FR JOSEPH ANTHONY WILLY, S. J. (1824-1897)

Fr Joseph Willy, SJ

Poor me! to venture to write on Fr Joseph Willy, S. J. and a mere sketch of his life at that when a to-volume biography would hardly do justice to the man who was the twin founder of the St Aloysius College. Hold me excused, therefore, at my attempt to put together in some order a few details in the long life of Fr Joseph Willy.

Fr Willy was not one of the first nine who landed in Mangalore on the last day of December 1878. But if I may draw a comparison with full respect to the first college of Apostles, Fr Willy, like St Paul, was drafted into the first batch and like St Paul stands out prominent. He joined the Mangalore Mission a year later on 5 December 1879.

(Fr Joseph Anthony Willy, SJ, a photo sketch by John Chandran, SAHS (2021)

Early Life

Joseph Anthony Willy was one of those sturdy Swiss, who came out to India when the Bombay Mission was transferred by the Holy See to the German Province of the Society of Jesus, whilst the Rt Rev. Anastasius Harmann, O.D.C., of blessed memory, was Vicar-Apostolic of Bombay and Administrator of Poona. Fr Willy was born in Switzerland on September 29, 1824. Of his youth, we are sorry to say, we have hardly any particulars, except that at the age of twenty he entered the Society of Jesus on October 1, 1844. His first religious training as a Jesuit Novice, he received at the College of Brig in Switzerland under the able direction of the famous Father George Standinger, who was for many years Master of Novices. At the same College of Brig he was, after his two years' Novitiate, engaged in the study of the classics and Rhetoric for two more years. When towards the end of 1847, the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland began a fanatical war against the Catholic Church, the Jesuits were the first against whom they directed all their fury. Then it was that our young scholastic, together with his brethren in religion, had to leave his romantic mountain home, in all possible disguises, to find a refuge on foreign soil. However, much they regretted to leave their cherished homes and the people they loved so well, still they went rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus".

Joseph Willy first found shelter in a College of the Society of Jesus in Savoy. After a short sojourn there he went to the United States of America. At St Louis, Missouri, he was engaged in his Philosophical studies, and here and at Cincinnati, Ohio, he laid the foundation for the career in which he so distinguished himself later on in India. For, whilst pursuing his own studies, he was engaged in educating the young Americans, both as disciplinarian and as teacher. We find him there as prefect of discipline and professor of Latin, Greek, Mathematics, French and German. In 1852 he returned to Europe for his study of Theology which he pursued successively at Louvain, Utrecht and Cologne. He was ordained priest at Cologne, and then made his third year of probation at Coblenz. His Jesuit formation was now complete. After spending two more years at Bonn where he was occupied partly with training of young scholastics and partly with the formation of university students, he received orders to leave for Bombay. Father Willy arrived on October 27, 1858, together with Father Leo Meurin, who later became famous as Vicar- Apostolic of Bombay and Archbishop of Port Louis, ile of Mauritius. Both men made their mark, because they were men of single purpose, seeking nothing but God's greater glory and the good of their fellowmen.

Life in Bombay

For 20 years Fr Willy laboured in the Bombay Mission holding different offices. Whatever the office he held and the work he did he give his best to the task in hand, discharging his duties with his characteristic zeal. In fact, he distinguished himself as a zealous parish priest, as an able director of souls, and as a capable administrator. Seeing his ability combined with hard work and his religious sense, his superiors heaped heavy responsibilities on him. And he never disappointed them or the people for whom he worked. His spiritual and intellectual training and his experience of hard life stood him in good stead in his various responsibilities.

The most outstanding of his distinguished services was his work as an educationist. He laid the foundation of the educational work at St Mary's and St Xavier's in Bombay and St Patrick's in Karachi. It was because of his great ability in educational work that he was sent to Mangalore. And here he did not disappoint the high hopes placed in him by his superiors. The Mangaloreans, as we shall note, found in him the right man for the work they were expecting from the Jesuits, namely, the starting of a college for the education of their youth.

In Mangalore

Here I cannot do better than translate the account of one who knew Fr Willy well and who wrote about him on hearing the news of his death. "I am very glad to hear that you are about to publish in your Magazine a sketch of the life of our late Fr Willy, whose memory is so lovingly cherished by us here in Mangalore. For six years he was the life and soul of our mission when it was in its infancy. To describe in detail the great work he did is beyond my power. The most I can attempt is to pay him the little tribute of my love and admiration, and to sketch in the merest outline the great work he accomplished here in the face of the untold difficulties and contradictions that must ever be attendant on the founding of a new college in a new mission. Father Willy was, without exaggeration. a man beyond all praise, and one of whom the Society has reason to be proud.

