Faithful Irish Exiles

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 22, 7 June 1923, Page 25

Faithful Irish Exiles

Pioneers of the Faith in Many Lands

(By Magdalen Rock, in the Catholic Herald.) Saint'Patrick came to Ireland in 432, and in the next

century Columba, led by remorse or by the missionary spirit that to the present seems characteristic of the Irish race, left his own loved land to found the famous monastery of lona, from which Scotland and Northern England were brought and re-converted to the knoweldge of the true God. Irish bishops governed the See of Lindisfarne; an Irish monk founded old Melrose; Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, is among the best Latin writers of the Middle Ages.

Towards the close of the same century, Columbanus departed from Bangor, with twelve companions, to found Luxeuil and Bobbio; the memory of Saint Gall survives in Switzerland, where a canton bears the name of one of the most earnest of Colu'mbanus’s disciples. Saint Frigidan was Bishop of Lucca for twenty-eight years of work and miracles; Livinus died a,martyr in Flanders in 633; Saint Fiacre, who flourished about the same time, founded a monastery near Meaux, in France; Saint Fursey, whose visions gave Dante inspiration, died venerated by all in 648, after founding a monastery in East Anglia, and a more enduring one at Lagny, near which Saints Folian, Gobban, and Dccuil died in the odor of sanctity. Irish Saints and Scholars. Saint Arbogast was Bishop of Strasburg in 646, and another Irish saint, Cathaldus, ruled in far-distant Taranto; Fridolin the Traveller founded monasteries in France and in tho islands of the Rhine; Saint Virgilius, -whose scientific opinions startled the world, was Bishop of Saltzburg in 785, and another, Dicuilthe Geographer—flourished about the same period, and is said to have visited Iceland.

Saints Donatus and Andrew are the pride of Fiesole, as Saint Rupert and Marianus Scotus are of Ratisbon; Clemens and Albinus delighted the scholars of the court of the great Charlemagne, while the wonderful learning and eccentric genius of John Scotus Erigena, ■who combined scholastic and mystical theology, drew on him praise and blame.

When religious persecutions ceased in Ireland poverty drove the Irish across the seas to be a. new Order of missionaries. The names of Quin, Carroll, Hayes, Murphy, and Casey are amongst those of the Jesuit missionaries who labored in the seventeenth century in Maryland and Virginia; among the signatories of the Declaration of Independence are fourteen Irishmen; thousands of Irish soldiers and hundreds of Irish commandants fought both in the War of Independence and the Civil War, and nearly onehalf of the Presidents of the United States were of Irish descent. The Irish Exile’s Mission. The mission, however, of the modern exiled Irish lias been the building up of the Church in other lands. It would be a weary task to essay to detail what the poor exiles of Ireland have accomplished in this respect. From the time of the first Bishop, John Carroll, of Baltimore, to the present there is not one single diocese or archdiocese in the wide extent of the States but has been governed by men of Irish birth or of Irish descent: The constant arrival of the exiles, driven from their country by unfair treatment, by famine, and by necessities of many kinds, have provided the congregations which supply the clergy to minister to their spiritual welfare. In 1908 there were nine archbishops and forty-eight bishops of Irish birth or descent governing the territory of the Church in tlie United States. The same race has furnished the cardinals to the Church in the States. The renowned Bishop Spalding has written: “No other people could have done for the Catholic faith in the United Slates what the Irish people have done. Were it not for Ireland Catholicity would be feeble and non-progressive in England, Australia, and America.” The number of Irish priests who have toiled in America through the last two centuries cannot be computed. The Irish transported to the convict establishment in Botany Bay, in Australia, were not criminals. Most of them had been convicted on the grounds of religion or

politics, and were, under the blue skies of Australia, deprived for long years of priests, sacraments, and religious services. Severe punishment attended their canstant refusal to attend Protestant services. “Felon” Priests. Among the miscalled felons sent out to the convict settlement in 1798 were three priests— Harold, of Dublin; Father O’Neil, of Cork; and Father James Dixon, of Waterford. Frequent remonstrances addressed to the home authorities by the governors of the settlement on the 'injustice of denying the Irish the consolations of their religion had at length effect, and the last-mentioned priest was permitted to minister to his co-religionists, but the facilities for doing so were almost unavailable. At length the sacred oils were brought from Rio Janeiro; a chalice was fashioned out of tin, while vestments were manufactured out of damask hangings given by a charitable lady. In 1804 Father Dixon was made Prefect-Apostolic of the new territory, called New Holland, and the two other priests received faculties from home. This good state of things did not last long. On the misstatements of a few bigots, the home authorities revoked the permission they had given, and Father Dixon, worn out by years of labor, returned to Ireltnd in 1803, and died pastor of Crossbeg, in Wexford. The Faith at the Antipodes. It was eight years before the appeal of a Father Hayes, whose brother was a political convict in New Holland, resulted in the appointment as Prefect-Apostolic of New Holland, with faculties to administer Confirmation, of a Father Flynn, an Irish Cistercian. He was not, however, long permitted to exercise his sacred functions. He was arrested after celebrating Mass in the house of a man named Davis, and the pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament lay safely guarded in a cedar press, till at the expiration of two years two priests arrived in the colony. Davis gave the house and the land about it as a site for the Church of Saint Patrick. In 1820 Father Therry took up work in Sydney, while his companion, Father Connolly, proceeded to Tasmania, where he dedicated his first poor, little church to Saint ' Virgilius, his countryman. It was Bishop Ullathorne who was largely instrumental, in bringing the unsatisfactory state of the eighteen thousand Irish Catholics in New South Wales to an end. During a visit to Ireland he secured several priests for the Australian Mission. Father MacEnroe had been appointed chaplain of his fellow-countrymen of the penal settlement 1832, and for over thirty years he labored strenuously in bis chosen sphere. His great energy was directed to the establishment of an Irish Hierarchy in Australia, and for this he strove incessantly until his death in 1868. English diplomacy in Rome labored when the appointment of an Australian Bishop was in question for the appointment of an English ecclesiastic. This diplomacy was defeated when Bishop Goold became the first Bishop of the Australian continent. Ninety-five per cent, of the Catholics of Australia were at that time Irish. Bishop Goold brought over several foundations of Irish nuns. The Sisters of Charity were the first to arrive; after them came the community despatched by Mother Mary Aikenhead, of whom a novice was the first nun to have the privilege of making her vows on Australian soil. She died as recently as 1892 at a green old age. The first Bishop of South Australia"was Father Murphy, a native of Meath ; and Father Brady, who was the pioneer priest of West Australia, was the first Bishop of Perth. lather Therry, who had reached Sydney in 1820, was the first priest to visit Queensland, and an Irish' Franciscan, Father Geoghegan, said the first Mass in Melbourne in 1839. Thomas Boynton, an Irishman, was the first Catholic to settle in New Zealand. His wife carried her first child to Sydney for baptism. Her second child was taken the thousand-mile journey for the same purpose. This family gave much assistance when the, Marist Fathers finally reached New Zealand in after years. The fight between France and England on American soil in the eighteenth century was the cause of many., Irish soldiers settling in Canada ; some had enlisted in the French service; many deserted from the army of England;; and

