The
Rev. William John Ashley KIRKPATRICK (FR. BILL)
b. June 16th, 1927; d. January 4th, 2018
b. June 16th, 1927; d. January 4th, 2018
______________________________________
Fr.
Bill’s life was a life of “being there” informed by Divine Compassion.
Early
years
He
was born Campbell Durno in Calgary, Canada, the child of a liaison between his
father and the housekeeper, and when a month old was placed in a private
orphanage housing 50 other children. According to his own account, the
Great Depression caused the Home to close and the Kirkpatrick family moved to
Vancouver where they opened a home for elderly people. Bill stayed with the
Kirkpatrick family, and at age 14 he changed his name to that of the family,
but he was never formally fostered or adopted by them. His early
life, described in Mary Loudon’s book Revelations (1994), was
extremely unhappy and that may explain his great empathy with those in need.
Bill
was dyslexic, at a time when the condition was unrecognised, and because of
this he was deemed at various stages to be lazy or stupid and simply worked in
the home, cooking, cleaning, caring, and was expected eventually to take on the
running of the home At age 21 he came to England with the intention
to study music, but not having any money, he found work in
Selfridges selling saucepans and then at Foyles bookshop before
joining BOAC where he worked as cabin crew where his tall frame and rugged
features must have made quite an impression within the small planes of the day.
Once, on a stop-over in Calcutta, he was shocked by the raw poverty he
encountered, and a seed was sown. So after two years he decided to train as a
nurse and in 1957 went to St Charles’s Hospital in Ladbroke Grove, where he
received the hospital gold medal, presented by the Queen Mother that year, and
went on to specialise in psychiatric nursing.
Baptism
and ordination
He
was baptised and confirmed in 1965 and from 1967 to 1969 was a nursing
officer at the Royal London Hospital where he helped to develop the Chemical
Abuse Unit. This was the first such dedicated unit to the care of chemical
dependent persons and their families. At some point he encountered a man who
was both a psychiatrist and a priest and eventually offered himself for
ordination. He began on the Southwark Ordination Course and then went on
to Salisbury Theological College. He experienced difficulties and was
first refused ordination as a deacon and later, as a priest, but in 1968 Trevor
Huddleston CR, when bishop of Stepney, took the decision to ordain him deacon
and, in 1970, to the priesthood.
It
was then that he became a worker-priest nurse at St. Clement's
Hospital, Bow in east London. Bill was intent on following the model
of the French worker-priests but whereas they immersed themselves in ‘secular’
work in factories and organisations, he found himself drawn to what he called
‘loitering with intent’.
Work
with the homeless and life as a Franciscan
By
1970 Bill had become Coordinator of Centrepoint in Soho. The project, based in
the clergy house of the bombed church of St Anne in Soho, London, had been
started by the curate, Fr. Ken Leech, three years earlier to provide
emergency shelter and care for the rising tide of homeless young people
arriving in London. Fr. Ken also spoke of his ministry as a "loitering
ministry" which included helping kids who'd taken drug overdoses, and
caring for the hungry and homeless, ministries which appealed to Bill. It was
staffed by Fr. Ken, Anton Wallich-Clifford of the Simon Community (another
charity working with homeless people, which is influenced by the work of
Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker Movement in the USA. Bill was also inspired
by Dorothy and a host of volunteers.
Bill
lived in a tiny bed-sit in the clergy house and spent time in the chapel
of St Anne’s: “This taught me how essential this is for me and for the ministry
with the homeless, to be bathed in the sea of contemplative prayer, leading to
contemplative action.” He became a prophetic,
contemplative-in-the-City who built on Fr. Ken’s work but with a growing
sense that he needed to explore Franciscan religious life (three brothers of
the Society of St Francis (SSF) had moved into another flat in the old clergy
house) and, in 1975, began to test his vocation as a Franciscan at Hilfield
Friary in Dorset. Hilfield was the main community of SSF and, at his novicing,
Bill took the name of Aelred William – ‘Aelred’ after the great 12th c.
