This Is Your Life: Francis O'Leary

Father Francis O'LEARY (1931-2000)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Francis O'Leary, Roman Catholic priest and missionary, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the audience at Thames Television's Euston Road Studios, having been invited to watch a recording of This Is Your Life by one of the programme's scriptwriters, Tom Brennand, on their way to a meeting.

Francis, who was born in Crosby, Liverpool, trained as a missionary and was ordained in July 1956. After gaining a post-graduate degree from Glasgow University in 1960, he was assigned to Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where he initially worked as a teacher. Shocked by the appalling poverty of West Pakistan, he saw the need for a proper care facility, and in 1964, with charitable donations, he opened St Joseph's Hospice in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Then, in answer to a call for help, he travelled to the South American countries of Columbia and Peru to build more hospitals for those in need. He later formed the St Joseph's Hospice Association, an organisation to help administer his ongoing humanitarian work, which became Jospice International, operating near his home town of Liverpool.

"Are we on television now? Is my hair alright?"

programme details...

Edition No: 360
Subject No: 361
Broadcast date: Wed 9 May 1973
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Wed 2 May 1973
Venue: Euston Road Studios
Series: 13
Edition: 26

on the guest list...

Rita - sister
Arthur - brother
Father Vincent Hughes
Jimmy McKinnon
Brian Conneller
Millie Quadros
Filomena O'Leary
Terry O'Leary
Anne-Marie O'Leary
Paul O'Leary
John O'Leary
Ruth O'Leary
Catherine O'Leary
Claire O'Leary
Bernadette O'Leary
Elizabeth O'Leary
Patricia O'Leary
Edna Pitman
Mother Dolores
Rita
Francis O'Leary II
Amwarjan

production team...

Researcher: Sarah Dickinson
Writer: Jack Crawshaw
Director: Margery Baker
Producer: Malcolm Morris

related pages...

Life's Vocation

celebrating the 'men of God'

The Night of 1000 Lives

a celebration of a thousand editions

The Audience

the applause, laughter and tears

Magic Book That Opens New Chapters Of Life

TV Times feature on 'The Unsung Heroes'

Screenshots of Francis O'Leary This Is Your Life

Francis O'Leary recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his book, Jospice International: An Autobiography of Fr Francis O'Leary...

In April 1973 Filomena and I visited our Hospices in Peru and on May 1st I flew home from Lima on an Air France flight at eleven o'clock in the morning. Before boarding the aircraft I said goodbye to a team of nurses, including Filomena, and gave her instructions to pass on to various people. That morning I had hoped to say goodbye to Fr. Vincent Hughes but he wasn't at the airport. "Ogger" (as he was known at school) usually made a point of coming to say goodbye but he wasn't there, so I departed. The first stop was Paris. I didn't realise it at the time but someone was there, observing that I did get my flight and there was also someone in Paris who saw me getting off the flight and that I had got the London connection.

I arrived in London early the following afternoon and was met by Paul Frayne who had done some photographic work for us earlier that year in our Hospices abroad. I was due to meet various producers of programmes to make a TV programme of our work and I had thought that a meeting had been set up through Tom Brennand, an old school friend. He held an important position at Thames Television in those days and I thought he would be a good contact for our Association. I didn't realise it, but Tom Brennand had got in touch with Tony Cooney, one of our helpers who in turn telephoned family and friends. A room had been set aside at the Clive Hotel for our meeting and I was so tired that I just wanted to go to sleep and in fact dozed off as I was having a cup of coffee. No producer had turned up yet and it was after five o'clock.

I said to Paul that I had to go and say Mass although I didn't know where I was going to say it, but I thought that there must be a Catholic Church in the vicinity. So off I went. Paul said that he wouldn't come along. Little did I realise that he had to be the main contact with the studio.

As I walked out of the hotel, I saw a priest on the other side of the road, so I went over to him and asked his permission to say Mass in his church, which was just around the corner. This I did and finished Mass at 6.15 p.m. The parish priest invited me in to the presbytery for a cup of tea, which I enjoyed, but was conscious of the fact that I had to be back for a producers meeting at seven o'clock. I left the priest's house and arrived at the hotel at ten minutes to seven. I am being very precise about the timing because, unknown to myself, I had to be on stage at seven o'clock. Tom had what seemed to me a triple gin waiting for me and as I tackled it, he leaned over and said "Finish that off as I have a chaser waiting for you." I said that I couldn't drink any more because I would be under the table, as I was so tired.

