Fr. Tom Downing, S.J.

By Fr. John Locke, S.J.
(From the Nepal Region’s 50th Anniversary Book, 2001)

Born in 191S, Fr. Tom Downing entered the Society in 1933 and came to India in 1942 where he completed his studies at St. Mary’s, a Kurseong. He returned to Patna after tertianship to take up the task of assistant parish priest in Buxar under Fr. Ed Burke. A few months after the opening of Godavari School, he was asked to come to Nepal where he would begin his real life’s work.

He arrived in Godavari in 1952 to take over Fifth Class, and he took it all over – he was their class teacher, their hostel prefect, their games master, and much more. He moved to Jawalakhel in 1954 when the primary school opened there to continue as a teacher and took on the added burden of minister for the community. When the primary boarding section moved back to Godavari at the end of 1969, he went back to Godavari to continue his dual role.

Tom was truly a man in whom there was no guile. He said what he thought, a man of true honesty and simplicity. This was a quality which generations of Fifth Standard boys understood and appreciated. They feared him as a stern disciplinarian, but they also trusted him, confided in him, and tried to imitate him.

A lifetime of teaching Fifth Standard might seem to some a life of boring, repetitious drudgery, but to Tom it was never boring. Each year was an ever-new challenge that brought him continual satisfaction. He was the hostel prefect of the boys, their class teacher, their games prefect, and an organiser of an endless round of interesting activities: Cub Scouts, dramas (Hansel and Gretel which remained until his death an annual event in the school calendar), swimming, the annual “Circus,” etc. Throughout all of these years he remained minister, seeing to the smooth administration of the whole plant, the needs of the community, and the needs of the workers.

By the time he moved to Jawalakhel in 1954, there were an increasing number of Indian Catholics and, as the sixties progressed, Nepali Catholics from Darjeeling, living in Kathmandu. For all of them he was their parish priest providing the consolation of the sacraments, visiting the families, and encouraging them in their faith. When he returned to Godavari, he continued his work as pastor to the Catholics there. He was a well-appreciated retreat master, often going off in the winter, to give retreats to Sisters.

In his later years he was a valued Spiritual Father to a large number of the Jesuits living in Nepal, and he went each week to St. Mary’s School to teach Moral Science and to counsel the senior boarding girls. Tom’s very last day was typical of his no-nonsense approach to life: after the parish Sunday Mass, and seeing to the minister’s duties in the morning, he took his Class Five boys on a morning walk. Then he set off for town to shop, get a check up at Patan Hospital from his doctor (the news she gave him was bad), and counsel the girls at St. Marys. He returned home to see to the evening meal, put oil his usual lively after-dinner Bungalow show by his boys for two nun visitors, retired to his room after he put Elie boys to bed, had a heart attack, and died.