Cistercian saint of Rievaulx whose classic work, On Spiritual Friendship,
greatly appealed to Bill, and ‘William’ after the founder of Glasshampton
monastery (Fr. William Sirr). William had been a contemplative and many saw his
life and spirituality resembled that of St Charles de Foucauld whose life had
inspired the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus. In 1977 Br. Aelred William
N/SSF went to live at St Francis’ School, Hooke near Beaminster in Somerset.
The school had been founded just after the Second World War to educate boys
referred there by the courts but Bill found, by 1978, that the Franciscan
religious life was not for him, left the Franciscans and moved back to London.
Earls
Court – Reaching Out
By 1979 he was living in a basement flat in Earls Court Square and became an Honorary Assistant Curate at St Cuthbert’s, Philbeach Gardens. From his flat he founded the ministry known as ‘Reaching Out’, a ‘hearing-through-listening’ service freely available to all. Bill described this as “a small cell of contemplative action within the Earls Court area … allowing for a ministry of sharing from within the sacredness of each other’s vulnerabilities and strengths where there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’.” He maintained that listening should be an active process done in respect for persons trying to express their pain and problems. Their words must not go in one ear and out of the other, but into one’s intellect and heart. His experience with end of life care made him particularly attuned to the needs of people who were dying and their bereaved friends and relatives. Bill understood not just the power of words and of silence, but also of touch, he knew that the warmth of one hand upon another can help to drive away a little of the chill of life’s darkest times. He was much moved by the stories in the Bible where Christ’s feet were washed by Mary, sister of Martha, and when Christ washed the feet of his disciples it was not just a practical act but also a gesture of profound humility and charity.
By 1979 he was living in a basement flat in Earls Court Square and became an Honorary Assistant Curate at St Cuthbert’s, Philbeach Gardens. From his flat he founded the ministry known as ‘Reaching Out’, a ‘hearing-through-listening’ service freely available to all. Bill described this as “a small cell of contemplative action within the Earls Court area … allowing for a ministry of sharing from within the sacredness of each other’s vulnerabilities and strengths where there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’.” He maintained that listening should be an active process done in respect for persons trying to express their pain and problems. Their words must not go in one ear and out of the other, but into one’s intellect and heart. His experience with end of life care made him particularly attuned to the needs of people who were dying and their bereaved friends and relatives. Bill understood not just the power of words and of silence, but also of touch, he knew that the warmth of one hand upon another can help to drive away a little of the chill of life’s darkest times. He was much moved by the stories in the Bible where Christ’s feet were washed by Mary, sister of Martha, and when Christ washed the feet of his disciples it was not just a practical act but also a gesture of profound humility and charity.
Bishop
Gerald Ellison of London gave his blessing and two Trusts of Sir Maurice Laing
gave him a salary and rent for the flat. He often wondered what the strict
evangelical Laing might have made of his work with rent boys. Bill walked the
streets day and night, considered adopting some sort of religious habit akin to
the Little Brothers of Jesus, and people in need came to his basement flat in
Earls Court to talk.
Adjacent to the flat was the former coal cellar which he converted to a chapel. He would begin his day at dawn with a long period of contemplative prayer in this space beneath the pavement he had walked the previous night and reach out to his Lord as he had reached out to those in need.
Adjacent to the flat was the former coal cellar which he converted to a chapel. He would begin his day at dawn with a long period of contemplative prayer in this space beneath the pavement he had walked the previous night and reach out to his Lord as he had reached out to those in need.
Streetwise
Youth
Bill and his partner Richie (his previous partner of 20 years had married sometime earlier) were aware of male prostitution and the problems which this trade involved (Richie had been concerned about male prostitution since his days living in a poor part of Liverpool) and both were particularly shocked by the murder of a fifteen-year-old boy who “worked" the area. So in 1985 they founded ‘Streetwise Youth’ to provide support, advice and care to young men, many aged 16-18 or even younger, selling or exchanging sex, mainly in the Earl's Court area. Streetwise worked in partnership with Barnardo’s and was also financed in part by another of the Laing Trusts. The project closed in 1993 but a new Management Committee was formed, a report produced by Kensington and Chelsea NHS Health Authority, and the organisation re-launched in December 1994.
