FATHER John O' Connor, who featured at the end of last week's article about Heckmondwike's Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Church, was in his eighties when he died in 1952.

He taught at St Bede's Grammar School for Boys before World War 1 and was parish priest at St Cuthbert's Church, Heaton, after the war. By all accounts he was a remarkable man, "a friend and confidant of statesmen, writers and artists," according to the authors of the book Holy Spirit Parish Heckmondwike - A Century of Change.

Of all his literary acquaintances probably the most famous was G K Chesterton. Father O'Connor is said to have played a large part in bringing the poet and author to the Roman Catholic faith. In turn, Chesterton based his detective priest Father Brown on Father O'Connor.

Chesterton's first volume of father Brown stories, The Innocence of father Brown, was published in 1911. Chesterton commented: "I permitted myself the grave liberty of taking my friend and knocking him about; beating his hat and umbrella shapeless, untidying his clothes, punching his intelligent countenance into a condition of pudding-faced fatuity, and generally disguising Father O'Connor as Father Brown."

A film was made of Father Brown in 1954 starring Alex Guinness. The stories were twice adapted for television in 1974 and last year.

In the Century of Change book the friendship between the two men occupies four pages, two of them containing poems written for Father O'Connor by Chesterton. The writer died in 1936. At his fneral in Westminster Abbey father O'Connor sang the Requiem and a year later produced a book of reminiscenses called Father Brown on Chesterton.

Father O'Connor was instrumental in the creation of Holy Spirit Church, raising money for the building by organising garden parties and auctioning off his collection of paintings in Bradford on June 12, 1913.

The collection included works by John Constable, Henry Moore, J M W Turner and John Varley. The whole lot went for £1,000. That would be worth just short of £100,000 today.

After his death in 1952, Father O'Connor was described as a "connoisseur of music and literature, authority on art , and a delightful talker." He was a stour defender of Catholic dogma but shunned bigotry.

Speaking at his Requiem Mass, Cardinal Heenan said he was not a typical parish priest. "Nevertheless, like all great characters, he was sometimes a cause of bewilderment to those who did not know him, but to those who knew him intimately, he was an essentially simple man."

He died at the age of 82 and is buried in Scholemoor cemetery.