25 Facts About Adrian Hastings

Adrian Hastings was a Roman Catholic priest, historian and author.

Adrian Hastings wrote a book about the Wiriyamu Massacre during the Mozambican War of Independence and became an influential scholar of Christian history in Africa.

Adrian Hastings argues that the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages played a crucial role in fostering a sense of national consciousness and community.

Adrian Hastings explores the significant influence of the Jewish people on the concept of nationhood.

Adrian Hastings suggests that the ancient Jewish nation, with its strong religious and ethnic identity, served as a model for later European nations.

Adrian Hastings argues that the Jewish experience, with its emphasis on a shared religion, common ancestry, and a historical narrative, provided a template that other groups adapted in forming their national identities.

Adrian Hastings, a grandson of George Woodyatt Adrian Hastings, was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, but his mother moved to England to bring up the children when he was little more than a baby.

Adrian Hastings was educated at Douai School and Worcester College, Oxford.

Adrian Hastings joined the White Fathers but later left the order to become a secular priest in the Diocese of Masaka, Uganda.

Adrian Hastings studied theology at the Collegium Urbanum, the college of the Congregation of Propaganda in Rome.

Adrian Hastings was ordained in 1955 and awarded a doctorate in 1958.

In Uganda, Adrian Hastings served in pastoral and teaching functions and was charged with interpreting the documents of the Second Vatican Council to priests in Africa.

Adrian Hastings agitated for a relaxation of the discipline of clerical celibacy in the African context, attributing the low numbers of African clergy to the cultural alienness of this requirement.

In 1966, after bouts of malaria, Adrian Hastings returned to England and became active in ecumenical dialogue through the preparatory commission of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.

Adrian Hastings was commissioned by a number of Anglican dioceses in Africa to prepare a report on Christian and customary marriage.

From 1972 to 1976 Adrian Hastings was on the staff of an ecumenical missionary school, the College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham.

In 1973 Adrian Hastings brought the massacres carried out by the Portuguese army during the Mozambican War of Independence to world attention, first in The Times and later at the United Nations.

Adrian Hastings created a controversy in 1973 with an article in The Times about the "Wiriyamu Massacre", in the Portuguese-ruled overseas territory of Mozambique, revealing that the Portuguese army had massacred some 400 villagers at the village of Wiriyamu, near Tete, in December 1972.

Adrian Hastings's report was printed a week before the Portuguese prime minister, Marcelo Caetano, was due to visit Britain to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance.

Portugal's growing isolation following Adrian Hastings' claims has often been cited as a factor that helped to bring about the Carnation Revolution coup which deposed Marcelo Caetano, the leader of the Estado Novo regime that ruled the Portuguese Empire, in 1974.

In 1976 Adrian Hastings was appointed to a lectureship in the theology faculty of the University of Aberdeen.

Later in life Adrian Hastings was active in raising awareness of the atrocities accompanying the break-up of Yugoslavia and the reassertion of Serbian control over Kosovo.

Adrian Hastings was a founding member of the Alliance to Defend Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In 1978, Adrian Hastings came to the decision that as a Catholic priest he was free to marry.

Adrian Hastings died in Leeds on 30 May 2001, aged 71, and was interred in St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, East Hendred, Oxfordshire.