Owen Snedden
|
Bishop Owen Noel Snedden |
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|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
11 December 1917 Auckland  New Zealand
|
| Died | 17 April 1981 (aged 63) Wellington New Zealand
|
| Occupation | Roman Catholic auxiliary Bishop of Wellington (1962–1981) |
The Right Reverend Owen Noel Snedden, MBE (11 December 1917 – 17 April 1981) was Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Wellington, New Zealand (from 1962–1981). He was the first Auckland-born priest to be consecrated a Roman Catholic bishop.
Snedden was born in Auckland on 11 December 1917. His primary education was at St Joseph's School, Te Aroha and at St Mary's College, Auckland; his secondary education was at Sacred Heart College, Ponsonby. He began studying for the priesthood at Holy Cross College, Mosgiel in 1934. In 1937 he was sent to Rome to study at the Pontifical Urbaniana University. Snedden was ordained a priest for the Auckland Diocese in Rome on 24 February 1941.
Because he was still studying in Rome in 1940 when Italy declared War on France and the UK, he was unable to return to New Zealand, and remained in Rome. After his ordination he completed his doctorate in theology with a thesis on Saint John Fisher. At the same time he and Fr. John Flanagan (another Auckland priest in the same situation as Snedden) became announcers for Vatican Radio, engaged particularly to broadcast weekly lists of Australian and New Zealand prisoners of war. Although the priests were not identified, one frequent listener to the broadcasts concluded that the readers must be New Zealanders because Māori names were pronounced with "such clarity and precision". Unofficially, code-named "Horace", Snedden, along with Flanagan (code-named "Fanny"), also became involved with an underground movement led by an Irish priest in the Vatican Secretariat of State, Hugh O'Flaherty, finding safe houses, medicines and food supplies for escaped prisoners of war who were hiding in the environs of Rome.
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