Death of former Jesuit archivist

Fr Geoffrey Holt SJ died on 28 September 2009; his funeral will take place at Farm Street Church on Tuesday, 6 October.

Thomas Geoffrey Holt was a historian, a writer and a Jesuit priest for more than 60 years.  He died at the Corpus Christi Jesuit Community in Boscombe, Dorset, on 28 September 2009, having recently marked 79 years as a member of the Society of Jesus.

Born in Hereford in 1912, Geoffrey was a pupil at Stonyhurst College and entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Roehampton at the age of 20.  He studied philosophy at Heythrop College in Oxfordshire and achieved his MA in history at Campion Hall in Oxford.  During the war years, he taught at Corby School in Sunderland and Stonyhurst College, before being awarded a Licentiate in Theology at Heythrop.

After three years of teaching at Mount St Mary's College, Spinkhill, Geoffrey did his tertianship at St Beuno's in North Wales in 1949 and then spent the next 16 years teaching at Stonyhurst College.

In 1966, he was appointed Assistant Archivist for the British Province, based in Mount Street in London, a position he held for the next 20 years until he became the Provincial Archivist in his own right.  During this time, he wrote extensively about the history of the British Jesuits and became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London (1973) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (1985).  He also lectured in Church History at St John's Seminary, Wonersh, from 1974 to 1979.

Geoffrey Holt's articles covered many aspects of English Catholic history - from biographies of such celebrated figures at Cardinal Vaughan and St Thomas More, to recusant history and the suppression of the Society of Jesus.  He retained the title of Archivist Emeritus until he joined the Corpus Christi Jesuit Community in Dorset when the house opened in 2007.  His Requiem Mass will be celebrated at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, London W1, on Tuesday, 6 October at 11am.

May he rest in peace.