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His light will always shine

The Irish Voice

Updated: Oct 29, 2024



Dr Joseph Bradley, Gerard Gough and Ian Dunn share their memories of, and pay tribute to, much-loved priest and Bishop-Elect of Dunkeld, Fr Martin Chambers—who had antecedents in Derry and Mayo—who tragically passed away in April of this year


Dr Joseph Bradley

BISHOP-Elect of the Diocese of Dunkeld, Fr Martin Chambers, died suddenly on April 10 this year, age 59: just three days after returning from Pilgrimage to his beloved Lourdes with HCPT (Hosanna House Children’s Pilgrimage Trust). His funeral, concelebrated by around 60 priests, including all of Scotland’s Bishops, was at Our Lady of the Assumption and St Meddan’s in Troon, attended by mourners in a packed Church, hall and marquee. Many more watched online, especially in Nueva Prosperina in Ecuador. Numerous people in the congregation wore their HCPT group colours.


Martin was born in the east end of Glasgow, but governed by his dad’s working life, his family moved around in his early years, to England and then Scotland’s west coast. At an early age Martin too began moving as he started to make concrete his calling to the Catholic priesthood; St Vincent’s College, Langbank, St Mary’s, Blairs in Aberdeenshire, and then, he became a Spaniard—in priestly speak—studying first at Scots College in Valladolid and then Salamanca. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Galloway in August 1989 and served a number of parishes there; in the villages and towns of Stevenston, Muirkirk, West Kilbride, Kilmarnock, Hurlford, Galston and latterly, Troon.

However, Fr Martin Chambers life could not be reflected in such a straightforward ‘Church’ type biography. Inspired by the Gospels, his life was one of service to others. He gave back to Christ the life he had been given. In this way he lived life to its fullest.


A few decades ago, during my time as an undergraduate student at university, I began to go to Lourdes at Easter time with HCPT, and it was on one my earliest trips—I think my first—that I met Martin. In fact, there must be very few, if any, Lourdes ‘helpers’ with the organisation’s Easter pilgrimages over the past few decades that have not got to know Martin in some capacity. Martin was one of HCPT/Easter pilgrimage’s biggest figures over the past few decades. It’s probable that Martin made friends and acquaintances with many hundreds of people, and more, through his trips to Lourdes. HCPT/Lourdes and Martin were made for each other.


He perfected a combination of a very prayerful, reflective daily life as a priest in service, and literally also, as ‘King of the Eejits,’ as his great friend Bishop Frank Dougan implied as chief celebrant at Martin’s funeral. Fun and laughter with a couple of generations of youngsters, in Lourdes, his parishes, and in Ecuador, were also Martin’s way of serving his mission as a priest. He was totally in-service to others, regardless of their ability, disability or faith. Everyone was equal, created in the image of God (Imago Dei) in the eyes of Martin. His chat, music, singing, playfulness, winding others up, making himself the butt of jokes, a figure to be laughed at and with, were some of his most well-known traits.


In the 1990s, Martin, his best friend Andy Hand, Andy’s brother-in-law James McDonald, and myself, climbed Britain’s three highest peaks, Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis—11,000 feet over the course of a September weekend. This to raise funds for HCPT/Lourdes. Fundraising for good causes was another way Martin served his priestly vocation. For example, running the London marathon, cycling from Lands’ End to John O’Groats and cycling from northern France to Lourdes in the Pyrenees: generally, raising funds for Ecuador or HCPT.


In 2004, Martin took a massive leap in his life and—with permission from his bishop—after various personal and family reflections, in particular conversations with his mum and dad, he joined up with the Missionary Society of St James, nearly 6000 miles away in Ecuador, South America. The main area to be served by Padre Mhartino during his five years there, was to be found in and around the shanty town of Nueva Prosperina, just outside the city of Guayaquil—and what a service he provided.


