Allan White 1963 to 1970

Dominican Friar Allan White joined St Mary’s in September 1963, aged 11, after attending St John’s Primary School in Gravesend where quite a few boys travelled from in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1970 Allan won a place at Trinity College, Oxford where he read Modern History. In 1973, he entered the Dominican Order and having completed his novitiate and first years of philosophical studies, was sent to Edinburgh to read for a theology degree. He was ordained in 1979. On being awarded his doctorate he remained in Edinburgh as university chaplain, parish priest of the university parish and superior of the Dominican Community. In 1991 he moved to Oxford and was appointed assistant chaplain in the University of Oxford 1993-94, and then Chaplain in the University of Cambridge in 1994.  He was elected Provincial of the English Dominicans in 2000 and served in that capacity until 2008.  In that year he was appointed socius to the Master of the Order for the provinces of north-west Europe and Canada. In 2011 he moved to St Joseph’s, Greenwich Village in New York City.  From 2012 to 2015 he served as Director of the Catholic Centre in New York University.  In August of 2015 he moved to southern California where he serves as Rector of St Mary’s School and works in the parishes of Saint Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe, El Centro.

Of his time at St Mary’s, Sidcup, back in the 1960s, Allan says: “I think it was a good school and I look back on my days there with equanimity. If you were willing to learn, you were given every encouragement and support.”