From homily delivered by Fr Mark Raper SJ at Mass celebrating the life of Francis George Doyle SJ (4 October 1931 ~ 17 March 2011) on 22 March 2011, at St Ignatius Oratory, Loyola House of Studies, Manila
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Fr Harold Naylor has been a contemporary of Frank since their early days in the Society, and is a member of the Wah Yan Kowloon community that Frank had planned to visit next month for a retreat and holiday. Harold memories of Frank reveal him as a person of community: “I have been a friend of Frank since he was our choir leader when I was at the Juniorate 1953-6 and then in Philosophy 1956-9, after which he was selected to go to Hong Kong. He had done well at University College Dublin, earning a good B.A. in Classics, Latin and Greek. In 1955 I was with him at Maynooth Seminary for a national sacred music weekend. He also had a deep and beautiful voice for singing and preaching. As was the custom with Irish Jesuits in Hong Kong, when it came time for Theology, he returned to Dublin. However after Christmas that year, Fr. LaDany requested that a Jesuit be assigned to his China News Analysis to edit the English of that fortnightly and do research on China. For this it was better for Frank to get familiar with written Chinese by studying Theology at Bellarmine College in Baguio. He did that and it influenced me to join him in Baguio in June 1962. Here we were over fifty scholastics destined to work in China. And here Frank was known as a good friend of all, especially the numerous Spaniards.
He was appreciated as a man of fun and good humour. To which he added much pastoral work with ESCA, the Catholic Student Movement. He was showing his true self as a pastoral man, bringing the freedom of Christ’s love for all.”
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Fr George Zee, who is with us representing the Chinese Province, reports that whenever Frank came back to Wah Yan Kowloon, all sorts of people lined up for the chance to meet him and to share a meal. It could be a group of former students, with the janitor, a rich friend or someone very poor. Frank was happy to be with each one, he listened to them and they counted him as their friend. Again Harold Naylor: “He simply wanted to help people in their spiritual life by being friendly and he became a blessing in the lives of many thousands of people.”
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Just recently, Father Doyle had sent to a friend this poem of Henry Scott Holland (1847~1918), Canon of St.Paul’s Cathedral:
Death is Nothing (aka What is Death)
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.
All is well.