In 2017, award-winning artist Vera Klute is commissioned by the National Gallery of Ireland to create a portrait of Hynes as part of the 2015 Hennessey Portrait Prize. The bust, made of porcelain, concrete and timber (with a dimension of 164cm x 54cm x 45cm), is unveiled to the public in April 2017 and is currently on display as part of the Gallery’s National Portrait Collection.
In 1998 Hynes wins the Tony Award for Direction for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the first woman to receive the award. She is a recipient of many other Theatre Awards, including The Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Award for Best Director (2002) and a The Irish Times Special Tribute Award for her contribution to Irish Theatre in February 2005.
A British advance force of 400 is defeated at Tuberneering on June 4. This rebel victory punches a hole in the dragnet the military has attempted to throw around County Wexford and also yields them three artillery pieces. The town of Arklow has been evacuated in the ensuing panic but the rebels content themselves with taking the town of Gorey and staying within the Wexford border. On June 5 the rebels attempt to break out of County Wexford across the River Barrow and to spread the rebellion but are halted by a major British victory at the Battle of New Ross. When the rebels finally move against Arklow, the town has been reoccupied by a force of 1,700 men sent from Dublin under Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, who quickly fortifies the town with barricades and has artillery positioned on all the approaches to the town.
The rebel army that forms for attack on the afternoon of June 9 is a combined force of Wexford and Wicklow rebels led by Billy Byrne, Anthony Perry, Conor McEvoy, Edward Fitzgerald, and Fr. Michael Murphy. The British in Arklow consist of approximately 1,000 militia from counties Antrim and Cavan and 150 regular cavalry supported by 250 Yeomanry. They are joined by 315 Durham Fencibles (Princess of Wales’s Fencible Dragoons) arriving an hour before the rebels.
The area surrounding the town and the approaches is covered by scrub and the rebel strategy adopted is to advance under cover attacking the town simultaneously from several points. Before the action begins, the rebels under Esmonde Kyan open fire upon the town with some of the artillery captured at Tuberneering and have some success by scoring a direct hit on a British artillery position, destroying the cannon and killing the attendant crew. The main assault is quickly launched but at all entry points the Irish are thrown back by the musket fire of the well-trained and disciplined militia and volunteers, and canister shot from the 3 pounder battalion gun brought by the fencibles. An attempt by the British to turn the Irish failure into a rout is defeated when pikemen and sharpshooters drive a cavalry charge back across the River Avoca, but an attempt to force a way into the town through the outlying fishing port is bloodily repulsed.
As Irish casualties mount, the lack of ammunition and proper leadership begin to work against them, and after Fr. Murphy is killed leading a charge, their attacks start to fade. As nightfall comes, the rebels begin to withdraw under cover of darkness and collect their wounded. They are not pursued or molested by the garrison who are, unknown to the rebels, down to their last three or four rounds per man and are themselves at the brink of defeat.
While rebel casualties are estimated at about 1,000 no full casualty list seems to exist on the British side, but are probably in the region of 100 dead and wounded. The defeat at Arklow marks the third failure to extend the fight for Irish independence beyond the borders of County Wexford following the other bloody repulses at New Ross and Bunclody. The Irish strategy now changes to a policy of static defence against the encroaching British armies.
Scott is the third son of Thomas Scott of Scottsborough, County Tipperary, and his wife Rachel, daughter of Mark Prim of Johnswell, County Kilkenny. His parents are cousins, being two of the grandchildren of Nicholas Purcell, 13th Baron of Loughmoe. His elder brother is the uncle of Bernard Phelan, who establishes Château Phélan Ségur, and Dean John Scott, who first plants the gardens open to the public at Ballyin, County Waterford and marries a niece of Scott’s political ally, Henry Grattan.
While at Kilkenny College, Scott stands up to the tormentor of a boy named Hugh Carleton, who grows up to be Viscount Carleton of Clare. They become firm friends, and Carleton’s father, then known as the “King of Cork,” due to his wealth and influence, invites him to their home and becomes his patron. In 1756, Carleton sends both the young men off, with equal allowances, to study at Trinity College, Dublin and then the Middle Temple in London. On being called to the Irish bar in 1765, Scott’s eloquence secures him a position that enables him to pay £300 a year to his patron, Francis Carleton, who through a series of disappointments has been declared bankrupt. He continues to gratefully support his patron until Hugh Carleton is financially able to insist that he take up the payments to his father. Scott in later life turns against Carleton, describing him in his diary as a “worthless wretch.”
