Arriving from Ireland in the early 1950s and then spending the 1960s at Clifton's Pro Cathedral, Father Rodgers has just celebrated the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest.
It was here that Father Rodgers, who now lives in retirement in his last parish, Holy Family Church in Patchway, set up an Irish Club as a home from home for the growing number of his young fellow countrymen who had flocked to the West Country to work.
This was a time of major civil engineering projects including the Hinkley and Berkeley Power
Stations and the carving of the M5 through Gloucestershire and Somerset.
But Father Rodgers could never have dreamed of what was to follow when, one night, a young Irish man approached him at the club and explained that he was getting married and did he know anything about buying a house.
"I didn't, but I knew a man who did – Father Casey, who had launched a housing aid society in London and who in turn went on to become Bishop Casey of Galway," says the priest.
"The organisation he founded eventually grew into Shelter.
"Father Casey asked me to get together a group of professionals – a solicitor, an accountant, an estate agent, a mortgage broker and a bank manager – together with an architect and surveyor. To my surprise over 70 volunteers turned up to hear Father Casey speak and on that very night we formed a Bristol Catholic housing aid society, to help young people and families find, or keep, a roof over their heads. There was so much demand for help and advice with housing issues, including dealing with pending homelessness and unscrupulous landlords, that our workload just grew and grew. We were really just acting as a shoulder to cry on and it soon became obvious that most people simply wanted their own homes and that we would have to become property owners."
"So that was when we founded the Bristol Family Housing Association. Families were encouraged to save £5 or more which they handed over when they came to our meetings on a Friday night. We invested their money and when they had saved enough for a deposit we organised a mortgage and gave them £100 towards furnishings," he explained.
"I remember going to see one young couple with six kids who were living in not particularly suitable rented accommodation in Kingsdown and had been saving up for a holiday in Ireland," recalled Father Rodgers. "I asked them if they would rather have a holiday or put their hard earned cash towards a home of their own, something they later agreed to do."
Such was the demand that the association began building homes on church land around Bristol, but in the end, owning and maintaining property, and collecting rents, became too much for the volunteers.
And so in the late 1960s they handed over their housing stock and became part of the new Bristol Churches Housing Aid Society, of which Father Rodgers became a founder and board member.
By the time the priest retired from the society, it had a housing stock of well over 600 properties, including sites behind the Colston Hall, all the way up Park Row and in other parts of the city.
The Catholic Housing Aid Society (CHAS), which he launched all those years ago, is still going as an inter- denominational housing advisory service.
Looking back over the years, Father Rodgers said it had all grown from a parish priest's responsibility, not only for the spiritual needs of his parish, but also for their pastoral care and well being.
"Many people we came across in those early days were uncertain, or unsure, about buying their own home" he says. "They were often afraid to take the plunge, but once they had made contact with our wonderful team of volunteer professionals, all became possible."
After leaving the Pro Cathedral in 1968, Canon Rodgers, who was born in County Clare in Ireland, was appointed parish priest at St Anthony's, Henbury, where he worked for ten years.
Then, after a brief spell in Cheltenham, he became parish priest at Holy Family Church in Patchway where he remained until his retirement in 1998.
Even now, at the age of 84, people stop him in the street and say "Hello Father do you remember how you helped my family find a house?"