Michael Morrison (priest)

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Michael Morrison, and Jewish British Army Chaplain Leslie Hardman, conduct a joint service over Mass Grave number 2 at Belsen before it is filled in. 25 April 1945

Father Michael Morrison (October 1908, Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland, U.K. - April 1973, Dublin, Republic of Ireland[1]) was an Irish Jesuit priest. Educated at Sexton St. Christian Brothers, and at the Jesuit Mungret College, Limerick, he trained as a Jesuit Priest in St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Co. Offaly from 1925, and was ordained on 31 July 1939.[2]

He was teaching at Belvedere College when in 1941 during the Second World War, the British army called on Irish priests to serve as chaplains.

He was a British Army chaplain associated with the allied liberation of Belsen, a notorious death camp in April 1945.[3] He made that atrocious camp into a center for daily Holy Mass. Several people of varying religious persuasions attended his services.

Following the war he went to Australia working as a teacher.

He collapsed while walking up the steps in Belvedere House and Gardens and died in Jervis Street Hospital soon after in April 1973.[1] He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b BBC History
  2. ^ a b Michael Morrison Jesuit Priest and Chaplain Jesuit Archives.
  3. ^ Celinscak, Mark (2015). Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442615700.