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Rev Oswald Summerton SJ

Title:

Rev

First Name:

Oswald

Middle Names:

Preferred Name:

Surname:

Summerton

Order:

SJ

Date of Birth:

19-Aug-1926

Place of Birth:

Adelaide SA

Country of Birth:

Australia

Date of Ordination:

Place of Ordination:

Country of Ordination:

Ordination Diocese:

Seminary:

Date of Death:

22-Oct-2012

Place of Death:

Tuglakabad, New Delhi

Country of Death:

India

Date of Burial:

Place of Burial:

Country of Burial:

Find A Grave URL:




Biographical Notes

Priest, Scholastics Sail Soon More Australian Jesuits for India, Catholic Weekly, Sydney, 16 October 1952, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article147086730:

Eight more Australian Jesuits will leave soon to join 15 Australian confreres already working on their newly-established mission in India.

The eight Jesuits—one priest and seven scholastics—will sail from Melbourne on the Mooltan on December 6.

The group will be the third contingent of Australian Jesuits to sail for the Indian mission in less than two years.

The first—a group of six—left Australia about Christmas, 1950, and the second band of nine sailed for India last Christmas.

The eight Jesuits chosen to leave on December 6 this year are the Rev. Father Michael Brady, S.J., and the Revs. Peter Coleman, S.J., Philip Crotty, S.J., Hans Hendricks, S.J., Brian O'Connell, S.J., Gavin O'Sullivan, S.J. Oswald Summerton, S.J., and James Thwaites, S.J.

The Revs. James Thwaites and Gavin O'Sullivan will begin their studies in Theology on arrival in India.

After preliminary studies in the Hindi language, the Revs. Oswald Summerton and Brian O'Connell are to do their teaching in the mission college.

The last three, the Revs. Peter Coleman, Philip Crotty and Hans Hendricks will first complete their studies in the Hindi language and then begin their course in philosophy.[...]

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Eight More Jesuits for New Indian Mission [includes photograph], Advocate, Melbourne, 30 October 1952, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article172527851:

Eight more Australian Jesuits—one priest and seven scholastics—will leave Melbourne on December 6 to join the 15 Australian Jesuits already working in their new mission in India.

[...]

The scholastics are:

[...]

Rev. Oswald Summerton, S.J., born at Norwood, S.A. Educated at C.B.C., Strathfield, N.S.W. Studying for the priesthood at "Loyola," Watsonia. Will take up college teaching in India after preliminary studies of Hindi.

[...]

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

Missionary, educationalist, psychotherapist; born Adelaide, 19 August 1926; died Tuglakabad, N Delhi, India, 22 October 2012, aged 86.

Os Summerton was born in Adelaide, but moved to Sydney, where he completed his secondary education at St Patrick's College, Strathfield. As a teenager he held the Australian National record for the two-mile athletics event. Leaving school, he studied for a Diploma of Electrical Engineering at the Sydney Technical College for three and a half years, and spent two years as a trainee engineer with Amalgamated Wireless of Australia before joining the Jesuits at Loyola, Watsonia, in 1946. He loved music, and, throughout his life, was much appreciated for his singing and choir directing. Phil Crotty described him in those early days as 'brilliant, creative, and whimsical, with a great gift for friendship'.

Summerton was among the third group of Australian missionaries sent to India, leaving at the end of 1952. He completed studies in science and theology in India, and tertianship at St Beuno's, Wales, before taking his final vows in 1968.

He taught mathematics, science, geography, Indian history, and English, coached cricket, organized the Boy Scouts, and was choir master and hostel prefect at St Xavier's School in Hazaribag for three years, where he also set up the school science laboratories. It was here that he learnt the power of positive encouragement of his students. 'What you focus on, that you get. Focus on the good work and you will get more good work'. Here, as with everything he did, Summerton undertook work with great enthusiasm and large-heartedness, which did not always contribute to great appreciation from other Jesuits.

From 1962, after a short time in Hazaribag and Bokaro Thermal parishes, for the next six years he was principal of the Teachers' Training Institute, Sitagarah, which focused on agricultural and educational skills for tribal leaders. Two years as educational supervisor in Bokaro city followed, after which he returned to the TTI for two more years.

In 1969 he was appointed to Delhi to assist Theo Mathias, the director of the Jesuit Education Association of India (JEA), and given the task of organizing training programmes for institutions engaged in social and educational works. He organized a national consultation on Catholic education and published a newsletter on Jesuit education. He designed participatory research for self-evaluation of schools and colleges, and conducted the first self-evaluation programme of the educational apostolate of Jesuit high schools and colleges throughout India and Sri Lanka.

Moved by the need for better psychological support for principals and teachers, he decided to pursue further studies, undertaking an M.A. in education from London University, and spending a summer at the School of Education, Chicago University. He received a M.Sc. in operations research from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He also trained in the USA in behavioural science.

His main life-time work for almost forty years was in the area of Transactional Analysis, an area of behavioural management first developed by Eric Berne in the 1950s, which sees any conversation or non-verbal communication that takes place between two people as a transaction. He became renowned for integrating psychotherapeutic interventions, social transformation and God experience. To follow this calling to become counselor, facilitator, healer and guru on one hand, or to fit into the more regulated life that his Jesuit superiors envisaged for him, became a difficult discernment for him.

Deciding to follow the former path, which pleased many people in India, Summerton, in 1976, founded the TA Society of India of which he was president for three terms, and edited its journal Tasi Darshan for twenty years.

He co-founded the Transactional Analytic Centre for Education Research and Training (TACET) in New Delhi in 1980 in partnership with Ms. Pearl Drego, a member of the Grail, an international movement of Christian women. Together they brought this pioneering theory of relationships to teachers working in schools, as well as those working in campaigns for justice, and with disadvantaged children and families. Through TACET Summerton conducted training and workshops in countries around the globe, and wrote six books and 51 articles.

He made annual visits to Hazaribag to join the province brethren, but gradually his connections with the province became more distant. In the 1980s he was invited to set up a counseling centre in Hazaribag, but this never materialized. He found more stimulation in the company of his clients and professional associated in Delhi, and declined many invitations to live out his days among senior Jesuits of Hazaribag. He said that he couldn't leave Delhi because so many people depended upon his help. He died in his residence attended only by TACET colleagues. His close friend of sixty years, Hans Hendriks of the Hazaribag province, said the funeral Mass in the chapel of St Xavier's, Delhi.

His co-workers were enlivened by his faith-in-action, and as a spiritual healer. His spirituality was experienced as 'inter-denominational and inter-religious and is focused on deep surrender to the will of God.' He taught many the art of group spiritual discernment and to recognize the sacred in everyday life.

Fellow Jesuit missionary, Bill Dwyer, described Summerton as 'something of a one man institution, full of talents and enthusiasms, not without some eccentricities, but much loved by those he worked with and helped.' Following his death, his followers praised his goodness, loyalty, humility, faith, sense of humour, and childlike innocence, and the way he was a 'creator of community', teaching others 'to heal, to celebrate, to be loyal, to reconcile, to be transparent, accountable, honest and forthright'.

(Reproduced by permission of Fr David Strong SJ.)