It is hard to know how to start to describe Father Ronan Drury: priest, professor of homiletics, editor; an accomplished man whose interests included drama, poetry, music, and art; a talented actor and director; an able tennis player in his younger days; sociable and gregarious, if also a little shy; a great raconteur.

“Humble” was the first epithet the president of Maynooth, Michael Mullaney, used of him at the reception of his body in St Mary’s Chapel, and it was apt. It might not have been the first of Ronan Drury’s qualities to strike a new acquaintance, but he was indeed unassuming, and one realised after a while that a true self-knowledge earthed him.