Father Jim Kennedy taking part in a protest

TRIBUTES have been paid to a much-loved priest who has passed away after serving the borough for almost three decades.

Father Jim Kennedy spent his final years in Cyprus, but was a well-known figure in Islington at the turn of the century.

He was ordained at St John the Evangelist Church in 1980, before becoming the priest at Blessed Sacrament church near Caledonian Road.

Father Kennedy later became the Borough Dean, making him responsible for all of the Catholic churches in Islington, and then the chair of the council’s standards committee, which tasked him with ensuring that councillors were acting ethically.

Councillor Paul Convery recalled how Father Jim was always on-hand during an emergency and remained an “activist” within the community, organising protests and campaigning for change.

Father Jim with Labour politicians Dame Emily Thornberry and Andy Burnham

He said: “He was particularly committed to youth work and, during the decade when our neighbourhood began to experience serious gang-related violence, he was a man with great authority who mediated between some of the feuding families and groups of young people. And he was the community’s reassurance when times got tough too. It was only natural that Fr Jim was asked by the Kinsella family to celebrate the life of Ben Kinsella with a funeral Mass.”

Residents recalled how Father Kennedy had set up a refuge in the church hall for survivors of the 1987 King’s Cross Underground fire, and remembered how the space was once again put into action when residents were evacuated from Tiber Gardens and York Way Court in 2006.

In fact, it was Father Kennedy’s consistent arrivals to the scene with a mobile phone, high-vis jacket and flashing green light on his car that earned him the nickname “vicar in a van”.

His passion for scuba-diving later led him to Cyprus in 2009 on a holiday that never ended.

Father Kennedy was awarded the Freedom of the Borough in 2010, and former Sheriff of Islington Brian Kay recalled travelling to the island to present him with the framed document.

“The lives of all of us who knew and had worked with him are the poorer for his passing,” Mr Kay wrote in a letter to the Tribune.