Death of Fr Clement Tigar SJ, champion of the Forty Martyrs

by HUGH KAY
NEARLY 1,000 priests in this country and overseas have owed their initial training to Fr Clement Tigar, Si, former Superior of the House of Studies for Late Vocations at Campion House, Osterley, who died on Good Friday at the age of 84,
Fr Tigar, who directed Osterley for 31 years, was one of the best known priests in the country. While at Osterley and afterwards he was much in demand as a preacher.
At one stage in his long editorship of Stella Mark its sales topped the 100,000 mark, and its famous "Questions and Answers" series provided the substance of the highly successful book called "Papist Pie".
By his untiring preaching, lecturing and conduct of walks and pilgrimages "Clem" Tiger must have done more than anyone else to bring about the canonisation, in 1970, of the Forty Martyrs of England and
Wales. After the cause was revived in 1960 he intensified his efforts and served as a VicePostulator from 1966 to 1970.
One of his most cherished causes was to maintain and build up the campaign for devotion to the Blessed Sacrament inaugurated by his predecessor at Osterley, Fr Edmund Lester, Si, on a nationwide basis — the Association of Knights, Handmaids and Pages of the Blessed Sacrament, whose lapel badges were the best known identification of a Catholic for many years.
Clement Bertie Tigar was horn in 1892 and educated at St Ignatius' College, Stamford Hill, North London. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1909, studied at St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst; Pope's Hall (now Campion Hall), Oxford, and St Beuno's College, North Wales, and was ordained in 1924.
From 1926 to 1954 he taught Jesuit scholastics at Manresa House, Roehampton, and in 1935 went to Osterley as Superior and Prefect of Studies — an office he held until 1966.
After six years at Farm Street, first as Vice-Postulator with Fr James Walsh, Si of the Martyrs' Cause and then on the parish staff, he went to Corby Hall, Sunderland, where he gave retreats from 1972 to 1974.
After a long life of robust health he then suffered his first stroke and was sent first to Westbourne and then back to his old home at Osterley where he remained until his death in the West Middlesex Hospital.
For him the vintage years came in the early post-war period when Ostlerly was packed with young men, mostly in the 23 to 30 age group.
Those who knew "Clem" well will always think of him striding along, outpacing much younger men, at the head of long crocodiles or marches from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the route of the London Martyrs as they went to execution, and of innumerable pilgrimages to scenes of the Martyrs' lives all over the country. His knowledge of their lives was encyclopaedic and he would declaim it in his precise stentorian voice from places like the Royal Exchange or the Tower of London, where he became a familiar and respected figure. He wrote many pamphlets on the martyrs and on vocations.
As an administrator he was a pile-driver and was renowned for his stubbornness, listening courteously to advice and then proceeding with equal courtesy to disregard it.
As a preacher and in giving points for meditation, his narrative style and precise diction (which was an obsession with him) were such that he could hold very different types of audience in the hollow of his hand.
Theologically, he belonged squarely to the pre-Conciliar era, and his enthusiasm for ecumenism did not come easily, but with his usual doggedness he worked hard to be faithful to the _developing mind of the Church.
Thus it was that the man who did so much for the Catholic Martyrs also led the first Catholic pilgrimages to the Protestant Martyrs Memorial in Smithfield.
The Requiem Mass for Fr Tigar, will be celebrated in Westminster Cathedral on Thursday, April 29, at 10.30 am.