Fr T.J. Linane, From Abel to Zundolovich, Vol. 2: Biographies of Priests on the Australian Scene up to 1900, 1980, pp 73-74:

Connolly, Richard Joseph, OSB, Australian, Visitor
First Priest to Take a Cambridge Degree Since Reformation Times
Strictly this famous Benedictine and Australian doesn't qualify for this list, but an exception is made, because, as his biographer (the late Mgr. Leonard of St. Patrick's College, Manly) claims, he is "a distinguished Australian scholar of international reputation .. too little known in his native country ..." Mgr. Leonard was paying a correct and deft tribute to the memory of Dom Hugh (his name in religion) in the Australasian Catholic Record of July 1948. It will be enough to summarise the Leonard writeup: "Dom Hugh was born at Werajel, near Carcoar on 12 July 1873. His parents were a Nathanael Connolly (descended, it is said, from a soldier who served under Wellington) and Catherine Heydon, a sister of the late Judge Heydon ... A niece of Dom Hugh is superioress of an Australian Convent of Mercy, and two grandnephews are studying for the priesthood .. but that is only part of the meritorious history of the Connolly stock. The saintly Dr. Polding had stayed with them on one occasion and, possibly, this explains some of the many blessings which followed the several Connolly families sprung from the old home at Werajel.

Richard is remembered ... as a homesick boy at St. Stanislaus' Bathurst. This must have been about 1887, when he was fourteen years of age. In April of the next year, 1888, he arrived at Downside, with no great knowledge of letters, it is said, and still ignorant of cricket. He became good at both, even while he was in his teens ... He passed the London matriculation with distinction in 1891, and in that year his Benedictine vocation manifested itself. He took the religious habit at Belmont in January 1896. October of that year saw him at Cambridge, as a non-collegiate student, but within a few months he had entered Christ's College ... It was in the theological faculty of the Protestant Cambridge that he made a choice, resulting in his becoming a specialist in Syriac ... I have heard it said, but cannot verify the fact that he was the first Catholic cleric to take a degree in Cambridge since the Reformation. If so, this would have been in the year 1899, the year of his ordination to the priesthood ... In 1903 he visited Australia ... His mother was still alive. This was his first and last visit to Australia. In 1904 Dom Hugh succeeded Dom Cuthbert Butler as Superior of Benet House, the Downside House of studies at Cambridge. During some seven years in this post he built up the scholarship in the Syriac and liturgical fields, and also the scholarly methods which were the power behind his subsequent work and which established his reputation as an Orientalist in the University of Cambridge ... From 1911, and for some years, he was lecturer in Syriac at Christ's College, examiner in the Oriental Language Tripos, a member of the Board of Oriental Studies, editor of some of the Cambridge 'Texts' and Studies' ... His first book appeared in 1929, 'Didascalia Apostolorum', dedicated to the memory of his deceased friend, Abbot Ramsay ... Ranking as titular Prior of Canterbury since 1939, he seems to have revived his old interest in works of scholarship, although very infirm. In the war years he satisfactorily proved that the work 'De Sacramentis' and a treatise entitled 'Explanatio Symboli' belong to St. Ambrose. Dom Hugh began to publish in 1901. His first listed contribution was to the 'Journal of Theological Studies' founded in 1900. Between then and 1948 he wrote some thirty articles for this important periodical ... His contributions to the Downside Review were also numerous. These deal mostly with monastic things and liturgical matters ... In his books he showed his mental calibre at its best. He had a keen gift for minute analysis, a most delicate scientific sense, and wide linguistic knowledge ... The first book was a collection of the 'Liturgical Homilies of Narsai' which appeared in 1909 in Cambridge 'Texts and Studies' ... In 1916 came a work which perhaps more than any other has given Dom Connelly international fame, namely 'The So-called Egyptian Church Order and Derived Documents... The 'Didascalia Apostolorum' was given to English readers in a volume published in 1929 ..." (But a fuller description of these books is given in the A.C.R. already mentioned). A heart attack took him to his reward, on 16 March 1948. Perhaps the pilgrim who kneels at his grave in Downside Abbey may say to himself: Here is a tangible link between the saintly Polding who came from Downside and a man from Australia who adorned the name of Downside by his learning and goodness.
(Footprints, Vol. 2, No. 9)
Ref.: As quoted above - Mgr. Leonard and the A.C.R. July 1948.