seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Category Archives: Religion


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Birth of Teresa Kearney, Teacher, Franciscan Sister & Missionary

Teresa Kearney, better known as Mother Kevin, a teacher, Franciscan Sister, and missionary who founds a new Franciscan order, is born in Knockenrahan, Arklow, County Wicklow, on April 28, 1875.

Kearney is the third daughter of farmer Michael Kearney and Teresa Kearney. Three months prior to her birth, her father dies in an accident. Following his death, her mother remarries and has three more children. When she is ten years old, her mother dies. Her maternal grandmother, Grannie Grenell, then raises her in Curranstown, County Wicklow. Grannie Grenell has a profound impact on her spiritual beliefs and deep faith. When she is 17, Grannie Grenell dies.

Kearney attends the local convent school in Arklow following her mother’s death. In 1889, following her grandmother’s death, she goes to convent of Mercy at Rathdrum, to train as an assistant teacher. She does not have the finances to pay for training, and becomes a Junior Assistant Mistress. A year later, she goes to teach in a school run by the Sisters of Charity in Essex.

Following the death of her grandmother, Kearney turns toward thoughts of religious life. She believes that God is calling her to be a sister, and she applies for admission to the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Five Wounds at Mill Hill, London. In 1895, she enters the St. Mary’s Abbey, Mill Hill. On April 21, 1898 she takes the name Sister Mary Kevin of the Sacred Passion. Her motto is “For Thee, Lord.” She volunteers to work with African Americans in London. She waits three years for a posting to the American mission, but when the call from a foreign mission comes, it comes from Africa.

On December 3, 1902, Kearney and five other sisters leave London for Nsambya, Uganda. They are chosen at the request of Bishop Henry Hanlon of the Mill Hill Fathers. The sisters arrive on January 15, 1903 and establish a dispensary and school in the Buganda. Their task is to care for the women and girls and to further weaken the association of Catholicism with French missionaries and Protestantism with British missionaries in the then British Protectorate. Among the sisters are three Irish, one American, one English, and one Scottish woman.

Kearney starts her first clinic under a mango tree near the convent. The first seven years of missionary work are tough for the sisters. Various diseases, from smallpox to malaria, ravage Buganda. The infant mortality rate is also relatively high due to the high frequency of maternal deaths. In 1906, she expands the missionary and sets up a hospital in Nagalama, twenty-three miles away. She is appointed the new superior of the convent following Sister Paul’s illness and return to the United States in 1910. In 1913, three more sisters arrive, which allows her to establish a third mission station in Kamuli, Busoga. All three stations focus on medicine and education for the local population with a focus on primary and secondary education, training of nurses, and the founding of clinics, hospitals and orphanages.

During World War I, the Nsambya Hospital is used to treat the Native Carrier Corp, porters for European troops. At times, Kearney is outraged by the treatment Europeans give to the African porters. She works to uphold the rights of African people caught up in the European war. On December 25, 1918 she is awarded the Member of Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to the wounded during the war years.

Kearney is credited for promoting higher education in Catholic African women in her mission. In 1923, she founds the Little Sisters of St. Francis, a community of African nuns for teaching and nursing. This program starts with only eight local girls. A year later, she and Dr. Evelyn Connolly, a lay missionary, found a nursing and midwifery school in Nsambya. Their goal is to promote the education of women throughout Uganda.

In September 1928, Kearney returns to England to establish a novitiate exclusively for training sisters for African missions. The novitiate is officially opened in 1929 in Holme Hall, Yorkshire. Many women from England, Scotland and Ireland travel to Holme Hall to assist the missionary efforts. This creates a shortage for the Mill Hill Fathers, who also need sisters for their school in England and American missions. Upon realization of this divide, Kearney and the Mill Hill Fathers break off from each other. On June 9, 1952 she founds the new congregation of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa. She is appointed the first superior general. Mount Oliver, Dundalk, becomes the motherhouse for this new congregation. With the formation of the FMSA, she expands the missionary work to Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, the United States, Scotland, and South Africa.

Kearney retires in 1955 at age 80. During retirement, she is appointed Superior of a convent in Boston, Massachusetts and raises funds for African projects. She travels and talks to donors to garner support for projects in Africa.

On October 17, 1957, Kearney dies at the age of 82 in Brighton, Massachusetts. Her remains are flown to Ireland and buried at Mount Oliver. Ugandan Catholics rally to have her body flown to Uganda to be buried. On December 3, 1957, her body is buried in the cemetery at Nkokonjeru, the motherhouse of the Little Sisters of St. Francis.

