Father George E. Smith (1918-2007)

Father George E. Smith joined the LMS in 1969 and was a member for thirty-eight years. In all that time he offered the Traditional Latin Rite as and when he could and was a devoted parish priest. The headline-grabbing work of giants like Dom Gérard Calvet was done so that humble priests like Fr Smith might thrive. Bill Quirk remembers Fr Smith.

Every inch a priest. From his appearance (cassock in church, biretta for services, black-suited outdoors), right through to his concern for the individual, that sentence epitomised Fr George’s very being. He was very conscious of the dignity of the priesthood, which had never to be compromised. And so, for example, he did not hesitate to decline an invitation from his bishop to repair to a local pub at the end of a visitation; at a deanery meeting where the guest speaker was an American cleric who opened his talk with remarks rejoicing at the end of the old “hic-ery hoc-ery”, he was the one who stood up to demand (and receive) an apology for the offensive reference to what had been at the centre of his priestly life; after Mass he was invariably to be seen giving an example by making his thanksgiving before the Blessed Sacrament, before going out to socialise with the congregation.

Father George was ordained for the Birmingham archdiocese in 1945 and became an army chaplain in 1951. He served in Korea and Malaya, and jumped with the Parachute Regiment, also serving with the Irish Guards. On return to the diocese, he had parishes in Coventry, Carterton and Lichfield; in the last, the heart trouble which was to dog him for the rest of his life made its appearance. On return from sick leave to a Church which had a different feel, he was given the small country parish of Hethe. On my arrival to work in Oxford in 1972, I heard the almost unbelievable report of the parish where seven of the eight Masses each week were in the Traditional Latin Rite. For those who could not journey to Hethe, Fr George celebrated twice a week in a well-known basement chapel in north Oxford.

Needless to say, Traditional Catholics from miles around flocked to Hethe on Sundays. For my family, it was the start of a firm and rewarding friendship which endured for thirty-five years. He was a most hospitable man and enlivened any company.

After Hethe, he became the first parish priest of Burford, where a church had been built by the Lidderdales. His first action on arrival was, with the help of his brother, to turf out the table altar which had been in use, and then say Mass at the beautiful fixed altar with its small statues of John Fisher and Thomas More.

He was very happy in Burford, but his stay there was increasingly marred by health alarms, (hospitalisation and operations) and he finally retired to a small flat in Bourton-on-the-Water at the age of seventy. As long as he was mobile, he acted as assistant chaplain at the US airbases nearby and also travelled frequently to say Masses for the Latin Mass Society in Clifton diocese. He never lost his conviction that many developments in the Church were an unjustifiable rupture with Tradition and, in particular, that the Traditional Rite would be rehabilitated.

In the last couple of years, he had become increasingly crippled with gout and arthritis, but never failed to say his daily Mass (three at Christmas and All Souls), even when eventually forced to sit. A couple of collapses at home made him realise he could no longer live alone and he was in hospital again where his heart condition was stabilised. For some months, he endured with great fortitude the indignities and casual neglect of an NHS ward, and then faced the prospect of being handed over to social services. Fortunately, a priest friend found him a place with the Sisters of Nazareth in Cardiff, where he moved after Christmas 2006 and spent his remaining months in great spiritual happiness, dying aged 89 on 20 June 2007.

Now that we are beginning to experience new growth in the Traditional Rite thanks to the Holy Father’s Motu Proprio, ‘Summorum Pontificum’, Fr George’s life can serve as a model of fidelity for those young men pursuing their vocations in the Traditional seminaries. Requiescat in pace.

[Taken from "Mass of Ages" May 2008, The Latin Mass Society's quarterly magazine]