Born in Portlaoise [then known as Maryborough], Ireland, 18 July 1823
Took the habit in N.D. de l’Osier on 15 July 1843
Oblation in N. D. de l’Osier on 16 July 1844 (No. 128 )
Priestly ordination in Marseilles, on 18 March 1848
Expelled on 5 November 1852
John Peter Grey was born Portlaoise [then known as Maryborough], Co. Laois Ireland, in the diocese of Kildare, on 18 July 1823. He began his novitiate on 15 July 1843 at N. D. de l’Osier where he made his oblation on 16 July 1844. This was followed by philosophical and theological studies in the Marseilles major seminary. He fell ill during the 1847 vacation in N. D. de Lumières. The Founder sent him to Aix and advised Father Courtès to get him a doctor. On 15 December 1847 he was called to the priesthood and received his obedience for Everingham in Yorkshire. Bishop de Mazenod ordained him in Marseilles on 18 March 1848.
In 1848 Father Grey worked in Everingham, then in Manchester with Father William Daly. When Bishop de Mazenod visited England in 1850 he described Father Grey as “without heart, and after he had seemed so lively in Marseilles! It seemed, he wrote Father Arnoux on 29 November 1852, as if I were meeting a stranger.” During the summer of 1852 Father Grey wrote Father Bellon, then superior in England, to ask for a dispensation from his vows so that he could help one of his sisters who was without support and because he did not think “he was made for the religious life.” Father Bellon submitted his case and that of Father Walsh to the General Council. He wrote: “These two priests ought already to have left the congregation; they have no religious discipline, no respect for authority, no love of the congregation […] They have benefited neither from my patience nor my warnings.”
At the meeting of the General Council on 5 November 1852 it was decided to expel them from the Congregation. Bishop de Mazenod wrote Father Arnoux on 29 November: “What a fall! I expected this catastrophe in the case of the wretched Walsh, but as for Grey, I would never have believed…”
It seems that Grey kept up some contact with the Oblates. Bishop de Mazenod wrote Father Casimir Aubert, when the latter was in England in August 1855: “If in your travels you can bring poor Grey, whom I am weak enough to want back, back to his duties, a few months in Montolivet would serve to reinstate him.”
According to a note on his file Father Grey later founded a college in California.
Yvon Beaudoin
and Michael Hughes, o.m.i.
