I WAS LATE, as so often had been the case in our long relationship, and I expected to be greeted by the same generous, forgiving smile, writes Fergal Keane. I was no longer a schoolboy but a hostage of the grown-up life with all its complications and competing timetables.

Now approaching his room at the Bon Secours hospital in Cork I could tell that I was too late. Br Jerome had passed away.

In the far-off days of the 1970s when he was my headmaster, Br Jerome Kelly would sanction repeated lack of punctuality by directing the offender towards some socially useful labour. I remember winter afternoons picking up rubbish on the Mardyke Walk next to Presentation Brothers College.

“Don’t return, boy, until it is as clean as your conscience,” he would declare. He never used violence to impose his will. His force of personality was quite enough to achieve any necessary end.