Using money raised from his own efforts in Scotland, but also assisted greatly by family, friends, schools and former parishioners, Martin helped transform the lives of countless numbers of people in that incredibly impoverished and deprived area of the country. Martin was a modern-day Brother Walfrid right enough. A new brick building for the celebration of Holy Mass, called the Precious Blood Church, was built just a year or so after he arrived. It was built on a former piece of wasteland where people dumped rubbish and gangs met when up to no good. It opened with great fanfare on the June 10, 2007. Several other smaller churches, usually bamboo hut type constructions were either built or received sustenance from the efforts of Martin and his army of supporters in Scotland and elsewhere. Over 20 years, many families there were able to build, stabilise or extend their bamboo shacks with money from the Martin Chambers Ecuador Trust.


The scattered, sometimes concrete, but mainly bamboo, town of Nuevo Prosperina contains no real roads, has dirt tracks, and there is a lack of electricity and very little fresh clean running water. Flooding is a big problem in the rainy season. When Martin arrived there existed a one-year-old school that operated out of bamboo huts with dirt floors, no toilets and no place for kids to play. With the assistance of the Ecuador Trust, a new place for youngsters’ education began to develop. Finally, the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) School emerged. With yet more funds—including a welcome small donation from Celtic FC Foundation—a new concrete playground/football pitch was also constructed, Parque Paraiso (Paradise Park). Trust money also assisted the construction of a canteen at the school where kids could be fed. Sometimes what is served at school being the only meal—generally soup/chicken/rice—many receive in a typical day. By the time Fr Martin departed in 2009, there existed 23 brick built classrooms at the school for primary and secondary pupils, as well as a nursery. Martin had worked hard towards establishing a place where youngsters could be educated, fed, and where, in the midst of great poverty and hopelessness, they could learn to live with optimism for the future. In 2010, money from the Ecuador Trust also helped establish a Medical Centre there.


One of the great things to also occur with, and a consequence of Fr Martin’s mission in Ecuador, was that a number of people were able to travel from Scotland to visit him. Often these family, friends and youngsters from local schools in Scotland had helped raise money for various projects. I too got this opportunity.


Just a few months before he returned to Scotland, Gerry Croall and myself were able to raise money and take it with us to make a small contribution towards Martin’s efforts: to see things at first hand and to show some solidarity with these poor, but frequently very joyous people. With some money Gerry had raised in his workplace, we travelled to the nearby city of Guayaquil and bought a fridge freezer. This allowed one large family—one where dad had suffered a broken back—to start their own food business from home and to support themselves. Various Catholic and non-denominational schools in Coatbridge also assisted me before travelling, raising money and providing school jotters, pencils, toiletries, clothes, footballs and so on. Contact with Celtic FC resulted in my acquiring hundreds of the tops that supporters left outside Celtic Park in the wake of the deaths of Jimmy Johnstone and Tommy Burns. Subsequently, it was amusing to see so many people in and around Nuevo Prosperina, and often at Mass, wearing the famous Hoops. Martin was a season ticket holder at Celtic Park for almost 30 years—including while in Ecuador—and had, prior to becoming a priest, attended Celtic games with his dad, standing in the former Celtic End, now Jock Stein Stand.


A few years later, I had the great privilege of again visiting Nuevo Prosperina. In mid-2018, Martin intended a return visit to Ecuador and offer his ongoing moral and financial support to his many ex-parishioners and friends there, as well as to monitor how the various projects were progressing and to identify where support was most needed. Two of my daughters, Ciara and Aoife, Fr Martin and myself, made the journey and spent a wonderful couple of inspiring weeks with terrific people there. House visits, staying in one of the small rooms in the school, talking to school kids—with Fr Martin making the necessary translations—even teaching PE in the school, travelling to several parts of the country where the Trust supported other great projects, visiting the homes of Tito, Lourdes, Carmen, Carol, Adela, Olga, Freddy and many others. My daughters and I received lessons in and for life from these people. We are thankful for that experience.