Kearney’s legacy is evident today. In Uganda, the word Kevina means “hospital” or “charitable institute.” The Mother Kevin Postgraduate Medical School is named after her. The Little Sisters of St. Francis has over 500 members throughout Africa, while the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa currently works in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.


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Birth of Aengus Finucane, Roman Catholic Missionary

Aengus Finucane, Roman Catholic missionary of the Spiritan Fathers order, is born on April 26, 1932, in Limerick, County Limerick. He organizes food shipments from Ireland to the Igbo people during the Nigerian Civil War. His younger brother, Jack Finucane, also becomes a Holy Ghost priest, and a sister of theirs becomes a nun.

Finucane is educated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers until 1950. He joins the Holy Ghost Fathers in Kimmage Manor, and studies Philosophy, Theology and Education at University College Dublin. He is ordained in Clonliffe College in 1958.

Finucane contributes humanitarian aid during the Nigerian Civil War (also known as the “Nigerian-Biafran War”), from 1967 to 1970. The Nigerian government had blocked food supplies to the successionist state of Biafra causing starvation in the country. This is reported on international television stations and receives worldwide condemnation.

In an effort to save the population from starvation, Finucane organizes food to be sent through makeshift airstrips, including one at Uli, Bafaria, and cargo trips with other Dublin-based workers. This leads to the formation of the organisation Concern Worldwide in 1968. He works with Concern for 41 years and views his mission as “love in action.”

Finucane is banished from Nigeria in January 1970. Following this, he gains a diploma in development studies and a Master of Arts degree in Third World poverty studies from the Swansea University. In 1971, he is again giving food supplies to the population during the operations which are ongoing in Bangladesh and flies often with Mother Teresa during the drop-offs.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) invites Finucane to lead a survey of people displaced in Southeast Asia. During the 1980s and 1990s he leads Concern Worldwide, becoming involved in the response to famine in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda. While in Somalia, he is in a convoy that is attacked and results in the death of nurse Valerie Place.

Finucane dies of cancer at the age of 77 on October 6, 2009, in a Dublin Spiritan Fathers’ nursing home in Kimmage Manor. His funeral is held at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Kimmage and is attended by hundreds. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, and Minister for Overseas Development, Peter Power, dub him as a “tireless force for good across the globe for more than four decades.” He is buried at Dardistown Cemetery, in the Spiritan plot.

Finucane’s biography, Aengus Finucane: In the Heart of Concern, written by Deirdre Purcell is published by New Island Books in January 2015.


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The Historic Meeting of David Trimble & Pope John Paul II

David Trimble becomes the first Ulster Unionist leader to meet a Pope when his historic meeting with John Paul II takes place in Rome on April 21, 1999. The meeting is widely welcomed as a sign that old prejudices are ending but Trimble is hotly criticised by both Protestants and Catholics in his Upper Bann constituency.

The First Minister is one of 54 Nobel Peace Prize laureates who meets Pope John Paul II briefly at the Vatican, as part of a two-day trip organised by former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Nobel Prize winners meet the Pope as a group and are then introduced and shake hands individually. There is a group photograph but no filming of the event. Careful stage-management ensures there are no public photographs of the two men close together.

A spokesman for Trimble says the UUP leader told the Pope he hopes this will be the year when peace will be secured in Northern Ireland. The Pope recalls his visit to Ireland and says murder cannot be condoned or called by another name.

Although the meeting is welcomed on both sides of the North divide, it does little to enhance Trimble’s standing in Upper Bann, particularly in troubled Portadown. In Portadown’s loyalist estates, there is open hostility toward Trimble. Many residents accusing their MP of “putting his personal status above the interests of his constituents.” The response is typified by one angry woman who says, “The loyalist people of this town and Drumcree, put David Trimble into office. Now he has turned his back on us. That’s a fatal mistake, this town and Drumcree will now destroy Trimble.”

“It’s unbelievable that this meeting is actually taking place,” says Orangeman Ivor Young. “It totally contradicts the oath that David Trimble took when he joined the Orange Order. We all knew Trimble was a traitor, this latest escapade puts the final nail in his political coffin here in Upper Bann. There is no way that he will ever be elected here again.”

