Obituary: Capuchin Fr Ted gave up farming and shearing for a ‘late’ vocation

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
22 February 2004

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Obituary: Capuchin Fr Ted gave up farming and shearing for a ‘late’ vocation

Fr EDWARD HARROP OFM Cap 1930–2004

Fr Ted Harrop died on the morning of Saturday, January 31, after a serious illness caused by a virus infection to his spine that left him paralysed from the waist down for almost a year.

He was 73.

Fr Julian Messina OFM Cap, provincial of the Capuchins concelebrated his funeral Mass with 29 other priests at the Capuchin parish church of St Fiacre’s in Leichhardt.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, Bishop Joseph Oudeman OFM Cap and Bishop Geoffrey Robinson attended the celebration.

Fr Ted was 37 when he made his first profession as a Capuchin at Plumpton on the feast of Our Lady on August 15, 1968.

A “late” vocation he had spent most of his life until then as a farmer and “shearing sheep from Darwin to Melbourne and even in New Zealand”.

In his younger days Ted also had a reputation for being a very good Australian Rules football player.

He was a man used to hard work who willingly put his energies into his religious life and priesthood.

He spent the greater part of his priestly ministry in the Leichhardt parish and was instrumental in welcoming the Neo-Catecumenate there.

He also assisted the students at Redemptoris Mater seminaries in Perth and Sydney as confessor.

Fr Ted brought to all his work years of experience, common sense, a willingness to do the hard work, a love of gardening and landscaping and a strong “no-nonsense” faith born of working on the land.

He was a man’s man who was unashamed to build grottoes in every friary to which he went to express in a practical way his straightforward devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

Fr Ted was buried in the friars’ cemetery at Assumption Friary at Plumpton, where he had renovated the grotto of our Lady and planted a rose garden.

And, of course, it was at Plumpton that he had made his first profession all those years ago.