that people would give you money – and lots of it. Before I set off to be a priest I was told by my mother to go around the houses of relatives and friends of the family.

This was an absolute goldmine. Generally they would give you a ten-shilling note. This was the equivalent to only 50p in today’s currency but it was worth a lot more then. It would buy 20 chocolate bars.

To give you some kind of perspective my weekly pocket money was 10d, whereas a ten shilling note was worth 120d. So I was getting 12 weeks pocket money at every house I would visit.

And it wasn’t a one-off!

Every time I came home from the college I would go and visit my aunts and uncles and family friends and I would receive more money.

I would usually get between 6 and 8 of these so I was getting around a year and a half’s pocket money from just one trip around the town.

My Brother’s Vocation

Years later my brother ‘got a vocation’ and went off to the same place. My parents always suspected that it was the financial benefits that attracted him but he always denied it vociferously enough that they gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, this was a second chance to have a son become a priest.

I didn’t always get it at the end of the summer either just before I went back. I got some of them at the beginning and this made for very pleasant summers with a whole heap of money in my pocket.

Why they all gave me money I don’t know. A ten-shilling note was a lot of money then and was quite a significant part of their weekly pay packet after tax. In fact my guess would be it would be close to 10% of their weekly take home pay.

I have wondered if I was getting their ‘contribution to God’ and that I would remember them when I became a priest.

Generosity of Heart

I think it was mainly down to their generosity though and their feeling of duty to help a member of what was quite a close family in the early days when there was an opportunity for one of their number to make something of himself at an early age.

One sometimes felt a little guilty at some of the things I spent this money on. Would they have felt that part of their money should go on things like a Lemon Meringue Pie?

I also bought a Brownie camera at some expense and took lots of pictures which were quite expensive to get developed in those days.

I probably had more spare and ready-to-spend cash in those days as an 11-13 year old boy than I would have till I got well into my twenties.

Joining the Chosen Ones

Those were great days – and I had joined the Chosen Ones as well.

Life could not have been sweeter.

The future could not have been brighter here on earth – and then there was a good spot available to be had in the hereafter as well.

This was the mid sixties and it was a pretty hopeful time anyway.

And I was right near the front of the queue.

Comboni Missionaries | How I was ‘Called By God’ – My Vocation

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Comboni Missionaries – The Sell

I had already decided, mainly because of Fr. Maloney and my mother’s pride, that I wanted to enter the priesthood, that I was sold on the idea of being a priest. It seemed like a great career move. It had status. I had also wanted to be a footballer and play for Scotland but this seemed equally as good.

So, when Fr. Tavano hit town when I was just 10 years of age I was an easy sell. He had been sent by the missionary order the Verona Fathers, an offshoot of the Jesuits, to find boys who would become priests.

Greenock was a fertile area for him as he grabbed five boys on the trip. Greenock was a place, in those days, where the British Army were able to grab lots of boys to join up. It sounded great – certainly compared to a life in Greenock. OK, you night go to war and have people shoot at you – but at least in the Army that was just a might.

Great Salesman for Comboni Missionaries

Fr. Tavano really sold. He would have made an excellent salesman in another profession. He sold and he sold and he sold. He made the college, where we would be living, sound like an upmarket holiday resort. Then there was the opportunity of foreign travel to exotic Africa when you became a priest.

He told us that we would have a tour of the surrounding district every Wednesday. Little did we know that this would be virtually the only time we were allowed out of the grounds. Even this was heavily supervised. The junior head boy would be at the front and the priest who was head of the junior school, Fr. Pinkman (of him, more later), would be at the back.

Liam Gribben

One of the Greenock boys, Liam Gribben, who joined at the same time as I did felt hard done by as regards the walk around the locale. He had thought that these would be bus tours. After all the local bus company in Greenock, Doigs, regularly advertised tours to places like Loch Lomond at advantageous rates. Unfortunately for us these rates were well beyond the means of our parents.

Maybe he had yearned to do something like that. Maybe he had seen the ads and begged his parents to go. Now there was an opportunity to go on a tour every week.

However, Fr, Tavano was a born salesman and a tour was how he described the weekly walk. I bet he would have sold lots of houses or second hand cars. Unfortunately for us he was not just selling us a commodity that we could sell on. He was selling us a philosophy and a way of life.

With slides of the college and Africa and a description of the lifestyle, he was on a winner. At the end he asked the 10 and 11-year-old boys who wanted to come. I remember that quite a few hands went up. Mine was one of them.

I don’t know what happened to the others. Perhaps their parents told them not to be so daft. Mine were proud of me and proud that the local priests were so proud as well. I volunteered myself they said. It wasn’t down to any of them at all.

Special Summer

It was a great summer. I was special. I was going to become a priest. I had a vocation. I was chosen by God. I was specially picked out of so many other people by God. I was to be his chosen one.

By God those were heady days for a ten / eleven year old (my birthday was in June).

Other people were desperate to know what a vocation was like. How did I know I was called by God? What did it feel like? It was like I had the secret of life, the Holy Grail.

To be perfectly frank I was as in the dark as they were but I explained it all to them – like it was explained to me. They nodded as I explained – but I could see that they still felt a bit on the outside.

My Vocation to the Priesthood

I was not on the outside. I was right bang on the inside. I was chosen and they were not. I must admit it was hard not to get a superiority complex. How could you not when God had specially picked you out? He wanted you and not the rest of them. He didn’t want them. He wanted you.

And I was only just reaching my eleventh birthday. Life was so full of hope. This was the sixties when hope abounded among the young anyway. And the rest of them weren’t even God’s chosen ones.

We had it in spades!

