Jimmy Collins

Jimmy Collins

priest of the people

Kristina Cooper reflects on the life of Canon Jimmy Collins, who this month on 27th January 2008, celebrates his 90th birthday

Canon James Collins, or “Fr Jimmy” as he is affectionately known, is something of an icon in the North West of England. Everybody knows him and everybody loves him and has a story about him. Born in Crosby in 1918, when Lloyd George was prime minister and Benedict XV was Pope, he has lived through the most momentous social, political and technological changes of the 20th century, but somehow has managed to embrace them all and played his part.

One of three children of a devout couple - his mother was Irish and his father a Liverpudlian - Fr Jimmy discovered his priestly vocation very early on and entered minor seminary at Upholland at only 11 years old. A frail looking figure, under five foot tall, he almost didn’t make it through the seminary because of doubts as to whether he had the stamina for the priestly life. His parents were even asked to remove him for a year until his health got better. But his zeal for the gospel and Our Lady’s prayers carried him through and he was eventually ordained in 1942 when the second world war was at its height.

Booked the Beatles

Full of zeal and a great lover of people, he served in various parishes in the Liverpool diocese including the mining parish of Ashton in Makesfield, where if there was an accident he would be called out to the coal face to anoint the dying. A great preacher, as a young curate he was a member of the Catholic Evidence Guild in the 1940s and 50s and would stand up on a soap box on Pier Head and expound and defend the Catholic Faith to anyone who might be interested. One of his claims to fame as a priest was that he booked the Beatles before they became famous for a local parish dance. But he came to real prominence when he arrived at St Joseph the Worker parish in Kirkby in the mid 60s. At the time, he had been to see the bishop because he wanted to work on the missions in South America. Instead the Bishop sent him to Kirkby. This was a new town which had been specially built to re-house the inhabitants of the inner city slums of Liverpool. The people had been promised jobs and a new life, but instead had been met with unfinished pavements, poor transport and shops and a lack of community resources.

Fr Jimmy immediately set to work, visiting all the homes and finding out what was going on. The hardship, poverty and lack of hope he saw radicalised him, and he became a firm supporter of the working man and his rights. This came to a head when there was a big march to protest against the closing of the local Bird’s Eye factory. Fr Jimmy was watching the march from the pavement when the protesters insisted that he come with them and he found himself at the front, invited onto the platform to speak. To everyone’s amazement, he said with great conviction and force, “I can tell you now, that the Bird’s Eye factory will not close”. His words proved to be prophetic and the factory didn’t close and the people remembered Fr Jimmy’s words. This helped seal his reputation as a holy man of God with special powers. He became not only a local figure of importance but a national one, meeting both Harold Wilson the prime minister of the day and the Queen, and telling them about the situation of the people there.

A man of prayer

A man of deep prayer, who still begins every day on his knees for an hour, Fr Jimmy has always been a man of action too with a deep sense of justice. While at Kirkby he helped set up a credit union which was run from the presbytery. This enabled people to borrow money at very low rates of interest and effectively put the loan sharks in the area out of business. He also set up an unemployment resource centre, to help people find jobs and even turned his own garage over to some men to use as a workshop for renovating second hand Volkswagen beetle cars.

A life long pacifist and opponent of nuclear weapons, he was also asked by the Knowsley Council to represent them at a big anti-nuclear protest outside the UN Building in New York, where he found himself facing a line of gun toting jack booted military men. He also helped muster support for the Women’s Peace Camp at the military base at Cappenhurst. In the late 1990s Fr Jimmy, although now retired, became involved in the Seeds of Hope, Ploughshares movement, supporting the four women who were tried for tampering with the fighter jets for Indonesia at the British Aerospace site at Warton, in Cheshire. Sadie Edwards was part of a group of ladies that Fr Jimmy mobilised to go to the trial of the women and pray the rosary during the proceedings. Sadie says, “You just can’t say no to Fr Jimmy. Whatever he asks you to do, you do.”

