A SPECIAL celebration Mass was held to mark Father Jack McQuillan's 60 years as a priest.

Father McQuillan, 88, of Westbury Close, Briercliffe, has been a supply priest for the St Gregory's Deanery in Burnley for the past eight years and was previously chaplain at St Mary's Convent in Yorkshire Street for four years.

The celebration Mass held at St John's RC Church, Burnley, was attended by nuns and priests who have worked with him in Britain and in Africa.

Bishop Joseph Mairura, from Kisii, Kenya, who was taught by Father McQuillan, also attended. Father McQuillan has had a colourful life in the priesthood starting with his ordination on June 9, 1940, which had to be brought forward because Dunkirk was in progress and afterwards he returned to class for six weeks. When Father McQuillan completed his BSc at Liverpool University he took his finals in the bombed-out engineering faculty separated from a large bomb crater by a sheet of tarpaulin.

He taught in Holland before serving in Africa from 1952 to 1988, which included time in Uganda as science teacher and then headmaster of Tororo College and Nagonggera Seminary.

In Kenya he was a science teacher in Rakwaro Seminary.

In 1988 he was awarded an MBE for educational work in the British Territories.

The parishioners of St John's are sending Father McQuillan to Lourdes for a week's pilgrimage later this month.