Fr T.J. Linane, From Abel to Zundolovich, Vol. 2: Biographies of Priests on the Australian Scene up to 1900, 1980, pp 11-12:

Cahill, Very Rev. Thomas, S.J., Irish, Golden Jubilarian
First Rector of Xavier College
Looking over the 'Xaverian' of 1910 we find this tribute: "Father Cahill, first Rector, was the weary Titan, taking the huge load of responsibility on his broad shoulders. And who could have endeared himself more to the boys than he? Gentle as a child himself, generous to a fault, he was the beau ideal of headmasters. I have known him try very hard to be angry, but never have I known him to succeed...His rule was love and his wish was law to the widest. Peace to his ashes. I never heard any boy, and we were as thoughtless and careless as most boys, speak of him except in respect and affection..." Many such tributes apart from the role of Rector, could be spoken of this versatile Jesuit. He was born in County Leix on 31 Dec. 1827 and entered the Order on 8 March 1855. Places of study are passed over to mention that before coming to Australia he worked with the Portuguese Jesuits in Macao from 1864 to 1871, being Superior there of St. Joseph's Seminary. He arrived in Melbourne on 27 Jan. 1872 to join other members of the Community: Frs. Wm. Kelly, Edward Nolan, Francis Murphy, Joseph O'Malley, Christopher Nulty, William Hughes, and Michael Watson. In July 1872 he succeeded Joseph Dalton as Superior of the Irish Jesuit Mission in Australia, remaining in office until December 1879. Besides being Mission Superior he was Rector at St. Patrick's College from 1874 to 1877. He appears to have resided mainly at St.Ignatius', Richmond during his term as Superior. The foundation stone of St. Francis Xavier's College, Kew, had been laid in December 1872, and with its opening in 1878 Cahill became the first Rector; the rectorship of St. Patrick's passing to Fr. Nulty. (For a time Xavier was regarded as an annexe of St. Patrick's catering for boarding pupils). Stepping down from his high office as Superior of the Order and relieved of teaching duties, we find him in the role of a humble curate at St. Ignatius' Richmond in 1881. Other portfolios are accounted for as follows: 1884-1886 at St. Patrick's College as Minister, teacher and Spiritual Father ; 1887-1889 at the Immaculate Conception Church, Hawthorn as minister and curate; 1890-1893 as Superior at St. Ignatius' Richmond; 1894-1896 as Superior at Hawthorn; 1897-1908 as curate at St. Ignatius', Richmond. He was an outstanding linguist and classicist - and a sought-after preacher, as instanced in the opening of churches, the preaching of the Month's Mind for Dr. Polding in 1877, in the panegyric to pay tribute to Pio Nono in St. Patrick's Cathedral and the special oration for the Plenary Council, Sydney 1885. He was a member in 1877 of the Committee appointed by Dr. Goold to found a Catholic College that would be attached to the Melbourne University. Having attained his Golden Jubilee of priesthood, and having given great service to his Order and to the Church in Victoria he died on 19 April 1908 at the ripe old age of 81. Burial took place at the Boroondara Cemetery, Kew.
(Footprints, Vol. 1, No. 12)
Ref.: Fr. Greg O'Kelly S.J.

---

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

Teacher and preacher; born Co Carlow, Ireland, 31 December 1827; died Richmond, Victoria, 19 April 1908, aged 80.

Thomas Cahill had been a theological student at Maynooth, Ireland, until near his ordination, and then entered the Society, 8 March 1855, and as Ireland had no noviciate, he went to France, where he was later ordained at Laval in 1857.

He returned to Ireland to teach classics and mathematics to the junior boys at Clongowes. In 1859 he was sent to Galway and divided his four years there between the parish and the school. But he had always wanted to go to the foreign missions and when the Portuguese Jesuits in Macao needed a man to teach English in the minor seminary, he volunteered and was sent there at the end of 1863.

He found himself in a rather bizarre situation. The seminary with one hundred boarders and 116 dayboys had at its head a Portuguese prelate, Mgr Gouvea, who apparently had little capacity for his position. The four Jesuits on the staff were supposed to be responsible for teaching and discipline: but in fact Gouvea confined them to teaching. The other three Jesuits were Italian.

The community's superior was Father Rondina, an enthusiast, his mind full of ambitious projects, but as Gouvea mentioned to his superior of the mission, he was so scatty that he'd forgotten by midday what he'd done in the morning and undid it. Rondina wanted to take over the administration of the seminary in spite of the fact that the two new men, Fathers Virgili and Cahill, were sent in response to complaints of chronic overwork. The second priest, Mattos, was causing trouble by denouncing with some violence what was practically the slave status of Chinese labourers in Macao - the colonial government was furious.

The two additions were most welcome, and the superior of the mission, too, wrote that he was delighted to get Cahill. The feast of St Francis Xavier in 1864 brought letters from Father General Beckx to the four priests in Macao. To Cahill he wrote warmly that he had heard only good of him and hoped this would always be so: he should go on living by the Institute and prudently doing God's work.