Trimble also comes in for further criticism from Portadown Orange District, whose Drumcree protest has continued for the past 288 days. David Jones, the District’s press officer says that the people of Portadown once again see their local MP on “a world stage,” instead of being involved locally. “There are a lot of people around Portadown who aren’t very impressed that David Trimble has gone off to meet the Pope and hasn’t got more involved in trying to get the situation here solved,” says Jones.

On Portadown’s Garvaghy Road, Catholics are also critical of Trimble’s visit to Rome. “It’s amazing how he can travel to Rome to meet and talk to strangers,” says one nationalist resident, “yet he can’t be bothered to travel less than 30 miles to meet us, to talk about the serious issues that confront this community. After all we are as much his constituents as are the loyalists in this town.”

The meeting is the first time that the First Minister of Northern Ireland or the head of the Ulster Unionist Party has met the Pope in Rome. It also represents a rare appearance by an Orangeman at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church. Trimble and his entourage meet the Pope in the sumptuous surroundings of the Consistory Hall, the same room where the Cardinals of the Church gather to advise the Pope.

Earlier in the morning Trimble says in an interview with the Vatican radio that besides giving an update on developments in Northern Ireland, he wishes to “express to his Holiness the Pope that he and the Church will do what it can to persuade the paramilitaries to commit themselves irrevocably to peaceful means.”

Other Nobel prize winners who meet the Pope include peace activist Betty Williams, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former South African leader F. W. de Klerk, Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchu, British scientist Joseph Rotblat, and former Israeli leader Shimon Peres.

Trimble’s fellow Nobel laureate, SDLP leader John Hume, is unable to attend the meeting.

(From: “Anger erupts at home as Trimble meets Pope” by Chris Anderson, Independent.ie (www.independent.ie), April 23, 1999)


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Birth of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin

Daniel Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, is born on April 18, 1768, at Sheepwalk, near Arklow, County Wicklow.

Murray is the son of Thomas and Judith Murray, who are farmers. At the age of eight he goes to Thomas Betagh‘s school at Saul’s Court, near Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. At sixteen, Archbishop John Carpenter sends him to the Irish College at Salamanca, completing his studies at the University of Salamanca. He is ordained priest in 1792 at the age of twenty-four.

After some years as curate at St. Paul’s Church in Dublin, Murray is transferred to Arklow and is there in 1798 when the rebellion breaks out. The yeomanry shoots the parish priest in bed and Murray, to escape a similar fate, flees to the city where for two years he serves as curate at St. Andrew’s Chapel on Hawkins Street. As a preacher, he is said to be particularly effective, especially in appeals for charitable causes, such as the schools. He is then assigned to the Chapel of St. Mary in Upper Liffey Street where Archbishop John Troy is the parish priest.

In 1809, at the request of Archbishop Troy, Murray is appointed coadjutor bishop and consecrated on November 30, 1809. In 1811 he is made Administrator of St. Andrew’s. That same year he helps Mary Aikenhead establish the Religious Sisters of Charity. While coadjutor he fills for one year the position of president of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Murray is an uncompromising opponent of a proposal granting the British government a “veto” over Catholic ecclesiastical appointments in Ireland, and in 1814 and 1815, makes two separate trips to Rome concerning the controversy.

Murray becomes Archbishop of Dublin in 1825 and on November 14, 1825, celebrates the completion of St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. He enjoys the confidence of successive popes and is held in high respect by the British government. His life is mainly devoted to ecclesiastical affairs, the establishment and organisation of religious associations for the education and relief of the poor. With the outbreak of cholera in the 1830s, in 1834 he and Mother Aikenhead found St. Vincent’s Hospital. He persuades Edmund Rice to send members of the Christian Brothers to Dublin to start a school for boys. The first is opened in a lumber yard on the city-quay. He assists Catherine McAuley in founding the Sisters of Mercy, and in 1831 professes the first three members.

Edward Bouverie Pusey has an interview with Murray in 1841, and bears testimony to his moderation, and John Henry Newman has some correspondence with him prior to Newman’s conversion from the Anglican Church to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. A seat in the privy council at Dublin, officially offered to him in 1846, is not accepted. He takes part in the synod of the Roman Catholic clergy at Thurles in 1850.

