User:12al12/Francis Xavier Morgan

Francis Xavier Morgan, C. O. (b. El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz; 18th January 1857 - d. Birmingham; 11th June de 1935), born Francisco Javier Morgan Osborne, was a catholic priest of spanish-british citizenship who spent most of his religious life in the Birmingham Oratory, where he educated and was the legal guardian of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Early years
Francisco Javier Morgan Osborne was the son of Francis Morgan, a Welshman who settled in El Puerto de Santa María as a winemaker and exporter of sherry wine. There Francis Morgan had married the Spaniard María Manuela Osborne y Böhl de Faber (daughter of another Briton, Thomas Osborne Mann, founder of Bodegas Osborne; and of Aurora Böhl de Faber, sister of the Spanish writer Cecilia Böhl de Faber, better known by her literary pseudonym Fernán Caballero). Francis Morgan and María Manuela Osborne had five children: Tomás, Isabel, Augusto and Francisco, the latter familiarly known as Curro.

As a boy, Francis was sent to study to England to the Birmingham Oratory, where he was a pupil of Father John Henry Newman. At the end of his primary education, he went to the baccalaureate school run by Monsignor Thomas John Capel in London, and then entered the University of Louvain. After two years there he returned to the Birmingham Oratory as a novice.

In 1880 he accompanied father John Norris, the prefect of the Birmingham Oratory, to Rome, where they met with pope Leo XIII. On his return, they both accompanied the newly appointed Cardinal Newman during his stay at the London residence of the Duke of Norfolk, the country's most illustrious Catholic, where British high society paid tribute to the Cardinal. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1883, Francis Morgan became an active member of the Birmingham Oratory community.

Relationship with the Tolkiens
Although he initially taught at the Oratory school, he spent most of his life doing pastoral work in the parish run by the Oratorians. It was there that he met a widow who had recently converted to Catholicism and who came to the Oratory for spiritual comfort: Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield), along with her children Ronald and Hilary. By September 1900 Mabel had managed to enrol Ronald at the prestigious King Edward's School in Birmingham, and on Sundays the family attended mass at the Oratory church. The Tolkiens had been living in a rather unstable situation since the death of the head of the family, Arthur Tolkien, who had worked in the Orange Free State as a branch manager of the Bank of Africa Limited. When their financial difficulties made it impossible for her to continue paying for Ronald's tuition at King Edward's School, Father Francis took him into the school run by the oratorians. Consequently Mabel and her children moved close to the Oratory, to Oliver Road, and there the young boy remained in school until September 1903, when he won a scholarship to return to King Edward's School.

In April 1904 Mabel Tolkien fell seriously ill with diabetes, having great difficulty fending for herself. Father Francis arranged for her to rent two rooms in a cottage in Rednal, to the south of Birmingham, near the estate where the Oratorians had their cemetery and a retreat house. There Mabel would have the landlady's help with the housework, she would also provide food, and the children could enjoy the countryside setting of the Lickey Hills. It is not for nothing that Rednal seems to have inspired Tolkien for his imaginary Rivendell.

In November 1904, seven months after being diagnosed with diabetes, Mabel Tolkien died at Rednal cottage in the care of Father Francis. In her she appointed him legal guardian of her two children.<ref name="Tolkien1"/ The financial means the late Mrs. Tolkien left for the upbringing of the children were rather meagre, but Father Francis was to supplement them with money from his share of his family's sherry business in El Puerto de Santa Maria.

Father Francis took the Tolkien brothers to live with him at the Oratory. The library that the priest kept in his cell was frequently used by Ronald, who learned some Spanish from his tutor, a knowledge that enabled him to create a language he called "naffarin". In all probability, thanks to Father Francis's library the young Tolkien had access to the works of Fernán Caballero, the pseudonym used by the writer Cecilia Böhl de Faber, the priest's great-aunt. This has been suggested because of the similarity between one of Gollum's riddles in The Hobbit and one of the ones present in Fernán Caballero's Cuentos, oraciones, adivinanzas y refranes populares (Madrid, 1877).

Soon after taking them in, Father Francis allowed Roland and Hilary to live with a sister-in-law of their late mother, Beatrice Suffield. After three years, the priest realised that Mrs Suffield, widowed and deeply depressed, could not offer the most suitable environment for the Tolkien brothers to grow up in. He looked for something more like a home for them, and so he decided to put them up in Mrs Faulkner's boarding house, right next door to the Oratory. Ronald, aged 16, met Edith Bratt, aged 19, who had been living alone with Mrs Faulkner since the death of their mother, and a special friendship began between the two teenagers. Francis Morgan objected to Ronald having any romantic relationship before he came of age at 21, and Ronald obeyed him.

Father Francis again found new lodgings for the two boys, this time with the McSherry family, parishioners of the Oratory. From there, Ronald prepared for entry to Oxford University, after which he moved to Oxford, but later returned and married Edith.

Francis Xavier Morgan died at the Birmingham Oratory in 1935 leaving each of the Tolkien brothers £1,000 as an inheritance.