1869–1946
Father Andrew, Brother Andrew, Ernest Hardy

Introduction

Born: January 7, 1869, Kasauli, Himachal Pra­desh, In­dia.

Died: March 31, 1946, of can­cer.

Biography

[Hardy’s]…fa­ther was a co­lo­nel in the In­di­an ar­my. Af­ter grow­ing up in In­dia, he at­tend­ed Clif­ton Col­lege and an art school in Bris­tol, be­fore stu­dy­ing at Ke­ble Col­lege, Ox­ford, where he ob­tained a fourth-class de­gree in theo­lo­gy in 1891.

While he was at Ox­ford, Ar­thur Win­ning­ton-In­gram (a Ke­ble gra­du­ate who at the time was head of Ox­ford House in the East End of Lon­don, and lat­er be­came Bi­shop of Lon­don) vi­sit­ed the uni­ver­si­ty seek­ing vol­un­teers to work with the poor. Har­dy of­fered his ser­vic­es and moved to Ox­ford House in Oc­to­ber 1891, where he com­bined ad­min­is­tra­tive work with prac­ti­cal as­sist­ance to the needy.

In Ja­nu­ary 1894, his thoughts about com­bin­ing a re­li­gious life and work with poor re­si­dents of Lon­don led him and two oth­ers (James Ad­der­ley and Hen­ry Chap­pel) to found the So­ci­ety of the Di­vine Com­pass­ion, taking re­li­gious vows of po­ver­ty, chas­ti­ty and obe­di­ence and for his re­lig­ious name: An­drew.

Brother An­drew was or­dained a priest, fol­low­ing stu­dies at Ely Theo­lo­gi­cal Col­lege. The new so­ci­ety was then based in Plais­tow, in the East End, and its mem­bers staffed St Phi­lip’s Church. Fa­ther An­drew was the last of the orig­in­al three mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty (Ad­der­ley left in 1897, and Chap­pel died in 1915) and was its cen­tral fig­ure for ma­ny years, as well as act­ing as priest-in-charge of St Phi­lip’s from 1916 un­til his death, apart from a year spent on re­treat in South­ern Rho­de­sia (now Zim­bab­we).

He was high­ly re­gard­ed as a con­fess­or, spi­ri­tu­al guide and re­li­gious writ­er. (A bi­shop des­cribed him as a great man, such as God sends on­ly once or twice in a ge­ne­ra­tion.) He was al­so a tal­ent­ed paint­er.

His health, which had trou­bled him for ma­ny years, wors­ened as a re­sult of the strain im­posed by the Se­cond World War, which hit the East End se­vere­ly—the church was bombed twice. He de­vel­oped can­cer, and died on 31 March 1946.

Wikipedia, ac­cessed 29 Mar 2024 button

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