Fr Denis W. Martin, Priests of 1928, Brisbane, 2003, pp 100-102:
John Healy

Both Gerard Hefferan and Tom Boland have researched and written on Fr Healy in recent years because he was a man ahead of his time.

John Edmund Healy was a true colonial for he was born at Gympie in 1873 where his father fossicked for gold. He was educated at Mr McGurk's local school outside Gympie. It was around the family property at Bauple that he first became aware of the declining situation of the local Aboriginals. He was employed in Gympie as secretary and accountant to the manager of a mining company.

At 40 years of age in 1913, he was in a position to go to study for the priesthood, apparently a long-felt vocation. Having passed through Springwood and Manly, he was ordained in Sydney by the Apostolic Delegate, Dr Cattaneo, at the end of 1918.

After a brief appointment at St Stephen's, he went to Chinchilla in 1921 and was made Parish Priest in 1922. When Toowoomba was about to be made a separate Diocese, he took the chance to do something he had always wanted to do: he approached Archbishop Duhig and won his approval to do missionary work among the Aboriginals.

He spent 1929-1930 at Beagle Bay in the north of Western Australia. He caught the blight and there were administration problems in that missionary Diocese but time there was not wasted for he had observed and formed a new approach to the problem. He would write to make the powers that be, both Church and Government, more aware of social justice for the original occupants of the land.

When Parish Priest of Childers he contributed articles to the Australian clergy magazine Manly. He had the opportunity to broadcast his message which now included land rights.

He wrote two books, one of which was published, Aboriginal People of Australia. Like most visionaries, his was 'a voice crying in the wilderness', a man ahead of his times. His appeal was for social justice, not the then fashionable interest of anthropology.

As Parish Priest of Bardon for 20 years from 1938, he continued his work in spite of failing eyesight. Light aggravated the eye disease so that even during the daytime, the presbytery was curtained and dark. The only light was provided by flickering candles as he had removed the electric light bulbs. The curates lived in fear of fire, but not Fr John.

It was on 16th July 1958 that he died in the Mater Hospital. He was laid to rest in the Priests' section at Nudgee Cemetery.

Writing in The Catholic Leader, Fr Hefferan summed up his life's work: 'In him we have a prophet who should never be forgotten - a man who dared to challenge, instruct and inspire - a man whose pen still speaks years after his death.' And Dr Boland says of Fr Healy, 'Especially he would have appreciated the Pope's endorsement of Aboriginal culture and spirituality in Alice Springs in 1986.'

(Reproduced by permission of Fr Denis Martin.)

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Prayer Calendar: Deceased Priests who have ministered the Catholic Faith throughout Toowoomba and districts, 1864–2025, Compiled by Annie Carrett, Diocesan Archivist, 2001, Updated by Gabrielle Saide, Diocesan Archivist, 2023:
Rev John Edmund Healy, died 18 July 1958

John Healy was born in Gympie on the 17th November, 1873, the son of a miner, and one of seven children (6 boys, 1 girl). Such a family was unable to afford higher education, and Archbishop Dunne was not given to paying the 40 pound a week stipend at Manly Seminary for his students. So John worked as an office clerk, until a curate, Fr Pat Murphy, managed to have him accepted, at the age of forty, into the Seminaries at Springwood and Manly. "Bad health dogged him continually throughout his seminary days, and it was only the sympathetic understanding...of the seminary staff and the tireless and almost heroic assistance of some of his fellow students that enabled him to reach his goal." (Manly IX/9, p 114). He was ordained Priest in Sydney on 30th November, 1918, after six years of study. He spent two years on the staff of St Stephen's Cathedral. In 1921 he went as curate to Chinchilla and in the next year became the Parish Priest. He remained there for eight years until the separation of the Toowoomba Diocese. He covered that large country Parish first by horse and sulky and later by car. About 1930 he volunteered for the Beagle Bay Mission in Western Australia, and spent twelve months with the Pallottine Fathers and working with the Aborigines. However, he had to return to Brisbane. His desire to help the Indigenous people never abated and he wrote of their needs in a book The Aboriginal People of Australia (1948). A second book was prepared but never got past the manuscript stage. He spent the rest of his life in the Brisbane Archdiocese, at Childers (1932-37) and Bardon (1938-58). He died aged 84 and is buried in Nudgee Cemetery.
(Ref. Brisbane Archives and Manly, Oct. 1958, Vol. 9, No. 2)

Reproduced by permission of Bishop Ken Howell.