Bill and his partner Richie (his previous partner of 20 years had married sometime earlier) were aware of male prostitution and the problems which this trade involved (Richie had been concerned about male prostitution since his days living in a poor part of Liverpool) and both were particularly shocked by the murder of a fifteen-year-old boy who “worked" the area. So in 1985 they founded ‘Streetwise Youth’ to provide support, advice and care to young men, many aged 16-18 or even younger, selling or exchanging sex, mainly in the Earl's Court area. Streetwise worked in partnership with Barnardo’s and was also financed in part by another of the Laing Trusts. The project closed in 1993 but a new Management Committee was formed, a report produced by Kensington and Chelsea NHS Health Authority, and the organisation re-launched in December 1994.
AIDS/HIV
It
was during these years that AIDS and HIV had been diagnosed and in 1983 Bill
realised that 75 per cent of his work was with people who were affected by this
disease. People with AIDS then were widely considered to be literally
untouchable. He was part of the Terrence Higgins Trust’s Interfaith group
supporting other people of faith who were caring for people affected by AIDS
and helping to inform and develop a faith-based response to the challenges of
AIDS. As well as being able to refer people to sources of practical help where
appropriate, he would spend hours holding people’s hand and listening as they
cried out their grief, fear and anger. Bill joined the ‘Ministers’ Group’
which had been founded by Fr. Malcolm Johnson as an ecumenical support group
that would also arrange Services of Healing, as well as lectures and talks by
people such as Bishop William E. Swing of California who was one of the
first to see that the co-factors were not promiscuity, irresponsible behaviour,
or belonging to "risk-groups", but stigma, oppression, poverty and lack
of sexual health education.
Bill
conducted hundreds of funerals of mostly young men, and some women, who died
from AIDS. These were not solemn events but often a celebration that reflected
lives full of colour cut short. He enabled a community weighed down by the
horror of the epidemic and an endless river of deaths to give full expression
to both its pain and its faith in the value and beauty of each and every life.
Many of these were for people he had got to know and who were very dear to him.
In
these early fear-filled years of the epidemic his faith, experiences and
profound understanding of the importance of the warmth of human contact was a
beacon to people with HIV. It was also an inspiration for faith communities
that sometimes struggled against doctrine and custom to respond with compassion
and care to the people affected. Bill travelled widely, sharing his knowledge
and experience, including a visit to South Africa in 1996 at the invitation of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu to be the opening speaker at a conference on the
ecumenical response to AIDS. He was one of the first to coin the term “AFRAIDS”
– an irrational fear of AIDS – as he saw “the Church institution is very
fearful of the HIV virus that is carried in its brothers and sisters. This fear
leads to a judgmental and rejecting attitude as it continues to be unwilling to
be alongside those who mirror its own weaknesses and its own vulnerability. It
also highlights the fact that the Church seems to be living in fear of different
sexual orientations, preventing it from recognising and acceding relationships
which are co-creative of the pair, excluding them from the mystery of loving
each other physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.”
In
those early 1980’s people from mainly Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches
joined to challenge the ecclesiastical structural sin of AFRAIDS. Bill was one
of the first priests to throw himself into visiting the sick and burying the
dead, when no one else would. Bill, with Fr. David Randall, Br. Colin Wilfrid
SSF, Fr. Malcolm Johnson, Fr. Richard Kirker, Sr. Eva Heymann SHCJ, Charles
O’Byrne, Martin Prendergast and others, tried to show the churches how it was
possible to live positively with HIV and AIDS. The needs of these men were very
complex and Streetwise Youth responded with a professional team that provided
medical care, accommodation referrals and counselling. In 1991 he was presented
with the Childline/Telecom award for twenty years’ work with young people by
the Duchess of Kent when she visited the project’s centre in Earl’s Court.
Bill
was later to offer an invaluable resource in his 1993 book, AIDS: Sharing
the Pain.
Bill
and the media
It was his ministry with the homeless, those living with HIV/AIDS and sex workers that brought Bill to the attention of the media and he was often interviewed by the press on TV and the radio. In an interview for ‘The Independent’ he said:
It was his ministry with the homeless, those living with HIV/AIDS and sex workers that brought Bill to the attention of the media and he was often interviewed by the press on TV and the radio. In an interview for ‘The Independent’ he said:
‘The
church lays guilt on people to support its ongoing traditions. It has taken its
view of homosexuality as wrong from the tradition of Pauline theology, and
doesn't seem to have been able to take in the advances of psychology and
psychoanalysis, which have helped us to understand the basis of people's
behaviour.
