GALLANT PRIEST
FIGHT WITH GUNMEN. Six feet in height, red haired and with fists like battering rams, the Rev. Matthew, Canning, the Irish priest of St. Charles Borromeo Church, is determined to clean up the underworld of Chicago. “If the police won’t help me,” he has vowed, “I'll clean up this parish single handed, God helping me, or I won’t live to regret failing my trust.” Every night now the Rev. Matthew Canning can be seen in speakeasies and other haunts of the underworld in his parish systematically carrying out his campaign. He sees a young man he knows and looks straight into his eyes. “Do you want to be a gangster, or are you coming along with me?” he asks. Often the men leave the place never to return. The “fighting parson,” as he is called, made up his mind to fight gangland after he had administered the Last Sacrament to a 19-year-old youth from his parish who lay in the gutter dying from knife wounds. i “They’ve got me this time,” whis-l pered the youth. “By heaven yes, and i I’ll get them,” roared the priest. 1
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Greymouth Evening Star, 5 November 1931, Page 2
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189GALLANT PRIEST Greymouth Evening Star, 5 November 1931, Page 2
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