The College Record 2022

DOMINIC BYRNE
Dominic Byrne who died on the 6 of December 2021,
was the Parish Priest of the church of St Theodore of
Canterbury, in Hampton, London. He will be remembered
fondly by all who knew him.
Obituaries
He studied Law at Queen’s, from 1974 to 1977, but had
almost decided to go into the priesthood when he was
a schoolboy. After Queen’s he joined the Civil Service in the Ministry of Overseas
Development, as it was then known, and it was whilst working as an expat civil
servant in Malawi and Zambia that he decided to follow that boyhood calling and
become a Catholic Priest.
He had a wicked sense of humour: in Malawi a man came from the British Embassy
to nail up the summer house of the rather grand residence he had been given to
live in. His grade in the Civil Service did not permit him to have a summer house
apparently, so it was to be boarded off. Dominic read the rules with a lawyer’s eye;
he found that he was entitled to have a tool shed, and so he sent the man back to
the Embassy and put a lot of tools in the summer house instead. That pettiness he
saw in the Diplomatic Service was part of what made him decide to become a priest.
He spent seven years in the English College in Rome, then was ordained in his
parish church in Shropshire. Instead of becoming a parish priest straightaway,
his knowledge of the law was put to use and he was dispatched to Leuven in Belgium
to study for a doctorate in Canon Law. This was how he became a fluent speaker
of Italian and Flemish, in addition to his perfect French.
It was also how his other great love blossomed. The Italians, the French and Belgians,
he said, comprise the greatest culinary nations of Europe. He loved, absolutely loved,
to cook. If you invited him for dinner, he would send a list of required ingredients, and
then arrive to cook them himself, always producing a memorable feast. Cooking was
his hobby, and even his personal email was ‘gastrorev’.
Dominic had friends all over the world, because it was impossible not to like him.
He kept in touch with a lot of the friends that he made at Queen’s, in the Civil Service
or in Rome. Every year he visited priest friends in the USA and also met up with his
old priestly pals from around Europe when they all accompanied their parishioners
to Lourdes.
Although he was quite humble, he loved the respect shown to priests by the waiters
in the restaurants in Lourdes: “Oui, mon père, bien sur mon père.” The waiters knew
him well, and he knew the restaurants very well. Typically, he would eat one course
only in each, selecting the best restaurant for a starter, the best for the entrée, and
yet another for the sweet.
College Record 2022 | The Queen’s College 109