When Fr Jimmy initially came to Kirkby he had two curates working with him, but with the decline in vocations as the 60s progressed he found himself on his own in the parish. Not only this, the once faithful Catholic population, particularly the men, were no longer coming to Mass. Fr Jimmy refused to admit defeat and inspired by the vision of Vatican II set up a lay collaborative team to help him in the parish.. One of those involved in this group was Peter Sloan. He remembers, “Fr Jimmy would get us all into a mini bus and we would drive to a new area and go door knocking, finding out who lived there and if they needed a priest or help of any kind.”

One the deepest spiritual influences on his life has been the Cursillo Movement, which he first came across in the early 70s at St Joseph’s. He was immediately struck by the way it helped both inspire and form ordinary people, and he was one of the first priests in the Liverpool diocese to get involved, attending a Cursillo retreat in Portugal and becoming friendly with one of the founders, Eduardo Bonnin.

He has been involved in the movement ever since and has been its spiritual director in the Liverpool diocese for 30 years. The key to Cursillo, apart from the introductory weekend, is the weekly meetings it encourages with at least one other person. Here members in couples or small groups share with others how their spiritual life is going in the areas of prayer, study and action. Fr Jimmy found this kind of spiritual friendship and support from lay people so helpful for his own spiritual life, that he continues to be part of a Cursillo small group to this day. Now because of failing health, and unable to drive, he currently meets with two other men, once a week in his flat.

Saturated in the Scriptures

Fran Hopkins, who is a member of Cursillo in the Liverpool diocese, and has worked with Fr Jimmy comments, “ He is a joy to be with. He can walk with kings and common people and it makes no difference to him. Everyone wants to sit at Fr Jimmy’s feet and we have been privileged through our association with Cursillo to have a special relationship and friendship with him. His knowledge of the bible is amazing. He is so saturated in the scriptures that he knows whole chunks off by heart .” She adds, “You learn such a lot just by being with him. He challenges us with his simple lifestyle. While the rest of us turn up for pilgrimages with great big suitcases, he’ll show up with just a little bag.” His friends despair of ever improving his shabby demeanour, as whenever they give him new clothes, he somehow manages to give them away almost immediately.

On his 75th birthday, he was asked by his Cursillo friends what he would like as a present. They were told he would like them to accompany him for his annual pilgrimage to Lough Derg in Ireland. This penitential pilgrimage involves 72 hours of fasting from food, as well as doing without sleep and walking on hard stones round the monastery site. Fran comments, “He is always like that. Somehow any present to him, usually means some spiritual good for us.” To his disappointment Fr Jimmy was stopped last year from completing his 50th visit to Lough Derg due to ill health.

Huge devotion to Mary

Throughout his priestly life he has had a huge devotion to Our Lady promoting and fostering the work of the Legion of Mary in whichever parish he has been in. When he was 78, in thanksgiving to Mary for 50 years of priesthood, he walked in pilgrimage from Upholland, where he had retired, to Walsingham, the national shrine in Norfolk. Here he arrived in the middle of the New Dawn conference to great applause. His commitment to Mary is legendary. According to friends he speaks to Mary every day and although he doesn’t talk about it, Mary speaks to him and advises and guides him in his life and he attributes to her intercession the spiritual fruitfulness of his life.

In more recent years Fr Jimmy has perhaps been best known for his healing ministry and the Advent Healing Team which he was responsible for setting up with a group of lay people. This came about when Mgr Michael Buckley came and ran a healing service in the parish some years ago. When he had finished, he turned to Fr Jimmy and said, “you should be doing this.” Initially Fr Jimmy said he wasn’t interested, as he was a bit suspicious, like many priests, of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the gifts of healing. Eventually, however, he was persuaded by John Shaw, a Catholic interested in the healing ministry of the Church, to put on a healing service. To his amazement hundreds of people showed up and he realised the deep need there was in the people for healing.

