It is unusual to see a Roman Catholic priest buried with his wife (Clotilde Bienes) or the first line of his obituary draw attention to his four children. The brief details given in the Catholic Herald's obituary make it clear that he was an unusual priest in many respects:
Fr Nigel Bourne,
a priest of the Northampton diocese and father to four children, has died at
the age of 83. Fr Bourne was ordained in Rome on Easter Monday, 1975 at the age
of 69 after a distinguished career as a civil engineer. Fr Bourne's Spanish
wife Clotilde had died ten years earlier.
While working in
Spain on the Santander-Mediterranean railway in the late 1920s, he met his wife
and before their marriage in 1933 converted to Catholicism. He became involved
in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side and was placed on a hit list
by the workers' committee which took over his company in Madrid. He later
worked with refugees fleeing the second World War in Spain on behalf of the
British government.
After his
ordination Fr Bourne worked in the Northampton diocese until he reached
retirement age at 75 when he moved to the southern coast of Spain, returning
occasionally to the diocese as a supply priest. He is survived by two daughters
and a son. He published an autobiography in 1985, ‘Padre-An Unusual Common Man.’
Catholic Herald
20 July 1990
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