Adventures of a man 'freed' by his church

THE first time Patrick O'Sullivan asked the Roman Catholic Church for a dispensation to leave the priesthood, he was knocked back.

As he had not broken his vows, the church would not consider his request.

O'Sullivan, or 'Father' as he was known back then, said he wanted to leave the ministry because he felt he had a stronger calling elsewhere.

"I wanted to continue teaching and I was more interested in helping youths in their careers," he said. "That was really what I wanted to do."

He would have to wait six more years, until 1977 before his pleas were heard by the Curia (papal court) and he was released.

Asked how he felt after he left, O'Sullivan laughs. "I felt relieved," he said. "I didn't have this thing hanging over me, these other obligations. I was able to continue with my life."

And he did. 

O'Sullivan has written a book, titled An Irish Medley, Memories of Home and Abroad, about his time as a priest and teacher in Ireland, Fiji and New York.

Born in Glantane in County Cork, Ireland, in 1935 as the ninth of 10 children, O'Sullivan

originally joined the priesthood because he wanted to help the less fortunate. When he was 25, he was sent to Buffalo, New York, by the church to teach English and mathematics before being offered a position at a Catholic school in the pacific.

"It was in the middle of the winter and there was about two feet of snow on the ground. I decided maybe the tropics might be a good place to go to for a while, so off I went to the Fiji islands."

O'Sullivan landed in Fiji at 5am around January 1 1965 and said his first memory was the heat hitting him like a coal fire.

But he soon acclimatised and fell in love with the country. He spent 30 years teaching there, and almost a decade after leaving the priesthood, met his future wife.

This year, O'Sullivan, at the suggestion of his wife Mary, published his memoirs which detail his adventures in Ireland and the Pacific Islands.

"I had actually relayed these stories early on to my daughter when she was young, telling her about things in Ireland where I grew up. My wife had suggested, 'Oh you should jot those things down, she can read them when she gets older'."

An Irish Medley, Memories of Home and Abroad, was launched this year.

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