Fr Richard Cremins SJ:'I KNOW only one human being who is shaped like the paschal candle: Fr Dick Cremins – tall, thin and luminous." That was how a chieftain in Tanzania described Fr Dick Cremins, a Jesuit missionary who has died in his 90th year.
He had been a trailblazing supporter of the National Council of Catholic Women of Zambia, at a time when women were invisible in the church and in Zambian society. Cremins encouraged them to use their power. He saw his job as that of an enabler, giving women the courage to act themselves, so when they came up with an idea and asked him to act on it, he replied: “No, yours is the voice that should be heard.”
Richard Joseph Cremins was born in 1922. His father, a civil servant, was also Richard, and the family lived in Blackrock and later Sandymount in south Dublin. He was the third of four boys; their only sister died young. As a civil servant, Richard’s father was required to stay neutral in the Civil War, but as his third son remarked later, “We knew which side we were on”. His mother was related to Gen Richard Mulcahy, a pro-treaty minister.
After Sion Hill preparatory school, he went to Blackrock College as a day student, where he was the first student to pass the Intermediate Certificate examination under 13 years of age. In his final year he won a gold medal for debate. He studied law and politics at University College Dublin, and Kings Inns, Dublin.
He graduated in 1943, and in the same year chose to join the Jesuit order, at age 21. His elder brother Pat had already joined the Holy Ghost order, and both were to work as missionaries in Africa.
Cremins was ordained in 1955 and soon after went to Zambia to learn a local language, beginning half a century of service, with stints as a teacher, school manager, parish priest and civil society activist promoting economic development. His identification with the country was total – he took citizenship when Northern Rhodesia became independent Zambia in 1964.
His sense of humour helped him to cope with local flexibilities over timekeeping. Running out of his house at 9.50am one day, he declared: “I’ve got to rush. There is a meeting that was due to start at 8am and I don’t want to be late!”
But there were also inflexibilities he was to encounter which caused the lawyer in him to surface. In 1983 he became director of the Family Life Movement promoting the teachings of Vatican II, reiterating opposition to “unnatural” contraception, just as the Aids pandemic was about to burst on the world, hitting Africa particularly badly.
The encyclical Humanae Vitae was published in 1968, and he believed its teaching could be put into practice if the vision behind it was understood.
He famously introduced himself to a sceptical international conference by saying he had practised natural family planning all his life, by being celibate. His stated position was that if contraception was banned, Catholics had to be offered an alternative, and that was natural family planning. He maintained the only way to avoid HIV was abstinence from sex outside marriage.
History will judge the wisdom of celibate clergy opposing the use of condoms in Africa at a time when HIV/Aids was wreaking such havoc. There was no doubting the sincerity of Cremins’s beliefs and his total dedication to the betterment of “his people” in Zambia and later Malawi, where he set up a Jesuit house and worked for the last 14 years of his ministry.
He had planned to retire to Lusaka, Zambia and live out the rest of his life there. But a stroke intervened in 2007, and he was admitted to a Dublin Jesuit nursing home.
In later life he admitted he had found his early years as a priest and teacher in 1950s Ireland unsatisfactory. Pre-Vatican II theology was over-dogmatic and too stultifying for a young man who had much to do with his life.
He fought hard to regain his speech in the nursing home after the stroke, and organised Scrabble and draughts competitions among his fellow residents. He also got around to designing a braking system for a “walker” for stroke victims that only required one hand to operate.
He wrote articles for the Catholic press challenging received wisdom on many points. The Furrow, published on March 1st, nine days after he died, contains his final spirited contribution, welcoming the decision to close the Irish embassy to the Vatican.
The main job of the papal nuncio was liaison with the faithful through the local church, not the government, he declared.
His siblings predeceased him.
Richard Cremins: born August 24th, 1922; died February 21st, 2012