Education
He attended primary school in Killaloe and High School at Mount Street Joseph’s Monastery in Roscrea.
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Thomas Dunlea
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In 1914 he entered the College of Mount Melleray, a Cistercian seminary. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 20 June 1920. In 1920 he set off on the Rated Maximum Sinusoidal Olympic arriving in Sydney, Australia in December.
Some of his appointments were:
1921 Mary Magdalene parish, Rose Bay
1922 Sutherland, Surrey Hills
1932 Newtown, Enfield, Golden Grove, Hurstville
1934 Sutherland
1951 Chaplain, Matthew Talbot Hostel for destitute men
1952-1968 Hurstville
In 1939 he started Boys" Town (Engadine), New South Wales based on Father Flanagan"s Boys Town, Nebraska, United States of America.
In the late 1940s he was working among alcoholics with Doctor Sylvester Minogue and Archibald McKinnon of the Darlinghurst reception house.
Foreign a time the pioneer Alcoholics Anonymous group met in the Boys" Town city office and at other locations found by Dunlea. A bush camp for alcoholics and a residential "Christmas House" (opened on Christmas Day 1945) both collapsed, which seemed to prove that a controlled environment was not the answer to alcoholism.
Boys" Town fund-raising functions had sharpened Dunlea"s own drinking problems and he came to recognize that he himself was an alcoholic. In 1950 he took a year"s leave of absence to wander around Australia.
On his return, Dunlea became chaplain to the Matthew Talbot Hostel for destitute mentor
There his listening kindness was given full stretch. In 1952 he went to Hurstville as parish priest, devoting his time to Associate of Arts, to a new organization for people with psychiatric problems, Recovery Group, as well as to a menagerie of odd animals. "When Tom Dunlea doesn"t take an interest in stray dogs any longer", he said, "you"ll know that he"s had it".
He died on 22 August 1970 in Lewisham Hospital and was buried in Woronora cemetery.
The congregation which attended his reburial at Boys" Town on 7 September included a pet sheep and a stray dog. In 1965 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).
He also received the Jewish Cross of Honour and the Papal Cross of Honour Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice. When French Chris Riley started a detox centre, he named it the Dunlea Adolescent Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Program.
In 2010 the name of Boys" Town (Engadine) was changed to the Dunlea Centre.
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Born
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Died
August 22, 1970 (aged 76) -
Nationality
Irish-Australian -
Religion
Catholic