Wartime army chaplain who saw his role as serving everyone in need

This was published 12 years ago

Wartime army chaplain who saw his role as serving everyone in need

John Aloysius Morgan: Bishop, army chaplain

9-10-1909 - 21-5-2008

AUSTRALIA'S oldest Catholic bishop and long-time military chaplain, Aloysius Morgan, has died in Canberra, aged 98.

Morgan - his second name was favoured and he was known as Alo - was auxiliary bishop of Canberra and Goulburn from 1969 until his retirement in 1985. He began his distinguished 40-year career as a military chaplain in 1941, and was chaplain-general from 1955 to 1981.

He served with Australian troops in New Guinea from 1942 to the end of the war in 1945, a formative time in his own development. "I belonged to the whole community there, not just the Catholic men," he recalled when he retired as a bishop in 1985.


"I never saw men better than in those circumstances. The things that normally separated people were missing and they were bound together by difficulty, suffering and death."

He was at the signing of the formal surrender of the Japanese in Salamaua on August 15, 1945.

Born on a farm that is now part of Melbourne's Essendon Airport, he was educated at St Columba's Primary School before going on to St Joseph's in North Melbourne, which at the time of Morgan's retirement had produced four bishops for the Catholic church in Australia.

In 1927, he entered Corpus Christi College at Werribee, where he spent eight years studying for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1934 and served his first year at the parish at Mansfield; it covered gold mining areas and the emerging ski field at Mount Buller.

Next, he served at Brunswick and Kew and then St Patrick's Cathedral, where he worked closely with Archbishop Daniel Mannix.

The archbishop, a family friend who had confirmed and later ordained him, had been an army chaplain from 1917 and bishop of the defence forces until his death in November 1963.

After World War II, Morgan served in two Melbourne parishes before being appointed senior Catholic chaplain to Southern Command, then chaplain-general. He moved to the parish of St Thomas More in Canberra in 1964, and in 1969 he was appointed the first bishop of the military vicariate and auxiliary bishop of Canberra and Goulburn.

His link with the military was perhaps preordained: an early memory as a child was looking out to sea from the Mornington Peninsula when he saw the lights of a hospital ship returning from Gallipoli.

The Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn Mark Coleridge said Morgan's "courage and devotion to duty as a military chaplain were legendary, as was the depth of his Christian faith . . . his unique place in the annals of the Australian Defence Force and the Catholic Church in Australia is assured".

Morgan was a keen golfer and retained an active interest in a wide range of sports throughout his life; he was enthusiastic about the AFL and was a passionate supporter of the Essendon football club since childhood.

After his retirement, he lived for about 19 years at the presbytery of Canberra's St Christopher's Cathedral, saying Mass daily.

The former Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn, Francis Carroll, said at Morgan's funeral that "his deep spirituality and transparent faith found expression in constant prayerfulness and convicted preaching". He had the integrity and innate dignity of a genuinely humble man and his faith was integral to who he was.

Most Viewed in National