Obituaries:

Fr Julian Rochford was the son of Bernard and Angela (née Kelly) Rochford. He was born at Sunninghill, the seventh of eight children, on 12 August 1923 and baptised Paul. The eighth child, his brother Basil, was handicapped, two of his sisters died when they, and he, were young; his brother Anthony was killed in Tunisia in the Irish Guards. This family, outstanding benefactors of Ampleforth and the Abbey Church, was loving and generous. The shadows that passed over it challenged and deepened its faith, but did not obscure for Paul the fun, affection and optimism of childhood. At the age of 10 he went to Ladycross Preparatory School. Dom Hubert van Zeller O.S.B., of Downside, was the chaplain for most of his time there, and it was through his contact with him that Paul first began to think of becoming a monk. He said later that he knew he had a monastic vocation by the time he was twelve. Fr Hubert thought so too. He kept the Christmas card Paul sent him in 1935, signed 'To Fr Hubert from P. Rochford', and added to it in his own hand: 'who will end up a monk. Dec. 1935.'

Paul always remembered Fr Hubert speaking on the meaning of the Ladycross motto. It shaped his understanding of his vocation, so much so that he quoted it in times of personal and community confusion when he feared a loss of monastic direction. Thirty years later, in the turbulence of the sixties, he was engaged in a long correspondence with Abbot Wilfrid Passmore. He wrote at the end of one of his many letters:

What I feel most strongly about the future of monasticism in this country is that it is not what a house does which counts but what it is: and what the world really needs are living examples of the community ideal. 'Vox vocis sonat, Vox exemplis tonat'.

The stamp Fr Hubert put on his young charge never faded, even though in the family tradition, it was not for Downside, but for Ampleforth that he set out at the age of 13 in 1936, when he followed his older brother Anthony into St Bede's House under Fr Hugh de Normanville as housemaster. He had an uneventful school career: he was one of the better boxers in his year, competent at rugger but no good as a swimmer. His academic record was middle of the road: a sprinkling of credits at school certificate level fading away when he took his higher certificate in chemistry, physics and mechanics.

In his last term at school, Paul's brother, Anthony, offered to put him up as a prospective candidate for a commission in the Irish Guards. Paul did in fact write to the adjutant asking for an interview in May 1941, but then changed his mind when he found out that the monastery was accepting novices in spite of the war. Anthony was the first member of the family to learn of this change of plan. Anthony wrote:

Dear Paul, My congratulations to you on being the receiver of the highest vocation of life. I am glad to hear you are not paying any attention to what other people might be think about you and that you are sticking to your own convictions despite any possible escapist talk; but I am sure noone will accuse you of that; people will continue to get true vocations whether there is a war or not and I for my part think you would be the last to back out of your duty to your country by taking such a course. Actually the news did not come as quite such a surprise as you may have imagined as I have always had half an idea you had a leaning in that direction...dont think you must worry about any difficulty in 'calling the whole matter off' [i.e. the plan to join the Irish Guards]. I'm sure the Regimental Adjutant will understand as I believe he is an Old Gregorian.

Paul received the Habit and his monastic name, Julian, from Abbot Herbert Byrne in September 1941. Eighteen months later, Anthony was reported missing in action in Tunisia. It was first thought he was a prisoner of war; finally the news came that he had been killed. In the same period, his other brother, Bernard, suffered a mental breakdown and was invalided out of the army. Through all this affliction, the faith of the family and their prayerful and loving support for Paul Julian did not waver; he came to solemn vows in September 1945.

Br Julian was not deterred and spent a fourth year at St Benet's studying botany to prepare himself for teaching. In the evenings he studied dogmatic theology with Fr Gerard Sitwell out of Tanquery. He returned to Ampleforth in 1948 and, with his eyes on ordination, completed his theological studies there. He was ordained to the priesthood on 23 Ju1y 1950.

