THE IRISH CONVICT PRIESTS OF '98.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 12, 29 July 1898, Page 27

THE IRISH CONVICT PRIESTS OF '98.

WHAT CARDINAL MORAN SAYS. THE following account of the Irish Convict priests of '1)8, which will prove of peculiar interebt owing to the '98 centenary celebrations, is (says the Irish Rosary) taken bodily from Cardinal Moran's History of the Cutholir Church hi Australasia, published some three or four years ago, yet rarely met with and almost unknown, in fact, in this country. This learned work, comprehensive in its general plan and clear in detail, has been written amid all the labours and distractions consequent on his elevated position as Archbishop of Sydney, and is a fitting complement to those works on Irish Church History, to which he has devoted so many years of his life, and which have placed him in the first rank of Irish historians. It is to be hoped that the perusal of this highly interesting part of the work relating to the convict priests will awaken among the priests and laity of this country an interest in the general history of the Church of Australia, the most distinctively Irish Church, outside Ireland, in the whole world. The centenary of the humble and sorrowful foundation of that Church coincides with the centenary we are celebrating this year, for it was the convict exiles of the rebellion, priests and laymen, who first carried religion to that far distant land. And thus, also, the '98 celebration appeals with more than usual force to the Australian Catholic?. No doubt there were in the colony before '98 many Irish Catholics, but there was no public worship practised by anybody, vice of every kind was rampant, the observance of Sunday was disregarded, and the population, nearly all belonging to the criminal classes, did not even pretend to a semblance of religion. But '98 introduced a different elemort into the colony ; it brought numbers of men who had led virtuous and religious lives and had occupied, many of them, highly respectable positions in their own country, but who had been transported as criminals for the part they had borne, or were supposed to have borne, in the rebellion. It also introduced THi: FIIiST PRIESTS into the colony at a critical time, when there was absolutely no minister of religion to be found there, and no church or regular place of worship. It was by these priests, branded at the 'time as criminals, though afterwards acknowledged to be guilders of the crimes alleged against them, that the sacraments were first administered, sometimes in secret and sometimes openly with the reluctant permission of the Protestant Go vernur. It is not unlikely that thos) secret conferences and whisperings between Father Harold and the Irish convicts, which we read of in the Cardinal's account of his life, and which excited such grave suspicions of conspiracy in the niimis of the officials, that they were brought to a close by the cruel flogging of the convicts and his own banishment to Norfolk Island, nie'int nothing more or less than that the priest was hearing their confessions, a boon which they naturally would desire to receive, and which he. despite prohibitions of every kind, could not in conscience refuse them. Though the convict priests did not remain many years in the colony, and all of them returned home, their influence in the formation of the Australian Church was not confined to the time they spent in exile. The memory of their sufferings and Libours. and the dearth of religious consolation felt on their departure, induced the Irish exiles to agitate for the appointment of regularly consti-