At six minutes to seven he said, "Come on now, let's go. We have to see the producers after this programme so come along with me," I did and went along with him. The Clive Hotel was only two minutes walk away from the studio. We went straight into the studio. A comic was warming up the audience and there were a couple of seats vacant. Tom told me to just go and sit in them, which I did with Tom. I was rather bemused at the whole paraphernalia of a television studio, but still I didn't know that I was to be the subject of the programme, the victim if you like, because it was quite a harrowing experience, apart from being an enjoyable one.

At seven o'clock precisely, Eamonn Andrews walked on to the stage and the programme began. Many of you may have seen the programme This Is Your Life. As I have said, it took me completely by surprise. Within the next half hour I was surrounded by family and friends, some of whom I hadn't seen for years. First on stage was Rita, my Sister, followed by Arthur, my Brother. I had in fact a return rail ticket, thinking I was going to meet Rita on the midnight train to Liverpool. She had told me she was at a nursing conference on that day in London. Then came Jim McKinnon and Brian Conneller, both of whom had been my classmates at Mill Hill. They had their stories to tell, which created a few laughs and then Millie Quadros was called on to the stage. She gave the background to the establishment of the Hospice she was involved in and my work in Pakistan. The stage became more crowded with the coming on of Terry and Filomena and their whole family, Anne-Marie. Paul, John, Ruth, Catherine, Bernadette, Claire, Elizabeth and Patricia. Little did I know that Filomena had taken a plane from Lima just an hour after my plane had left. It was also a surprise to see Fr. Vincent Hughes on the programme. He had left Lima at half six in the morning by an Air Panama flight, so no wonder he wasn't at the airport to say goodbye to me. To wind up the programme, Edna Pitman came on with her story of my visit to her in Karachi. It must have cost the programme makers a great deal of money to fly all these people to London and to get my friends from the Liverpool area to come down.

During the programme a film made in Pakistan was shown. It involved Rita, who is the daughter of Sadiq and Alice. Rita had a young brother, Francis O'Leary! I mentioned this in the programme - how Francis was called after me and took my surname. It was all great fun and after the programme there was a meal awaiting us all.

It is strange how these events happen and watching the video is interesting now because you are viewing people as they were so many years ago. The programme had the highest rating for the number of people viewing that week - something like eight and a half million. One wonders what good it has been for us. I suppose it captures for us all, events which happened so long ago and it is nice to see everyone looking so much younger. People who were not Catholics learnt something about the Church in a roundabout way. As I have said previously, it was good fun and many people who belonged to our Association were brought together and a certain type of happiness was created, which to this day is maintained. It also showed that the Church takes under its wing all those thousands of people who are destitute and abandoned.

Presenter Eamonn Andrews and producer Jack Crawshaw recall this edition of This Is Your Life in their book, Surprise Of Your Life...

As Tom Brennand thumbed through his morning mail he came across a letter marked private and personal and postmarked Liverpool. Nothing particularly odd about that for our man from Merseyside. A former journalist, he still has many relatives and friends living in and around that city famed for it's colourful characters.

But there can be few as colourful and as full of character as the person Tom read about in that letter, which had been sent by an old school friend.

The friend told Tom of the exploits of another "Old Boy" whose gripping life story, though unsung, had touched people in all corners of the world.

He was Father Francis O'Leary. When Tom first knew him he was just one of the boys; Franny O'Leary, the son of a scrap metal merchant with a sharp sense of humour.

Since then, said the letter, he had become a priest travelling the world on a non-stop mission of mercy. Shocked by the appalling poverty of West Pakistan, he had built a hospital in the foothills of the Himalayas. Then, in answer to a call for help, he travelled to the South American countries of Columbia and Peru to build more hospitals for the poor and needy.

When we reached the "possible future subjects" item on our next conference agenda, Tom told us about his letter which he handed over to me. It was the first of thousands of words that, in the next few months, I was privileged to read as we built up a dossier on this amazing man.

To help administer his work, Father O'Leary had formed an organisation called the St Joseph's Hospice Association, which had grown to become Jospice International. But it was still based near his home town of Liverpool and it was there that we talked to one of his key helpers, Philomena O'Leary.

Philomena told us that Father O'Leary had just seen the completion of a film about the association's work. It would be easy for her, she said, to drop it in conversation that she knew Tom Brennand who now worked in television and who might know someone who would be interested in the film. And this is exactly what she did.

Always anxious to do anything he could to bring the plight of the Third World's starving millions to the attention of as many as possible, Father O'Leary took up the suggestion to "give Tom Brennand a call".

