Our Lady of the Assumption Church - Newspaper Article
Publication: West Lancashire Evening Gazette
Date: Friday 13 October 2000
Title: Priest died from rare bug
Legionnaire’s Disease was to blame for the death of a Blackpool priest and his old college friend who both fell ill after making a journey to Rome. South Shore priest Fr Anthony Foulkes died six days before Canon Harold Parker, the Roman Catholic vicar of St Wilfrid's Church in Ripon, North Yorkshire. The two men had both returned from a 18-day trip to Italy for a reunion with students who studied for the priesthood at the Venerable English College in Rome in the 1940s and 1950s.
Another travelling companion, Bernard Connolly, who is in his 70s and lives in Torquay, has also fallen ill. Tests are being carried out to establish if he has contracted the killer bug.
Blackpool Victoria Hospital has sent out an alert to every hospital in the country to look out for admissions of patients suffering from symptoms linked to the disease. Fifteen to 20 people who went on the trip from the UK have been advised to be checked over by their doctor.
Today an investigation was underway to trace the source of the disease which is a form of pneumonia.
Fr Foulkes' brother John, a priest at St Kentigern's in Newton Drive, Blackpool, said: 'Somewhere and somehow they have contracted Legionnaire’s Disease. He came back sick. It just got worse and worse. After a week he went straight into hospital. The staff at Blackpool Victoria Hospital bent over backwards. He couldn’t have been better treated, even if he had been the Pope himself.'
Fr Anthony Foulkes, 71, the parish priest of Our Lady of the Assumption Church, had stayed in the college's Palazzola villa in the hills outside Rome before spending his last eight days in the city. No trace of the disease has been found at the Palazzola.
Fr Foulkes worked at churches in Lancaster, Garstang and Preston. He later moved back to the Fylde and was parish priest at St Edmund’s. Fleetwood, from 1971 to 1984.
John said: ‘He was the kindest, most gentle, humble person I have ever met. He really was a holy man.’
Canon Parker, 73, was admitted to Harrogate District Hospital last week where he died peacefully in his sleep on Monday.