I deal quite a lot with people who are ashamed. But, as I see it, there is a place and a need for the sex industry, provided it's properly regulated.
Initially, rent boys feel shame about their sexual behaviour: they have to get used to the idea of being a person who has sex with men. They try to turn their feelings off, because at first they think sex is disgusting; the only way they can cope is by becoming detached. Most manage to cope with it eventually, and, if they later lead ordinary lives, they block it all out. So shame doesn't necessarily enter into it. Not all rent boys are homosexual, only about half. Of the others, 30 per cent are heterosexual and the rest don't know. Some of the punters are very good to the boys. Some will have them to live in their homes and look after them for two or three years, partly because they want to care for someone. But, mostly, the sex industry is about passing encounters.
People with HIV don't feel shame if they've come to terms with who they are - but only a minority have. The majority of homosexual men I've been alongside have not shown shame unless so much has been laid upon them by their families that they can't shake it off. Families tell them, "We want grandchildren," and that makes a person very insecure.
On the family's side, they feel shame because of what they may have done to their sons by rejecting them, or by not wanting other people to know that their son died with Aids.
Everyone wants to be accepted when they're dying. When I conduct the funeral, the family may say, "Don't tell people my son died of Aids - say it was cancer." Other families can accept the remaining gay partner as a member of the family. But people often don't know how to handle one surviving member of a couple - it's as though half of them has disappeared.’
I deal quite a lot with people who are ashamed. But, as I see it, there is a place and a need for the sex industry, provided it's properly regulated.
Initially, rent boys feel shame about their sexual behaviour: they have to get used to the idea of being a person who has sex with men. They try to turn their feelings off, because at first they think sex is disgusting; the only way they can cope is by becoming detached. Most manage to cope with it eventually, and, if they later lead ordinary lives, they block it all out. So shame doesn't necessarily enter into it. Not all rent boys are homosexual, only about half. Of the others, 30 per cent are heterosexual and the rest don't know. Some of the punters are very good to the boys. Some will have them to live in their homes and look after them for two or three years, partly because they want to care for someone. But, mostly, the sex industry is about passing encounters.
People with HIV don't feel shame if they've come to terms with who they are - but only a minority have. The majority of homosexual men I've been alongside have not shown shame unless so much has been laid upon them by their families that they can't shake it off. Families tell them, "We want grandchildren," and that makes a person very insecure.
On the family's side, they feel shame because of what they may have done to their sons by rejecting them, or by not wanting other people to know that their son died with Aids.
Everyone wants to be accepted when they're dying. When I conduct the funeral, the family may say, "Don't tell people my son died of Aids - say it was cancer." Other families can accept the remaining gay partner as a member of the family. But people often don't know how to handle one surviving member of a couple - it's as though half of them has disappeared.’
Bill’s
spirituality
Bill’s
compassionate spirituality might be described by his simple expression: “being
there”. He estimated that he supported over 1300 men with AIDS (then
untreatable) and was present with over 350 of those as they died, then taking
their funerals and supporting their loved ones. Bill had grown up
gay in a straight world and his own early experiences were ones which left him
with the messages that he did not fully belong, was not fully wanted - not
really approved of. What he managed to achieve in the light of those messages
was astonishing and few in our own time and country can match him for being a
true active-contemplative, living out the gospel of the Beatitudes on the
margins of society. His life provides an infinitely compelling reading of
Christ’s Gospel and Bill brought himself, without adornment, to the energy the
Church calls grace and the results have been significant and beautiful. In the
most straightforward of ways he contemplated what the gospels say about the
elusive Jesus and he sought to live that out in the costly way of giving
himself to others. ‘Listening’ and ‘being there’ go a good way towards summing
up Bill’s life and work, but only if heard beyond the language of cliché. The
transformation of our psychic wounds into the unself-conscious business of
loving and healing others is indeed the work of grace. And in this, Bill’s life
and witness have been, and remain, of tremendous significance.
