for god and country
Introduction
a man for all seasons.
Rev. John P. Foley, S.J. was born on June 6, 1904 in Motherwell, Scotland, of Irish parents who emigrated to the United States when he was six weeks old. He grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. And after graduating from Boston College High School at the age of nineteen, he entered the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, on August 14, 1923, to begin a thirteen year course of study and spiritual formation that led to his ordination to the priesthood in 1936. As part of his training he studied at Heythrop College, in England, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in classical studies. He was later awarded a Master’s degree in Classics at Boston College.
Along the way he gave evidence of gifts of capable leadership that led to his appointment in 1939 as Dean of Admissions and Assistant Dean of Freshmen and Sophomores at Boston College. On December 8, 1941, a day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Fr. Foley volunteered for service as a Chaplain in the United States military. One of his favorite quotes from Horace: “Cras ingens iterabimus aequor” came to life. “Tomorrow we set out on the enormous ocean.” He was commissioned as a Lieutenant (j.g.) in the Navy on February 22, 1942; promoted to Lieutenant on March 1, 1942 and to Lieutenant Commander on October 3, 1945. From the day he began his assignment to Chaplain’s School in Norfolk, Virginia, on April 15, 1942, until he was discharged on October 7, 1945, he kept a diary of his experiences as a Navy Chaplain assigned to warships, first on the USS George Clymer, an attack ship and troop carrier, and then on the USS Vella Gulf, an aircraft carrier. He
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seems to have kept the diary for the benefit of family and particularly his mother, who was widowed when Foley, the oldest of eight children, was a teenager, and for his sister Catherine, to whom he was particularly close. The diary includes details that would have been of particular interest to members of his family, particularly his visits with his brother Edward, 12 years his junior, who was also serving in the South Pacific, and his practice of making the Stations Of the Cross in memory of his father at each church he visited, whether in Wellington, New Zealand, or at a mission station on one of the Solomon Islands. But his central focus, as captured in the diary, was the war he witnessed. A keen observer whose Roman collar allowed him access to places, on board and on land, normally closed to men of his rank, Fr. Foley took careful notes of the horrors and heroism, and the young men he served, comforted and buried—and they were of all faiths; the Navy could only staff one chaplain on a ship that might be carrying 3,000 men. He also wrote about the nature of war propaganda, the difficulty of holding religious services under dangerous and distracting condi-
