Obituaries:

Fr Osmund died aged 74 on 25 May 1994 at Ampleforth Abbey. He was born on 7 December 1919 at Sevenoaks, Kent. He was brought up an Anglican, and went to school at Sevenoaks. In 1938, as clouds of war were gathering, he chose a naval career, being given 'special entry' into the Royal Indian Navy (RIN). to the training ship HMS Vindictive. As a midshipman, he served in HMS Erubus and Hood. HMS Hood was sunk by the Bismark on 24 May 1941; but by then Dick Jackson was serving on board a destroyer. He was then assigned to a new river class sloop built on the Clyde, HMS Jumna. It was to be the last ship to depart from Singapore and survive at its surrender on 15 February 1942. It took him to the Pacific; after which he became a liaison officer at GHQ Calcutta, and then joined a convoy escort supporting the Burma campaign. After India was partitioned on 14 August 1947, he retired from the Indian Navy, serving a last year with the Royal Navy.

He was up at Wadham College, Oxford as an undergraduate during 1948-50, reading initially mathematics, finally Politics, Philosophy, Economics while also giving his mind quietly to religion.

The Catholic chaplain at Oxford during 1947-59 was another naval man - Mgr Valentine Elwes of the Westminster Archdiocese. He had been at school at Downside and the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, then served in the First War as a midshipman at the Battle of Jutland, and in the Second as Royal Navy Chaplain during 1943-46. With a naval background in common, he and Richard Jackson became friends. In his early years Elwes had tried his vocation as a novice in the Charterhouse at Parkminster - and indeed Dick was briefly to do the same. But first he embraced the Chaplaincy life and became a Catholic.

There he was present for a Mission retreat, led by the Superior of the Catholic Missionary Society, Fr (later Cardinal) John Carmel Heenan, helped by Fr George Patrick Dwyer, who later became bishop of Leeds and then Archbishop of Birmingham. That experience moved Dick to think beyond conversion to monasticism. He came first to Ampleforth in 1951 and was clothed as Br Leo by Abbot Herbert Byrne. After a short while he took himself to the Charterhouse at Parkminster to try life there, but returned in September 1952 to Ampleforth, where he was clothed again, this time as Br Osmund. He was solemnly professed in September 1956 and ordained in July 1959.

He had taught for a time in the school, but was appointed parish priest of St Chad's Kirkbymoorside in September 1959, three months after his ordination. Thereafter, he spent his active life serving in parishes on both sides of the Pennines, as an assistant in the larger parishes in Lancashire or Cumbria, or as parish priest in smaller Yorkshire parishes. ln February 1960 he was sent as an assistant priest to Workington (1960-1964), followed by St Mary's Warrington (1964-1970) before returning to Kirkbymoorside in 1970, where he stayed for three years as parish priest. In 1973, he was sent across the Pennines to St Mary's, Brownedge as an assistant. During 1979-1989 he was back in Yorkshire as parish priest of St John's, Easingwold.

Fr Osmund was remembered with great affection at all the parishes he served. One parishioner at Workington recalls him during his time there:

He was very popular while here and in his unassuming way very successful pastorally. When he came here it was not long until he became involved with the near moribund Sea Cadet Corps. Their revival began with him - with lectures, other activities and his personal experience of naval life. Soon the Corps was having a monthly church parade at the Sunday sung Mass and providing Guards of Honour and buglers for all kinds of activities liturigical and otherwise. He was keen to open an ecumenical bookshop and this in the days when that word was unknown to most people. It was not his fault that the bookshop never materialised. The nuns who lived opposite the Priory knew him as 'the Admiral'.

In 1991 he returned from his last parish appointment in Lancashire to Ampleforth, where he lived in peaceful monastic retirement for the last three years of his life. He was regularly in choir. He was not to be hurried, neither in cloister or refectory. His natural equanimity and good humour were enhanced by a certain smiling simplicity of mind and heart, enlivened by shafts of humour, pierced from time to time with some perceptive and uninhibited comments. He was a friend to all, especially the younger monks who helped to look after him. To experience his unforced and unfailing courtesy was one of the delights of community life. He died peacefully among his brethren and family after a short illness.

OSMUND JACKSON

Details from the Abbey Necrology