A PARISH priest who spent more than 20 years helping families in need has died.
Fr Rodney Marshall, parish priest of St Helen’s in Athersley and St John’s in Carlton, died on Tuesday aged 72 following a short battle with cancer.
Fr Rodney’s stepson Antony Pickering, 39, has paid tribute to the man he said ‘would give you his last penny if he could’.
“If you needed him he was just a phone call away,” Antony said. “He would drop everything to help.
“He tried to do good in any way he could. He was heavily involved with the miners’ strikes and was quite a socialist.
“I think he inspired a few people to go into different things, and a few local vicars decided to go into the clergy because of him.”
Fr Rodney arrived in Goldthorpe in 1982 and immediately began helping families affected by the miners’ strike.
He later moved to Athersley and founded the Romero Project information and counselling service, which runs from a centre attached to St Helen’s and provides a safety net for marginalised people, in 2004.
He said at the time: “We’re not doing it because we’re do-gooders or bleeding-heart liberals.
“We’re doing it because it’s at the heart of the Christian gospels. God’s love needs to be incarnated in our communities.”
Fr Rodney was born in Manchester in 1946 and trained as an electrical engineer before being ordained aged 30.Â
He served churches in the Manchester area before moving to Barnsley.
He retired in November 2017 after 20 years as parish priest at St Helen’s and St John’s.
Fr Rodney’s wife Marilyn with whom he lived in the vicarage at St Helen’s died last year, aged 64, and he leaves two stepsons, Antony and Noel, and two grandchildren.
St Helen’s churchwarden Pat Padgett said Fr Rodney would be ‘really missed’ by the community he served.
“He was a larger than life character,” Pat said.
“He left us last year and I said goodbye on behalf of the church. He was a man of the community known by everybody and we were friends.”
The funeral will take place at 11am on Friday at St Helen’s.