Admitted to King’s Inns in 1765, Scott is entitled to practice as a barrister. In 1769 he is elected as the Member of Parliament for Mullingar, a seat he holds until 1783. The following year he is made a King’s Counsel (KC). In 1772 he is Counsel to the Board of Revenue and in 1774 is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland (1774–1777). Three years later, he is elected a Privy Councillor and Attorney-General for Ireland (1774–1783). He is dismissed from the latter position in 1782 for refusing to acknowledge the right of England to legislate for Ireland. In 1775, he is awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Law (LL.D.) by Trinity College, Dublin. He holds the office of Prime Serjeant-at-Law of Ireland between 1777 and 1782. He is Clerk of the Pleas of the Court of the Exchequer in 1783 and is elected Member of Parliament for Portarlington between 1783 and 1784.
In 1784, Scott is created 1st Baron Earlsfort of Lisson-Earl, County Tipperary, following his appointment to Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. In 1789 he is created 1st Viscount Clonmel, of Clonmel, County Tipperary and in 1793 is created 1st Earl of Clonmel. By the 1790s he has an annual income of £20,000. Due to heavy drinking and overeating he becomes seriously overweight, and this no doubt contributes to his early death, although his diary shows that he makes frequent efforts to live a more temperate life. Drinking also produces the red face which earns him the nickname “Copper-faced Jack.”
In 1768, Scott marries the widowed Catherine Anna Maria Roe, daughter of Thomas Mathew, of Earl Landaff and sister of Francis Mathew, 1st Earl Landaff. She dies in 1771. In 1779, he marries Margaret Lawless, daughter and eventual heiress of banker Patrick Lawless of Dublin. He leaves a son and heir and a daughter by his second marriage.
Scott lives at Clonmell House, 17 Harcourt Street, Dublin. He also keeps a country residence, Temple Hill House, in County Dublin. Clonmell Street in Dublin is named in his honour, as is Earlsfort Terrace, also in Dublin. He also gains a reputation of being an experienced duelist.
In 1797, in the last conversation he would have with his wife’s cousin, Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, he exclaims, “My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man in life. I am a Chief Justice and an Earl; but, believe me, I would rather be beginning the world as a young (chimney) sweep.” He dies at the age of 58 the following year on May 23, 1798.
(Pictured: John Scott, 1st Earl of Clonmell, oil on canvas by Gilbert Charles Stuart)
Bowen is baptised in St. Stephen’s Church on Upper Mount Street. Her parents, Henry Charles Cole Bowen and Florence (née Colley) Bowen, later bring her to Bowen’s Court at Farahy, near Kildorrery, County Cork, where she spends her summers. When her father becomes mentally ill in 1907, she and her mother move to England, eventually settling in Hythe. After her mother dies in 1912, she is raised by her aunts. She is educated at Downe House School under the headship of Olive Willis. After some time at art school in London she decides that her talent lay in writing. She mixes with the Bloomsbury Group, becoming good friends with Rose Macaulay who helps her seek out a publisher for her first book, a collection of short stories entitled Encounters (1923).
In 1923 Bowen marries Alan Cameron, an educational administrator who subsequently works for the BBC. The marriage has been described as “a sexless but contented union.” She has various extra-marital relationships, including one with Charles Ritchie, a Canadiandiplomat seven years her junior, which lasts over thirty years. She also has an affair with the Irish writer Seán Ó Faoláin and a relationship with the American poet May Sarton. She and her husband first live near Oxford, where they socialize with Maurice Bowra, John Buchan and Susan Buchan, and where she writes her early novels, including The Last September (1929). Following the publication of To the North (1932) they move to 2 Clarence Terrace, Regent’s Park, London, where she writes The House in Paris (1935) and The Death of the Heart (1938). In 1937, she becomes a member of the Irish Academy of Letters.[3]
In 1930 Bowen becomes the first (and only) woman to inherit Bowen’s Court, but remains based in England, making frequent visits to Ireland. During World War II she works for the British Ministry of Information, reporting on Irish opinion, particularly on the issue of neutrality. Her political views tend towards Burkean conservatism. During and after the war she writes among the greatest expressions of life in wartime London, The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945) and The Heat of the Day (1948). She is awarded the CBE the same year.
