In Pace Christi

Fr. Charles Duffin was born in Glengarnock, a small village in north Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 28^th. December 1930. He was one of two children born to the Duffin family – the other child being his younger sister Agnes. The village where Charlie was born, once fairly prosperous, was centred around a small steel works which attracted folk who were in search of employment.

As a youngster, Charlie was soon recognised for both his high-spirits and his intelligence. His progress at school was steady and his secondary education came on apace as he commuted each day from his village to the Jesuit school in the big city of Glasgow.

At the age of 18, at the end of his official schooling, the young Charlie decided to go abroad i.e. to travel to England where he joined the Verona Fathers novitiate in Sunningdale, near London. His arrival at Sunningdale marked a special moment in the development of what was later to become the London Province – he, Charlie, was to be the first Scot to join the Institute and he was to start his journey in the Sunningdale house that had been requisitioned by the army and only just been returned to the Institute (a good three years after the Second World War had ended).

Charlie’s formation lasted a mere seven years – two years novitiate (he made his first vows in Sunningdale in 1950), a year of philosophy (also at Sunningdale), and four years of theology (at Venegono). He made his perpetual profession in the March of 1955 and was ordained priest in the June of the same year.

Immediately after ordination Fr. Charlie was packed off to Uganda where he spent the next ten years (1955-1965) serving in Lira-Ngeta, Kangole (a pioneer mission), and Aliwang. Many were the difficulties and hardships that the missionaries were expected to share and to face. In later life Fr. Charlie would recall some of these with a degree of incredulity! One of the personal gifts about which Fr. Charlie never spoke, however, was his innate ability with languages: his grasp of Acholi, Lango and Karimojong was often commented upon by others; his Italian, French and Spanish were, by all reports, pretty noteworthy.

Fr. Charlie spent the second decade (1966-1976) of his priestly ministry in the northern hemisphere: in Scotland, where he helped found the first Comboni Community there (in Dumfries not all that far from his home village); in the USA, where he was based at the community in Montclair and from where he attended Notre Dame University; in England, where he served as a teacher in the Junior Seminary; and in Rome where he spent a year helping with the translation of Institute documents into English. It was during the last couple of years of this decade of service that Fr. Charlie’s health began to suffer and this was to be a cross that would stay with him right to the end of his life.

Of the next 17 years (1976-1992 inclusive) of Fr. Duffin’s ministry, eleven were spent in Mexico (Santa Rosalia parish, Ciudad Insurgentes, La Paz – Corazon de Maria parish, and Casa San Daniele Comboni also in La Paz) with five spent in the LP (London). Fr. Charlie’s service in Mexico was also something that he recalled fairly frequently; he always claimed that the mission in Baja California could be every bit as demanding as the toughest parts of East Africa.

In 1992 Fr. Charlie, already in poor health, returned home for good. By 1996 his situation had deteriorated so much that he stood in need of a more constant form of medical attention/supervision. The most suitable and most acceptable solution in these circumstances was for Fr. Charlie, while remaining a member of the Glasgow community, to go to live with his sister Agnes, a retired teacher, and to give a hand in the local parish whenever possible. Some four years ago Fr. Charlie became completely house-bound and at the beginning of December he suffered yet another stroke. He died in hospital in Kilmarnock on Tuesday 21^st December 2010 attended by his sister.
(Fr. Paul Felix)