| Description | This small collection, containing the personal papers of Fr Richard Worsley SJ, includes: photographs, WWII medals and papers, correspondence, spiritual writing, notes, newspaper cuttings and certificates. |
| Admin_History | Fr Richard Worsley was born on 6 December 1889, at Bury, Lancashire, and was educated at Stonyhurst.
He entered the noviciate at Roehampton on 7 September 1907. He studied philosophy at St Mary's Hall and Greats at Pope's Hall, Oxford, before the First World War interrupted his studies there and he was summoned to teach for three years at Mount St Mary's. Fr Worsley then studied theology at St Beuno's, where he helped Fr Leo O'Hea in correcting exam papers for the Catholic Social Guild Schools Examination.
Fr Worsley was ordained priest on 24 September 1922. On completing his theology, he taught at Liverpool and Wimbledon, did his tertianship at St Beuno's, and in in 1928 was appointed to lecture at Heythrop College (Oxon) in logic, epistemology and general metaphysics. He took his Final Vows on 2 February 1929.
Fr Worsley's next appointment came in the same year, when he became Rector of Stonyhurst. He struggled with the responsibilities of this office and as a result had a serious nervous breakdown from which, it is reported, he never fully recovered.
Leaving Stonyhurst in 1932, Fr Worsley returned to the professorial staff at Heythrop. In 1933 he joined the parish staff of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Edinburgh. From 1936-39 he served at Sunderland, and from 1939-45 as a chaplain in H.M. Forces.
After the Second World War Fr Worsley returned to the Society's retreat house in Sunderland - Corby Hall, becoming 'Min. dom.' in 1946. He spent seven years in Sunderland before being posted to the then Jesuit parish of Leigh in Lancashire, where he remained for another seven years.
In 1959 Fr Worsley was appointed chaplain at the Servite Priory at Dorking, where he remained until ill-health ended his active life and he went to St Beuno's in 1970.
Fr Worsley remained at St Beuno's until his death on 28 April 1972. Fr Paul Kennedy, Vice-Rector of St Beuno's, was celebrant at the Requiem Mass, which took place at St Beuno's on 3 May. |