Memorial Masses at Messines

Talking to my Dad last night about the Messines centenary, he told me that our Timaru parish priest Father Brian Fennessy is currently in Belgium to be part of the official commemorations.  Father Brian is a Defence Force chaplain and active member of the Army Reserve.  He has gone to Belgium to represent Cardinal John Dewe at memorials for Father James McMenamin, a New Zealand Catholic chaplain who was killed at Messines on 8 June 1917.  The photograph below shows a Catholic chaplain distributing communion to New Zealand soldiers just before the battle and may well be of Father McMenamin.  I wonder if our cousin Michael Scannell was one of his communicants?  It is not unlikely – he was in the 1st Canterbury Battalion while Father McMenamin was attached to 2nd Canterbury but clearly would have acted as chaplain for all the men in the Regiment and indeed the 2nd Brigade.

New Zealand chaplain gives Holy Communion to kneeling soldiers near the firing line, Messines Ridge, Belgium, 1917. Photograph taken 1917 by Henry Armytage Sanders. Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: 1/2-012780-G

A Petone soldier wrote a letter home shortly before Messines in which he described Father McMenamin’s qualities as a chaplain:

“Father McMenamin is known as Father Mac. He is right out on his own. When he is not settling draught problems for us he is accompanying embryo Sims Reeves on the piano, and is always looking after the boys, who swear by him. The way the boys borrow an occasional 5s from him is pretty strong. Catholic, Jew or Protestant, it is all the same. There’s no creed or colour drawn by Father Mac. Good luck to him”.

The day after the successful attack at Messines, Father McMenamin was conducting a burial service for a Catholic soldier who had been killed when a shell landed nearby and killed him too.  He was initially buried at Messines but subsequently reinterred in the priest’s vault in the parish church at Nieppe.  Meanwhile a chalice that had been presented to him by his parishioners at Petone was returned to New Zealand.  This same chalice has now been taken to Belgium to be used in  memorial services at Nieppe and Messines over the centenary days by Father Fennessy.  I’m sure he will also be offering the Mass for Michael Scannell, a fallen parishioner whose name is commemorated on the Roll of Honour at the back of Sacred Heart basilica in Timaru.

Father McMenamin’s chalice.