Slowly he began to recruit people to form a healing team to help him, made up in the main from Cursillo contacts and former parishioners. The group has grown over the years, and there are about 26 people in the team now, who meet regularly every Wednesday for prayer and fellowship and teaching. The team as well running healing services round the diocese including a huge one at Liverpool cathedral for about 2000 people, also helps train and set up healing groups in parishes. Over the years as Fr Jimmy came to understand more the role of the Holy Spirit in the healing ministry, and the use of the charisms in the bible, he softened towards the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and grew to understand it better. He has become a great friend of Myles Dempsey from the Prince of Peace Community and often ministers with him, as well as being a regular speaker at Catholic Charismatic conferences like New Dawn.

In more recent years he was also responsible for helping to initiate the Northern Catholic Conference, which is held annually in Southport and which draws hundreds of people for a weekend of spiritual uplift and healing.

Although he is technically retired, his eyesight failing and his health as ever poor, Fr Jimmy continues to serve all who come to his door. He is particularly beloved of the travelling community who, recognising his holiness and powerful intercessory gifts, will turn up at his door and whisk him off in one of their vans to pray with someone in their community who is sick or in need. And it is as an intercessor that Fr Jimmy is very effective. Everyone acknowledges that he is a living saint.

Peter Sloan, who has known him for years from the parish comments: “when they investigate his life they will find lots of miracles. I’m sure of that. I’ve seen some myself.” Liam Long, another close friend says, “I have worked closely with him for 35 years and I have seen the effect his prayer has on the sick close up. At first it used to frighten me a bit, but eventually I have come to expect the Lord to work through him. Fr Jimmy always says, we are walking on the edge of the supernatural. I have seen people dying, full of fear, and when Fr Jimmy prays for them, their whole countenance changes and they die in peace. It is wonderful to behold.”

He adds, “He is just a special man. I remember once we were on holiday in Majorca together and I said to him, “You know how much we all love you, don’t you?” He put his arms round me and said, “I love you too”. Coming from a man, from a holy man like that, it brought tears to my eyes. If you asked me who was my best friend, apart from my wife and children, I would say that little priest. He is a noble little priest and a Christ like priest, and we all love him so much.”