Towards the end of his life, Murray’s eyesight is impaired, and he reads and writes with difficulty. Among his last priestly functions is a funeral service for Richard Lalor Sheil who had died in Italy, and whose body had been brought back to Ireland for burial. Murray dies in Dublin on February 26, 1852, at the age of eighty-four. He is interred in the St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, where a marble statue of him has been erected in connection with a monument to his memory, executed by James Farrell, president of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Fine Arts.

(Pictured: Portrait of Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, by unknown 19th century Irish portrait painter)


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Birth of Jeremiah Newman, Bishop of Limerick

Jeremiah Newman, Bishop of Limerick from 1974 to 1995 after having served as Professor and President of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, is born in Dromcolliher, County Limerick, on March 31, 1926.

Following a local primary education, Newman attends St. Munchin’s College, Limerick. He studies for the priesthood at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and is ordained there on June 18, 1950.

Newman begins postgraduate studies in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven and is awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy there in 1951. After that he takes up studies in Sociology at the University of Oxford for four years before taking up a teaching post at Queen’s University, Belfast.

In 1953 Newman is appointed Professor of Sociology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, succeeding Peter McKevitt. It is an institution he remains within, and eventually leads with distinction, until he is appointed Bishop of Limerick in May 1974. He publishes two books about the college: Maynooth and Georgian Ireland (1979) followed by Maynooth and Victorian Ireland (1983).

Newman arrives in Limerick with a strong reputation for reform having served a number of years as President of Maynooth where he adapted and shaped the college to the new challenges of the 1970s. His academic background in sociology gives him an informed understanding of the changing dynamic in Irish life, especially rural life which he has been writing about since the early 1960s, especially the dangers of depopulation.

Newman often makes comment on national matters particularly about church-state relations which has been his special area of study for over 20 years. He takes what might be called a broadly ‘conservative’ approach which, as time goes on, jars with wider public opinion especially as Ireland faces a number of constitutional referenda in the 1980s. At least one modern author has quoted the epithet alleged to have been conferred on Newman by Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Mullah of Limerick, for articulating a neo-conservative position more commonly associated with the United States.

Newman’s later years are dogged by periodic bouts of ill-health, and he dies in office on April 3, 1995, of hepatoma. He is buried in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick. He is the subject of many obituaries not least because of his extensive public statements in his years as Bishop of Limerick. The Tablet suggests he was most “well known for his conservatism and taste for controversial remarks” before quoting the homily by Cardinal Cahal Daly that “he seemed to have a strange sense of inadequacy; and, for one who was so lovable, he seemed to have difficulties in believing that others respected and admired and indeed loved him.” The Irish Times obituary says he was a man “who kept fighting the battles of long ago.”

Newman is succeeded as Bishop of Limerick by Bishop Donal Murray.

Limerick City Library holds an extensive set of newspaper articles about Bishop Jeremiah Newman which have been made available online.


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The Death of Stopford Brooke, Chaplain & Writer

Stopford Augustus Brooke, churchman, royal chaplain and writer, dies in Ewhurst, Surrey, England, on March 18, 1916.

Brooke is born in the rectory of Glendoen, near Letterkenny, County Donegal on November 14, 1832, the eldest son of the Rev. Richard Sinclair Brooke, later incumbent of the Mariners’ Church, Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire). His maternal grandfather, Joseph Stopford, is then rector of the parish. He is educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He is ordained in the Church of England in 1857 and holds various charges in London. From 1863 to 1865 he is chaplain to Victoria, Princess Royal in Berlin. In 1869, with his brother Edward, he makes long tours of Counties Donegal and Sligo, and spends much time at Kells, County Meath studying Irish antiquities. Between 1866 and 1875 he is the minister at St. James’s Chapel, a proprietary chapel. After it closes, he takes services at Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury where he continues to attract large congregations. In 1875, he becomes chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria. But in 1880 he secedes from the Church, being no longer able to accept its leading dogmas, and officiates as an independent preacher for some years at Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury.

Bedford Chapel is pulled down about 1894, and from that time Brooke has no church of his own, but his eloquence and powerful religious personality continues to make themselves felt among a wide circle. A man of independent means, he is always keenly interested in literature and art, and a fine critic of both. The two-volume Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, written by his son-in-law L. P. Jacks and published in 1917, contains many details of different facets of his life.

In 1890-1891 Brooke takes the lead in raising the funds to purchase Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere from 1800 to 1808, and establishing it “for the eternal possession of those who love English poetry all over the world.” Dove Cottage is now administered by the Wordsworth Trust.

