Divine Word Brother Patrick Hegarty, who helped to make Ireland’s The Word one of the country’s most successful magazines, died May 28. He was 97.

A funeral Mass was celebrated for Brother Patrick on June 1 at the Divine Word Residence chapel in Techny, Ill. He was laid to rest in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Techny.

Born in County Galway, Ireland, he completed his studies and worked as an apprentice at a general store in Kilsallagh in Galway, Ireland.

In 1944, he joined the Society of the Divine Word at St. Patrick’s College in Donamon Castle, County Roscommon.

Three years later, he professed first vows and took the religious name Columba. After the Second Vatican Council when religious brothers were given the option to continue using their religious name or return to their baptismal name, he chose to be known again as Patrick.

He worked in Great Britain during the 1950s, at Divine Word College in Rome in the early 1960s and in the United States thereafter.

For decades, Brother Patrick put his salesmanship skills to work for the Society of the Divine Word. While assigned to Donamon Castle, Ireland’s oldest continuously occupied castle, he traveled the country’s rugged West Country and sold Divine Word greeting cards.

In part due to his toil, today’s Divine Word Missionaries at Donamon are Ireland’s largest producer of religious greeting cards.