Montgomery, Hugh Edmund Langton
Contributed by
McElroy, Gerry
Montgomery, Hugh Edmund Langton (1895–1971), diplomat and priest, was born 30 October 1895 at Blessingbourne, near Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone, eldest among three sons and three daughters of Maj.-gen. Hugh Maude de Fellenberg Montgomery (qv), soldier and landowner, and Mary Montgomery (née Massingberd Langton), daughter of Edmund Langton. He was educated at Winchester and went to study at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1914, before joining the army in 1915. He served in the Lincolnshire Regiment and as lieutenant in the North Irish Horse in France and Belgium, and was awarded the MC (1919). In 1919 he resumed his studies at Christ Church and graduated with a BA in history (1921) having completed a shortened serviceman's course. During this period he decided to become a catholic, which led to his being effectively disowned and (as heir apparent to the family estate) disinherited by his protestant family. He entered the British foreign service and (despite ongoing uncertainty over whether to become a priest) pursued a successful diplomatic career for over twenty years, initially as third secretary in 1922, serving in Stockholm 1923–4, and then as second secretary in Belgrade (1926–9), Berlin (1929–32), and Ankara (1932–3), becoming first secretary in 1933 and serving in the Holy See (1933–6), Baghdad (1936–8), Sofia and Makow (1940), and Ankara (1940–41).
He returned as first secretary to the Holy See (1942–4) via a sealed compartment in a train from Switzerland, and exploited the neutral status of the Vatican by helping numerous allied servicemen escape from fascist-controlled territory. Despite the criticism of many senior churchmen, he continued these activities and gained the nickname ‘the battling diplomat’. He also played a role in the negotiations leading to the German evacuation of Rome in 1944. He was so appalled by the postwar execution of two German teenagers who had spied on US forces during the war that he wrote a letter on the subject entitled ‘Be not like your enemy’, which was published in The Times (8 June 1945). In 1946–7 he briefly resumed his career as first secretary in Rio de Janiero before finally deciding to study for the priesthood at the Beda College, Rome (1947–51), and was ordained at St John Lateran, Rome, by Bishop Macara on Holy Saturday 1951. As a clerical student in Rome, he had enjoyed a growing friendship with Mgr Montini, and at the time of his ordination he was a guest of Montini, by now cardinal of Milan and later to become Pope Paul VI. During this period he used his formidable linguistic skills to translate two religious books from French, Francis Trochu's Jeanne Jugan: Sister Marie of the Cross, foundress of the Little Institute of the Little Sisters of the Poor (1950) and Joseph Lecler's The two sovereignties: a study of the relationship between church and state (1952).
He was ordained for the archdiocese of Birmingham and for a time was an assistant master at Ampleforth College and then chaplain to Birmingham University. Thereafter he was parish priest at Pype Hayes, Birmingham (1957–62), and at St Brailes, Warwickshire (1962–5), before being posted to St Peter's in central Birmingham and his last parish, St Augustine's in Handsworth, Birmingham, becoming a monsignor sometime in the 1960s and retiring in either 1969 or 1970. He was fondly remembered in his archdiocese for his humility, kindness, scrupulosity, and sensitivity, qualities which were underlined by his decision to write to Pope Paul VI to emphasise that he had never claimed to be a close friend of the pontiff, as he knew their friendship was a common topic of conversation. When Archbishop Dwyer of Birmingham said Montgomery's requiem mass, moreover, he revealed that the monsignor had actually known four popes, and described how in a recent trip to Rome Paul VI had asked him about Hugh Montgomery during the course of their conversation. Montgomery also enjoyed a successful career in the foreign office and demonstrated remarkable courage and diplomatic skills while at the Holy See in 1942–4. Shortly after his friend Montini became pope in 1963, Montgomery was made a privy chamberlain of the church. He died at Handsworth, Birmingham, on 24 June 1971, and is buried at what was his favourite parish, St Braile's, Warwickshire.
Sources
Times, 8 June 1945; Who's Who (1954), 2059–60; Catholic Herald, 2 July 1971; Tablet, 10 July 1971; Burke, IFR (1976), 855; Paul Bew, Passion and prejudice (1993), vii; information from Judith Curthoys, archivist, Christ Church, Oxford, 11 Oct. 2005
Publishing information
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.005902.v1
Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography
Last revised October 2009
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license.
Mau-reece
