RIP - Fr William Broderick SJ

Father Bill Broderick SJ, one of the leading British exponents of Ignatian Spirituality, has died at the age of 76. William Broderick was born on 11 September 1928 in Listowel, Kerry in Eire. After studying at the Catholic College in Preston, Lancs, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1947, studying first at the Juniorate in Roehampton, then Heythrop College in Oxfordshire, and Campion Hall in Oxford. In 1958, he flew to Salisbury in Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) where he taught at St George's College, and then at St Aidan's College, Grahamstown, South Africa. On returning to Britain in 1960, Bill studied theology at Heythrop and, after ordination to the priesthood in 1963, served his tertianship at St Beuno's in North Wales. Between 1965 and 1970, he taught at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, before being appointed rector at St Ignatius College in Enfield, Middlesex. He returned to Stonyhurst as rector from 1977 to 1980. In July 1981, Bill moved to St Beuno's where he specialised in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, becoming Director of the Retreat House there in 1983. He moved to Scotland in 1990, taking up the role of Director of the Craighead Spirituality Centre, and representing the Jesuit Provincial on the Scottish Conference of Major Religious Superiors. In 1997, Bill moved to St Bede's Pastoral Centre in York where he directed the Spiritual Exercises, a ministry which he continued at the Mount Street Jesuit Centre in central London in his later years. Source: Jesuit Communications Office