Father Oswald (Bennett), C.P. PASSIONISTS of St. Joseph’s Province (England and Wales) have lost a priest of rare spiritual and intellectual worth in the passing of Father Oswald (Bennett), C.P. Death came while he was supplying in the Parish of St. John’s, Burscough, near Ormskirk. It struck without warning as he was preparing to offer Mass on Monday, February 27th. A Londoner, Father Oswald was born in 1884, and, like many another noted son of St. Paul of the Cross, he was nurtured in the faith of the Anglican Communion. His upbringing ran along the conventional lines of a well-to-do member of the Established Church. For his secondary education, he went to St. Paul’s, one of England’s centuries-old public schools. Tradition was duly maintained by his going up to Cambridge, where, in 1905, the name of Reginald Francis Bennett stood high on the roll of graduates. Whilst studying at the University, he became interested in the claims of the Catholic Church. This interest gradually deepened until doubt finally passed and he received the gift of the true Faith. It was his good fortune, at this time, to meet a distinguished graduate of Trinity College – himself a Cambridge convert of two years’ standing – the Rev. Robert Hugh Benson, who received him into the Church during his last year at the University. The call to the religious life came three years later, when he entered the Passionist Novitiate of the then Anglo-Hibernian Province at St. Saviour’s Retreat, Broadway, Worcs., where, on the 20th February, 1908, he was clothed in the habit of the Passion. In the Autumn of that year, the Novitiate was transferred from Broadway and established temporarily at Mount Argus, Dublin, pending the erection of the new Novitiate at St. Gabriel’s, The Graan. Enniskillen. Thus, Father Oswald was one of the few novices to have been professed at St, Paul’s Retreat, Mount Argus. On the 21st December, 1913, he was ordained priest in Holy Cross College, Clonliffe, by the Most Rev. Dr. W. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin. Following his ordination, he was appointed to the mission staff of St. Joseph’s Retreat, Highgate, London, and shortly after the outbreak of World War I, volunteered as a chaplain to the Forces. After the war, his apostolate took him to the far-off mission fields of Australia, where his name as a missioner is still held in benediction. Returning from Australia via America, he spent a period of intense missionary activity in the United States. On his recall to England in 1932, he was once again appointed a member of the Highgate Community, and later was attached to our Retreats at Birmingham, Ilkley and Ormskirk. The death of Father Oswald has inflicted a deep wound on the Province of St. Joseph – a wound which will not quickly heal. His was a life, dedicated without reserve to the highest priestly and Passionist ideals. As a missioner, he will long be remembered for his eloquence and purity of style. To listen to him was to realise that here was a man of training and culture. But perhaps he will be remembered best as a preacher of retreats to the clergy and religious communities. In this work, he had few equals. Father Oswald’s zeal extended to the written as well as to the spoken word. Despite his other labours, he found time to write an inspiring work on the Stations of the Cross, entitled, This Royal Way. In addition, he wrote for a number of Catholic periodicals and magazines, including THE CROSS, and was for many years a valued contributor to The Catholic Times. May his soul rest in peace. (The Cross, Vol. XLVII, 1956-57; p. 11.)