Fr David Strong SJ, The Australian dictionary of Jesuit biography 1848-2015, Second Edition, 2017:
Hoyle, Ian

Missionary, writer; born London, England, 3 June 1903; died Melbourne, 25 September 1983, aged 80.

Ian Hoyle was as English as a Wodehouse novel. He spent five years of his secondary education at Stonyhurst and in spite of less happy memories of that place the seeds of his Jesuit vocation were sown. His mother died when he was young and his father, an army surgeon, married an American lady, so Hoyle completed his secondary education at Georgetown, Washington, DC, and Santa Barbara in California.

Hoyle was an extremely tall youth, delicate and sensitive in the extreme. His most vivid memories of Stonyhurst were of the fear he had of the ferula. His experiences of corporal punishment kept him in sweating wakefulness at night.

After America, a discernment safari in Africa took place at Ibo in Mozambique, and he decided to follow Christ. He went first to the house for late vocations at Oscott and from there entered the English noviciate at Roehampton, 7 September 1927.

In an answer to an appeal for men for the Toulouse province mission in India, he volunteered again in an impulsive way. Two other novices volunteered with him and it says much for Hoyle's perseverance that he was the only one of the trio to continue. He was to spend 31 years at the Madura Mission, all of which, after his formation, were spent in schools. From 1944-54, and 1956-58, he taught at Campion High School, Trichinopoly, South India. There he contracted tuberculosis, which advanced to such a stage as to require the removal of one of his lungs.

Hoyle was a man into whose blood the British Raj seemed to have been injected into his blood. The changes, which followed the withdrawal of the Raj, were incomprehensible to him, and these conditions, coupled with his ill health and his less than happy memories of Stonyhurst, made him took towards Australia as a haven. The then provincial, who had himself been a missionary and had suffered the same conditions of health, offered him refuge.

An immense man, in height 6 feet 4 inches, and in weight 19 stone 11 pounds, his arrival was as impressive as a battleship's. His first assignment was to Belloc House where, within the space of a fortnight, it became obvious that the frugality of its table and living quarters were as unsuited to his dimensions as his talents were to the requirements of the Institute of Social Order.

Then he went to Messenger House, St Ignatius' parish, Richmond, Victoria, 1958-74. Here he was more amply housed and the fare at the presbytery was certainly not economy class. He spent some years as assistant editor of the Messenger, his offices being the supervision of the matrimonial column and reading proofs, both of which he did with great exactness.

Later he was transferred to Campion College where he was cared for with extraordinary kindness by the community until his death. There he enjoyed the community of the young men and, in his homily, Christopher Horvat recalled some of his characteristics. 'Ian was a man of sweeping gestures and overflowing heart. He seemed larger than life. He turned life into the raw material of an intense emotional drama that played itself out in his community, in conversations, in a stream of poems, letters and drawings and an autobiography.' He wrote an autobiography and began writing poetry after 17 years silence.

Hoyle was intensely sensitive, artistic and a poet. Like all artists and poets he always struggled to express the churning of his inner spirit. He also had great simplicity, which could disarm the unwary. Yet this stemmed from his great hunger for life. He believed very emphatically in the goodness, the greatness of being alive, and he wanted always to be on the side of life. He was a man who suffered much ill health and pain, and tried not to cause pain to others. Some of his students testified that he was much loved by them, and was the only Jesuit not to administer corporal punishment. There was weeping at his funeral. Hoyle had touched the hearts of those who experienced his presence.

(Reproduced by permission of Fr David Strong SJ.)