The starting of a new college, even under the most favourable circumstances, is a great undertaking. But it is in comparably greater when it has to be brought into existence as well as into shape- when it has to be started without a building or the funds to procure the same- with a very limited staff of teachers, many of them strangers to the language and new to the work, and with a class of boys not used to study and discipline. This was the almost herculean task to which Father Willy had to put his hand when he arrived in Mangalore on December 3, 1879. It was soon evident to everyone that he was the right man in the right place. From his long experience in college work, he knew exactly what was to be done and how and when to do it. People felt at once that the College had become an institution in the land and that he was its life and soul. All those who had to do with him felt utmost confidence in him; for they knew that his long experience and prudent wisdom made him see as it were intuitively what shape he had to give to different things, what rules he had to make, and what traditions to establish. It required all his prudence and tact at times so to combine firmness with kindness as to maintain discipline in the infant College with out at the same time wounding the susceptibilities of parents or pupils. He seemed to possess the secret of being a very strict disciplinarian and at the same time of making himself beloved even by those who felt betimes the weight of his hand.

"The amount of work he got through in a day was something extraordinary. He had an eye to everything and everybody. Pupils as well as masters needed his constant vigilance and care. Many a long day he spent seated at his desk with unwearied patience, correcting homework, setting examination papers, keeping up an endless correspondence with Government, and directing all without the assistance of an amanuensis or clerk. Besides teaching his own class, he went the rounds of all the other classes regularly, seeing that both masters and pupils did their work well and uniformly. With all this on his shoulders, he still found time to take an active interest in the games and sports of the boys, to teach them music and to visit the homes of several who needed more than ordinary attention. Add to this that he was always ready to help in the confessional and to preach as occasion demanded in the different churches in the town. His sound judgement and consummate prudence brought him many persons who came to seek his counsel and direction in delicate and perplexing affairs. From this it appears that he was truly dux consilio, manu miles.

"I cannot regard it otherwise than a most signal favour of Almighty God that, when in 1879 the Holy see ordered the Society to take over the care of the Christians of South Canara and North Malabar from the Carmelites, and our Father General confided the new Mission to our little Venetian Province, we should have had such an able workman sent to help us in our work. The most arduous task we had to undertake, right after our arrival in Mangalore was the foundation of a college for the higher education of the youth of the district. In fact, as it is well known, it was chiefly for that purpose that the transfer was made. Superiors, therefore, set about the work the very first year after our coming, although painfully conscious of how limited they were in men and means for such a serious undertaking. assembled in the verandahs of a private house, which had been the first classes lent us for our dwelling. When greater accommodation was required, we had nothing better to supply than a pandal constructed after the native fashion with bamboos and cadjan. That was our only college building, and the future presented nothing but a prospect of anxiety and uncertainty.

"Mangalore quickly began to learn that in Father Willy it had a superior kind of man, and it was proud of him. Soon he became so well and favourably known that he could not go through the streets of the town without being stopped by those who had something to say to him, or those to whom he had something to say. The people of Mangalore became very much attached to Father Willy, and he to them. He saw and felt what a fine field there was for work in the large Christian community, and especially was he impressed with the College as an agency for good, particularly as the pupils were in great majority Catholics.

"He Had become so identified with the best interests of Mangalore during the six years he spent in it, that when he was recalled to Bombay at the end of November, 1885, everyone in Mangalore felt that he was losing a personal and almost indispensable friend. How sad was the last good-bye spoken on the steamer that was to take him away from us, you may well imagine. Up to the very end of his life he cherished fond memories of Mangalore, and it was surprising how, even after a long lapse of years, persons and places were so fresh in his memory. The people of Mangalore, it must be said to their credit, were not at all forgetful of him. When the telegram giving the news of his death reached us last Easter, we all felt we had lost in him a friend and a benefactor. In three different churches solemn Requiem Masses were celebrated, the most solemn one being that, which was sung in the College chapel. It will stand as a perpetual memorial of the debt of gratitude that is due to the never-to-be-for-gotten Father Joseph Willy".

The above is the translation of a letter written to the Bombay Jesuits by one who knew Fr Willy well and we may add also, knew enough to judge men and matters.

Fr Joseph Willy, as the author of the "In Memoriam" puts it, "built up the soul of the College while Fr Mutti built up its body." It was Fr Willy, who as the first Rector and Principal of the College, declared on Jan, 12, 1880, in a pandal of thatched cadjan leaves: "We open the college today". And one of his successors will soon announce amidst a pile of buildings and perhaps before an assembly of several thousand: "The College completes 100 years today".

