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

Tag Archives: Catholic Church


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Birth of Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead

mary-aikenhead

Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead, founder of the Catholic religious institute, the Religious Sisters of Charity, and of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, is born in Daunt’s Square off Grand Parade, County Cork, on January 19, 1787.

Aikenhead is baptised in the Anglican Communion on April 4, 1787. Since she is quite frail and possibly asthmatic, it was recommended that she be fostered with a nanny named Mary Rourke who lives on higher ground on Eason’s Hill, Shandon, Cork. It is believed that she is secretly baptised a Catholic by Mary Rourke, who is a devout Catholic. Aikenhead’s parents visit every week until 1793 when her father, Dr. David Aikenhead, decides he wants her to rejoin the family in Daunt’s Square.

By the early 1790s, Aikenhead’s father has become imbibed by the principles of the United Irishmen. On one occasion Lord Edward FitzGerald, disguised as a Quaker, seeks refuge in the Aikenhead home. He is enjoying dinner with the family when the house is surrounded by troops. Fitzgerald manages to slip away but the house is searched but no incriminating documents are found.

On June 6, 1802, at age of fifteen, Aikenhead is officially baptised a Roman Catholic. In 1808, she goes to stay with her friend Anne O’Brien in Dublin. Here she witnesses widespread unemployment and poverty and soon begins to accompany her friend in visiting the poor and sick in their homes. After many years in charity work and feeling the call to religious life, she looks in vain for a religious institute devoted to outside charitable work.

Aikenhead is chosen by Archbishop Murray, Bishop Coadjutor of Dublin, to carry out his plan of founding a congregation of the Sisters of Charity in Ireland. From 1812 – 1815 she is a novitiate in the Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin at Micklegate Bar, York. It is there she assumes the name Sister Mary Augustine, which she keeps for the rest of her life.

On September 1, 1815, the initial members of the Convent of the Institute take their vows and Sister Mary Augustine is appointed Superior-General. The following sixteen years are filled with arduous work – organizing the community and extending its sphere of labor to every phase of charity, chiefly hospital and rescue work.

In 1831, overexertion and disease take a toll Sister Mary Augustine’s health, leaving her an invalid. Her activity is unceasing, however, as she directs her sisters in their work during the plague of 1832, places them in charge of new institutions, and sends them on missions to France and Australia. She also founds St. Margaret’s Hospice, which has been known as St. Margaret of Scotland Hospice since 1950.

Sister Mary Augustine dies in Dublin on July 22, 1858 at 71 years of age. She leaves her institute in a flourishing condition, in charge of ten institutions, besides innumerable missions and branches of charitable work. She is buried in the cemetery adjacent to St. Mary Magdalen’s, Donnybrook.


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Hugh O’Brien – First Irish Mayor of Boston

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Hugh O’Brien is sworn in as Boston’s 31st mayor and first Irish mayor on January 5, 1885, marking the beginning of a new era in Boston politics.

Born in Ireland on July 13, 1827, O’Brien moves with his family to Boston when he is five years old, well before the potato famine sends waves of impoverished Irish men and women to Boston. He spends seven years in the Boston public schools and is apprenticed to a printer at the age of 12.

Working first for the newspaper Boston Courier and then for a Boston printer, O’Brien excels at the printing business, making foreman when he is only fifteen. He starts his own publication, Shipping and Commercial List, and is soon successful enough to become a respected member of the Boston business elite.

O’Brien’s business success draws the attention of Patrick Maguire, publisher of The Republic newspaper and the unofficial head of Irish politics in Boston. He orchestrates O’Brien’s election to the city’s Board of Aldermen.

Boston has long been controlled by native-born Protestants, generally called “Yankees,” most of whom have a stereotypical view of Irish immigrants as poor, ignorant, undisciplined, and under the thumb of the Catholic Church. But the Irish-born population of Boston is exploding, making up over 40% of the city’s population by 1885.

By 1883, Maguire decides that the time has come for Boston to elect an Irish-born mayor. He devises a two-part strategy. O’Brien will be the public face of the campaign, an able public official who criticizes the previous administration for increasing taxes. O’Brien’s pledge to reduce the tax rate without cutting city services appeals to the Yankee tradition of frugality. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Maguire develops a system of Irish ward bosses who visit each household in the neighborhood and make sure that every eligible Irishman votes for O’Brien. O’Brien sweeps 15 of Boston’s 25 wards and, on December 10, 1884, becomes the first Irish Catholic to be elected Mayor of Boston.

O’Brien surprises the opposition by governing the city in a conservative and honest way during his four terms in office. He cuts tax rates as promised. He also widens streets, establishes the commission that hires Frederick Law Olmsted to design the Emerald Necklace park system, and builds the new Boston Public Library in Copley Square. He disarms his critics by enlisting Yankee and Republican businessmen to serve on the committees overseeing these projects.

Hugh O’Brien dies on August 1, 1895, and is buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.


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Death of Archbishop John Joseph Hughes

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John Joseph Hughes, Irish-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and the fourth Bishop and first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, dies in New York City on January 3, 1864.

Hughes is born in the hamlet of Annaloghan, near Aughnacloy, County Tyrone. He emigrates to the United States in 1817.

After several unsuccessful applications to Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, he is eventually hired as a gardener at the college. During this time, he befriends Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, who is impressed by Hughes and persuades the rector to reconsider his admission. Hughes is subsequently admitted as a regular student of Mount St. Mary’s in September 1820.

On October 15, 1826, Hughes is ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Henry Conwell at Old St. Joseph’s Church in Philadelphia. His first assignment is as a curate at St. Augustine Church in Philadelphia, where he assists its pastor by celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, preaching sermons, and other duties in the parish.

Hughes is chosen by Pope Gregory XVI as the coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of New York on August 7, 1837. He is consecrated bishop at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on January 7, 1838, with the title of the titular see of Basilinopolis, by the Bishop of New York, John Dubois, his former Rector.

Hughes campaigns actively on behalf of Irish immigrants and attempts to secure state support for parochial schools. Although this attempt fails, he founds an independent Catholic school system which becomes an integral part of the Catholic Church’s structure at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), which mandates that all parishes have a school and that all Catholic children be sent to those schools. In 1841, Hughes founds St. John’s College in New York City which is now Fordham University.

Hughes is appointed Apostolic Administrator of the diocese due to Bishop Dubois’ failing health. As coadjutor, he automatically succeeds Dubois upon the bishop’s death on December 20, 1842, taking over a diocese which covers the entire state of New York and northern New Jersey. He is a staunch opponent of Abolitionism and the Free Soil movement, whose proponents often express anti-Catholic attitudes. Hughes also founds the Ultramontane newspaper New York Freeman to express his ideas.

Hughes becomes an archbishop on July 19, 1850, when the diocese is elevated to the status of archdiocese by Pope Pius IX. As archbishop, he becomes the metropolitan for the Catholic bishops serving all the dioceses established in the entire Northeastern United States. To the dismay of many in New York’s Protestant upper-class, Hughes foresees the uptown expansion of the city and begins construction of the current St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Street, laying its cornerstone on August 15, 1858. At the request of President Abraham Lincoln, Hughes serves as semiofficial envoy to the Vatican and to France in late 1861 and early 1862. Lincoln also seeks Hughes’ advice on the appointment of hospital chaplains.

Hughes serves as archbishop until his death. He is originally buried in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, but his remains are exhumed in 1882 and reinterred in the crypt under the altar of the new cathedral he had begun.