Cahill was not perhaps altogether won by the mission. At any rate, he wrote at the end of 1864 to the Irish provincial who had asked for news of the situation in Japan, and recommended that the Irish province should get in there quickly. Other Orders were taking over the cities of Japan; so why should the Irish province not have a mission there.

In the meantime there was Macao and the situation there became troublesome. Gouvea refused to expel some boys for immorality - the governor of the colony had interceded for them. Rondina, reporting this, added that Cahill was having stomach trouble, and his gentleness, admired in an earlier letter, prevented him from maintaining discipline and made some of the boys avoid his subjects. This was a pity; Cahill was so devoted and good, and Gouvea and the assistant masters were rough and harsh with the boys. Cahill was their spiritual director, but his work prevented his being always accessible to them.

By the middle of 1866 Rome had decided that the Macao community needed a new superior. It would have to be someone already there - no one else could be sent to Macao. The superior of the mission and his consultors proposed Cahill - he was prudent and kind, perhaps not forceful enough, and the community - given to mutual complaints, needed someone strong. If the general, in appointing him, wrote him an encouraging letter, this might help him to overcome his timidezza. Beckx at first jibbed at appointing Cahill because of his experience, but he later agreed that there was no one else, and he was a good man and peaceable. So in August 1866 he appointed Cahill superior of the community in the seminary.

Cahill met new problems and was not finding the mission satisfactory to his missionary zeal - it was a settlement of hardly devout European Catholics. He raised again the question of the Jesuits returning to Japan when he heard of the canonization of the Japanese martyrs, and asked Beckx to remember him if the Society undertook a mission there.

Meanwhile, Cahill was finding the new rector of the seminary, Fr Antonio Carvalho, who had first been friendly to the Society, becoming more difficult, and again confined the Jesuits to teaching only. Discipline was so bad that the Jesuits withdrew from their rooms in the seminary and went to live in a house put at their disposal nearby.

Sometime later Cahill was reporting maniacal behaviour on Carvalho's part; he forbade the Jesuits to hear the boys' confessions, complained that to warn boys against the Freemasons was to engage in politics. And the Spaniards and Portuguese in Macao were making outrageous accusations against Rondina because he encouraged girls to refuse their advances. The community wanted to withdraw altogether from working in the seminary. Further dissentions developed with the Society on the outside watching and waiting. But the situation did not improve and Cahill wanted to leave the mission. The situation became so impossible that the Jesuit presence there also became impossible.

At one time during his stay, Cahill was awarded a knighthood by the Emperor of Annam for work he did for some Annamese fisherman unjustly imprisoned in Macao. He became so proficient in Chinese that he wrote also a Chinese catechism for his people.

Cahill left for Manila hoping to be sent from there into China; and indeed the provincial in Lisbon suggested using him in one of the off coast islands from which some missionaries had just been expelled. But the Irish provincial wanted him to go to the new mission in Australia. The general wrote to him in January 1872, praising his missionary zeal, and thanking him for all he had done in Macao; but Melbourne's needs were imperative and Cahill should get down there quam primum.

When in April 1872 Beckx asked the Irish provincial to suggest three names of men suitable for appointment as superior of the Australian mission, Cahill's name led all the rest, and in July he became superior of the mission. Two years later he was also rector of St Patrick's College, and exchanged this post in 1878 for the rectorship of the newly formed Xavier College, remaining superior of the mission. At this time his students remembered him as a very earnest and able man, constantly called upon by the diocese to give occasional addresses. He was a methodical teacher of classics and mathematics.

He may have found Melbourne dull after Macao, or suffered a reaction after all the excitements there. In September 1875 the general wrote complaining that he had not heard from him in two years, and six months later complained that it was now two years and six months since he'd had a letter. Perhaps Macao had nothing to do with it, for the general also complained of one of the mission consultors; he had written only once in the past three years and that was to say that there was nothing to write about!

Cahill remained superior of the mission until November 1879, and rector of Xavier until December of the same year. During his term as superior, in February 1875, he preached at the opening of St Aloysius' Church, Sevenhill, South Australia, and in 1877, gave a two-hour funeral oration on the first Australian bishop, Dr Polding, at 'Month's Mind'.

From 1880-83 Cahill did parish work at Richmond, and 1883-87 taught for the university examinations at St Patrick's College. He worked in the parish of Hawthorn, 1887-90, before appointment as superior and parish priest of Richmond, 1890-94, and had similar duties in the Hawthorn parish, 1894-6. His final home was the Richmond parish, 1896-1908, where he was spiritual father and a house consultor.

Thomas Cahill was one of the 'founding Fathers' of the Australian province. He was a fine preacher, a classicist, a linguist and a zealous pastor. He was also a respected theologian, called upon to preach at Synods, both in Sydney and in Melbourne. He was also one of the diocesan examiners of the clergy, and consultor of the archbishop.

He was a man with a fine constitution, and did the work of a young man until within a few months of his death. He suffered heart trouble and for long periods was unable to leave his room. His life was given to his work, devoted to the confessional and to the sick and those in trouble. He had a good memory for his former students and parishioners, and was a good friend to many.

(Reproduced by permission of Fr David Strong SJ.)