THE LEGACY OF FATHER JOHN PETER SULLIVAN
The Credit Union Movement comes to Jamaica
HE CAME to Jamaica on August 6, 1939 on the ship SS Jamaica on missionary duties. As a teacher at St George’s College, he came in daily contact with Jamaica’s working class who frequented North Street, Kingston.
Father Sullivan performed parochial work at the Holy Trinity Cathedral where he had weekly meetings with the Catholic Young Men’s Sodality (CYMS). He soon became director of this sodality and developed a greater understanding of the social, economic and spiritual problems facing Jamaica.
Loan sharks and usurers exploited the poor, charging as much as 200 per cent per annum for each loan. Unable to repay the interest, let alone the principal, the borrower would be at the lender’s mercy. Commercial banks also charged high interest rates on loans and often refused to open accounts for the ordinary man who could only make small savings.
For two years after his arrival in Jamaica, Father John Peter Sullivan and the 14-member sodality associates studied the principles which guided the operations involved in managing a credit union.
On September 12, 1941, they pooled together their shares totalling US$1.87, giving birth to Jamaica’s first credit union – the Sodality Credit Union. This credit union operated under the motto, ‘Not for charity, not for profit but for service’ and offered loans at 12 per cent interest and dividends at six per cent.
In 1945, Father Sullivan turned his attention to other islands in the Caribbean and formed credit unions in five Antillean islands: St Lucia, Grenada, Curacao, Trinidad and Barbados.
Father Sullivan’s work in the movement spanned almost two decades during which time the movement grew from 14 to 65,000 members and from an initial share capital of US$1.87 to US$6,000,000. He retired as active head of the Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union League at its 19th Annual
Convention held at St George’s College in 1959.
He died in 1975 at the age of 79 back in his homeland state, Massachusetts, USA.
For two years after his arrival in Jamaica, Father John Peter Sullivan and the 14-member sodality associates studied the principles which guided the operations involved in managing a credit union.