Canon William Price writes:
CANON John Henry Lewis Rowlands, who died on 30 June, served the Church in Wales in a variety of posts for 45 years, including nine years as Warden of the Church’s only theological college.
John was a Carmarthen boy, educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, St David’s College in Lampeter, where he read history, and Cambridge, where he read theology at Magdalene College. He trained for ordination at Westcott House. I think that it was Cambridge that made John what he was.
He was ordained in 1972 and served his title in Aberystwyth. At the end of July 1976, he married Catryn. A few weeks later, he went back to Lampeter as the College’s first chaplain, when I was then a lecturer there. He brought new life into the chapel and he summed up his ministry on the campus as “lurking with intent”. He was also diocesan youth chaplain.
In 1979, John moved to work in St Michael’s College, Llandaff, where he remained for 18 years. He also made important contributions to the diocese and to the university’s Faculty of Theology. He left St Michael’s in 1997, to serve in the parish of Whitchurch — probably the largest parish in population in the diocese of Llandaff, if not in the Church in Wales — first as Vicar and then as Team Rector. He was also a member of the Chapter of Llandaff Cathedral, first as Canon from 1997 and then as Canon Chancellor from 2002 until his retirement in 2017. He moved to live in New Quay, in Ceredigion, where he assisted in local churches.
John had a real hinterland of other interests. In recent years, and especially when Covid ruled out meeting in person, John and I used to chat about once a month on the phone, often for a couple of hours. Every conversation began with something on the book that he was reading, a different book every time. He had a superb library at the top of his home. Politics was another absorbing interest. Prime Minister’s Questions was a regular weekly fixture, along with Choral Evensong on Radio 3. How John would have relished recent weeks with the Prime Minister’s resignation and the contest for the party leadership! John also loved many sports, especially tennis and rugby.
He was a scholar, who not only read books, but also published them. His “big book”, Church, State, and Society: The attitudes of John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froude and John Henry Newman, 1827-1845, was published when he was Warden of St Michael’s. He had a special devotion to John Henry Newman — one John Henry to another. John was also a teacher, and, during 18 years on the staff of St Michael’s, taught many future priests, including four future bishops, one of them also a future archbishop.
He was a priest, a priest in the Catholic tradition, to his fingertips, sustained by the eucharist and the daily Office; but John was no ascetic. He loved the good things of life which God has given us — good food, a glass in his hand, and exciting holidays in faraway places, including Costa Rica in 2020 when Covid restrictions almost kept John and Catryn prisoners in that country. But throughout his life he never wavered in his priestly ministry.
He was, perhaps above all, a family man. We recall his partnership with Catryn and his huge love for, and great pride in, his children and grandchildren, with whom he usually conversed in Welsh. His family gave him that love and support which enabled him to do so much for his church.
John had been diagnosed with leukaemia, but he was responding well to treatment when he fell in hospital and suffered a brain haemorrhage. His funeral was held in New Quay on 19 July, and what is mortal of him is buried in the churchyard of Llanina, right by the sea.
We pray that he may rest in peace and that light perpetual may shine upon him. Heddwch i’w enaid.
