Born in Loughrea, Ireland on 1 December 1833
Took the habit in Maryvale on 11 June 1850
Oblation in N. D. de l’Osier on 7 July 1851 (No. 307)
Died in Marseilles on 15 January 1853
William Winter was born in Loughrea, in the diocese of Clonfert, on 1 December 1833. He began his novitiate in Maryvale on 11 June 1850 and made his oblation in N. D. de l’Osier on 7 July 1851. Father Santoni, master of novices, proposed him for profession: “Solid virtue, talent above average, good temperament, good judgement, good conduct in every respect although by nature somewhat contained.”
He died on 15 January 1853 while he was a scholastic in the Marseilles major seminary. Father Tempier, local superior, immediately announced the death in a circular letter of which the following is an extract: “Well lettered, doing well in his theology studies, endowed with truly outstanding abilities, he might later have honoured and served our congregation. His calm, reflective, kindly, charitable nature would have made him congenial and loved in any community. A man of solid piety, perfect regularity, blind submission, generous devotion that is how he was always in the seminary. The congregation was already building its hopes on him, and now God has dashed them all. He has taken him from us at the age of 19. Without having up to the present suffered the least serious indisposition, stronger than all his brothers, all of a sudden he felt a pain in the chest and, after spending eight consecutive days vomiting and coughing up blood, he fell into a phthisis that brought him to the grave. This good brother died as he lived, in the peace of the Lord, fortified with the sacraments of the church…”
Yvon Beaudoin
and Michael Hughes, o.m.i.