Brooke publishes in 1865 his Life and Letters of FW Robertson (of Brighton), and in 1876 writes an admirable primer of English Literature, followed in 1892 by The History of Early English Literature down to the accession of Alfred the Great, and English Literature from the Beginnings to the Norman Conquest (1898).

Brooke gives the inaugural lecture to the Irish Literary Society, London, on “The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue” at Bloomsbury House, March 11, 1893. He delivers a sermon on “The Kingdom of God Within” to the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers, meeting in London in May 1901. He continues preaching at Bedford Chapel and to unitarian congregations throughout Britain until forced to retire because of ill-health in 1895.

Brooke lives in London until 1914 and then retires to Ewhurst, Surrey, where he dies on March 18, 1916. His published letters record that his work brought him into touch with most of his famous contemporaries – including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Philip Burne-Jones, William Morris, James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, James Martineau and Matthew Arnold.


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Birth of Patrick Brontë, Anglican Priest & Author

Patrick Brontë, Irish Anglican priest and author, is born at Drumballyroney, near Rathfriland, County Down, on March 17, 1777. He is the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë.

Brontë is the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty, a farm labourer, and Alice McClory. At one point in his adult life, he formally changes the spelling of his name from Brunty to Brontë. He spends most of his adult life in England.

Brontë has several apprenticeships until he becomes a teacher in 1798. He moves to England in 1802 to study theology at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and receives his BA degree in 1806. He is then appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he is ordained a deacon of the Church of England in 1806, and into the priesthood in 1807.

In 1809, Brontë becomes assistant curate at Wellington, Shropshire, and in 1810 his first published poem, Winter Evening Thoughts, appears in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verses, Cottage Poems. He moves to the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1811 as assistant curate at Hartshead, where he serves until 1815. In the meantime he is appointed a school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley. In 1815 he moves again on becoming perpetual curate of Thornton. At Guiseley, Brontë meets Maria Branwell, whom he marries on December 29, 1812.

Brontë is offered the perpetual curacy of St. Michael and All Angels’ Church, Haworth in June 1819, and he takes the family there in April 1820. His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell, who had lived with the family at Thornton in 1815, joins the household in 1821 to help to look after the children and to care for Maria Brontë, who is suffering the final stages of uterine cancer. She decides to move permanently to Haworth to act as housekeeper.

After several attempts to seek a new spouse, Brontë comes to terms with widowhood at the age of 47, and spends his time visiting the sick and the poor, giving sermons, communion, and extreme unction, leaving his children alone with their aunt and a maid, Tabitha Aykroyd (Tabby), who tirelessly recounts local legends in her Yorkshire dialect while preparing the meals.

Brontë is responsible for the building of a Sunday school in Haworth, which he opens in 1832. He remains active in local causes into his old age, and between 1849 and 1850 organises action to procure a clean water supply for the village, which is eventually achieved in 1856.

In August 1846, Brontë travels to Manchester, accompanied by Charlotte, to undergo surgery on his eyes. On August 28 he is operated upon, without anaesthetic, to remove cataracts. Surgeons do not yet know how to use stitches to hold the incision in the eye together and as a consequence the patient is required to lie quietly in a darkened room for weeks after the operation. Charlotte uses her time in Manchester to begin writing Jane Eyre, the book which is to make her famous.

Following the death of his last surviving child, Charlotte, nine months after her marriage, he co-operates with Elizabeth Gaskell on the biography of his daughter. He is also responsible for the posthumous publication of Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor, in 1857. Charlotte’s husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, who had been Brontë’s curate, stays in the household until he returns to Ireland after Patrick Brontë’s death, at the age of 84, on June 7, 1861 in Haworth, Yorkshire, England. Brontë outlives not only his wife (by 40 years) but all six of his children.


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Death of John Hewitt Jellett, Mathematician & Priest

John Hewitt Jellett, Irish mathematician whose career is spent at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he rises to the rank of Provost, dies in Dublin on February 19, 1888. He is also a priest in the Church of Ireland.

Jellett is born at Cashel, County Tipperary, on December 25, 1817, the son of Rev. Morgan Jellett and his wife Harriette Townsend, daughter of Hewitt Baldwin Poole of County Cork, by his wife Dorothea Morris. He is the eldest brother of Hewitt Poole Jellett, Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for County Laois, and of the Venerable Henry Jellett, Archdeacon of Cloyne. He is educated at Kilkenny College and at TCD, where he becomes a fellow in 1840.