<< Top Home >>

Canon James Collins, or “Fr Jimmy” as he is affectionately known, is something of an icon in the North West of England. Everybody knows him and everybody loves him and has a story about him. Born in Crosby in 1918, when Lloyd George was prime minister and Benedict XV was Pope, he has lived through the most momentous social, political and technological changes of the 20th century, but somehow has managed to embrace them all and played his part. One of three children of a devout couple - his mother was Irish and his father a Liverpudlian - Fr Jimmy discovered his priestly vocation very early on and entered minor seminary at Upholland at only 11 years old. A frail looking figure, under five foot tall, he almost didn’t make it through the seminary because of doubts as to whether he had the stamina for the priestly life. His parents were even asked to remove him for a year until his health got better. But his zeal for the gospel and Our Lady’s prayers carried him through and he was eventually ordained in 1942 when the second world war was at its height. Booked the Beatles Full of zeal and a great lover of people, he served in various parishes in the Liverpool diocese including the mining parish of Ashton in Makesfield, where if there was an accident he would be called out to the coal face to anoint the dying. A great preacher, as a young curate he was a member of the Catholic Evidence Guild in the 1940s and 50s and would stand up on a soap box on Pier Head and expound and defend the Catholic Faith to anyone who might be interested. One of his claims to fame as a priest was that he booked the Beatles before they became famous for a local parish dance. But he came to real prominence when he arrived at St Joseph the Worker parish in Kirkby in the mid 60s. At the time, he had been to see the bishop because he wanted to work on the missions in South America. Instead the Bishop sent him to Kirkby. This was a new town which had been specially built to re-house the inhabitants of the inner city slums of Liverpool. The people had been promised jobs and a new life, but instead had been met with unfinished pavements, poor transport and shops and a lack of community resources. Fr Jimmy immediately set to work, visiting all the homes and finding out what was going on. The hardship, poverty and lack of hope he saw radicalised him, and he became a firm supporter of the working man and his rights. This came to a head when there was a big march to protest against the closing of the local Bird’s Eye factory. Fr Jimmy was watching the march from the pavement when the protesters insisted that he come with them and he found himself at the front, invited onto the platform to speak. To everyone’s amazement, he said with great conviction and force, “I can tell you now, that the Bird’s Eye factory will not close”. His words proved to be prophetic and the factory didn’t close and the people remembered Fr Jimmy’s words. This helped seal his reputation as a holy man of God with special powers. He became not only a local figure of importance but a national one, meeting both Harold Wilson the prime minister of the day and the Queen, and telling them about the situation of the people there. A man of prayer A man of deep prayer, who still begins every day on his knees for an hour, Fr Jimmy has always been a man of action too with a deep sense of justice. While at Kirkby he helped set up a credit union which was run from the presbytery. This enabled people to borrow money at very low rates of interest and effectively put the loan sharks in the area out of business. He also set up an unemployment resource centre, to help people find jobs and even turned his own garage over to some men to use as a workshop for renovating second hand Volkswagen beetle cars. A life long pacifist and opponent of nuclear weapons, he was also asked by the Knowsley Council to represent them at a big anti-nuclear protest outside the UN Building in New York, where he found himself facing a line of gun toting jack booted military men. He also helped muster support for the Women’s Peace Camp at the military base at Cappenhurst. In the late 1990s Fr Jimmy, although now retired, became involved in the Seeds of Hope, Ploughshares movement, supporting the four women who were tried for tampering with the fighter jets for Indonesia at the British Aerospace site at Warton, in Cheshire. Sadie Edwards was part of a group of ladies that Fr Jimmy mobilised to go to the trial of the women and pray the rosary during the proceedings. Sadie says, “You just can’t say no to Fr Jimmy. Whatever he asks you to do, you do.” When Fr Jimmy initially came to Kirkby he had two curates working with him, but with the decline in vocations as the 60s progressed he found himself on his own in the parish. Not only this, the once faithful Catholic population, particularly the men, were no longer coming to Mass. Fr Jimmy refused to admit defeat and inspired by the vision of Vatican II set up a lay collaborative team to help him in the parish.. One of those involved in this group was Peter Sloan. He remembers, “Fr Jimmy would get us all into a mini bus and we would drive to a new area and go door knocking, finding out who lived there and if they needed a priest or help of any kind.” One the deepest spiritual influences on his life has been the Cursillo Movement, which he first came across in the early 70s at St Joseph’s. He was immediately struck by the way it helped both inspire and form ordinary people, and he was one of the first priests in the Liverpool diocese to get involved, attending a Cursillo retreat in Portugal and becoming friendly with one of the founders, Eduardo Bonnin. He has been involved in the movement ever since and has been its spiritual director in the Liverpool diocese for 30 years. The key to Cursillo, apart from the introductory weekend, is the weekly meetings it encourages with at least one other person. Here members in couples or small groups share with others how their spiritual life is going in the areas