Timothy Mulroy SSC
Columban Father Joseph Houston, having returned to Ireland from Hong Kong in March, completed his lifelong pilgrimage for Christ and entered the Father’s house on May 14.
Father Houston was just a few months old when his native city of Belfast in the north of Ireland became the target of German air raids in the spring of 1941. However, he grew up happily alongside his two sisters, Mary and Kathleen. Thanks to the influence of his mother, Mary Ellen, he developed a love for the Gaelic language and culture, which he treasured throughout his life.
After completing his secondary education, Father Houston attained a master’s degree in Celtic Studies from Queen’s University, Belfast. Then, after obtaining a license in education and teaching for two years, he entered the Columban seminary at Dalgan Park, outside Dublin.
Ordained in 1969, he pursued post-graduate studies in philosophy in Rome, and would later spend five years on the teaching faculty of the same seminary where he himself had studied.
During the 1970s and 1980s, he spent nine years on mission in Chile, where he witnessed the brutal impact of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet on the lives of the people.
There, he built up Basic Christian Communities, making special outreach efforts to young people, the Aymara indigenous people, as well as to those who had little or no contact with the Church.
In 2015 Father Houston moved to Hong Kong where he became the general manager of AITECE. He also helped in various parishes and became a spiritual guide to a praesidium of the Legion of Mary.
In 1988, sensing that “China was opening up—it was time to go back there,” Father Houston studied Putonghua in Taiwan. Then, he spent the next 25 years—most of them under the auspices of the Association of International Teaching, Educational and Curriculum Exchange [AITECE]—teaching English in Beijing, Nanchang and Wuhan. He encountered countless young people and, through the witness of his life rather than preaching, shared with them the values and joy of the gospel.
In 2015 Father Houston moved to Hong Kong where he became the general manager of AITECE. He also helped in various parishes and became a spiritual guide to a praesidium of the Legion of Mary.
In 2018, to mark the centenary of the founding of the Columbans, he researched and wrote the history of Columban priests and lay missionaries in Hong Kong.
However, ever faithful to his own humble character, he made only passing references to himself in that book!
Towards the end of 2020, upon turning 80-years-old, he gave up his AITECE position and became a priest-in-residence at St. Joseph Church on Garden Road, Central.
Like his patron saint, Father Houston preferred to be in the background than in the limelight. Though gifted with various talents and many achievements, like that other great missionary St. Paul, he considered all such things as rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ.
As his health declined during this past year, Father Houston was deeply grateful for the concern and care of so many people in this city, particularly Father Joseph Tan Leitao and Father Paul Chen Zhongxue, of the Society of the Divine Word, along with the parishioners of St. Joseph’s Church, his many friends in the Legion of Mary, as well as several other personal friends scattered across the city.
It was with great reluctance, therefore, that he agreed to leave Hong Kong in order to return to Ireland in March of this year.
Like his patron saint, Father Houston preferred to be in the background than in the limelight. Though gifted with various talents and many achievements, like that other great missionary St. Paul, he considered all such things as rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ.
While academic theological studies were helpful in that regard, time spent in personal prayer and the celebration of daily Mass were indispensable.
Even though he remained firm in his conviction that he had been called to collaborate in accomplishing God’s mission as a Columban missionary priest, he was equally convinced that God could—if he so wished—achieve just as much without him!
This belief was the foundation stone of Father Houston life of humble service as he made his pilgrim way from his native land to Chile, on to China, then back to Ireland, and finally onwards to his true and lasting homeland.
May he rest in peace.
