On 18 July this year Canon Pozzi, the Parish Priest of Llandudno, celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood.
He was born in Welshpool on 17 July 1885, and, after attending Protestant schools, came lo Cotton in September 1898. He modestly states that he was not a shining light during his Cotton days. However, he entered Oscott in September 1903, and was ordained by the Rt Rev Mostyn at St Anne's, Fairfield, Manchester on 1S July 1909.
Canon A 0 Pozzi
His first appointment was as Assistant Priest at Flint where he served the Deeside and witnessed the building of the parish church there. This was followed by appointments as Assistant Priest at Bangor and Llandudno.
In 1913 he was appointed to take over from the Capuchin Fathers at St Anthony's, Saltney, Chester. Here he built the church and made additions to the schools. He was for nine years Chairman of the Local Council and a member of the Flintshire Education Committee. He was then made Parish Priest of the Deeside and built the first Catholic school in that area. In 1936, at the request of the Bishop, Dr McGrath, he started the first Catholic Rescue Society and is still its nominal head.
He seemed to specialise in taking over from the religious orders, as in 1937 he succeeded the Jesuits at Holywell. In 1943 he went to Llandudno as Parish Priest and built the Catholic school for the children of three parishes. In February 1966, at the request of the Council of Churches, he preached on Church Unity in the Calvinistic Chapel, which all the Anglican and NonConformist ministers attended.
During the Summer Term this year, the Canon, accompanied by one of his curates, paid the College his first visit since leaving sixty years ago. He was in great fettle and enjoyed his visit immensely. As you see from his photograph, he is in excellent health in his 84th year.
Ad multos annos.
FATHER ANTHONY OWEN
Paint in oils; see forms change, vanish and return as ideas chase the mixing colours; seal your final choice with clear varnish which adds depth to lustre and hide your picture in an old attic. Centuries later send it to the British Museum for aged, cracked, brown varnish to be removed, and exhibit sensational and rare disco
very.
To clean up Father Owen for exhibition is happily not necessary, Old Master though he is. The cracks are hairline only and the task is not to flake off old, brown shellac but to stand sufficiently far back to appreciate the warmth and subtle form of the colours glowing beneath its unwrinkled lustre.
His years al Cotton have been enjoyed; by us, I mean, and therefore by himself as well. An academic timetable is a bugbear to compose and can be a sodden burden to bear unless you like it. Father Owen has answered bells for forty years, since he first peered owlishly through a frizzled, ginger forelock at his future life at Cotton. Owl is a good colour to see beneath the varnish, but your owl must be horribly good at Maths and Music, with an alarming disregard for grievous bodily harm. Two decades have hazed the athletic outlines, but a Blue tinge dates from Cambridge days, and there are delicate shades of a sizzling fast bowler who dismissed many a batsman mercifully unaware of how myopic his assailant was.
With natural talent and very hard work, Anthony Owen became an accomplished musician as a schoolboy. Since then, as seminarian and priest, Church Music has been his first care. His twenty-one years as Choir Master have been a constant guarantee of the dignity of our worship and the delight of our ears. Bright jewels for St Cecily and feasts of song at Christmas-lime mean hours of work for a moment of content. Goodness knows what colour the picture needs for music; rainbow colour perhaps, anything but weasel colour, for he went pop and Father Owen will never do that.
He nearly did go pop in a rare moment of history his colleagues can recall, when he took delivery of a new motor-bike before the expectant gaze of the Staff Common Room. It started at first asking, ran out of path instantly and made for Boundary Cross. Gravel, grass and geraniums spurted front twin wheels as man and machine, locked in deadly embrace, disappeared into the weeping ash. The engine jibbed at tree-climbing and our intrepid hero was saved from a sad and woody end, but the spectators had aching sides for hours. Later he exchanged this mettlesome mount for a chuntering monster more like a kitchen range than a means of transport, but in recent years, thank goodness, and the Standard Motor Company, he rides four wheels and could tackle flower-beds at less personal risk.
Now paint, with due precision and patience, a teacher of Mathematics and Science who can instil facts into his pupils but prefers to initiate enquiry. Your model is a priest who can smile at others and laugh at himself, one who is always available and knows how to bring out of his treasure house things new and old. The canvas is wide but you must fill it; without stint Father Owen has put his priesthood at our service.
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