of prayer, study and action. Fr Jimmy found this kind of spiritual friendship and support from lay people so helpful for his own spiritual life, that he continues to be part of a Cursillo small group to this day. Now because of failing health, and unable to drive, he currently meets with two other men, once a week in his flat. Saturated in the Scriptures Fran Hopkins, who is a member of Cursillo in the Liverpool diocese, and has worked with Fr Jimmy comments, “ He is a joy to be with. He can walk with kings and common people and it makes no difference to him. Everyone wants to sit at Fr Jimmy’s feet and we have been privileged through our association with Cursillo to have a special relationship and friendship with him. His knowledge of the bible is amazing. He is so saturated in the scriptures that he knows whole chunks off by heart .” She adds, “You learn such a lot just by being with him. He challenges us with his simple lifestyle. While the rest of us turn up for pilgrimages with great big suitcases, he’ll show up with just a little bag.” His friends despair of ever improving his shabby demeanour, as whenever they give him new clothes, he somehow manages to give them away almost immediately. On his 75th birthday, he was asked by his Cursillo friends what he would like as a present. They were told he would like them to accompany him for his annual pilgrimage to Lough Derg in Ireland. This penitential pilgrimage involves 72 hours of fasting from food, as well as doing without sleep and walking on hard stones round the monastery site. Fran comments, “He is always like that. Somehow any present to him, usually means some spiritual good for us.” To his disappointment Fr Jimmy was stopped last year from completing his 50th visit to Lough Derg due to ill health. Huge devotion to Mary Throughout his priestly life he has had a huge devotion to Our Lady promoting and fostering the work of the Legion of Mary in whichever parish he has been in. When he was 78, in thanksgiving to Mary for 50 years of priesthood, he walked in pilgrimage from Upholland, where he had retired, to Walsingham, the national shrine in Norfolk. Here he arrived in the middle of the New Dawn conference to great applause. His commitment to Mary is legendary. According to friends he speaks to Mary every day and although he doesn’t talk about it, Mary speaks to him and advises and guides him in his life and he attributes to her intercession the spiritual fruitfulness of his life. In more recent years Fr Jimmy has perhaps been best known for his healing ministry and the Advent Healing Team which he was responsible for setting up with a group of lay people. This came about when Mgr Michael Buckley came and ran a healing service in the parish some years ago. When he had finished, he turned to Fr Jimmy and said, “you should be doing this.” Initially Fr Jimmy said he wasn’t interested, as he was a bit suspicious, like many priests, of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the gifts of healing. Eventually, however, he was persuaded by John Shaw, a Catholic interested in the healing ministry of the Church, to put on a healing service. To his amazement hundreds of people showed up and he realised the deep need there was in the people for healing. Slowly he began to recruit people to form a healing team to help him, made up in the main from Cursillo contacts and former parishioners. The group has grown over the years, and there are about 26 people in the team now, who meet regularly every Wednesday for prayer and fellowship and teaching. The team as well running healing services round the diocese including a huge one at Liverpool cathedral for about 2000 people, also helps train and set up healing groups in parishes. Over the years as Fr Jimmy came to understand more the role of the Holy Spirit in the healing ministry, and the use of the charisms in the bible, he softened towards the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and grew to understand it better. He has become a great friend of Myles Dempsey from the Prince of Peace Community and often ministers with him, as well as being a regular speaker at Catholic Charismatic conferences like New Dawn. In more recent years he was also responsible for helping to initiate the Northern Catholic Conference, which is held annually in Southport and which draws hundreds of people for a weekend of spiritual uplift and healing. Although he is technically retired, his eyesight failing and his health as ever poor, Fr Jimmy continues to serve all who come to his door. He is particularly beloved of the travelling community who, recognising his holiness and powerful intercessory gifts, will turn up at his door and whisk him off in one of their vans to pray with someone in their community who is sick or in need. And it is as an intercessor that Fr Jimmy is very effective. Everyone acknowledges that he is a living saint. Peter Sloan, who has known him for years from the parish comments: “when they investigate his life they will find lots of miracles. I’m sure of that. I’ve seen some myself.” Liam Long, another close friend says, “I have worked closely with him for 35 years and I have seen the effect his prayer has on the sick close up. At first it used to frighten me a bit, but eventually I have come to expect the Lord to work through him. Fr Jimmy always says, we are walking on the edge of the supernatural. I have seen people dying, full of fear, and when Fr Jimmy prays for them, their whole countenance changes and they die in peace. It is wonderful to behold.” He adds, “He is just a special man. I remember once we were on holiday in Majorca together and I said to him, “You know how much we all love you, don’t you?” He put his arms round me and said, “I love you too”. Coming from a man, from a holy man like that, it brought tears to my eyes. If you asked me who was my best friend, apart from my wife and children, I would say that little priest. He is a noble little priest and a Christ like priest, and we all love him so much.” << Top Home >>