OBITUARY : BROTHER BENEDICT SULLIVAN C.P. (d. 6th January 1937, aged 84 years.) A venerable figure has been removed from our midst by the death of Bro. Benedict (Sullivan), C.P., which occurred at Holy Cross Retreat, Ardoyne, Belfast, on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, 1937. Bro. Benedict, both by age and by profession, was the patriarch of St. Patrick’s Province, for he had attained the ripe old age of eighty-four years, nearly sixty of which had been spent in religion . Born in Mullinavat, Co. Kilkenny, on August 27th, 1853, Laurence Sullivan, as he was then known, spent his boyhood amongst a people who still remembered only too vividly the horrors of the Famine of 1847-49. Like thousands of his countrymen, he decided to seek abroad the security and the livelihood denied to him in his own land; and thus, whilst still a youth, he migrated to the United States, where he settled in Pittsburg. Here he became acquainted with the Passionist Fathers, an acquaintance which soon produced happy results for the lonely Irish exile. It is no small testimony to his solid piety and the deep-rooted spirituality to record that the materialism of a great American city fostered rather than destroyed the religious vocation which called him away from the world and invited him to the cloister. Entering the noviciate at the age of twenty-five he made his religious profession on September 7th, 1879, taking the name of Benedict of the Nativity of Our Lady. After some few years in America, Bro. Benedict was transferred back to the home country, where he spent the remainder of his life, chiefly at St. Paul’s Retreat, Mount Argus, Dublin, and at Ardoyne, Belfast. For more than fifteen years Bro. Benedict acted as porter at Mount Argus, and only those who are acquainted with the busy life of the Dublin Retreat of the Passionists can realise how arduous and how exacting was his task. The admonition regarding the duties of the Brother Porter given in the Passionist Regulations was not lost upon Bro. Benedict. Indeed, he fulfilled to the letter that prudent counsel which bids the porter ” to receive everybody with modesty and politeness, remembering that the manners of the porter have a great deal to do with the good name of the Retreat.” At other periods he acted as sacristan and refectorian fulfilling every duty entrusted to him by holy obedience with the same diligence and exactitude. At Mount Argus, Bro. Benedict had the privilege of living in the same community with the saintly Fr. Charles, and was one of those who assisted at the death-bed of that holy Passionist. His later years were passed in almost complete retirement at Holy Cross Retreat Ardoyne, where he bore the cross of increasing infirmity with exemplary patience and resignation. May he rest in peace. (ex. “The Cross” February 1937, Vol. XXVII, p.444)