April, 2005
| Patrick Gerald Fitzgerald was born on 13 September 1922 in Prospect, a suburb of Adelaide, the eldest son of Patrick, a clerk with the Post Master General's Department, and Agnes Fitzgerald. His childhood education was with the Dominican Sisters at Rosary Primary School, Prospect, and the Christian Brothers at Rostrevor College, Magill. He joined the Dominican Order in 1940, being part of the first group of Dominican novices to receive the habit in Australia and he was also the first Dominican friar to make solemn profession in Australia.(Candidates had formerly been sent to Ireland.) He was given the religious name 'Thomas'. He received his ecclesiastical education at the House of Studies of the Order at St Dominic's Priory, East Camberwell, in Melbourne. During this period he also studied at the University of Melbourne, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In this he achieved another first, being the first Dominican man to graduate from an Australian university. He was ordained to the priesthood in St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, on 15 December 1948 by Archbishop Daniel Mannix. In 1951, now based at Holy Name Priory, Wahroonga, in Sydney, Fr Thomas was placed in charge of the Rosary crusade and published the Rosary Letter. Between 1954 and 1957 he was chaplain at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, and the Armidale Teachers' College. In the later 1950s he also served as military chaplain, with the rank of captain, to the Sydney University Regiment of the Citizens' Military Force. In 1958 he was appointed as superior of Aquinas Hall, the Dominican community in Dunedin, New Zealand, and also functioned as parish priest and chaplain to the University of Otago and the Dunedin Teachers' College. He went back to Australia in 1962 as Prior of Holy Name Priory, Wahroonga, and pastor of the local parish. During the 1960s he was a regular panelist with radio station 2GB and helped to pioneer the new phenomenon of 'talk-back' radio. In 1969 he returned to Armidale as Master of the newly-opened St Albert's College, a residential facility at the University of New England maintained by the Dominican Order. It was in recognition of his work in Armidale that he was made a Member of the Australian College of Education (MACE). At the end of that assignment, ten years later, he became Master of John XXIII College, a similar institution at the Australian National University in Canberra. During his time in Canberra he was a member of the Council of Signadou College of Education, the Dominican Sisters' teachers' training college which later became the Canberra campus of the Australian Catholic University. In 1981 Fr Thomas went to Melbourne having been elected as Prior of St Dominic's Priory, the House of Studies for the Australian Dominicans. During this period he wrote a thesis on the theological and canonical possibilities for lay preaching for which he was awarded the degree of Master of Theology by the Melbourne College of Divinity in 1989. In 1985 he was appointed as parish priest of Prospect-North Adelaide, initially living at Rosary House, Prospect, and then moving to St Laurence's Priory, North Adelaide. In the early 1990s he took on two new apostolates, chaplain and teacher at Blackfriars Priory School, a school for boys managed by the Dominicans. Between 1994 and 1997 he was Prior of St Laurence's Priory, continuing to serve as parish priest. Among many other diverse activities throughout his life, Fr Thomas had extensive experience as a much sought-after lecturer in theology and philosophy, especially in the educational and formation programmes of various congregations of sisters, and as a retreat-giver to clergy and lay people. He lectured in homiletics at the Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne and at St Francis Xavier's Seminary in Adelaide. He wrote articles for popular theological journals and published a number of pamphlets. For a while he also edited the Bulletin of Christian Affairs, a journal published under the aegis of the Australian Dominican Province. As his time of active ministry drew to a close, the late 1990s was a time for reflection and the bestowal of honours. Fr Thomas celebrated his golden jubilee of ordination to the priesthood on 13 December 1998 in the Rosary church at Prospect in the company of Bishop Eusebius Crawford, OP, Bishop Emeritus of Gizo, Solomon Islands, 16 concelebrants and a church crowded with relatives, friends and well-wishers. He had been invited to write a history commemorating the centenary of the foundation of the first Dominican men's community in Australia, St Laurence's, North Adelaide, which was published in the same year, 1998, as The First Hundred Years: A History of the Dominican Friars in Australia, 1898-1998. The book was launched by the then Archbishop of Adelaide, Most Revd Leonard Faulkner. The following year Fr Thomas himself was cited in the Queen's Birthday Honours List by the award of the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the Catholic Church and religious education. The Medal was conferred on him at an investiture ceremony at Government House, Adelaide. As his health declined, Fr Thomas tried to remain as active as possible as assistant priest, chaplain to the Dominican Laity and chaplain to Calvary Hospital, North Adelaide, but he was forced to retire in 2002. The following year he moved into the Hyde Park Aged Care facility. Fr Thomas died of heart failure at Hyde Park on 28 March, Easter Monday, 2005. - Fr Christopher Dowd, O.P. Provincial Historian |
 Obituary for Fr Tomfrom the Blackfriars Priory School Newsletter. (Click on image for an enlargement.) |
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