Remembering Brian Devlin

"Gold is tested in the fire"

More than forty years ago, I first met Brian Devlin. He and I were at the same college, a seminary called Drygrange in the Scottish Borders. Brian was about four years ahead of me. Brian went on to be ordained as a Catholic priest and I eventually found my vocation elsewhere. Our paths had diverged but it was not be the last time they would cross.

Four decades later, I was active on Twitter and so was Brian. Our paths crossed once more and we ended up in fairly regular contact - initially reminiscing about days long gone, but latterly nattering about all sorts of things. I had gone on to have a career in nursing before finally retiring some five years ago. Brian’s pathway, on the other hand, had turned out be quite out of the ordinary.

A year after his ordination, Brian made the decision to leave the priesthood for reasons which would be explained and made public only years later.

He would go on to work with drug addicts and people with HIV infection in Edinburgh - at a time when this was most definitely not the thing to do. HIV was rampant in the city and the papers and TV screens were filled with horror stories and recriminations and a great deal of victim-shaming and blaming. Brian wasn’t interested in that - as he saw it, these people needed help, he was able to offer that help and so that was what he did. Later he would have a career in the NHS Highland, eventually becoming Director of Communications. This ended when Brian became a whistle-blower, a move which caused him enormous stress and cost him dearly. Yet he was tenacious and fought relentlessly for the right thing to be done and and for right to be acknowledged. And he was successful. But while this was an enormous event for Brian and for the local community, a far bigger one was about to explode into the public eye.

Whilst at seminary, each student had weekly meetings with a Spiritual Director - at that time, this was Father Keith O’Brien. In May 1985, a year after Brian was ordained, Fr O’Brien became Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, the archdiocese in which Brian was working. It was at this point Brian left ministry. Archbishop O’Brien became Cardinal O’Brien in 2003. But unknown to anyone, in the course of those Spiritual Direction meetings, O’Brien was sexually grooming Brian and intimated that he wanted to establish a sexual relationship. Brian declined. Thinking things over, Brian saw clearly that this man he thought was an authentic spiritual leader was, in fact, a fraud - professing one thing in public while doing something else in private. And so when the same man was about to become his Archbishop, exerting full control over his life, Brian left the priesthood.

Many years passed and eventually Brian had found himself back in touch with former colleagues from his earlier life, all active priests. They spoke of many things and eventually discussed O’Brien and in the course of those conversations, it became apparent that his sexual grooming of Brian was not isolated. Similar behaviour had been exhibited toward others - all of them subordinate to O’Brien. As this became apparent, the four men reported their allegations to the Church authorities, both locally and in Rome. And they were met with silence and obfuscation time and time again. And so finally, they determined to take the only course left open to then - they went public. In February 2013, Brian and three other men, all serving priests, publicly accused O’Brien of sexually inappropriate behaviour.

There were initial denials from O’Brien who said he didn't know of what he was being accused, nor by whom. But very quickly this changed as the scandal deepened and broadened. O’Brien announced he would not attend the forthcoming 2013 Papal Conclave, which would elect Pope Francis. At the beginning of March that year, he released a statement in which he said there had been times when his “sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal”. There it was, then - the admission. O’Brien would then resign as Archbishop, although he remained a Cardinal until his death in 2018.

Brian had found himself in a battle against the Church and he had come to see clearly that the Catholic Church, at its highest levels, operated on what he would call “a code of omertá” - meaning silence. He described his journey from student priest, through ordination, to leaving in a book called ‘Cardinal Sin’. Larter, he would note wryly that this book “made me very unpopular in some quarters”. Despite the darkness of what it recorded, the book was written incredibly warmly and with deep humanity.

In the intervening years, Brian would marry an incredible woman called Maggie and they lived in Rosemarkie and the Black Isle, in the north of Scotland. In his later years, Brian would live a very simple life with Maggie - enjoying the companionship of Pepper and Barley (his dog and cat), and the stunning scenery of the local area. But he continued to do astonishing things - such as the establishment of ‘Black Isle Cares’ and various other endeavours. He would also appear in online interviews and seminars from time to time, which he always enjoyed preparing for. And he establishedd a whole new network of online friends, not just in the United Kingdom but also far beyond. These friend always trusted Brian and valued his inherent integrity and would often seek his advice - sometimes for one-off needs or events, but at other times for long-term projects. His advice was always good and well-received.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Brian again a couple of years ago. He and Maggie had come down to Glasgow from the Black Isle and so my husband and I met the two of them and we had dinner. Over this, Brian and I reminisced at length about days past. Although we deliberately didn’t talk in any depth about the O’Brien saga, I did ask Brian to sign my copy of ‘Cardinal Sin’. He very kindly did so, writing “gold is tested in the fire”. This line from Scripture formed part of the reading at Brian’s ordination Mass and the full text proved to be very much a prediction of the path Brian would take in the course of his life.

On 5th March, Brian died suddenly but peacefully at home, having lived with poor health for some years. His funeral will take place on Friday of this week.

Brian once told me about the end of his priesthood, as he saw it; I replied that it didn’t end, it simply changed form and required to be lived in a new and different way - he would later concur that “although I left the priesthood, the priesthood never left me”. He was right.

Brian Devlin will be remembered not by the tempestuous events in which, unfortunately, he found himself involved - even though one of these in particular was monumental and had a profound impact. Rather, he will be remembered for the kind of human being he was.

The response to the news of his death - and the sheer volume of responses - act as a great testament to the man Brian was in life. He was an astonishing human being of deep integrity and authenticity, ablaze with compassion for others, and especially for those in need and those who are downtrodden by systems and events. He is survived by Maggie, his wife of thirty-nine years, and by his mother, Pauline.

May he rest in peace.