Amongst
those whose lives inspired him he acknowledged that Charles de Foucauld and Thomas
Merton played a key role: “Both have died to live for God and through God for
others. Both remained obedient to the mystery of Love and its ‘costing not less
than everything’.” From his time at Centrepoint he had developed a close
relationship with the Sisters of the Love of God at Fairacres, Oxford where
Mother Mary Clare SLG had become his “soul friend”.
Bill
was an icon – a representation of things good and Godly, not in any
self-conscious or showy way, but whilst (or because) he had been starved in his
crucial early years of love and security he went on to become hugely loving in
the most unsentimental and costly of ways. His life and work as a priest was in
the shadows, self-effacing and concentrated on those beyond the reach of the church.
What he grew into was a kind of ordinary holiness. He was also sometimes
cheeky, playful and great fun. His own vulnerabilities and later psychiatric
training enabled him to have great empathy for those with all sorts of
practical, emotional and spiritual needs.
Conclusion
From
his early training as a nurse through his time as Coordinator of Centrepoint,
his time spent living as a Franciscan, his ‘reaching out’ with mercy to young
men in Earls Court and to male prostitutes through ‘Streetwise Youth’ until,
finally, he founded ‘St Cuthberts', an open door drop-in centre for
all marginalised, vulnerable people in Earl’s Court and the surrounding areas,
it is compellingly obvious that it was compassion, as lived by Jesus and
Francis, which informed his life, a life which reflected that of the
Compassionate Samaritan. He was by nature and grace a contemplative and the
dislocations in his early life had sensitised him to the sufferings of
others. He described himself as a “contemplative activator” and was
prophetic in his vision of what it means to be human and how we might live in
prayerful listening to God. He believed that we are “co-creators” of life,
called to be spiritual rather than religious, truly catholic, knowing God to be
above all traditions, a God of all peoples who acts in all and leaves his
traces in all, wherever they may be found.
His
contemplative spirituality was deeply influenced by the agape-eros love of
Aelred of Rievaulx, the love of Lady Poverty which inspired St Francis of
Assisi, the compassionate love of Charles de Foucauld (St Charles of Jesus to
whom he bore some physical resemblance) and the writings of Thomas Merton. He
had close links with the Anglican Sisters of the Love of God at Fairacres,
Oxford whose charism is inspired by the Carmelite contemplative tradition with
its emphasis on the hidden love of God and he was especially close to Mother
Mary Clare SLG who acted as his spiritual director for many years. All these
informed Bill’s spirituality – his own means of living in and out of the love
of God and the calling he had. His personal vocation of "being there"
expressed a profoundly contemplative stance before “the Mystery”. People have
said they hardly ever heard him talk of “God”, the “Almighty” or the “divine” –
it was always simply falling down before “the Mystery” – and one became acutely
aware of this when he prayed publicly, or celebrated Mass. As he said, being
there “… puts me into deeper awareness of my innermost self, my contemplative
self alongside my active self, my most vulnerable and valuable self, where I
have been and still am faced with the ultimate questions about life and perhaps
more importantly about dying and death.”
The
final years
In
2007, Bill suffered a serious mental breakdown (psychosis), compounded by
dementia. He was hospitalised for nearly a year, and then moved to 3 Beatrice
Place, a nursing home for people with severe dementia. The staff lovingly
cared for him and supported him until he died there.
Bill
was always interested in complementary medicine, the spirituality of care,
and interfaith dialogue. His books included AIDS: Sharing the pain (1988), Cry
Love, Cry Hope (ed. 1994), Going Forth: A practical and spiritual
approach to dying and death (1997) and The
Creativity of Listening: Being There, Reaching Out (2005)
____________________
Quotations
from: ‘A Contemplative in the City’, Fr. Bill Kirkpatrick, 1994, Journal
of the Thomas Merton Society.
________________________________________________
With
thanks to (amongst others): the Rev. Colin Coward, the Rev. Dr. Malcolm
Johnson, Martin Pendergast and the Rev. Hugh Valentine.
Fr.
John-Francis Friendship
February
9th, 2018
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