In Fr Joseph Willy we have a beautiful example of hard work, which was indeed characteristic of the first Fathers of our Province. This spirit of hard work was, in Fr Willy, combined with German tenacity and religious simplicity, an uncanny eye for detail, and a never exhausting zeal. Edu cation, for Fr Willy, was a means to an end. The educational apostolate was a means of reaching God in and through Christ. So, the study of languages and the sciences had their rightful place in his apostolic endeavour. In the same way games and sports, music and painting and other extra-curricular and cultural activities too found a place in his apostolate. He was gifted with a broad outlook and a balanced mind to be able to take interest in different aspects of a student's life, giving them the importance, they deserved. What is more, he could take a personal interest in each one of them and thus win the hearts of his students, the parents and Mangaloreans in general. "Among us" wrote one of his students, Mr. Jerome Saldanha, M.L.C., Fr Willy soon acquired the reputation of being almost omniscient and omnipresent, so powerful was his memory, so keen his insight into men and matters and so energetic was his action. He was Rector, Principal, Prefect of Studies, clerk, collector of school fees, Director of the College Choir, and of the Sodality Choir at Codialbail, spiritual Father of the nuns at St Ann's and what not. He did everything thoroughly and with an eye to minute details, which was truly remarkable. He found time to visit each class at least once a month, to examine the boys and to read out the 'Honoris Causa' List. He went over all the examination papers and revised them carefully after the professors had assessed the marks. He used to keep a strict account of the tickets showing that a boy had gone to confession at least once a month (a practice in vogue at that time). Once my confession ticket had not been handed over to him and the result was that I had to learn by heart a chapter of De Bello Gallico. When the good Father discovered the mistake, he was very sorry, but at the same time expressed his keen satisfaction at my having done the penance without grumbling".

Such anecdotes show clearly that Fr Willy had the qualities of heart and mind to a remarkable degree. This accounts for his immense popularity. Moreover, he was as much a priest and missionary as an educationist. The marble tablet set up in the vestibule of the College and the scholarships founded in his name bear witness to the high place he had won in the hearts of his students and friends. When he died in Bombay, twelve years after he had left Mangalore, Requiem Masses were offered in all the parishes in Mangalore This is a sure sign that he had endeared himself to all the Mangaloreans. An eye witness account says:

"The college which Father Willy watched over and laboured for with such indefatigable zeal, paid a fitting tribute of gratitude and respect to its benefactor on July 8th. An earlier day could not have been conveniently set for it, owing chiefly to the fact that the College was closed for the long vacation. In point of solemnity nothing was left undone. The Church was tastefully draped in black and yellow, and the catafalque was a superb structure reared under a canopy of evergreens suspended from the roof. Just before the absolution the Rev. Fr A. Muller, S.J., paid a fitting tribute to his old Rector and fellow-countryman. Among other things the speaker drew attention to the important offices Father Willy filled during a life of labour and prayer. It was the spirit of faith so strongly developed in him, that made Father Willy so anxious about the religious training of the boys entrusted to his care. He made their best interest his study both in the playground and in the classroom, a devotion which won for him the affection and respect of every boy in the College. Mangalore owes much to the energy of Father Willy, who did all in his power to work the College up to the highest standard which it could possibly attain".

But the best and the most touching souvenir is the sanctuary lamp that was burning and perhaps is still burning. which was a gift of Fr Willy's students. And how was the money for its purchase obtained? Those were not days of large donations; societies that give in lakhs as at present did not exist. Mr. Joseph Fernandes, a good student of Fr Willy, a sportsman and at the time prefect of the Sodality, organized a one-anna collection campaign and raised the sum required to buy that lamp. It is a tribute not of one person but of hundreds.

A few lines on Fr Willy's life after he left Mangalore. On his return to Bombay, he became the Superior of the Bombay Mission and then the Administrator Apostolic in the absence of Bishop Meurin until the establishment of the Hierarchy. In his advanced years we find him in Poona still directing the activities of youth and in his last years gently guiding the nuns of Jesus and Mary at Poona, then at Bombay. Here in Bombay, he died in his 73rd year after spending 39 years in India without even once returning to Europe. The funeral took place at St Ann's Church on Holy Saturday, 17th April 1897. in the presence of the Archbishop of Bombay, Fr Hoene, Superior of the Mission and Fr Jurgius, Rector of St Xavier's College.

To conclude this short life sketch of the great Fr Joseph Anthony Willy in the Words of Bishop Cavadini: "Fr Willy was for six years the life and soul of our mission in its infancy. Without any exaggeration he was a man beyond all praise, whose words touched the hearts and minds of people, raising them God-ward. In his advanced age he made his daily meditation kneeling without support, in the centre of his room". Finally in the words of Bastian: May the flame of that lamp, ever burning before the tabernacle (in the college chapel), keep alive the flame of God's love which Fr Willy lit in our hearts!"

This above material is taken from the book "Restless for Christ - Lives of Select Jesuits who toiled in the Karnataka Province" Series - II