A Gang of Brothers

I was put in touch with the other guys who would be ‘entering the priesthood’ as we thought at the time. In total there were five boys from Greenock, including myself. It was a particularly good catch by Fr. Tavano. I don’t think that he got as many anywhere else including London.

We spent the summer together – the Chosen Few. It was a time of great optimism. We had a whale of a time together. I remember that we hit it off greatly and we laughed a lot – in fact a hell of a lot. It seemed that people chosen specially by God had quite a lot in common. We were like brothers in arms. In fact looking back perhaps that was the greatest summer of my life. Life stretched out long in front of us – and we were going to be in God’s special legion.

We really believed that we were all going to be priests – the whole five us. We felt that we had already passed the audition. We believed that we had already been selected, that all we needed now was the training.

Vocations Lost

Fr. Tavano didn’t tell us otherwise – although he must have known. It seems that only about one in twenty of the boys ‘chosen by God’ in this way actually make it through to the priesthood.

Some of them leave having ‘lost their vocation’ along the way. The majority, though, are simply ignominiously dumped. There remains the strong suspicion that some were dumped to save paedophile priests from being found out when the boys got a little older and wiser.

Can you imagine how it feels to be selected by God and then dumped by his emissaries on earth?

What would you do after that?

I remember once reading that John Lennon said that when the Beatles broke up when he was in his late twenties he wondered “what do you do after you’ve been a Beatle?”

When Your Vocation is Gone

I think that, to an even greater extent, we could ask the same question. “What do you do after you’ve been specially chosen By God – and then he no longer wants you”?

The answer sadly for many of those who were rejected is ‘not much’.

As I said, only about one-in-twenty of those ‘chosen by God’ actually make it through to the priesthood and Fr. Tavano didn’t tell us about that when we signed up. We thought we were already there.

We were called by God – and then, seemingly, he dumped us because we had become’defiled’ by one of his servants.

Comboni Missionaries | The Beginnings of My Vocation

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Implantation

“What’s the half of two and two” asked Fr. Maloney. I knew the answer as he had asked the same question many times before. I wasn’t sure if he was forgetful or whether he just liked to hear the answer. Some of the other altar boys preferred to indulge him by giving the wrong answer so that he could gain great delight from explaining it. I swapped about, sometimes giving the right answer and sometimes the wrong one.

“Two”, I replied.

“No three” he said.

“Why is that?” I indulged him.

“What’s the half of two” he asked.

“One” I replied.

“So what’s one and two” he asked and waited for the trap to be sprung and realisation to happen.

“Three”, I said, caught again by his ruse.

That pleased him a lot.

Father Maloney

Fr. Maloney was a very holy man. He was proudly Irish, proudly Catholic and proudly priest. He wasn’t one of those holier than thou religious people. He wasn’t using his religion or position to feel better than other people or to look down on them. His holiness was genuine.

However, it was now time for his half-a-crown question.

“So what are you going to be when you grow up?” he asked.

This, of course, was another question that he asked heaps of times. He asked the other altar boys as well, but he asked me the most. He knew that my father was in hospital with tuberculosis and that my mother was struggling to get by, and there wasn’t much spending money.

Vow of Poverty

Priests, although they take a vow of Poverty and are supposed to own nothing of their own and get no pay, get bits and pieces from parishioners. If they officiate at a wedding or a funeral they tend to get a ‘bung’.

I don’t know what most of them do with it, but Fr. Maloney tended to look for ways to give it away again. He was a redistributor of wealth in his own small scale.

When he first asked his ‘career’ question, the altar boys gave all sorts of things that they wanted to do when they grew up. However, we had worked out long ago that ‘footballer’ or ‘doctor’ was not the right answer.

The Right Answer

I think that I was the first to say ‘priest’. The other altar boys were still slightly behind the times. After a while they started to say ‘priest’ in answer to teh question or if they were feeling brave ‘bishop’. However they weren’t ambitious enough.

“Pope”, I replied, whereupon he immediately fought his way through his cassock to pull out a lovely big silver half-a-crown.

“Here you are” he said delightedly. “Get something for your brothers and sisters too”.

The other altar boys usually got a sixpence if they got anything. I was never sure if it was my brave replies that got the half-a-crown or whether he was just looking for a way to give me the money anyway. I suspect it was the latter.

Family Struggles

My father was in hospital with tuberculosis and my mother had a family of seven to bring up on her own.

This was a princely sum of money and he gave it on a fairly regular basis.

Whenever he met my mother he would tell her, often in my presence, that I had told him that I wanted to be a priest. He would put his hand on my head and look delighted. My mother looked suitably delighted too that her young son had brought her such kudos from the local holy man.

Gradually it grew in my head that a priest was a good thing to be. It seemed to be a career with a lot of kudos and my mother would be in seventh heaven to have a son who was a priest.

Brainwashed?

I’m sure that I could look back and say that Fr. Maloney was not all that he seemed, that he was a conniving person who gradually brainwashed little boys, using cash rewards, into wanting to join the ranks of the priesthood.

I’m sure that, like many others in the church, he was worried about the falling numbers of boys who wanted to become priests. However, it was the profession that he had chosen, which seemed to give him personal fulfillment, and which, I’m sure he felt he could recommend to other people.

However, I suspect that if it was the local Accountant who was dispensing money for the ‘right’ answer to his question about what I was going to do when I was older, then there is a good chance that I might now be an Accountant (although I’m not sure what the equivalent of Pope is in that profession).

Parish Priests

To my mother, and many of the people of the parish, priests were the local equivalent of pop stars or movie stars.

Maybe not too many people aspired to become priests, but those who did received a tremendous amount of admiration and respect for doing it.

So that was how the idea formed in my head that I wanted to be a priest!