Brian Green

Born in Sheffield on September 7, 1929, in the years after the Second World War he studied for the priesthood at Ushaw College in County Durham, then the major seminary for the Catholic Church in the North of England.

He was ordained for the Leeds diocese at St Marie’s, Sheffield, in July 1953. His first appointment was to St Peter’s, Doncaster, where he stayed until 1957 when he joined the staff of St Anne’s Cathedral in Leeds.

In 1961 came the first of three appointments in what was known in those days as the Heavy Woollen District. He served at St Paulinus, Dewsbury, from 1961-62 and St Mary’s, Batley, from 1962-66. He was a curate at St Joseph’s, Batley Carr, from 1966-71, where one of his parishioners was a young man who would go on to become the present Bishop of Leeds, the Rt Rev Arthur Roche.

In 1971, Fr Green became a lecturer in Pastoral Theology at Ushaw College. He was very much an enthusiast for the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and his role at Ushaw was to draw on this and his own extensive pastoral experience to train a new generation of seminarians in the practicalities of life as parish priests.

By 1980, when the Diocese of Hallam came into existence, Fr Green had already been back in South Yorkshire for three years, following his return from Ushaw in 1977. He was to remain there for the rest of his life, a total of almost 35 years. He was parish priest of St Joseph’s, Dinnington, for three decades until his retirement in 2008.

Fr Brian Green was always known as a likeable, unpretentious and approachable man with a great sense of humour. His body will be received into the church at Dinnington next Wednesday, and the Funeral Mass will be held the following day at St Mary’s Church, Herringthorpe, Rotherham.