Bowen’s husband retires in 1952 and they settle in Bowen’s Court, where he dies a few months later. Many writers visit her at Bowen’s Court from 1930 onwards, including Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Iris Murdoch, and the historian Veronica Wedgwood. For years Bowen struggles to keep the house going, lecturing in the United States to earn money. In 1957 her portrait is painted at Bowen’s Court by her friend, painter Patrick Hennessy. She travels to Italy in 1958 to research and prepare A Time in Rome (1960), but by the following year she is forced to sell her beloved Bowen’s Court, which is demolished in 1960. In the following months, she writes for CBS the narrative of the documentary titled Ireland the Tear and the Smile which is realized in collaboration with Robert Monks as cameraman and associate producer. After spending some years without a permanent home, she finally settles at “Carbery”, Church Hill, Hythe, in 1965.
In 1972 Bowen develops lung cancer. She dies at the age of 73 in University College Hospital in London on February 22, 1973. She is buried with her husband in St. Colman’s churchyard in Farahy, close to the gates of Bowen’s Court, where there is a memorial plaque to the author at the entrance to St. Colman’s Church, where a commemoration of her life is held annually.
Owing to his father’s death when he is four years old, McBride spends most of his spare time helping out on his family farm. Because of this he does not start playing rugby until he is seventeen. He is educated at Ballymena Academy and plays for the school’s First XV. After he leaves he joins Ballymena R.F.C.
In 1962 McBride is selected to play for Ireland. His first Test on February 10, 1962 is against England at Twickenham Stadium. Later that year he is selected to tour South Africa with the British and Irish Lions.
McBride continues to play for Ireland throughout the 1960s and plays for Ireland when they first defeat South Africa in 1965, and when Ireland defeats Australia in Sydney, the first time a Home Nations team had defeated a major southern hemisphere team in their own country. He is again selected for the Lions in 1966, this time touring New Zealand and Australia. He tours South Africa with the Lions again in 1968.
McBride is selected to play for the Lions in their 1971 tour of New Zealand. Despite being criticized by some as being “over the hill,” he is made pack leader and helps the Lions to a test series win over New Zealand, their first and last series win over New Zealand. He receives an MBE in 1971 for services to rugby football.
McBride’s leadership qualities lead to his appointment as captain of the British and Irish Lions in their 1974 tour to South Africa. The test series is won 3–0, with one match drawn, the first Lions series ever won in South Africa. It is one of the most controversial and physical test match series ever played. At the time there are only substitutions if a doctor agrees that a player is physically unable to continue and there are no video cameras and sideline officials to keep the punching, kicking and head butting to a minimum. If the South Africans are to resort to foul play then the Lions decide “to get their retaliation in first.” The signal for this is to call “99,” which is a signal for the Lions to clobber their nearest rival players.
In 1975 as his international career is ending McBride plays his last game for Ireland at Lansdowne Road. The game is against France, and near the end of the match he scores his first test try for Ireland. It is the crowning moment of a great playing career. His last international game is against Wales on March 15, 1975. After retiring from playing the game, McBride coaches the Irish team and is manager of the 1983 Lions tour to New Zealand. Despite the test results being mainly poor, team camaraderie is high and some good wins are recorded in other games.
In 1997 McBride is an inaugural inductee into the International Rugby Hall of Fame. He has been asked to present test jerseys and give motivational speeches to Lions players prior to matches. In 2004 he is named in Rugby World magazine as “Rugby Personality of the Century.” He is a major supporter of the Wooden Spoon Society.
Kitchener is credited in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan for which he is made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff (1900–1902) in the Second Boer War he plays a key role in Lord Roberts’ conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeds Roberts as commander-in-chief, by which time Boer forces have taken to guerrilla warfare and British forces imprison Boer civilians in concentration camps. His term as Commander-in-Chief (1902–09) of the Army in India sees him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigns. He then returns to Egypt as British Agent and Consul General.
In 1914, at the start of World War I, Kitchener becomes Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister. One of the few to foresee a long war, lasting for at least three years, and with the authority to act effectively on that perception, he organises the largest volunteer army that Britain had ever seen, and oversees a significant expansion of materials production to fight on the Western Front. Despite having warned of the difficulty of provisioning for a long war, he is blamed for the shortage of shells in the spring of 1915, one of the events leading to the formation of a coalition government and is stripped of his control over munitions and strategy.