others had been taken prisoners by the French. Later many disbanded soldiers settled in the province of Quebec, where they, were kindly received and sheltered by the French peasantry. • . Catholicity in Canada. But there was not much Irish immigration into Canada till the beginning of the nineteenth century. The evident desire to crush out the Catholic Church did not make “Our Lady of the Snows” a happy ground for Irish Catholics, and it was not till Bishop Plessis took up work that Catholics enjoyed any rights or privileges. In 1803 a Talbot of Malahide secured nearly seven hundred thousand acres in Western Ontario, and on this land many Irish settled.

In the summer of the year 18-17 one hundred thousand Irish people, flying from the famine in their own land, found death from fever in the seaports and river towns of Eastern Canada. Numbers of devoted priests and nuns carried the consolations of religion to the perishing people. Official figures show that over thirty thousand souls died, while other reports put the figures far higher.

In the records of the Latin republics of South America Irish names appear frequently. The first Irishman whose name occurs in the history of the South American continent is that of Father Field, a native of Limerick, who spent forty years in missionary labor in Paraguay. He arrived in Brazil in 1.577, and after ten years departed to work among the barbarians of Paraguay in company with Father de Ortega, another Jesuit. It is said that those two Jesuits baptised no less than one hundred and fifty thousand Indians. Father Filde, as his name is written in South American records, died at Asuncion in 1626. South American Pioneers. Incredible as it may appear, there were many Irishborn viceroys governing Chile, Peru, and Mexico prior to the wars for independence, and in the colonial ranks’ as in those of the Spanish. Irish soldiers fought. Many Irish were honored in Argentina prior to the defeat of the Spanish ; and such names as Dillon, Butler, Sheridan. Farrell, etc., are yet known in the state. The interests of the Irish colony were seen to by a friar named Burke, and afterwards by Father O’Gorman, who was sent out to minister to his countrymen by Archbishop Murray, of Dublin, in 1829. The name of Father Daly, a Dominican, is beloved still in the country where he labored, and he was intimately connected with the spiritual and temporal prosperity of the large Irish community of Buenos Aires. He brought over a company of Sisters of Mercy from Dublin, though these were afterwards driven out of the city. They were untimatch- induced to return. An Irish Passionist prepared the way for the Passionists’ Congregation.”” Chile and Peru revere the memories of the two O’Higgins, Ambrose, the “Great Viceroy” of Peru under the Spanish, and his son, Bernard, the Dictator of Chile. General John McKenna, of Tyrone, did good service when the war against Spain broke out, while John Devereux fought under Bolivar. Many other Irishmen are mentioned during that period. South Africa. The Catholics of South Africa are either mostly all of Irish birth or extraction. In 1832 Bishop Ullathorne found only a single priest in South Africa. In 1835 the Holy See sent Father Griffith, an Irish Dominican, as VicarApostolic to Cape Town; all his .successors without exception have been Irishmen. The Transvaal became a separate vicariate in 1904, when an Irish prelate, the Right Reverend V. Miller, became first Bishop, and the VicarApostolic of the Eastern district is Bishop Mac Sherry. who was consecrated by Cardinal Logue in 1896. The VicarApostolic of Kimberley is another Irishman, _ the Right Rev. Matthew MacGeoghan. The constant flow of Irish immigrants into England gave a great impetus to the cause of Catholicity in England .and Scotland; it was fitting, therefore, that the first head of the restored hierarchy should be the son of Irish parents. It is absolutely impossible to estimate the numbers of the Irish priests that served in Great Britain during the last century. They were found everywhere —in the great mining centres, in manufacturing districts, and in the crowded seaport towns. Nearly all Catholics in the Army and

Navy in pre-war times'were Irish, and the churches and convents and schools that have sprung up all over England are largely the work of the Irish working man. Ten per cent, of the Catholic churches of Scotland are dedicated to Irish saints, and in Glasgow Irish Catholics form nearly one-fourth of the population. Thus it would seem that Ireland, mourning for her scattered children, is not only “The Light of the West,” sending out her sons and daughters to re-vitalise the Faith in.other lands, but the Niobe of Nations also, mournin'g her exiled children.