This month the monastic community marks the 25th anniversary of Abbot Augustine O’Sullivan, who died on 7th December 1999.
Seamus O’Sullivan was born in Limerick city on 21st October 1918. He trained and worked as a primary school teacher before entering Glenstal Priory in 1946, receiving the name Augustine. He was professed on 13th April 1947 and, following studies in the monastery and with the Spiritan Fathers at Kimmage Manor in Dublin, was ordained priest on 15th June 1952. For the next five years he was involved in many areas of the life of the monastery and school. During this period and later, when his workload permitted, he was a much sought-after retreat master and speaker, in particular for religious sisters.
When Glenstal became an abbey in 1957, Father Augustine was appointed Prior and Novice Master. For the next nine years, by his constant devotion and presence, Prior Augustine maintained the rhythm of monastic life while supporting the young Abbot Joseph Dowdall who was much involved in assuring the role of religious in the Irish Church, not least as the founding president of what was then known as the Conference of Major Religious Superiors.
Elected second Abbot of Glenstal Abbey at Christmas of 1966, following the premature death of Abbot Joseph, Abbot Augustine served the community for fourteen years until his retirement at the end of 1980. These were the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council. With his clear-headed and courageous defence of essential monastic values, Abbot Augustine guided the community calmly through this exciting and sometime turbulent period. He encouraged Glenstal’s contribution to the wider Church by supporting the Annual Ecumenical Conference, which had made a faltering, exploratory, start in 1964. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the older Liturgical Conference, but was sufficiently far-seeing to recognise in 1975 that this conference had, at least for the time being, served its purpose and that it was time to hand over to other fora.
Upon his retirement as abbot in 1980, when he might have sought a quieter life, Abbot Augustine went to the monastery at Ewu in Nigeria he had originated and constantly supported during his time as abbot. He remained at Ewu for the remaining nineteen years of his life, acting as superior for fourteen of these years. On his last visit to Glenstal, scarcely two months before he died, Abbot Augustine did not hide his impatience to return to Ewu, stating that he wanted to be buried there.
Appropriately, his last days were spent in the care of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, with whom he had had close associations in Ireland and Nigeria for many years. He died in Ibadan on 7th December 1999 and, as he had wished, was buried in Ewu. People from all over Nigeria came to his funeral, witnessing to the peace he had brought into the lives of so many.
May he rest in peace.