Patrick Rogers was an Irish Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Down and Connor, an ecclesiastical historian, author and educationalist.
Having excelled at history he was sent for post graduate study and in 1934 his thesis was published as The Irish Volunteers and Catholic Emancipation 1778 - 1793 with an introduction by Eoin MacNeill[1] He was appointed to the staff of St. Malachy's College in Belfast and taught history there his appointment as the first principal of St. Joseph's College of Education at Trench House in 1947.
A flavour of the College in the 1960s, under Rogers, was given in a Canadian account of Heaney teaching there; "it doubled as a cross between a medium secure prison and a Trappist monastery.
"[3] Another former student recalled him as am "austere man....with a dry sense of humour underneath his uncompromising, strict and forbidding appearance.
"[4] Rogers, always a heavy smoker, died in October 1969 and was interred in Priest's Row in Milltown Cemetery.