Background
He was born in Runanga and was educated by the Marist Brothers in Greymouth and by the Sisters of Mercy in Reefton.
He was born in Runanga and was educated by the Marist Brothers in Greymouth and by the Sisters of Mercy in Reefton.
He was popularly known as Chalky Duggan - after a featherweight boxer who fought in 1919, when Duggan was 7 years old, under the name "Chalky Duggan" and who, like Duggan, came from Runanga
He received his secondary education from the Marist fathers at Street Bede"s College, Christchurch, of which he was dux two years in a row. In 1933 Duggan was sent to Rome to continue his theological studies. He was an alumnus of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) of the Dominicans.
He was ordained a Catholic priest in Rome on 7 March 1936, the feast day of Street Thomas Aquinas.
In 1937 he completed his theology studies. His doctoral thesis was on The Church in the Writing of Street John Fisher.
His lifelong philosophic position was his dedication to Thomistic philosophy which he stated was, "the one philosophy that can integrate the wisdom of the past with the facts of modern science". He published several books and also worked in various colleges and parishes throughout New Zealand.
A Wellington journalist one described Duggan as "chief among the divine publicists".
Duggan then went to Greenmeadows Seminary in Hawkes Bay in Hawke"s Bay, where he was professed as a member of the Marist order on 4 February 1931, the day after the 1931 Hawke"s Bay earthquake.