On June 5, 1916, Kitchener is making his way to Russia on HMS Hampshire to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II. At the last minute, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe changes the HMS Hampshire‘s route on the basis of a misreading of the weather forecast and ignoring (or not being aware of) recent intelligence and sightings of GermanU-boat activity in the vicinity of the amended route. Shortly before 7:30 PM the same day, steaming for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk during a Force 9 gale, HMS Hampshire strikes a mine laid by the newly launched German U-boat U-75 and sinks 1.5 miles west of the Orkney. Only twelve men survive. Amongst the dead are Kitchener and all ten members of his entourage. He is seen standing on the quarterdeck during the approximately twenty minutes that it takes the ship to sink. His body is never recovered.
Born on November 3, 1896, in County Roscommon, O’Donovan is an explosives expert and reputedly invents the “Irish War Flour” (named after the flour sacks in which it was smuggled into Dublin aboard ships) and “Irish Cheddar” devices. He subsequently becomes IRA Director of Chemicals in 1921. During the Irish War of Independence, he is imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison and Kilmainham Gaol and later interned in Newbridge, County Kildare.
In addition to fighting in the Irish War of Independence, O’Donovan fights on the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War. In 1930 he becomes manager at Electricity Supply Board (ESB) headquarters in Dublin.
In August 1938, at the request of IRA Chief of StaffSeán Russell, O’Donovan writes the S-Plan, a bombing campaign targeting the United Kingdom. In his unpublished memoirs he writes that he “conducted the entire training of cadre units, was responsible for all but locally derived intelligence, carried out small pieces of research and, in general, controlled the whole explosives and munitions end” of S-Plan. During this time, he and Russell are the only GHQ members of the old IRA still in the organisation.
As “Agent V-Held”, O’Donovan visits Germany three times in 1939 on behalf of the IRA. On February 28 he negotiates an arms and radio equipment delivery at the Abwehrstelle in Hamburg. On April 26 he concludes a new arms deal with the Abwehrstelle and establishes, with the help of a Breton, a secret courier connection to Ireland via France. On August 23, he receives the last instructions for the event of war.
On February 9, 1940, Abwehr II agent Ernst Weber-Drohl lands at Killala Bay, County Sligo aboard U-37. He is equipped with an ‘Ufa’ transmitter, cash, and instructions for O’Donovan, who by this time is the chief IRA contact for Abwehr I/II. The transmitter is lost upon landing, but when Weber-Drohl reaches O’Donovan at Shankill, Killiney, County Dublin, he is able to deliver new transmission codes, $14,450 in cash, and a message from “Pfalzgraf Section” asking that the IRA concentrate its S-Plan attacks on military rather than civilian targets.
O’Donovan becomes increasingly enamoured of Nazi ideology during this time, and visits Germany three times. In 1942 he writes an article arguing that Ireland’s future lay in an alliance with a victorious Germany and attacks Britain and the United States for being “centres of Freemasonry, international financial control and Jewry.” Even long after the pact with the Germans falls apart, he continues to express his sympathy for the Nazi regime. His son, Gerard O’Donovan, recalls that every Saturday night a visitor would come to the family home and send messages to Germany.
Born on November 23, 1845, at Cahirmoyle, County Limerick, O’Brien is the younger daughter in a family of five sons and two daughters. Her father is William Smith O’Brien, the Irish nationalist and her mother is Lucy Caroline, eldest daughter of Joseph Gabbett, of High Park, County Limerick. On her father’s return in 1854 from the penal colony in Tasmania, she rejoins him in Brussels and stays there until he comes back to Cahirmoyle in 1856. On her mother’s death in 1861, she moves with her father to Killiney, near Dublin, and is his constant companion until his death at Bangor, Gwynedd in 1864.
From 1864, O’Brien lives at Cahirmoyle with her brother Edward, caring for his motherless children until his remarriage in 1880. Having been hard of hearing since childhood, by 1879 she has become entirely deaf. She goes to live at Ardanoir near Foynes on the River Shannon and spends time writing. She becomes a staunch supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell.
