Page 45 - Bulletin 13 2009

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passed out of the hands of the Dominican Sisters and was handed over to a lay principal.
Today Mr Greg Gordon is the Principal.

The school is proud of its history as a community school. It has played an important role

in keeping its community together in the face of adversity over the past century.

Significantly, it still boasts pupils with surnames like Fernandez, Pepino, Almazon,
Erispe and Delcarme. This is a tribute to their heritage which stems from the early

Filipino settlers and fishermen of the mid-1850s.

Father John Duignam (b. 1846 Co. Mullingar, Westmeath, Ireland – d. 1931 Bonnievale, Cape)

Of all the personalities who left an impression on St. James no one was more prominent

than Father Duignam who gave the community fifty-one years of service as the Catholic
Parish Priest. (Fig. 1.24).

In early 1874 the Cape Government requested the Right Reverend Bishop John
Leonard, Vicar Apostolic of the Catholic Diocese of the Cape of Good Hope, to appoint

a priest on a permanent basis to handle the religious needs of the Filipino fishing
community at Kalk Bay. Father John Duignam had the ability to speak Spanish, the

mother tongue of the Filipino fishermen. This influenced Bishop Leonard quite
considerably and Fr. Duignam was appointed on 1 June 1874 “to relieve for a period of

six months until an alternative permanent priest could be found”. Fr. Duignam stayed

for more than fifty years and retired on 1 December 1925. What he achieved in those
fifty years is a book within itself.

He had been ordained in Rome in 1873 at the age of 27 and was appointed the following

year to St. James. With the enthusiasm and vigour of a devout 28-year-old Christian, he
set about his work with unbridled energy.

His early days were very difficult with little or no money and often the good priest’s
meals for the day consisted of black tea and dry bread. When his father in Mullingar,