Legend of a Priest Who Crucified Lambeth Council
He was a parish priest first and foremost, but to others he is a legend. Canon John Devane who has retired after 37 years a parish priest in West Norwood was a veteran critic of Lambeth Council. His weekly sermons were usually prefaced an anecdote about yet another outrage by the pen pushers at the Town Hall. As Roman Catholic diocesan representative on the Education Committee in the early 1990s, he aroused the then Director Beb Burchell to explode: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest," echoing King Henry II's furious outburst about his saintly Archbishop of Canterbury.Neither was Canon Devane willing to go to an unquiet grave. His last major campaign against petty bureaucrats at the town hall was over his wish to have Christian burial in West Norwood Cemetery. "Parishioners can either come to my grave and pray if they liked me, or dance on it if they don't," he quipped.
Cemetery officers tried to deny this wish claiming the cemetery was full and that making an exception would create a precedent. Then they offered him a berth to eternity next to some Anglican nuns in the Church of England reserve. Fortunately, Labour was temporarily out of power and common sense prevailed when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration overruled the officers and granted his wish - unheard of now Labour is back in office.
Canon John Devane who hailed from Kilkenny in County Kerry in Ireland is a life long teetotaller who nevertheless liked nothing better than to entertain - parishioners, teachers, councillors, and not always the great and the good. He rebuilt the finances of his parish through shrewd husbandry of the pennies as well as the pounds, but also threw his heart and soul into youth work and Catholic education. He was chairman of governors and St Francis Cabrini Primary and also at Bishop Thomas Grant Secondary. Buying the site of the church car park was he reckoned his shrewdest decision.
Never afraid to take on the authorities, Canon Devane defied his own bishops by taking all but one of the Catholic schools grant maintained in the Tory years to give them independence from a notoriously anti-church school Labour council in Lambeth. However, Canon Devane's waggish, and sometimes sardonic humour, defused many a confrontation. His knowledge of headteachers, parents, pupils, and youth workers was second to none. At times garrulous and slightly petulant, Canon Devane knew when to walk away and turn the other cheek. After all his faith sustained him through even the darkest hours.
Courageous through ill health in his later years, Canon Devane was determined to enjoy the parish's centennial before retiring or going to the Purley Gates. Any evening with him produced a fund of clerical stories usually jokes at the expense of other Irish clerics or bishops one of which concerned a cigar and an Irish pub that closed for business while a bishop had a Havana. Another was about contacting a parish priest in a remote district of Ireland where cremation was unknown. Instead of driving to meet the newly arrived relative with the deceased's cremated remains in a jam jar, the unworldly cleric sent a horse-drawn hearse thinking he was receiving a coffin. Another concerned how he financed a new carpet in church. "Well, this lai-dy hayer--dress-her," he drawled in his unreconstructed Irish accent, "came to con--fession in South London because she didn't want anyone in her par--ish to hear about her sins. And dat's how I came by the car--pet as part of her pen--ance."
He often told his parishoners, perhaps in jest, that he didn't want any bishop conducting his funeral mass, but when they visited St Matthew's on special occasions he was always a model of courtesy and welcome, controlling the order of service with hand signals and what to the initiated might look like unseemly gestures. As it turned out, Canon Devane outlived several bishops and even presided over the choice of the current Archbishop of Southwark. It was fitting that Bishop Lynch was full of humour at his farewell service even promising to sshow this bloh to the Archbishop. No one was ever sure of Father Devane's politics, but he was always on the side of those elected by the people who fought for the people. As for me brought up in a family that revered priests, I was never able to imitate by fellow councillors call Canon Devane by his first name - to me he was always "father."
Labels: Canon John Devane
posted by Cllr John Whelan on Wednesday, August 22, 2007
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