Julian Tenison Woods

Julian Edmund Tenison-Woods (15 November 1832 – 7 October 1889) was an English Catholic priest and geologist, active in Australia. With Mary MacKillop (later Saint Mary MacKillop), he co-founded the Congregation of Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart at Penola in 1866.

Woods was born in London, the sixth son (of eleven children) of James Tenison Woods, Q.C., a sub-editor of The Times, and his wife, Henrietta Maria Saint-Eloy, née Tenison, daughter of the Rev. Joseph Tenison. Among his ancestors were several outstanding Irish Catholic and Anglican religious leaders. He attended Thomas Hunt's Catholic school, Kent House, Hammersmith, and, briefly, Newington Grammar School.

James Woods was a Roman Catholic, but apparently not a very strict one. His mother belonged to the Church of England and was of the same family as Archbishop Tenison, well-known around the beginning of the eighteenth century. Julian Woods was baptized and confirmed in the church of his father but probably during his youth there was a period when he fell away from his church. His own manuscript memoirs, written during his last illness, represents him as leading the life of an Anglican when 16 years old, and being converted to Catholicism soon afterwards. Woods' biographer, the Rev. George O'Neill, S.J., discusses the question at some length and gives reasons for thinking that Woods's memory at the time of writing the memoir may be untrustworthy.

In 1846 Woods obtained a position in The Times office, but after a few weeks went to live at Jersey with his mother whose health had failed. Woods returned to London in less than two years and resumed his position at The Times office. In 1850 Woods entered the monastery of the Passionist Order at Broadway in Worcestershire, and became a novice. His health began to fail and he studied at Marist seminaries near Toulon, France; where he also taught English at a Naval College. Around this time his interest in geology and natural history appears to have begun.

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