Samuel Bennett Crooks was

Dean of Belfast The Dean of Belfast is the senior official of St Anne's Cathedral in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland and head of the Chapter, its governing body. List of deans of Belfast * 1894–1899: Henry Stewart O’Hara; first dean of Belfast ( ...

in the last third of the 20th century. He was born on 20 January 1920 into an ecclesiastical family (his father was the Rev. S. B. Crooks,

Rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

of Killough, Co. Down and then St Stephen’s, Belfast) and educated at

Down High School Down High School is a controlled co-educational grammar school located in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland. The school has students from the ages of eleven to eighteen in the senior school — of which there are approximately 970 pup ...

and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1944 and became Dean's

Vicar A vicar (; Latin: '' vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pre ...

and then Vicar Choral at

St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast St Anne's Cathedral, also known as Belfast Cathedral, is a Church of Ireland cathedral in Donegall Street, Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is unusual in serving two separate dioceses (Diocese of Connor (Church of Ireland), Connor and Diocese of Do ...

, until 1949, when he was appointed

of St John’s, Orangefield. Later he became Rector of Christ Church Lurgan, then the largest parish in the Church of Ireland,

Rural Dean In the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion as well as some Lutheran denominations, a rural dean is a member of clergy who presides over a "rural deanery" (often referred to as a deanery); "ruridecanal" is the corresponding adjective ...

of Hillsborough and Archdeacon of Dromore. In 1970 he became

, a post he held for 15 years. While at the Cathedral he launched the annual Christmas "sit out" to raise funds for local charities for which he became known as the Black Santa. http://www.belfastcathedral.org/black-santa/. He was made a Chaplain of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem in the Queen's Birthday Honours in February 1976., and admitted OBE in 1981.London Gazette
/ref> He died in 1986 aged 66 in a car crash on the Saintfield Road near

Carryduff Carryduff ()Northern Ireland Placenames Project
is a small ...

on his way to a meeting at Belfast Cathedral. In December 2014 an Ulster History Circle blue plaque was unveiled in his memory at St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crooks, Samuel Bennett 1920 births People educated at Down High School Alumni of Trinity College Dublin 20th-century Irish Anglican priests Archdeacons of Dromore Deans of Belfast Officers of the Order of the British Empire 1986 deaths