The news that Fr Peter O'Dwyer, O. Carm., a strong swimmer, had been drowned in the Mediterranean off the coast of Malta stunned his confreres, his family and many friends. The tragedy robbed the Carmelite Order of a dedicated priest, and Irish academic life of a distinguished luminary.
Born in London of Munster parents in 1920, Brendan O'Dwyer grew up in Ireland after his father returned home to join the civil service of the Irish Free State. Making his religious profession, he took the name of the apostle Peter. It was an apt choice for a priest who was to distinguish himself in the pastoral work of his ministry. He quickly made a reputation for himself as a humorous preacher at parish missions, as a director of retreats for religious and as a kind and wise confessor. His service as director to the Little Sisters of the Poor in Roebuck spanned an unbroken 40 years. In semi-retirement, he kept going in all the phases of his priestly labours. The simple homilies of a self-effacing scholar engaged congregations at home and on visits overseas.
As a young Carmelite attending UCD during the second World War he read Celtic Studies, leading to a master's degree. He studied under the Bollandist Pere Paul Grosjean SJ in Belgium; and in Dublin, Louvain, and the Angelicum University in Rome, he researched his doctoral thesis on the Celi De spiritual reform.
His work Celi De: Spiritual Reform in Ireland 750-900 (1981) had just been published when the Garda Siochana Diamond Jubilee Pilgrimage Committee was looking for a suitable personal gift for Pope John Paul II. In a specially bound volume, with an illuminated inscription by Tim O'Neill, Fr Peter's work was duly presented to the Pope, to the author's quiet satisfaction.
His second doctorate, in church history, from the Gregorian University in Rome, traced the life and times of Fr John Spratt, the 19th-century Carmelite social reformer associated with the Whitefriar Street community, who was honorary secretary of the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Society. Fr Peter published his thesis under the evocative title, Beloved of Dublin's Poor.
His other published work included A True Patriot, a biography of Dr Peter Elias Magennis, the first Irish Carmelite General; and, Mary: A History of Devotion in Ireland (1988). He greatly served his Carmelite brethren in a very comprehensive history of the Irish province (1988). His last major work, Towards a History of Irish Spirituality (1995), was not, as he wrote, the last word on the subject.
In his pedagogic career, he lectured on ecclesiastical history at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, the Milltown Park Institute of Theology, and the International Faculty of St John's University, Minnesota.
He had a maxim on God's displeasure at the burying of money or, of special concern to the scholar, the burying of knowledge. His confrere Fr Christopher O'Donnell, who delivered the homily at the funeral Mass in Whitefriar Street, recalled the universal regret that the great Celtic Scholar, Osborne Bergin, on his death in 1950, had carried much of his learning to the grave.
Determined to ensure that this would not happen in his case, Fr Peter, in addition to his published work, left a rich legacy of unpublished notes, even if much of it, in rough and ready form, will require to be organised for future research.
As an academic, he was noted for his love of things Carmelite, Fr Chris told the large congregation at the funeral Mass; agus bhi an- mheas aige ar gach rud Gaelach. Ba mhaith leis Gaelige a labhairt i dtolamh, ach ni labhradh se i le daoine conuil liomsa; ni chuireach se isteach ar aoinne nach raibh compordach leis an dteanga.
Bhi se dilis go bas, duairt an tAthair Chris; go dtuga Dia suaimhneas da anam.
G.A.