Jellett marries his cousin on his mother’s side, Dorothea Charlotte Morris Morgan, daughter of James Morgan, on July 7, 1855. The marriage produces seven children. His son, William Morgan Jellett, is a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is the father of the celebrated artist Mainie Jellett, and of Dorothea Jellett, director of the orchestra of the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Another son Henry Holmes Jellett is a civil engineer in British India. His daughter Harriette Mary Jellett is the wife of the noted Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald. Another daughter Eva Jellett is the first woman to graduate with a degree in medicine from Trinity and goes on to practice as a doctor in India.

Jellett graduates B.A. in mathematics in 1837, M.A. 1843, B.D. 1866, and D.D. 1881. He is ordained a priest in 1846. In 1848 he is elected to the chair of natural philosophy at TCD, and in 1868 he receives the appointment of commissioner of Irish national education.

In 1851 Jellett is awarded the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy for his work on the “Calculus of Variations.” The society later elects him their president, a position he holds from 1869 to 1874.

In 1870, on the death of Dr. Thomas Luby, Jellett is co-opted a Senior Fellow, and thus a member of the Board of TCD. William Ewart Gladstone‘s government in February 1881 appoints him provost of Trinity. In the same year he is awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society.

After the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland by the Irish Church Act 1869, Jellett takes an active part in the deliberations of the general synod and in every work calculated to advance its interests. He is an able mathematician and writes A Treatise of the Calculus of Variations (1850), and A Treatise on the Theory of Friction (1872), as well as several papers on pure and applied mathematics, articles in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He also writes some theological essays, sermons, and religious treatises, of which the principals are An Examination of some of the Moral Difficulties of the Old Testament (1867), and The Efficacy of Prayer (1878).

Jellett dies of blood poisoning at the provost’s house, TCD, on February 19, 1888, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery on February 23. The funeral procession is the largest that ever left Trinity.

(Pictured: “John Hewitt Jellett,” oil on canvas by Sarah Purser)


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Birth of William John Conway, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

William John Cardinal Conway, Irish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who serves as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1963 until his death, is born on January 22, 1913, in Belfast.

Conway is the eldest of four sons and five daughters of Patrick Joseph Conway and Annie Conway (née Donnelly). His father, a self-employed housepainter, also has a paint shop in Kent Street off Royal Avenue. His mother, who survives her son, is born in Carlingford, County Louth. He attends Boundary Street Primary School, St. Mary’s CBS (now St. Mary’s CBGS Belfast). His academic successes are crowned by a scholarship to Queen’s University Belfast. He decides to study for the diocesan priesthood. In 1933 he is conferred with an honours BA in English literature and goes on to read a distinguished course in theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

Conway is ordained on June 20, 1937, and awarded a DD (1938). On November 12, 1938, he enters the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, and in 1941 he receives the DCL degree at the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Italy enters World War II in June 1940, he returns to Belfast to take up duty in the Diocese of Down and Connor. He is appointed to teach English and Latin in St. Malachy’s College in Belfast, but after one year he is named professor of moral theology and canon law in Maynooth. He contributes regular ‘Canon law replies’ to the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which are later collected as Problems in canon law (1950), the only book published by him.

In 1957 Conway becomes vice-president of Maynooth, and in 1958, he is named Ireland’s youngest bishop, Titular Bishop of Neve, and auxiliary bishop to Cardinal John D’Alton, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He is consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh on July 27, 1958. He serves as administrator of St. Patrick’s Church, Dundalk, for the next five years, gaining valuable pastoral experience, and also uses these years to familiarise himself with his new diocese, especially its geography. On the death of D’Alton, he is chosen to succeed him in September 1963, and is enthroned on September 25 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh by the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Sensi. At the end of 1964, Pope Paul VI chooses him as Ireland’s seventh residential cardinal, and he receives the red hat in the public consistory of February 22, 1965.

