I want to write to you about Fr Bellanti SJ[*]. You will see why at the end of my story of his life and how it strangely links into mine.

In 1917 he was serving in France in the 42nd brigade. Lt Robinson wrote of him; “A wonderful chap loved by us all and as brave as a lion.”

J C Nealy said of him “he would crawl into no mans land to succour the dying.”

Desmond Morton, Churchill’s man of Mystery said:
“The commitment of chaplains on the western Front won the respect of both troops and army establishment for their courage,endurance and leadership.”

The Military Cross has been awarded to Father Luke Eli Bellanti, S.J., for assisting the wounded and dying under fire. Born in Malta in 1882, Father Bellanti was educated at St. Ignatius’ College, Malta, and later at Pope’s Hall, Oxford. He was ordained at St. Beuno’s , and was attached to the Church of the Sacred Heart, Leeds, when he joined as chaplain. He took part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

He was a former head of Stoneyhurst and of Grassendale in Bournemouth. At one time latin master at Corby Hall school where a pupil remembers “although recommended for the Victoria Cross he received the Military Cross instead as his regiment had already won a VC”.

I met him when I was a student at Manchester University and he was appointed Catholic Chaplain in 1946. He always greeted me as Sybilla recalling the mention of my name in the De Profundis.

Before long I discovered an almost impossible connection with my family over an impossibly long period of time. I was 20 and Fr Bellanti in his seventies, but we discovered that my uncle Frederick Bateman SJ, born in 1867 had taught Fr. Bellanti when he was a boy in the Jesuit college in Malta. I never met my uncle who died in his seventies in 1928 when I was 2 years old. My grandfather had been born in 1827.

Fr Bellanti was a delightful man a very good and caring chaplain. I think that none of us students in his charge had any idea of the wonderful care and bravery he had shown in the first World war.

Now in this season of remembrance of friendship I want to remember him and tell my friends about him .