Monday, 02 July 2012 07:48

MONTEVIDEO MARU SINKING, 70th ANNIVERSARY

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Two Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Clifford Brennan and David McCullagh, died in the sinking of the ship. 2nd July 1942.

Clifford Ambrose Brennan was born at Balmain, NSW, (1916) and educated by the Christian Brothers. He was employed as a ‘fleet flyer’, dashing around on his bicycle delivering letters and small parcels. Early reports of his religious life state that he had a quiet and unassuming character of great simplicity, intelligence, with good judgement and a firm will. He was pleasant and affable, a delightful community man.

After appointments to Downlands College and Kensington Monastery as cook, he went to Eastern Papua in 1941 with the arrangement that he spend a year or more at Vunapope, New Britain, working with the German Brothers in their various workshops. It was here at Vunapope that the Japanese invasion overtook him.

David McCullagh (born 1911) was from Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, and educated by the Christian Brothers there and at Ballarat. Ordained in 1937, he went to Thursday Island and then to Eastern Papaua. He was transferred to New Britain in 1941.

Br Brennan, Frs David McCullagh and Ted Harris, Iost their lives as the result of the Japanese occupation of New Britain. They had all refused opportunities of escape, preferring to remain with the local people and face the terrors of invasion with them. Br Brennan and Fr McCuIIagh were taken by the Japanese as civilian internees and were to have been transferred to Japan on the ill-fated Montevideo Maru which was torpedoed by an Allied naval force near the PhiIippines, no survivors.

Clifford Brennan was 26, David McCullagh was 31.

After confirmation of their deaths, a solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated for them at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, Randwick, December 5th, 1945.

(Information from Brotherhood in Mission by Jim Littleton MSC).

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