Bookshop find casts new light on foundation of Sciaf

The document was a testimonial to a priest celebrating his Golden Jubilee

A chance find in a Glasgow second-hand bookshop has thrown new light on one of the key individuals behind the foundation of the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund

It didn't look like much, to be honest. A pale blue linen folder on top of a pile of books. The sort of binding someone might use for a PhD thesis. Bigger than A4. And just a few pages long.

But I picked it up. And straight away I was intrigued. A few cuttings from newspapers carefully tucked inside. Then several pages of beautiful, handwritten calligraphy.

It was a testimonial to a priest, to commemorate 50 years in the service of the church.

Founder member

I'd never seen anything like it before. And it was only priced at £6:50. So, I thought I had to buy it.

When I got it home, there was time to read it more carefully.

It was addressed to Father John Rooney, priest at St Columbkille's. Dated May 1974.

And there were references to the Scottish Catholic Aid Fund (Sciaf). Father Rooney, it said, was chosen to be a founder member, national chairman, and administrator of Sciaf.

The first place to start, to try and find out more, was back at the bookshop where I'd bought it - "Voltaire and Rousseau" in Glasgow's west end.

Eddie McGonigle remembered that the testimonial came with hundreds of theology books

The document is an example of beautiful hand-written calligraphy

Eddie McGonigle, one of the two brothers who run the shop, recognised the document straight away.

He remembered that it had come with about 2,000 books, "virtually all Catholic theology", from a house in Motherwell. They'd all been in good condition, and had sold quickly.

But he'd never seen anything like the testimonial before.

"It's the type of thing that would be handed to another priest. Or someone would hand it in to their parish priest. So it wouldn't end up here", he told me.

Next stop, the parish where Father Rooney was serving when he celebrated his milestone in the priesthood.

St Columbkille's is a busy place. Hundreds of parishioners gathered for morning Mass in the church hall on the day I was there, including children from the local Scout group who processed in and took part in the service.

Monsignor John Rooney was a parish priest in Rutherglen when Sciaf was founded

Afterwards, in the parish house, I heard some memories of John Rooney from people who'd been children in the parish when he was there.

Michael McGrath said: "The memory I have of him is meeting him as he would walk up and down Rutherglen Main Street, wearing his black coat and his black trilby hat.

"He would doff his hat to every family he passed."

Miriam McKernan laughed as she told me: "I don't remember many sermons. But I remember one, where he was advising how we should baptise our children.

"I would have been about 10 at the time. And I can remember him saying 'You must give your child a saint's name. Otherwise you might as well call her Carrot!'"

But then a real breakthrough. The priest at St Columkille's now is Father Pat Hennessey. I asked him to look at the list of signatures at the end of the testimonial, to see if he recognised any of the names.

Father Pat Hennessey is back at St Columbkille's, after serving there when he was first ordained

"That's my signature there", he pointed. And there, indeed, it was. The Reverend Patrick Hennessey.

He was young, fresh-faced, and just out of the seminary. His first posting. And he remembered the celebration when his boss marked 50 years as a priest.

"A lot of people made great speeches," he said. "And there was great joy, really.

"And we all felt delighted for Monsignor. He became Monsignor that night."

But it turns out that the cuttings I'd seen in the front of the folder were obituaries - from the local papers, and the Catholic press.

The obituaries, carefully collected inside the folder, are dated just days after the testimonial itself

John Rooney died just days later.

Father Pat remembered that, too.

"After such joy over in the hall, his funeral was celebrated here in the church."

And that was quite an occasion, too. The funeral Mass was attended by a Cardinal, two Archbishops, five bishops, and hundreds of parishioners.

Pat Hennessey says the service recognised John Rooney's work in education. And it commemorated the fact that he'd been "the driving force" to get Sciaf established.

So, finally, my quest took me to Sciaf's present headquarters at Park Circus in Glasgow.

Alistair Dutton said it was "incredibly moving" to see the document

Director, Alistair Dutton, pointed out the remarkable coincidence that a document written to commemorate John Rooney's Jubilee had come to light in the year that the organisation he'd helped to start is itself celebrating 50 years since its foundation.

He said it had begun as a parish effort.

"But very quickly the Bishop, and then the Bishops' Conference more generally, recognised the value of that," he said.

"And so in September 1965 there was this pastoral letter that launched Sciaf as the official aid agency for the (Roman Catholic) church in Scotland."

Mr Dutton said it was "incredibly moving" to see the document written to celebrate one of the charity's founders.

He added that it was "really reassuring to go back to the spirit of the founders, and just see we are still true to exactly what they wanted to achieve.

"We're bigger now, but that means we're able to do more of it. I'm pretty confident if Monsignor John Rooney was sitting here now, he'd be smiling at what we're doing."

BBC Radio Scotland's "Sunday Morning With" programme reported on the discovery of the document. The programme appealed for information about who produced the document and who looked after it when Mgr John Rooney died.