Fr Martin was group chaplain for our Lourdes group when my children were younger. He was chief celebrant, along with Fr Michael Kane, at my daughter Ciara’s marriage to Declan in September 2022. In January this year, he once again celebrated a Mass in my home, this time for my deceased Mother Ellen and Dad Joe. Many have lost a great priest and my family has lost a wonderful friend.


The HCPT theme in Lourdes in 2024 has been ‘Let Your Light Shine.’ Martin would be the first to recognise that none of us can shine without first drawing close to Jesus, and

subsequently, reflecting His infinite brightness in some small way in our own lives. Fr Martin Chambers knew this, and it provided his entire raison-d’être. Martin was a student of Ignatian spirituality. A Jesuit called Anthony de Mello said: “The death of the empirical self is the crowning glory of the Spiritual Exercises: that a person’s self-love, self-will, and self-interest have merged into the will and the interest and love of Christ.. we cannot produce it, but we can dispose ourselves for it by loving God.”


In several parts of Scotland, in Lourdes and in Ecuador, and through a multitude of personal relationships and contacts created by the authentic, honest and earnest work and endeavour of priest, family member and friend, Fr Martin Chambers, many have been deeply saddened that Martin is now no longer with us. Indeed, many have experienced a sense of devastation with this news. Many of us can however also say, we were glad and blessed to have known him. Thank you, Martin. Your light shines on. Farewell for now, Amigo.


Make a difference! As long as poverty, injustice and inequality persist, none of us can truly rest. To learn about, or donate to, The Martin Chambers Ecuador Trust, visit: http://www.ecuadortrust.org.uk


Gerard Gough


WRITER’S block and procrastination are issues that afflict even the best of journalists, but for me, when coming to write about the passing of Fr Martin Chambers, the Bishop-Elect of Dunkeld, I was only suffering from both because committing an obituary to print would have a sense of finality and I didn’t want to accept that he’s gone—and it’s still hard to believe that he is.


I didn’t know Fr Martin as well or as closely as a lot of other people did, but the important thing is that I was able to call him a friend and I will always remain proud of that fact.


Our paths first crossed when I was primary school pupil at St John’s in Stevenston and he became the school chaplain there in the late 1980s. At that time, the school environment could still be a bit stuffy and austere, so he breezed in during his visits like a breath of fresh air. He came across as happy, funny, caring, engaging, intelligent, interesting and interested from that first visit—and all the subsequent ones—qualities that he carried throughout his priesthood, which not only made him such a fine priest, but also a brilliant human being.


During one of these visits, he showcased his brilliant sense of humour when he brought his guitar and sang a version of Guantanamera, which included the line ‘my wee Auntie Sarah, went tae Majorca for the ferra!’ He had all the pupils chuckling as he sang and, to be honest, I cannot sing that song with the correct lyrics anymore because of this interaction. Cheers Fr Martin!


He also took on the role of coach in our successful school football team, something I reminded him of when I was speaking to him a couple of weeks before his untimely passing. That said, despite the fact that he really loved his football, I feel we might well have been successful in spite of his coaching capabilities because none of the players managed to break a school window during a training session, but he did!


That passion for football though would see us meet up again in later life when he had moved onto pastures new, because I was—and am—a Celtic season ticket holder and so was he, so it wasn’t unusual to run into him at Celtic Park. One time, myself and my friend Gary—who had been enjoying some post-match entertainment in the Brazen Head—met Fr Martin on the train back down to Ayrshire and wherever he had been post-match, he looked like he enjoyed himself in a similar fashion! We enthused about the day’s action and put the world to rights in a football sense, before sharing a taxi from Kilwinning Station to our various abodes in Stevenston. It is still a treasured memory that makes me smile to this day.


I came into contact with him again when I worked at the Scottish Catholic Observer and he would send over his monthly reports from his life on mission in Guayaquil, Ecuador. As a sub-editor, not everything you read is memorable, but his copy was, and it was no surprise when he compiled his experiences into a book. Hopefully, there will be a reprint of it so that more people can understand the legacy of faith and love that he left to the people of Ecuador. That legacy also lives on in The Martin Chambers Ecuador Trust, which continues to provide support to his South American family.