A bad harvest in Ireland in 1879, combined with Irish political turmoil, causes many Irish people to emigrate to the United States. In articles and letters to newspapers and reviews, O’Brien exposes the awful conditions that exist in the Queenstown (Cobh) lodging houses, on board the emigrant ships, and in the dock slums of New York City, where the Irish have to stay upon landing. A notable piece she writes is the Horrors of the Immigrant Ship which appears in ThePall Mall Gazette on May 6, 1881.
A visit to Queenstown, the port of embarkation, and a tour of the White Star Line‘s Germanic leads her to successfully lobby to get a Catholic priest aboard the emigrant ship to help ease the passage, at least spiritually. That achievement captures even more public attention by virtue of the fact that O’Brien herself is Protestant. Despite the limit of 1,000 passengers, she notes the steamer has carried as many as 1,775 at one time.
O’Brien presses the Board of Trade for greater vigilance, and in April 1882, founds a 105-bed boarding house at Queenstown for the reception and protection of girls on the point of emigrating. The O’Brien Emigrants Home at The Beach, Queenstown fails because it is boycotted by other boardinghouse keepers and local merchants, forcing her to order provisions from Cork.
O’Brien also daily visits three or four of the ships for which her lodgers are destined along with a medical officer. She makes passages herself to America, using the occasion to investigate shipboard conditions and lobby for the reform and enforcement of health and safety standards.
O’Brien finds little effort to provide food, drink or accommodation at the Castle Garden entry facility. She also finds that often the illiterate young women are being tricked into prostitution through spurious offers of employment. Additionally, she notes the high infant mortality rates in the tenements where the women live. She proposes to Archbishop John Ireland of Minnesota an information bureau at Castle Garden, a temporary shelter to provide accommodation for immigrants and a chapel. Archbishop Ireland agrees to raise the matter at the May 1883 meeting of the Irish Catholic Association which endorses the plan and votes to establish an information bureau at Castle Garden. Ireland also contacts Cardinal John McCloskey, Archbishop of New York, about providing a priest for immigrants arriving at Castle Garden.
The Mission opens on January 1, 1884, with Rev. John J. Riordan appointed as the first chaplain at Castle Garden. Immigrant girls needing accommodation are placed in local boarding houses until May 1 when a Home for Immigrant Girls is opened at 7 Broadway. In 1885, the James Watson House at 7 State Street is purchased from Isabella Wallace for the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Protection of Irish Immigrant Girls to serve as a way station for young immigrant women. Between 1884 and 1890, the Mission provides assistance to 25,000 Irish immigrant women.
In 1881–82, O’Brien embarks on a campaigning lecture tour in the United States. She encounters problems, however, particularly given her Protestant background and the need to enlist support from Catholic clergy. Poor health, and her profound deafness cause her to curtail her activities in America. When she returns to Ireland in 1883, she finds herself suspected of being a British agent whose Emigrant Boarding house and whose plans for an American home for Irish immigrant girls facilitate the government’s assisted emigrant scheme. Supposedly, this would be the scheme that helps landlords clear their estates of poor tenants. In fact, O’Brien opposes assisted emigration, but she continues to assist those who are sent to her.
O’Brien retires from active public work in 1886, moving to Ardanoir, Foynes, on the Shannon Estuary. She spends considerable time in Dublin, where she socialises with Douglas Hyde and the painter William Osbourne. She joins the Roman Catholic Church in 1887. She dies of heart failure on June 3, 1909, at Foynes, and is buried at Knockpatrick.
O’Shea is discovered in the 1950s by Harry Dillon, who runs the 37 Theatre Club on the top floor of his shop, the Swiss Gem Company, 51 Lower O’Connell Street, Dublin. Early in his career he tours with the theatrical company of Anew McMaster.
O’Shea begins acting on the stage, then moves into film in the 1960s. He becomes popular in the United Kingdom, as a result of starring in the BBC sitcom Me Mammy alongside Yootha Joyce. In 1967–68 he appears in the drama Staircase, co-starring Eli Wallach and directed by Barry Morse, which stands as Broadway‘s first depiction of homosexual men in a serious light. For his role in that drama, he is nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1968.
Other stage appearances include Mass Appeal (1981) in which he originates the role of Father Tim Farley, for which he is nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1982, the musical Dear World in which he plays the Sewer Man opposite Angela Lansbury as Countess Aurelia, Corpse! (1986) and a 1994 Broadway revival of Philadelphia, Here I Come!.
