Remembering Brother Raphael Berney

While the Berney family is well known in today's Kilcullen, with brothers Jim, Tom and Bernard all still playing an active part in the business and social community here, a cousin of theirs' memory is rather lost in the mists of a premature demise, writes Brian Byrne.

John Berney was born to Thomas Berney and his wife Margaret (Connolly) on March 3 1907. Little is known of his growing up in Kilcullen, but in 1921 he was sent to boarding school in Mount St Joseph Abbey in Roscrea, operated by the Cistercians order.

He is recalled in the college annual as 'never having achieved distinction in games' but having 'unfailing high spirits, his love of laughter and its attendant sprites'. A commentary which leaves open much, and possibly something mischievous.

What was his big skill was music, 'above the average' according to contemporary accounts, and for which he gained the college First Class Honours and a Prize at Senior Advanced level.

"Of course he was indispensable for every céidhlí — and there were many — in the classrooms, and foremost in the orchestra of his day," the writer of his obituary notice in the college annual noted in 1935.

John left the college in 1924 and went to study at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. There he studied the organ under the tutelage of one Dr Heuston, but after two years he decided he wanted to consecrate himself to religious life. He applied to his alma mater at Mount Saint Joseph, and in 1926 he took the Cistercian habit as a brother and the monastic name of Raphael.

Brother Raphael was appointed organist in the abbey church, and was assigned to teach music in the college where he had himself studied. His hope was that he could advance through the Cistercian system to full priesthood.

But his health failed, and he underwent a series of operations which eventually resulted in the removal of his colon. In 1931 he made his solemn profession as a Cistercian, and early in the next year was conferred with Minor Orders. When in the summer of 1933 he was conferred as sub-deacon, he was within less than a year in sight of his ambition to be a fully-ordained priest.

"How he yearned for the coming of that never to be forgotten day on which the dignity of the sacred and eternal priesthood would be his," is recorded in a reflection on Brother Raphael's life. "To be an Alter Christus; to be a mediator betwixt God and man."

It wasn't to be. His illness had left him open to further problems. In 1933, a Holy Year proclaimed by the Vatican to mark the 19th centenary of the death of Christ on the cross, Mount St Joseph's was hit by typhoid fever, eventually in early 1934 resulting in the deaths first of Brother Raphael and two of his Cistercian colleagues and three students.

At the age of 27 when he died on the Feast of the Epiphany, John (Brother Raphael) Berney had spent much of his educational time as well as seven years and four months in the cloister of Mount Saint Joseph's.

This is the 80th year since his death. It's time to to mark it, if for no other reason than to be true to our own local history.

Thanks to Peter Moloney for the research and the prodding to make this article happen.