Fettes College Edinburgh.

Cardinal O'Brien with Chaplain Dr David Campbell and some pupils meet informally after the evening service

On the Feast of St Margaret, Cardinal O’Brien was asked to lead the evening service in Fettes College, Edinburgh. He spoke of the ancient links of St Margaret with Edinburgh and Dunfermline – and of the outstanding example which she gave, both of family life and of care for the poor.

Cardinal O'Brien with Cardinal William Theodore Heard's Pectoral Cross.

Great interest was aroused among the 400 pupils when he spoke of the Cardinal’s cross which he was wearing – a cross which had been given to a former pupil of Fettes College, whose father had been the head teacher!

 Reverend William Augustus Heard 1890-1919

The pupil had been Cardinal William Theodore Heard, who was born in Edinburgh in 1884 and attended Fettes College where his father, the Reverend William Augustus Heard, had been head teacher.


A brilliant student, the late Cardinal Heard had studied in Rome, gaining the degrees of Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Canon Law – and spent most of his life as a priest working as a member and then judge of the Sacred Roman Rota, eventually becoming Dean of that very important body in the Church.


It was the late Pope John Paul XXIII who created Cardinal Heard as a Cardinal, the first Scots-born Cardinal since Cardinal Beaton, who died over 400 years ago. The consistory had been held on 14 December 1959 and Cardinal Heard used to remark that his fondest memories of that time were shortly after the consistory when he returned to Edinburgh and was received with great joy by all at Fettes College.

William Theodore Heard was born on 24 February 1884 in Edinburgh, and died at Rome in the clinic at S. Stefano Rotondo run by the Blue Nuns, on the morning of Sunday, 16 September 1973. He was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.

He was the eldest son of William Augustus Heard, Headmaster of Fettes College, and of Elizabeth Tamar Burt who died when William Theodore was only four. He was educated at Fettes College and at Balliol College, Oxford where he rowed.

 He was baptised conditionally on 9 August 1910 by Fr Stanislaus St John SJ in the Farm Street Church of The Immaculate Conception in Mayfair, central London and, being thus reconciled with the Catholic Church, he was then confirmed. In 1913 he was accepted as a candidate for the priesthood by Bishop (later Archbishop) Peter Amigo of Southwark, his application to be a student priest of the Archdiocese of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh having been ignored by Archbishop Smith -whether intentionally or by omission is unclear. He studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome where he obtained his doctorate in philosophy in 1915 and his doctorates in both theology and canon law in 1921.

He was ordained to the priesthood aged 34 years in the Patriarchal Lateran Basilica Rome on 30th March, 1918, by Basilio Pompilj, Cardinal Bishop of Velletrie Segni, the Pope’s Vicar General for Rome.

In 1921 he was appointed curate at the Most Holy Trinity parish in Dockhead, Bermondsey. He was named a Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius XI on 30 September 1927 and on the following day, 1 October 1927, he was named Auditor of the Tribunal of the Holy Roman Rota (the judicial part of the Roman Curia) which acts as the Supreme Court of Appeal in the administration of the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1958 he was appointed Dean of the Holy Roman Rota (i.e. the equivalent of Chief Justice) and was elevated to Cardinal one year later when he was appointed Cardinal Deacon of the titular churchS. Teodoro. He was one of the rare modern instances of a Cardinal who was not a Bishop. This was rectified after three years when, on 19 April 1962 he was appointed Bishop of the titular see of Feradi Maius and consecrated Bishop by His Holiness Pope John XXIII personally in the same Patriarchal Lateran Basilica in which he had been ordained priest forty-four years before. He attended the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965 and participated in the conclave of 19 to 21 June 1963 which elected the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Giovanni-Battista Montini to be Pope Paul VI.