FR. TOM OF THE 38th PARALLEL

Korea Catholics say goodbye to an heroic priest from Ireland
FR. TOM NELIGAN, the red-headed Irish Columban Father who a: was a parish priest on the 3Rth Parallel in Korea, has been buried in the garden of the Sacred Heart Orphanage at Kangnung—in the grave he himself chose.
He died in an army hospital in Seoul after an illness of four months. Coming from Ireland, he was a missionary in Korea for 21 years. He went home only once, eight years ago.
His story is told by Fr. Patrick O'Connor, a fellow Columban.
Fr. Tom (he writes) lived through two wars and under three Governments in Korea. During the Japanese war he was first imprisoned, then interned.
During the Communist aggression he was forted out of his parish, as were his people, but he never left the country. During the Korean war years he served as auxiliary chaplain as well as missionary. The 38th Parallel ran through his parish. He was one of the first missionaries to realise what Russia% policy was to mean. Soviet soldiers barred him from crossing the line to say Mass for his parishioners on the northern side.
Mgr. Quinlan
In the days of the Pusan perimeter, on piers and in troopships, he heard the confessions of men who a few hours later were in the front line.
With a fellow Columban, he brought two Catholic Korean families to safety in one jeep through 150 miles of guerrilla infested country. His last illness was gladdened by the return of the heroic Mgr. Thomas Quinlan, with whom he had worked for years.
Bishop Ro of Seoul and Bishop Mousset of the Paris Foreign Missions assisted at the Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass celebrated by Mgr. Quinlan in the Chaplains' Memorial Chapel in Seoul. Fr. Neligan's body was taken by road across the mountains to his parish of Kangnung, where his friend of seminary days, Fr. Brian Geraghty, sang the funeral Mass.
Now, in the grave he chose, he has every day the prayers he specially cherished — the prayers of the 69 orphan children whom he sheltered in the name of the Sacred Heart.