O’Shea’s first wife is Maureen Toal, an Irish actress, with whom he has two sons, Colm and Steven. They divorce in 1974. His second wife is Irish actress Kitty Sullivan, whom he meets in Italy, where he is filming Barbarella and she is auditioning for Man of La Mancha. The couple occasionally act together, such as in a 1981 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. O’Shea and Sullivan have no children together. They both adopt United States citizenship and reside in New York City, where they both live from 1976.
O’Shea dies on April 2, 2013, in New York City following a short illness at the age of 86. He is buried at Deans Grange Cemetery.
Rice is born into a Catholic family and is one of nine children. It comes as a surprise that a Catholic family can be prosperous in these days but they have a lease of a good-sized farm and are industrious people. In view of his future work in education it is fortunate that he receives a very good education himself, first at a local hedge school and then at a private secondary school in Kilkenny.
Rice is apprenticed to his uncle, Michael Rice, in Waterford at the age of 17. Waterford is then the second largest port in Ireland with an expanding trade with England, France and Spain and has very special trading links across the Atlantic with Newfoundland. His uncle is involved in providing food and services for the crews and passengers of the ships trading in and out of the port of Waterford. His uncle becomes a very prosperous businessman, and his business expands even more after it is handed over to his nephew. His great wealth is later to be used in transforming the lives of countless young boys.
At the age of 25 Rice marries Mary Elliot and is left a widower two years later when she dies after falling from a horse. He is left with a handicapped daughter, Mary. He calls in his stepsister Joan Murphy to help him care for his daughter so he can develop the business he inherited from his uncle.
In 1802, having properly cared for his daughter, Rice begins a night school for the uneducated boys from the quays of Waterford. His deep desire is to found a religious order of men who will educate these poor boys so that they can live with dignity and high self-esteem. But his volunteer assistants cannot stick with it. Neither can the paid teachers he later employs. Just when his spirits are lowest, and he looks to be a failure to all his business colleagues, two men from his native Callan join him not only to educate these unruly boys but also to join him in his plan to found a religious order. To do such a thing is contrary to the law. Nevertheless, Rice and his growing number of companions proceed. In 1808 seven of them take religious vows under Bishop Power of Waterford. They are called Presentation Brothers. This is the first congregation of men to be founded in Ireland and one of the few ever founded in a Church by a layman. Rice has in the meantime built a substantial school out of his own money, but it is already proving too small for the many boys who flock to him for an education.
Gradually an extraordinary transformation takes place in the “quay kids” of Waterford. Rice and his Brothers educate them, clothe and feed them. Other Bishops in Ireland supply him with men whom he prepares for religious life and teaching. In this way the Presentation Brothers spread throughout Ireland. However, the groups in separate dioceses are not under his control but that of the bishop. This creates problems when Brothers need to be transferred. Rice seeks and ultimately obtains approval from Pope Pius VII for his Brothers to be made into a pontifical congregation with Rice as Superior General. He is then able to move Brothers to wherever they are most needed. From this time on they are called Christian Brothers. By 1825 there are 30 Christian Brothers working in 12 towns and cities and educating 5,500 boys, free of charge. Many of these boys are also being clothed and fed.
Rice’s life is steeped in a spirituality that is strong and practical. He is forever caring for the poor in the wretched circumstances of their lives, for he believes there is a great need “to give to the poor in handfuls.” Many people, both men and women, from many cultures, young and old are helped and given hope and purpose and a new footing in life. He and his Brothers even card for the inmates of the jails of Waterford. He is privileged to comfort and accompany many a condemned man to the gallows. The poor never forget his love for them and see him as “a man raised up by God.”
Rice endures many and severe trials and in 1829 it seems the Christian Brothers are going to be suppressed by the law of the land. They face extinction but this does not happen. An even worse trial comes to him personally when some of his own Brothers try to undermine his work. Fortunately, they are unsuccessful. He gave his Brothers as their motto a text from the Book of Job that means so much to him in his life: “The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord forever.”
In 1838, at the age of 76, Rice retires from leadership of the congregation and returns to Waterford. After living in a near-comatose state for more than two years, he dies at Mount Sion, Waterford on August 29, 1844, where his remains lie in a casket to this day.
Rice is declared to be Blessed Edmund Rice by Pope John Paul II in Rome on October 6, 1996. His Feast Day in the Catholic Church is 5 May.
seamus dubhghaill 