Grave of John Charles Jones

menai_bridge_grave_john_charles_jones

John Charles Jones (d.1956)

Bishop J C Jones, as he became known, was born in 1904 in Llansaint, Carmarthenshire, writes Lis Perkins. After attending Carmarthen Grammar School, he gained first class degrees in Hebrew from University College Cardiff and in theology from Wadham College, Cambridge, in 1928. A year later, he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of St Davids in 1929. After becoming a priest in 1930, he was curate in Llanelli and later Aberystwyth.

In 1934 he moved to Africa to teach theology at Bishop Tucker Memorial College in Mukono, Uganda. From 1939-45 he was the college’s warden and sole administrator. His wife Mary, a nurse, assisted him in his missionary work, which included setting up education facilities for the wives of Ugandan clergymen.

John Charles became vicar of Llanelli in 1945. His enthronement ceremony as Bishop of Bangor in 1949 was the first to be performed in Welsh. In the following year he led more than 4,000 people on a pilgrimage to Aberdaron, following a route which many early Christians had travelled in order to cross the water to Bardsey Island.

After his death in Bangor on 13 October 1956, the Bishop John Charles Jones Memorial Fund was established to educate and train candidates for ordination in Africa, in Uganda especially.

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