In Pace Christi

Anthony Joseph Wolstenholme (‘Tony’ to those close to him) was born in Hawley Street Flats, in the centre of Sheffield, England, on 18 March 1924 to William Reginald and Elizabeth Theresa Mary, the second of seven children.

On finishing secondary school, he began to work at the “English Steel Corporation” as a trainee metallurgist. In 1942, when Great Britain was fighting in the Second World War, having reached the age of eighteen, he was called to military service and joined the Royal Marines. He was sent to a listening post in the Faroe Islands to monitor the Arctic convoys that were crossing the Atlantic and spent the rest of the war in that place.

At the end of hostilities, he returned to England where he fell gravely ill with an infection that began in his nose and caused a swelling of the brain. He was transferred to the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth where he was not expected to live. It seems it was there he told his family members, called to his bedside, that, if he recovered completely, he would have followed the priestly vocation. And that is what happened. He went to Campion House in Osterley (West London), a Jesuit pre-seminary set up to assist adult vocations.

It was at Osterley that Anthony first met the Verona Fathers (as the Combonis were then called). One of the mission promoters, Fr. Filiberto Polato, from the nearby community of Sunningdale, was a frequent visitor to Campion House. Anthony expressed his desire to become a missionary priest in Africa and asked to join the Combonis. He was accepted into the novitiate in Sunningdale in August 1949 and took first vows at the age of twenty seven. He continued with his philosophical studies in Sunningdale before going to the Scholasticate in Venegono Superiore to pursue his theological formation, in July 1953. He was ordained priest in Milan Cathedral on 15 June 1957 by Archbishop (later to be Pope and a canonised saint) Giovanni Battista Montini.

After ordination, Fr. Anthony helped for a year in Sunningdale before being appointed to the missions of North Uganda. He was first sent to the parish of Gulu Cathedral where he ministered for a year and then went to the mission of Warr (West Nile), before taking up a post as a teacher at the Seminary of Ss. Peter and Paul at Pokea, in the outskirts of Arua, where he taught until June 1965, when his poor health obliged him to return to England. From then on, for the rest of his life, Fr. Anthony was troubled by a number of phobias, probably as a result of his experience in the missions of Uganda. He had a great fear of dirt and would repeatedly check at night if the external doors were locked and the windows properly closed. Nevertheless, he endured all those difficulties stoically, without rancour or complaint as was typical of his gentle and caring nature. “A clear sign of his undoubted sanctity – writes Fr. Patrick Wilkinson – Fr. Anthony never allowed his condition to be a burden to others. It was his Cross and he bore it always with a smile”.

After spending a year convalescing with his family in Sheffield, Fr. Anthony returned to Sunningdale where, with the exception of a year spent in Dumfries, Scotland (1972-1973), he spent the following twenty years, up to July 1988. For the first ten years, much of his time and energy were spent teaching English to those who were being sent to the novitiate in Sunningdale or to ordained confreres assigned to Anglophone missions in Africa. Fr. Anthony was always a very competent and popular teacher.

Following the transfer of the Novitiate and the English language studies from Sunningdale, Fr. Anthony offered to assist Fr. Teodoro Fontanari with the pastoral care of the faithful who attended our Church of the Sacred Heart at the Sunningdale house. His peaceful and unassuming manner and his diligent care of the seriously ill and the elderly made him a well beloved pastor and priest.

In 1988 he was asked to join the community of Baillieston Road in Shettleston (Glasgow, Scotland) and to help with mission promotion, before transferring, together with the community, in 1992, to the present Carmyle, Glasgow house.

Due to his failing health, Fr. Anthony was transferred in early 2014 to “Nazareth House” in Cardonald (Glasgow), run by the Nazareth Sisters, and later, for another six years, to “St. Joseph’s Retirement Home” run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, in Robroyston (Glasgow). There Fr. Anthony passed away peacefully as he sat in his armchair in his room, shortly before one o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday 2 May 2020.