tuted chaplains, who came a few years afterwards, and continued under slightly better auspices, the work which the convict prieet had begun. What adds a heightened interest to these new pioneers of religion is that among them, almost all of them IRISH TO A MAN, were to be found not only secular nrieats. but also representatives of the Capuchin, Dominican, and Franciscan Orders, and. later on members of the Jesuit, Marist, and Benedictine Orders as well. It is, doubtless, true that even if n > priests had come out as convicts at the time of the rebellion, Australia, in time, would have been supplied with pri.'«f,« bnt how great a delay there would have been, and, in the meantime, how many thousands of souls would ha\c been lost to the Church in ji country which the officials of the Crown were trying by every means in their power to make a purely EnglNh colony, and where the grossest cruelties were practised on. poor, unoffending Catholic prisoners in the endeavour to make them I attend the Protestant service. This persecuting- spirit existed far J into the present century, and for many years after all persecution for conscience' sake had died a natural death at home, owing to the fact that the officials of the Crown in the colonies were far removed from the supervision of the Home Government, and were not under j the restraint of public opinion. Another great reason of the slow I growth of the Australian Church, and which would have operated j still more detrimentally under the circumstances we are contem- ! plating, is Unit the home mission in the early ye.ra of the present i century was suffering more from want of priests than at any previous period in history, the Catholic population in Ireland was growing by leaps and bounds, and bishops and priests, having more I than enough to do in attending to their own flocks, were naturally I unwilling to abandon their work for a field of labour in a distant colony. We are thus able to appreciate the influence of the convict priests, for not only were these new workers in the field petitioned for by the Catholic exiles, bnt of the few priests who went out as chaplains to the large Catholic population so eager to receive them one at least declared that it was the account of the sufferings of the priests who went before, which actuated him in his resolve. We, during the '08 centenary celebrations, will not be so absorbed in our own affairs as to forget to hail our Catholic kinsmen of the Australian Church. Cradled in DIRE CAPTIVITY, brought up stealthily under the jealous and watchful eye 9of a Protestant ascendency party, that Church has now reached its maturity, presenting to the Christian world a fair and complete picture, with its hierarchy and clergy, and religious Orders, with its churches and superb cathedrals, with its schools, colleges and seminaries. But while at the present day, it is justly conscious of its strength, and proud of the foremost position it holds in the Australian Continent, let it this year look back to the days when it had no bibhops, and no cathedrals or churches, and pay a golden tribute to the memory of the men of ".)S, priests and laymen alike, who laid in sorrow and blood and tears, the foundations of tliafc edifice which has attained in our generation to such graceful and noble proportions. THE WRIT. We give here a copy of the original writ ihsued by Lord Kilwarden for the apprehension and detention on board the ship Lire!,/ of Father Harold,-the first convict priest who set his foot in Australia :—: — 'George the Third, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain France, and Ir land. King. Defender of the Faith and so forth' !To the Commader of the Miip called the Lin hj, now lying in the J Harbour of Cork or elsewhere, grating. We command you that ! you have the body of Jame-. Harold detained in your custody, as it is said, under safe and secure conduct, or by whatsoever other Name ! addition ot Name, or Sir Name, the said J unei Harold is called in the .same before the Honble. Robert Day, fourth Justice of our Court I ot Chief Place in Ireland, or in hi-, absence, before any of his i Brethren Justices of said Court, in Dublin, Immediately on sight or I receipt hereof, together with the day and cause of his being the said I Jam<'s Harold ho taken and detained, to do and receive what shall j then and there be considered concerning him, and have you then I there this Writt. Witness, Arthur Lord Kilwarden, at the Kin«-'a j Courts, the 12th day of February, in the Wtth. year of our Reign. " H. & It. Convoy. Ecc. W. Nourne. I>-M. Brutchell M.G 13 feb On a fiat grant d by I Mr. Justice Day.'

The Endorsement. — ' Allowed by the Statute of the twentysecond year of the Reign of King George the Third sixpence per mile to be paid on bringing up the prisoner.' R. Day.'

BIOGRAPHICAL

It will be noticed that there is an apparent di'crepinr-y between this document and the Cardinal's account of Father Harold. Thy Cardinal says he was trans-port' d in th« Menerra, and this document gives the Lively as the ship on which he was placrd in the Cove of Cork. However, it is probable that he was transferred from one Bhip to the other. The document \va«, for many years, in the possession of the Very Rev. Dr. Russell, 0.P., who \vas indefatigable in collecting 1 documents bearing: on the past, and was placed by him in the archives of the Irish Dominican Province, where it still remains On the envelope which contains it, Pr. Russell wrote a few notes relating to Father Harold. He says that when he was a student at Lisbon in 1820, Father Harold paid a visit there to his nephew, Father Vincent Harold, about whom there is more than one reference in the Cardinal's account, and who was profess, r of theology at the time, and Dr. Russell's tutor. Father Harold at th s time had been home several years, and was still a robust old man, though almost in his dotage. Dr. Russell heard him relate an anecdote which will be of special interest to the people of Cork. Mr. Timothy Mahony, of Blackpool, smuggled or obtained leave to put on board the vessel which was leaving Cork for Botany Bay a ' vestment box,' containing chalice, vestments, and a supply of altar linen. This gentleman several years afterwards lost his life by his self-sacrificing zeal for the poor in the typhus fever epedemic in Cork. Dr. Russell also met Father O'Neill, of whom we shall also give an account, and who was publicly flogged in Youghal before his transportation. When Dr. Russell met him he inquired very earnestly about ' old Harold,' his companion in exile. Dr. Harold, the Dominican and nephew of the old man, lived till 1856, and was Provincial from 1840 to 1844. It may be also of interest to state that Father Harold, the late parish priest of Glasthule, Co. Dublin, was also belonging to the same family.