Fr Michael Beattie SJ

Fr Michael Beattie died on 7 January 2023, in Chesterfield Royal Hospital. Members of the Mount St Mary’s staff were with him. He had been suffering from pneumonia after a fall on 4 January. He was 86 years old, in the 69th year of religious life.

Michael was born in Lytham in Lancashire on 31 May 1936, and educated at Mount St Mary’s College in Sheffield. He joined the novitiate at Harlaxton at the age of eighteen, and made a year’s juniorate in Manresa, Roehampton immediately after taking first vows.

Between 1957 and 1960, he studied for a licentiate in philosophy at Heythrop in Oxfordshire. After a year of special studies in modern languages at Campion Hall in Oxford, he made his regency at Mount St Mary’s teaching French.

In 1964, he returned to Heythrop for theology, and was ordained in Sheffield in 1967. A fourth year of theology was followed by tertianship at St Beuno’s under Paul Kennedy.

Between 1969 and 1972 he was a member of the parish staff at Sacred Heart, Wimbledon, then moved to St George’s, Worcester as superior and parish priest. In 1975, he became rector and parish priest at the Sacred Heart in Wimbledon, and next, after a sabbatical in Rome and the United States, moved to the Sacred Heart in Edinburgh as parish priest in 1983. While there, in 1986, he was appointed to the province vocations promotion team.

From 1991, he served as parish priest at Farm Street in London for seven years, becoming superior of the community in 1993. He was appointed superior and parish priest at Corpus