My parish priest, Father John Olliver, who has died aged 71, might have come out of a GK Chesterton novel: he was unfailingly jolly, smiling, often cracking a joke, a connoisseur of good wine, and with a cigarette never far from his lips. Yet such affability, warmth and humour did not disguise his deep spirituality.
He had spent much of his priestly life as a missionary in his beloved Kenya, but in the last decade of his life he served as the parish priest of All Saints, Oxted, and St Ambrose, Warlingham, both in Surrey.
He was born in Worthing, West Sussex, son of Ronald, a motor mechanic, and Dorothy (nee Whittle). He was the eldest of eight children, four girls (one of whom became a nun) and four boys. After secondary school, his vocation to the priesthood led him to be sent to the mission house of St Joseph’s Missionary Society (the Mill Hill Fathers) in Roosendaal, the Netherlands.
He made his commitment to the society in 1967 and was ordained at St Charles in Worthing in 1968. He was then sent to west Kenya, where he served in Kibabii until 1977 before he was called back to serve as the society’s vocations director. In 1981 he returned to Kibabii as parish priest, and when Bungoma diocese was created, he also became the bishop’s secretary and financial adviser. A decade later he became the society’s financial secretary, in St Joseph’s College, Mill Hill, north London, in 1997 also taking on vice-rectorship of the college.
But Olliver’s calling was essentially pastoral, and in 2001 he was allowed to be appointed priest-in-charge at Oxted, while retaining links with Mill Hill. However, in 2007, when the two parishes were united, he became parish priest and was later appointed dean in the area.
On the very day of the celebrations of the centenary of Oxted parish, he was taken ill and underwent an operation for an intestinal blockage. The operation was successful, but he died after several weeks in hospital with breathing problems due to the strain and stress of the operation.
He is survived by his brothers and sisters.
