My friend Bernard Brady, who has died aged 93, was a long-serving chaplain at the University of Nottingham and later a parish priest to the Catholic church in Wollaton in the western part of the city.
As chaplain Bernard had an ecumenical heart, always working closely with colleagues from other churches in the Nottingham area – a stance that was appreciated by the students, many of whom keenly took part in his ecumenical trips to Florence, Rome, Israel and Berlin.
Gregarious and warm, he enjoyed meeting people, was always good company and was a splendid raconteur. Over the years large numbers of people relied on his wise counsel.
Bernard was born in Leicester to Edith (nee March), who ran a market stall, and Pat, a postman. His parents were strong Catholics; he served as an altar boy at the local church and from an early age wanted to become a priest. After attending Wyggeston grammar school for boys he moved on to St Joseph’s College
,
Mark Cross, a junior seminary in Sussex.In 1948 he started seven years of training at the English College in Rome, leading to ordination as a priest in Italy in 1955.
On his return to the UK in 1956 he briefly served as a priest at Nottingham Cathedral before joining the staff of the diocesan junior seminary at St Hugh’s College in Tollerton, Nottinghamshire, in 1957. In the early 1960s he took time out to go to Downing College, Cambridge, for a history degree and afterwards gained a teaching qualification from the Institute of Education in London.
He had intended to return to Tollerton to teach history, but instead the local bishop appointed him in 1967 to establish the Catholic chaplaincy at Nottingham University on a firmer footing. He stayed there for the next 20 years.
After a decade or so, Bernard began to combine his role at the university with being a parish priest at Wollaton, where the care of the dying was close to his pastoral heart and an important part of his ministry. In 1980 he co-founded the
, becoming first its chair, then president and latterly honorary president.He retired as a parish priest and university chaplain in 1992 and trained as a psychotherapist at Vaughan College, Leicester, running his own private practice from the mid-90s until 2007.
In 1998 he married Helen Scott, a social work manager whom he had met through mutual friends.
He is survived by Helen and a nephew, Peter.