On 13 October 1964, Patrick Keegan, pioneer of the YCW in England and with the International YCW, as well as co-founder of the World Movement of Christian Workers (WMCW) became the first lay person to address the Second Vatican Council.
Indeed, it was the first time that a layperson had addressed an Ecumenical Council since the Fifth Century.
I’ve written before about that speech:
In this post, however, I’d just like to recall the person he was, a man who died a “most holy death,” according to the late British Archbishop Derek Worlock.
In the eulogy at his funeral, another YCW chaplain, Fr Ed Mitchinson, told the story of Pat’s working class background:
His father was from Ireland and progressed from farm–labourer to miner to steel worker. His mother was Lancashire born and a four–loom weaver. The need of his work and wage precluded a grammar-school scholarship and at fourteen Pat started work in a garage and left that later for better money – sixteen shillings a week with stoppages – as a little piecer in Howbridge Mills. Laughter greeted him when he arrived for training in the garage boilersuit. It was very hot work piecing bobbins at the mule spinning and work started at 7.45 a.m. and finished at 5.30 p.m. Like the others Pat was soon topless and barefooted.
And the way in which he came to join the embryonic English YCW:
The Keegans lived in Hindley near Wigan. Pat has recalled the Benedictine led parish community with great affection. He was trained to make the sign of the Cross as he buttoned up his coat to go out and would eat his breakfast sandwiches at school after weekday Mass and communion. Sunday evenings in the parish club brought the occasional visiting speaker. One Winter evening in 1937 this was Gerard Rimmer, curate from the neighbouring St Joseph’s parish armed with the newly launched Catholic Worker. Keegan responded to the priest’s appeal for door to door sellers and still more to the priest’s interest in himself. He soon found himself part of a large group of the Catholic Social Guild.
Such were the humble beginnings of his involvement. The outcome, as Fr Mitchinson concludes, was that “there is no doubt that Keegan was the key lay founder of the English YCW.”
But this was merely the beginning of his apostolic involvements. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Keegan quickly joined the newly established international bureau of the YCW, established within months of the war’s end.
Here, he established a close partnership both with Canon (as he was then) Joseph Cardijn, and with Marguerite Fiévez, the Belgian YCW Girls pioneer, who became a key figure in the developing international movement.
As was usual in those days, it fell to Keegan to take the front line position in the movement. In this capacity, he became a well-known lay apostle throughout the English-speaking world.
After completing his service with the International YCW in 1957, he moved almost immediately to work for the establishment of an adult counterpart to the YCW. In England, this became known as the Family and Social Action Movement, while internationally it developed into the World Movement of Christian Workers.
By the time, the Second Vatican Council began, Pat was well known to many bishops from around the world, as well as at the Vatican itself, where he had befriended, Mgr John Baptist Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, from the time of their first meeting in the late 1940s.
As his friend, John Maguire used to recall, Keegan did not hesitate to confront Montini when he thought it necessary, even during the Council, when, after one fiery exchange, the pope called him back to apologise.
It was during the Council that he also became close to the Polish Archbishop, later Cardinal, Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II.
Indeed, Fr Mitchinson recalled that John Paul “literally wept on Pat’s shoulder after his election” as pope.
On the eve of the Second Assembly of the Synod on Synodality, it’s also relevant to recall, as Fr John Fitzsimons did, Keegan’s constant “emphasis on the need for close contact between priests and laity in a living dialogue.”
It’s a phrase that sums up the life of this great jocist pioneer.
Stefan Gigacz
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Patrick Keegan website:
https://patkeegan.josephcardijn.com
VIDEOS
John Maguire remembers Pat Keegan
PHOTO
Keegan (middle) with Cardijn and Bartolo Perez, IYCW president, and also a lay auditor, during Vatican II.