Tom expressed suitable "surprise" when the call came, telling Franny how pleasant it was to hear from him after all this time, and how he would see what he could do to help.

All the This Is Your Life staff were briefed in case there were any more telephone calls from Franny. But you can imagine the shock we got when, two weeks before the show and after months of looking into his life, a call came through to the office saying that Father O'Leary was downstairs in reception.

Tom had already arranged for him to meet a producer two weeks from then, but, Franny explained to a somewhat tongue-tied Kay Bird, who, in Tom's absence, spoke to him, he had just popped in to say hallo on his way through London.

"Where are you going Father?" said Kay. And she almost choked when he casually replied: "Oh, Peru."

In his brief stay at Thames, Franny asked Kay to tell Tom that he would see him as arranged when he returned from South America.

Two weeks to the day later, after Franny had been given the blessing of the Peruvian Government for his latest scheme we were, to say the least, relieved to hear that he had arrived safely back at London Airport.

There to meet him was a friend, Paul Frayne, who had brought down from Liverpool the much-talked-about film he had shot. Paul told Franny that he had talked to Tom Brennand, who had arranged to meet them at the White House Hotel, close to the studios, before taking them to meet a producer who was interested in the film.

Tom wouldn't be available until after 6.30pm that evening, however, and a room had to be booked at the hotel for Franny to rest in, after his long and tiring journey.

But shortly before 6.30pm, Paul called us to say that, after spending much of the afternoon polishing up the film script, Franny had vanished.

As the surprise guests were now arriving at the studios the big panic was that Franny might just take it upon himself to wander into reception again and bump right into someone he shouldn't.

Relief came just 20 minutes before the show when we got a call to say Franny had returned to the hotel.

He had been out for a stroll and had bumped into another Roman Catholic priest, who, at Franny's request, had opened up his church so he could say Mass. After Mass he had invited Franny back to his home for a cup of tea and a chat, which had been so pleasant that Franny had quite forgotten what time it was.

But it was something a little stronger than tea that Tom was downing when Franny returned to the hotel. With steadied nerves, Tom told Franny that there was no problem about being late because the producer they were to see had been held up himself.

Tom told Franny that he wanted to watch This Is Your Life which was about to begin and asked him if he, and Paul, would care to join him for half-an-hour.

I had never met him, but I had seen so many pictures of him that the moment I walked out on to the set to face the audience, I couldn't mistake him sitting there, next to Tom, wearing a clerical collar and grinning in a way that made him stand out as clearly as he would have done had he been preaching from a pulpit.

I looked away from him as I walked out into the audience, explaining as I went that amongst them was the subject of tonight's show.

I walked past the row in which he was sitting, and felt him turn to look as I made a tentative move with the book towards a young naval rating, four rows behind on the opposite side of the gangway.

Then I turned, retraced my steps, and spoke to an attractive lady sitting right behind him. I then made as if to walk back towards the set before turning again.

He smiled as I asked him where he had come from that day. When he told me he had travelled from Peru, I said I knew because the name on the book was his.

His first reaction was to recoil clutching his hand to his forehead in disbelief. Then he sprang to his feet and clenched his fist. But I knew he wasn't going to hit me. You could see immediately from his humour-filled eyes that he had seen the joke and was happy to enjoy it.

From his seat of honour on stage he waved that fist at Tom before sitting back to enjoy the show that, for all of us, was the beginning of a warm and happy friendship with this remarkable man.

His charisma is quite astonishing. So much so that he even persuaded our own Kay Bird to give up her summer holidays to fly to South America, and spend three weeks ferrying medical supplies and hospital equipment to a remote village called Tambo, 11,000 ft up in the mountains, and to another village called San Francisco, a long, long way from the one with the Golden Gate and deep in the steaming jungles of Peru.

He had a similar affect on someone he had met on the boat that took him to West Pakistan for the first time. She and her husband, although of a different religious persuasion, were later to offer him shelter, encouragement and the first donation towards the building of his first hospital in Rawalpindi.

Her name was Edna Pitman and we flew her from her home in Karachi. On the show she told why she and her husband had placed so much faith in Father O'Leary. "His sincerity was so strong" she said. "All I did was what everyone he has ever met has done. Believe in him".

Scriptwriter Tom Brennand recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, Eamonn Andrews...

In 1973, the author, Tom Brennand (centre) - then programme consultant and writer of This Is Your Life - realised an old school pal, missionary priest Father Francis O'Leary, who founded the worldwide hospice organisation Jospice International, would make an ideal subject. So he lured him to a surprise confrontation with Eamonn.

Series 13 subjects