The thirteen-odd years of Conway’s ministry as primate are dominated firstly by the Second Vatican Council and secondly by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His primary concern is the church, to steer it through testing times. He is a very active bishop in a diocese of 160,000 Catholics, with fifty-seven parishes and some 167 priests. He carries the burden alone until 1974 when he is given an auxiliary in the person of his secretary, Fr. Francis Lenny (1928–78). Two new parishes are created, five new churches are built, and many others are renovated to meet the requirements of liturgical reform. Twenty new schools are also provided. He attends all four sessions of the Vatican council (1962–65), as auxiliary bishop and as primate. On October 9, 1963, he addresses the assembly, making a plea that the council might not be so concerned with weightier matters as to neglect to speak about priests. He also makes contributions on the topics of mixed marriages, Catholic schools, and the laity. On the topic of education, he is convinced that integrated schools will not solve Northern Ireland’s problems.

Conway represents the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference at each assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, at first with Bishop Michael Browne of the Diocese of Galway and Kilmacduagh, his former professor in Maynooth, and later with the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan. With Cardinals Jean-Marie Villot and Pericle Felici, he is chairman of the first synod in 1969, a signal honour conferred on him by Pope Paul VI. He addresses the assembly, opposing the ordination of married men as a move that would release a flood of applications from around the world for dispensations from priestly celibacy. His experience of violence in Northern Ireland is reflected in contributions he makes to later synod assemblies, especially in 1971 and 1974.

Apart from the synod, Conway travels a few times each year to Rome for meetings of the three Roman congregations on which he is called to serve (those of bishops, catholic education, and the evangelisation of peoples) and the commission for the revision of the code of canon law. He also travels further afield in a representative capacity to the International Eucharistic Congress at Bogotá, also attended by Pope Paul VI, and to Madras (1972), where he acts as papal legate for the centenary celebrations in honour of St. Thomas. In 1966 he is invited by the bishops of Poland to join in celebrations for the millennium of Catholicism in that country but is refused an entry visa by the Polish government. In January 1973 he feels obliged to forgo participation in the Melbourne eucharistic congress because of the troubled situation at home. Within Ireland he accepts invitations to become a freeman of Cork and Galway (1965) and of Wexford (1966). In 1976 the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers on him an honorary LL.D.

Conway is acknowledged as an able and diligent chairman of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The core problem in the early years is how to lead the Irish church into the difficult new era that follows the council. He shows exceptional leadership qualities in the manner in which he promotes firm but gentle progress, avoiding sudden trauma and divisions. A major event in his term as Archbishop of Armagh, and one that gives him much satisfaction, is the canonization of Oliver Plunkett, his martyred predecessor, in the holy year 1975. He follows with great interest the final stages of the cause from 1968 and is greatly disappointed when grounded by his doctors six weeks before the event. He does however take part, concelebrating with Pope Paul VI at the ceremony on October 12, 1975. He also presides the following evening at the first mass of thanksgiving in the Lateran Basilica, receiving a tumultuous applause from the thousands of Irish present.

More than anything else, the Troubles in Northern Ireland occupy Conway during the second half of his term as archbishop and primate. He is the leading spokesman of the Catholic cause but never fails to condemn atrocities wherever the responsibility lay. He brands as ‘monsters’ the terrorist bombers on both sides. In 1971 he denounces internment without trial, and the following year he is mainly responsible for highlighting the ill-treatment and even torture of prisoners in Northern Ireland. He repudiates the idea that the conflict is religious in nature, emphasising its social and political dimensions, and is openly critical of the British government over conditions in Long Kesh Detention Centre, and of ‘the cloak of almost total silence’ surrounding violence against the Catholic community.

In January 1977 Conway undergoes surgery in a Dublin hospital, and almost immediately comes to know that he is terminally ill. It is the best-kept secret in Ireland until close to the end. On March 29, he writes to his fellow bishops informing them that the prognosis regarding his health is ‘not good, in fact . . . very bad,’ and that he is perfectly reconciled to God’s will. He is still able to work at his desk until Good Friday, April 8, 1977.

Conway dies in Armagh on Low Sunday night, April 17, 1977. Seven countries are represented at his funeral by six cardinals and many bishops. The apostolic nuncio, the bishops of Ireland, the president and Taoiseach, six Irish government ministers, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland are also among the mourners. The cardinal is laid to rest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh. The red hat received from Pope Paul VI is suspended from the ceiling of the Lady chapel, joining those of his four immediate predecessors.

(From: “Conway, John William,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, contributed by J. J. Hanley)


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Birth of Nicholas Joseph Callan, Priest & Scientist

Father Nicholas Joseph Callan, Irish priest and scientist, is born on December 22, 1799, in Darver, County Louth. He is Professor of Natural Philosophy in Maynooth College in Maynooth, County Kildare from 1834, and is best known for his work on the induction coil.