At the same time he began work in the school teaching biology and organising boxing (1950-1962) and swimming (1955-1965). These activities brought him into contact with the boys and staff of other types of school. He liked them and found them easier than the Ampleforth boys. They liked and respected him. But these contacts were also unsettling. His respect and admiration for those for whom life was not easy made him impatient with the closed, upper middle class world of Ampleforth in the 1950s. Paradoxically, he sensed that it was through his faith and prayer and the monastic life that he was able to transcend the limitations of his own upbringing and background. What mattered therefore was being a proper monk. As early as in 1954 he was questioning the validity of the parochial apostolate as a work for monks in letters to Dom Wilfrid Passmore, then headmaster of Downside. As the fifties turned into the sixties the changes in church and society brought his questioning to a critical point.

Fr Julian's contemporary in school and monastery, Basil Hume was elected Abbot in 1963. This, with the impact of the Vatican Council and the general re-appraisal of the life of the English Benedictine Congregation required by the re-drafting of its constitutions, raised in an acute way his semi-dormant doubts about the authenticity of Benedictine life in our monasteries in general and St Laurence's in particular. He sought to convey his concerns by writing memos for the abbot and letters to his friends. But though this let off steam, it was not enough to resolve his crisis. Abbot Basil had initiated a measured dialogue within the Community over the way forward. Fr Julian was for a head-on approach, for a radical re-appraisal of everything at once; the specificity and gradualism of Abbot Basil's evolutionary approach seemed to him inadequate. He sought permission to step aside for a while to gain a new perspective from a different base.

There followed perhaps one of the happier years in his adult life thus far. It was certainly one of the most critical. He spent the academic year 1965-1966 at Ealing Abbey. He experienced monastic life in an urban environment and, more importantly, found a community with a balance between community life, work, the divine office and prayer which he considered to be different from the one he had been used to at Ampleforth. He took the chance to work in a variety of Catholic and secular comprehensive schools in London (spending some time in each of Ealing Grammar School, St Benedict's Ealing, St Richard of Chichester RC mixed comprehensive Camden, Christopher Wren LEA boys' comprehensive, Shepherd's Bush Comprehensive). He met at first hand problems of racial prejudice (hobbling, for his hip was troubling him, to the rescue of a black youth he saw being beaten up in Camden town. He frightened off the assailants while the rest of the world passed by on the other side.) He saw poverty of all kinds: spiritual, social, material. He found too that he had room to breathe and think in a way which he felt unable to do at Ampleforth, where he feared ending up with a one way ticket to the parishes. That, he thought, would be the end of his truly monastic life. He was torn between returning to face the tensions of living in a community which was still in the early stages of sorting out its response to the Council and the signs of the times, and the desire to seek a monastic haven elsewhere until the sorting out process was finished.

In the end, he decided that the right thing was to try to bring some of his experience of another monastic community and of a different approach to education to bear on the life and work of the Ampleforth conventus. So in July 1966 he returned to Ampleforth. Almost immediately, he received a letter from Abbot Basil asking him to go to a parish in September - not because he was asking awkward questions, but because the abbot thought that once acclimatised, he would find there greater scope for the kind of work and experience he had enjoyed in London. Though he was dismayed, he accepted this obedience and went to St Mary's Cardiff in September. He was to stay in Cardiff for a year, maintaining his resolve not to be 'secularised', as he put it, by the demands and attractions of parish life. He poured out his thoughts in a rapid sequence of almost weekly letters to Dom Wilfrid Passmore, who had just preached the community retreat at Ampleforth (and who, in the middle of the correspondence was elected Abbot of Downside).

I feel all bottled up here with no one to talk to about the things that matter most. I would give anything to live in any Monastery for six months until there are clearer signs whether there will be an aggiornamento at Ampleforth. (Passmore 4-12-66)

He sought also the views of friends at Belmont, and of Dom David Knowles; he shared his thoughts and anguish with a few of his brethren at Ampleforth.

His solution was to call for the setting up of a new foundation intended for independence. He thought it should be a priory in an urban setting, surprisingly enough with its own parish and comprehensive school for the monks to work in. It would differ from current parishes because from the beginning there would be a community life of prayer and office. Existing parish houses were too set in their ways to change their priorities and establish a flail conventual life. Failing that, he was for a foundation abroad, not in anglophone Africa, an idea that some at Ampleforth then favoured, but in South America, which he believed would be culturally more sympathetic. (His family had horticultural interests in Kenya. He had visited Kenya and Uganda in 1951 so spoke from some experience.) All this pre-occupied him during his first and, as it happened, only year at Cardiff. He had had trouble with his hip for some time. Toward the end of the year, the doctors diagnosed osteoarthritis and recommended an operation to replace the joint.

