Leo Rowlands

Leo Rowlands, O.F.M. Cap. (1891–1967) was a Welsh Catholic priest and musical composer, associated with Rhode Island. Early life Rowlands was born to Welsh parents (his father was a Congregationalist missionary) in Madagascar on 17 September 1891 and spent the first seven years of his life there before returning to be educated in schools in London and Wales. In 1912 he graduated in music from the University of Wales, Cardiff, going on to the Royal Academy of Music where he studied the piano, composition and singing with Frederick Corder and York Bowen and took his doctorate in music in 1914. In the same year he was received into the Roman Catholic Church and joined the army, serving as a cyclist and gunner in Italy and Flanders. He was captured in Neuve Chapelle in March 1918 and remained a prisoner until the end of the war. Musical career After a period as a music teacher at the Seaford School in Seaford on the south coast of England, Rowlands joined the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in 1920 and was ordained a priest in 1926. He spent the 1930s-1940s at the Friary of St Francis, Providence, Rhode Island, as part of a mission of the British Capuchin Province to the United States.