In the next step in my career, working as the Communications Officer for the Scottish branch of the Pontifical Mission Societies, our shared love for the missions would intertwine with him being our Diocesan Director for Galloway Diocese and he was always on hand to help in any way he could to support our work and that of missionaries like himself worldwide. In fact, as if to emphasise that point, he even granted me an interview when all of his worldly possessions remained in boxes in his new home at Our Lady of the Assumption and St Meddan's in Troon after having moved from St Matthew’s and Our Lady of Mount Carmel parishes in Kilmarnock! It was the measure of the man and I’m glad that that interview will be preserved for future generations.


When the news came through that he had died, to say I was shocked and saddened is an understatement. He might not have known it—and he was a pretty humble fella so I doubt he would have—but he had a really positive impact on my life and I will always cherish that and try to live up to the excellent example he set in so many different ways.


As I said previously, shortly before he died and not long after he was chosen to be Dunkeld’s new Bishop, I sent him a message, which read: “Hi Padre, not long until you are Bishop Martin! You’re going to do just fine, you’re a fantastic servant of God and I’m proud to have called you coach, parish priest and friend.” To which he replied: “Coach! I forgot to put that in the CV!” He might not have been the best coach in the world, but he was a fantastic friend and I’ve no doubt in my mind would have been a wonderful bishop too.


The world is undoubtedly dimmer without you Fr Martin, but on the flipside, Heaven will be that bit brighter. Rest in peace, you are sorely missed.


Ian Dunn


SITTING among hundreds of others at the funeral of Fr Martin Chambers, it was clear the grief from his death had rippled far beyond the parishes of his native Ayrshire where he had served for decades. Scores of Catholics who had travelled with him to Lourdes on HCPT pilgrimages when he was a chaplain were there. There was a live link to Ecuador where he spent five years working as a missionary and founded a parish, and a charity to support the neediest in that parish when he returned to Scotland.


The news, a few months ago, that the Pope had appointed him Bishop of Dunkeld had been a surprise. He didn’t fit the traditional profile for a bishop, few of whom take a five-year sabbatical from parish life in their own diocese to work with the poorest of the poor on the other side of the world, but many of us were excited to see what he would accomplish there.


We would not get the chance.


His great friend, the recently installed Bishop Frank Dougan of Galloway, said: “It was with a heavy heart and the deepest sadness that he learned of the news. To know Martin was to know a man of love, enthusiasm, humour, and a deep faith which enlivened all that he did.”


Archbishop William Nolan of Glasgow said he was shocked and saddened at the news. He added: “Martin’s death is a huge loss not only to his own diocese, and the Diocese of Dunkeld where he had been appointed bishop, but for the whole Catholic Church in Scotland. When I was Bishop of Galloway I knew him well—a great priest, always welcoming, friendly, with a good sense of humour who worked so hard for his people.”


So many of the tributes mentioned the humour, the laughter, the songs, the dancing. He was a man of great joy in his faith and he spread that joy freely. And he was funny.

That commitment to joy is something that was redoubled when he returned to Scotland after his time in Ecuador. He once said that on his first night there he looked out and saw mile after mile of houses made of bamboo: “It was extreme poverty. I wondered what I was getting myself into.” However, in time, he came to love the ironically named shantytown of Nueva Prosperina where he was based and especially the people there.


“The greatest joy of my time as a missionary priest came in walking the dusty streets of the shantytown, meeting the poor people, visiting their homes, and hearing their joys and sorrows,” he said. “Even though they had nothing, they had such joy. Despite all the poverty, there was a lot of happiness there. When I came back to Scotland, I was struck by how miserable a lot of people seemed. We have so much in comparison yet often it seems we don’t know how to be happy.”


Fr Martin Chambers found that joy in his faith. Requiescat in pace.

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