Callan attends school at an academy in Dundalk. His local parish priest, Father Andrew Levins, then takes him in hand as an altar boy and Mass server and sees him start the priesthood at Navan seminary. He enters Maynooth College in 1816. In his third year at Maynooth, he studies natural and experimental philosophy under Dr. Cornelius Denvir. He introduces the experimental method into his teaching and has an interest in electricity and magnetism.

Callan is ordained a priest in 1823 and goes to Rome to study at Sapienza University, obtaining a doctorate in divinity in 1826. While in Rome he becomes acquainted with the work of the pioneers in electricity such as Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), who is a pioneer in bioelectricity, and Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), who is known especially for the development of the electric battery. In 1826, he returns to Maynooth as the new Professor of Natural Philosophy (now called physics), where he also begins working with electricity in his basement laboratory at the college.

Influenced by William Sturgeon and Michael Faraday, Callan begins work on the idea of the induction coil in 1834. He invents the first induction coil in 1836. An induction coil produces an intermittent high voltage alternating current from a low voltage direct current supply. It has a primary coil consisting of a few turns of thick wire wound around an iron core and subjected to a low voltage (usually from a battery). Wound on top of this is a secondary coil made up of many turns of thin wire. An iron armature and make-and-break mechanism repeatedly interrupts the current to the primary coil, producing a high voltage, rapidly alternating current in the secondary circuit.

Callan invents the induction coil because he needs to generate a higher level of electricity than currently available. He takes a bar of soft iron, about 2 feet long, and wraps it around with two lengths of copper wire, each about 200 feet long. He connects the beginning of the first coil to the beginning of the second. Finally, he connects a battery, much smaller than the enormous contrivance just described, to the beginning and end of winding one. He finds that when the battery contact is broken, a shock can be felt between the first terminal of the first coil and the second terminal of the second coil.

Further experimentation shows how the coil device can bring the shock from a small battery up the strength level of a big battery. So Callan tries making a bigger coil. With a battery of only 14 seven-inch plates, the device produces power enough for an electric shock “so strong that a person who took it felt the effects of it for several days.” He thinks of his creation as a kind of electromagnet, but what he actually makes is a primitive induction transformer.

Callan’s induction coil also uses an interrupter that consists of a rocking wire that repeatedly dips into a small cup of mercury (similar to the interrupters used by Charles Grafton Page). Because of the action of the interrupter, which can make and break the current going into the coil, he calls his device the “repeater.” Actually, this device is the world’s first transformer. He induces a high voltage in the second wire, starting with a low voltage in the adjacent first wire. The faster he interrupts the current, the bigger the spark. In 1837 he produces his giant induction machine using a mechanism from a clock to interrupt the current 20 times a second. It generates 15-inch sparks, an estimated 60,000 volts and the largest artificial bolt of electricity then seen.

Callan experiments with designing batteries after he finds the models available to him at the time to be insufficient for research in electromagnetism. Some previous batteries had used rare metals such as platinum or unresponsive materials like carbon and zinc. He finds that he can use inexpensive cast iron instead of platinum or carbon. For his Maynooth battery he uses iron casting for the outer casing and places a zinc plate in a porous pot (a pot that had an inside and outside chamber for holding two different types of acid) in the centre. Using a single fluid cell, he disposes of the porous pot and two different fluids. He is able to build a battery with just a single solution.

While experimenting with batteries, Callan also builds the world’s largest battery at that time. To construct this battery, he joins together 577 individual batteries (“cells“), which use over 30 gallons of acid. Since instruments for measuring current or voltages have not yet been invented, he measures the strength of a battery by measuring how much weight his electromagnet can lift when powered by the battery. Using his giant battery, his electromagnet lifts 2 tons. The Maynooth battery goes into commercial production in London. He also discovers an early form of galvanisation to protect iron from rusting when he is experimenting on battery design, and he patents the idea.

Callan dies at the age of 64 in Maynooth, County Kildare, on January 10, 1864. He is buried in the cemetery in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

The Callan Building on the north campus of NUI Maynooth, a university which is part of St. Patrick’s College until 1997, is named in his honour. In addition, Callan Hall in the south campus, is used through the 1990s for first year science lectures including experimental & mathematical physics, chemistry and biology. The Nicholas Callan Memorial Prize is an annual prize awarded to the best final year student in Experimental Physics.