Education
Without using the bellows and eventually gained his Doctor of Music degree in 1894.
Without using the bellows and eventually gained his Doctor of Music degree in 1894.
To avoid making a noise, he practiced on a small harmonium. Later he was appointed to the position of Director of the Queen's Music and became well known as a composer of both sacred and secular music He continued to work both as a conductor and composer but after the First World War began to take a greater interest in spiritual matters and a common bond through music led to him accepting ordination as a priest from F.E.J. Lloyd in 1924.
Unfortunately in this new role he rapidly attracted enemies in the established Church who often employed agent provocateurs and the gutter press against him.
Despite this persecution he was always the perfect gentleman, and there was a firm chin under his George V beard. Eventually he was to admit, ‘One can be too easily accessible.’ One such attack came from a young woman reporter from the gutter press, who first sought his help and then launched a vicious attack through “John Bulletin” a gutter press magazine.
The same woman later tried a similar trick with the Review Father, John Ward, but warned by the, he was less easily duped.
In his ecclesiastical capacity Sibley wore a black suit, black spats, purple stock, and a wide-brimmed hat with a rosette.
He was a likeable old man with steady blue eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses, very upright in stance and courteous in the extreme, yet underneath was a will of iron. Sibley himself suffered great pain from an enlarged prostate, and many persecutions but struggled on. Wishing to establish a religious community he sought to purchase Minster Abbey on the Isle of Thanet in the River Thames, where once Street Sexburga had been in charge, but he was attacked so vehemently in John Bulletin that the whole scheme fell through.
Nevertheless, it was through this contact that some of the bones of Street Sexburga came into the possession of John Ward and the Abbey of Christ the King.
They are still preserved at Street Michael’s in Caboolture. Sibley also established an Intercollegiate University, which offered degrees to clergymen from various denominations after appropriate studies.
Just after his 80th birthday, on December 15, 1938 John Churchill Sibley went to his well earned rest, and was buried in High Barnet cemetery during a raging snowstorm in a funeral arranged by John Ward and the Community. Soon afterwards, the John Churchill Sibley was recognised as having been raised to the ranks of the Blessed Saints of God.