Obituaries

Obituary

Ursula Nash 1920 – 2016

Ursula Nash, who has died at the age of 96, was one of the Faith Movement’s earliest supporters and for nearly twenty years ran the voice for Faith Magazine and pamphlets in her home.

Ursula first became involved in the movement when Fr Roger Nesbitt founded the Faith group at the John Fisher School in Purley, Surrey, where her son was a pupil. In 1975 she agreed to take on the administration of the magazine. A spare bedroom in her family home in Wallington became the Faith voice where she was assisted by Mrs Jeanette

Cook who had originally been a home help but became Ursula’s co-worker in the hectic business of posting out each issue of the magazine and orders for pamphlets. Her grandchildren remember sleeping surrounded by shelves loaded with booklets and magazines when they came to stay.

Ursula and her husband Bert welcomed Faith members into their home when boys from the school came to help in the voice. They also hosted social events, notably the annual Faith party for which Bert would build a huge barbecue in their garden.

Born in 1920, Ursula was technically a convert when her father was received into the Church when she was seven. She grew up in Richmond, Surrey, leaving school at 16 to work in a bank so as to help pay for her brothers to go to university. During the Second World War she was evacuated to Stoke-on-Trent along with the rest of the bank’s staff and was involved in the Young Christian Workers. Returning to London after the war, she married Bert in 1949; they had three children.

With her own children grown up and left home, she became “Auntie Faith” to several generations of boys from the John Fisher School, attending the weekly meetings of the Faith group and providing toast and tea after the talks. On her retirement in 1994, Fr Edward Holloway, the founding Editor of Faith, wrote: “Few except those intimately concerned know how much she has also been the ‘Mother confessor’ and counsellor of so many of our youth. She has been the ‘eminence grise’ behind many of the vocations with which God has blessed the John Fisher School.”

Widowed in her seventies, Ursula remained active in her parish life and was a regular at daily Mass. She spent her last years in St Teresa’s Home for the Elderly in south-west London. Her Funeral Mass was attended by eight priests from the Faith Movement as well as her children, all her UK grandchildren and two of her great-grandchildren.

Obituary

Father Dominic Rolls 1963 – 2016

Father Dominic Rolls, a priest of the Faith Movement, of Dorking  in  Surrey  and  a  lecturer  at  St  John’s  Seminary, Wonersh,  died in April 2016 aged 53.

Born in 1963, the youngest of five children, Fr Dominic was educated at Worth School in Sussex and St Andrews University, Fife. He was a housemaster at Westminster Cathedral Choir School before training for the priesthood at the English College in Rome for the diocese of Arundel and Brighton. He received

his STL  from  the  Pontifical  Gregorian  University.  Ordained  at  Arundel  Cathedral in 1993, he worked irst as assistant priest at St Joseph’s, Epsom, and Our Lady of Ransom, Eastbourne, before being appointed to St Joseph’s, Dorking. Here he became a popular parish priest, developing youth work and initiating a number of parish projects including a community Memorial Garden. He was also Dean of the Epsom Deanery. He served for twelve years at Dorking, his work cut short in 2014 when he was diagnosed with cancer and faced surgery and prolonged treatment.

A leading figure in the Faith Movement, Fr Dominic was a popular speaker at the Faith Summer and Winter conferences, the annual theology seminar, and the Faith Forum at Glasgow University and Evenings of Faith in London.