My friend Patrick Phelan, who has died aged 80, was a social worker who became an Anglican Benedictine monk. In one of his last roles he sought the hermit’s life as priest for the Shrine of St Julian of Norwich. It was characteristic of Patrick’s eccentricity that he did so at a place where hundreds visit each month. He was nothing if not surprising.
Born in Plumstead, south London, Patrick was baptised a Roman Catholic, but not raised in the faith. As he told it, one day as a 10-year-old, he climbed a wall and entered the Anglican church behind the family home. The vicar came up to him and suggested he might attend one Sunday. He did and, as he said, “that was that”.
Patrick attended St Olave’s grammar school, then in south London. His gift for impersonation and anecdote made acting his original ambition, but instead he went to study at Kelham theological college, Nottinghamshire, in 1957, then withdrew, did his national service, and trained as a social worker at Leicester and Southampton universities.
He met Clare while at Kelham and they married in 1961. They had two sons, Christopher and Michael, but later separated.
Patrick was a social worker in Leicester and Brighton and chair of the British Association of Social Workers (1980-81). He was also a member of the review of residential care chaired by Gillian Wagner (1985), and director of social work at the Royal School for the Blind (1985-92). He was one of the few voices then advocating that those who use social services should have a say in how they are run.
He entered Chichester theological college, West Sussex, in 1992, and went on to serve as a priest in Somers Town, London. In 1997 he joined the Benedictine Abbey of Elmore in Berkshire.
He went to Norwich in 2002 and retired from active ministry in 2007, then moved to the Great Hospital in Norwich, which was founded in` 1249 for “decrepit priests”. In what he referred to as “my 13th-century sheltered housing”, he lived surrounded by books. He travelled everywhere by bus or train, taking services in villages and delivering homilies until earlier this year, when he preached his last sermon in the church of the Great Hospital.
Patrick was one of the funniest of speakers, capable of talking seriously on a social work or theological subject with references to Alan Bennett, Queen Victoria or Wind in the Willows. In talking, writing, preaching and his life, he had what one friend called “elegant sufficiency”.
He is survived by Clare, Christopher and Michael.