After a few months' convalescence, he was sent to Gilling Castle to teach maths and science, returning to the Abbey in 1969. He was not an effective teacher of larger groups. He did not have the gift of holding the attention of a class that did not want it held, nor or communicating clearly and concisely by the spoken word. He was a competent teacher of those who had ears to hear, but could not cope with adolescent rumbustiousness. His teaching in the senior school was soon limited to a few small groups and to the individual tuition of boys needing special help. This puzzled and saddened him, but it freed him for other work. He was appointed as chaplain to Howsham Hall Preparatory School; and in 1970 started the Ampleforth College sub-aqua club. At his own request, he did some part-time teaching at Ryedale Comprehensive in biology and religious education. He also joined Fr Rupert Everest in running the club for the domestic staff. He re-established that contact with ordinary folk that meant so much to him. He never pretended to be other than what he was, and indeed seemed somehow to be able to be more what he was with working people than with members of the privileged group from which he himself came. In 1970 he went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with members of the domestic staff, his first since a family pilgrimage in 1938 for which Fr Hubert van Zeller - almost a member of the family - acted as chaplain. The 1970 pilgrimage began the shift of the focus from the future of the Ampleforth conventus to the future of the world as revealed by Our Lady in various apparitions across Europe.

Lourdes is a straightforward place of prayer and healing, well attested scientifically and in the centre of the mainstream of Catholic devotion to Our Lady. There was that in Julian which responded more readily to the unusual, to the things that aroused scepticism or doubt in others. He developed an interest in the phenomena of all religious experience; non-medical healing Christian and pagan; a knowledgeable and very critical appraisal of the 'New Age' movement; and a far less critical approach to crop circles and flying saucers. He approached all these things as a believer in the paranormal and as a scientist. In 1989 he was given life membership of the Alastair Hardy Research Centre, which aims to bring scientific method to bear on religious experience. His membership thus sat nicely with both sides of Fr Julian's interest as objective recorder and committed participant. In him the search for experience and the search for evidence combined, with perhaps a predisposition to follow up the more strikingly unusual phenomena of Christian experience as signs from God. It was this that inclined him to see the hand of God at work in the mysteriousness of secret revelations, in the dramatic cosmic phenomena reported at some Marian shrines, and to believe in the urgency of their apocalyptic messages. Through the seventies, eighties and into the nineties, his interest shifted from Lourdes to Fatima, Garabandal and Medugorje; interest metamorphosed into devotion and the devotion into an apocalyptic conviction that in turn inclined him to look for more and more reports of visions and locutions, or warnings and secrets, until in the end there did not seem to be a single reported apparition, moving or weeping statue or visionary newsletter that FrJulian did not know about.

It was about this time that he became involved in the charismatic renewal. Again, it was the emphasis on religious experience and the evocation of a strong personal faith in lay people from all walks of life that animated and sustained him. This good zeal was sharpened by a sense of urgency as his conviction that the world was in its last years grew stronger. Questions of institutional reform receded completely; personal conversion, penance and prayer were all that mattered. He began to spend longer in prayer, and would retreat when he could to a hermitage on the North Yorkshire Moors or for all-night vigils at the shrine of Our Lady of Mount Grace at Osmotherley.

All the while, he faithfully fulfilled his monastic duties. He looked after the wine cellar (and kept the empty containers to store water to enable the community to survive Armageddon), and continued with an almost equal commitment to encourage boys to take up sub-aqua swimming and to say the rosary. Wary of the scepticism of most of his brethren, he preached carefully worded but urgent homilies, was assiduous in his attendance in choir and a cheerful, voluble contributor to calefactory life.

One May evening, having presided at the conventual Mass the previous day, he set out on his Honda 50, kitted out as usual in black waterproofs and crash helmet, for Howsham, to prepare some children for their First Holy Communion. He did not arrive. The alarm was raised, the police contacted, the news awaited but somehow known. He was killed instantly in collision with a car as he crossed the A64 on his bike. May he enjoy the fullness of that vision that he so faithfully sought and so eagerly awaited.

JULIAN ROCHFORD

Details from the Abbey Necrology