Deaths

JOHN DESMOND MORRIS (D55) 20th April 1937 – 16th December 2016 had strong links with Ampleforth in many ways over the years – as a boy in the school, as a novice, in his family, in the Rome Pasta Pot, as a regular visitor and friend of many.

John was the eldest of three sons of Sir William Morris and Mollie.  The family lived in Bolton, and his father was a Judge, and Recorder of Liverpool and of Manchester.  John’s brother Basil (B57) was an outstanding sportsman, and died on the golf course of a heart attack in 1980 – he was the father of Charles (O87) and James (O90).  John’s other brother, William (B65), was a Judge and married to Trish, Baroness Morris of Bolton who are the parents of Jonty (H02) and Katie (A04).

John was at Gilling Castle before joining the College.  He was hopeless at sport and Fr Oswald let John do birdwatching instead of playing rugby.  Directly after leaving Ampleforth in 1955, he was clothed as a novice at Ampleforth as Br Desmond.  He is remembered as ‘fitting very well to the monastic life,’ and he stayed about three months until December 1955.  He did two years National Service (still compulsory) with the Lancashire Fusiliers, being for some time in Cyprus at the time of the insurgent campaign by the Greek Cypriot militant group EOKA and where 371 servicemen died between 1956 and 1959, sometimes called the Forgotten War.  In Cyprus, John went around the island with an armed guard delivering post.

From about 1961 to 1967, he was for six years at seminary at the English College in Rome, a student for the priesthood for the Diocese of Salford.  In November 1966 he went with almost all students at the English College to help rescue art treasures in Florence after catastrophic floods, which killed 101 people and destroyed millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. 

Returning to England in 1967, he worked in his Uncle’s stockbroking firm.  From 1969 to 1971 he was at Manchester University reading Italian before he returned to Rome, and it was in Italy that he would spend the remaining years his life.  At first, he worked as an assistant in a language school, before setting up his solo Language School in the basement of a Church in Latina, 39 miles South of Rome in the Lazio region.  He was often in Rome and a regular visitor at the English College.

For many years, John organised and presided over at least 56 Pasta Pots in Rome, an informal supper or luncheon party of Old Amplefordians and friends in the Rome area.  The Pasta Pot always started with the celebration of Mass, normally at The Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuits at the invitation of Fr Joe Barrett SJ (C30, died 2006).  Mass was followed by a supper party and in later years a luncheon party, in a Rome street restaurant, perhaps of between 15 and 25 persons.  The Grand Masters of the Order of Malta, Fra’ Andrew Bertie (E47, died 2012) and Fra’ Matthew Festing (C68) were regular attenders.  John had an amazing knack of finding anyone in Rome who had a connection with Ampleforth.  The Pasta Pot was based on Johns’ experience of the Manchester Hot Pot, as started and run until 2002 by Tony Brennan (E52, died 2002).

In 2015, John fell in his Latina flat and very badly broke his wrist, which led to a time in hospital.  Later that year he had a bicycle accident and was in hospital in Italy.  After recovering, he returned to England and to Boarbank Nursing Home, where from January to July 2016 John had treatment for cancer; after that he remained at Boarbank amidst growing realisation that this treatment was not successful.  In early October 2016, with his brother William, he made a weeks’ return visit to Italy.  A few weeks before he died, the current Rector of the English College, Mg Philip Whitmore, visited John at Boarbank – this was a token of the esteem with which John was regarded by the English College.  

John was a person of much faith and friendship.  He would arrive at the English College or the monastery at Ampleforth or a restaurant in the mountains of Italy, and everyone there would be his friend, receiving his welcome.  He visited Ampleforth perhaps twice a year, and normally for the Easter retreat, arriving on Holy Saturday and for the Vigil.  On 10th August 2005, to celebrate the Feast of St Laurence, he went with two Ampleforth monks to the village of Amanseno, 50 miles South of Rome, to celebrate Mass at the invitation of the Archpriest and to witness the reliquary of the Blood of St Laurence bubbling on his feast.  As mentioned earlier, from his schooldays he listened to bird song and is remembered in about 2010 driving late at night along hedgerows South of Rome and stopping to listen to the nightingale “who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds,” (Shelley).  John was a poet of Friendship, in the song of the nightingale – and in the Pasta Pot.

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Rest in eternal peace.