Fr Robert ‘Bob’ Barrow SJ

Fr Bob Barrow SJ died on 23 November 2022 in Georgetown, Guyana. He was 93 years old, in the 68th year of religious life.

Bob was born in Upminster, Essex, on 9 December 1928. He was educated at St Ignatius College, Stamford Hill, and then took a Teachers’ Certificate at St Mary’s Training College in Strawberry Hill.

He was then called up for his National Service, and joined the Education Corps, teaching the children of the British occupying forces in Trieste for eighteen months. After being demobbed, he taught at St Ignatius, Stamford Hill, until he entered the novitiate at Harlaxton in 1954, taking his first vows there two years later.

Bob studied philosophy at Heythrop in Oxfordshire between 1956 and 1959, and theology there from 1960 to 1964, studying mathematics and physics at the University of London in the intervening year. He was ordained with his brother

Michael at Heythrop in 1963 and, after tertianship at St Beuno’s under Paul Kennedy, was sent to what was then British Guiana to teach at St Stanislaus College in Georgetown.

In 1966, he took a Master’s degree in education at Fordham University in New York. He then returned to St Stanislaus in what was by then Guyana, where he taught physics and offered student counselling until 1974, when he was made mission superior. In 1980 he became superior and parish priest of the Sacred Heart community in Georgetown, returning to the UK for a sabbatical at Craighead Retreat House in 1985. The following year he was assigned to the Brickdam community in Georgetown, and over the next three years worked variously as psychological counsellor, spiritual director, vocations’ promotor, regional treasurer and novice-master for Guyana.

A period of sick leave in the UK followed, after which he went to Port Mourant in the Corentyne District of Guyana as superior and parish priest. 1995 saw a brief return to Brickdam, but the following year he was assigned to Spanish Town in Jamaica as assistant to the novice-master.

By 1997, he was back at the Sacred Heart in Georgetown, working on the parish staff there, and two years later became parish priest at Plaisance and regional treasurer. In 2004, he became superior of the houses in Georgetown and the East Coast. He moved to Arrupe House in Georgetown in 2010, continuing as treasurer and undertaking pastoral ministries, and praying for the Church and the Society from 2017 until his death.