seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Priesthood in the Catholic Church


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Birth of Francis Desmond Wilson, Irish Catholic Priest

Francis Desmond Wilson, Irish Catholic priest, is born on July 8, 1925, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is renowned for his courageous community activism, advocacy for education, and role as a mediator during the Northern Ireland Troubles, earning him the title “the People’s Priest.”

Wilson is the youngest of five sons in a middle class Catholic family. Witnessing sectarian violence and the hardships faced by Catholics in Belfast, he initially considers careers in science or journalism but feels called to the priesthood to address social injustice. He studies at St. Malachy’s College and Queen’s University Belfast and is ordained in 1949.

Wilson begins his priestly career as a hospital chaplain, where he becomes aware of the systemic neglect and exploitation of women. This experience shapes his later advocacy for marginalized groups. In 1966, he is assigned to St. John’s parish in Ballymurphy, a heavily working class and nationalist area. Confronted with poverty, deprivation, and social neglect, he rejects a purely clerical role and chooses to live among his parishioners, earning deep community trust.

Wilson facilitates grassroots initiatives such as the Springhill Community House and the Conway Education Centre, establishing spaces for alternative education, vocational training, small business incubators, and cultural engagement. These efforts emphasize the empowerment of local communities, adult education, and economic development, drawing inspiration from liberation theology and Worker Priest models.

Wilson’s ministry coincides with some of the most violent years of the Northern Ireland Troubles. He provides support to families affected by violence, offers shelter and practical assistance, and maintains dialogue channels between republican and loyalist communities. He criticizes the Catholic Church for its detachment from the struggles of working class Catholics and refuses to condemn paramilitary groups acting as “alternative police and armies,” reflecting his nuanced approach to community protection and justice. Alongside figures like Fr. Alec Reid, he is instrumental in mediating discussions that contribute toward the peace process.

Wilson’s work earns widespread admiration for his courage, humanity, and commitment to justice. He hosts Mother Teresa in west Belfast, helping to establish charitable outreach in the community. Despite periods of estrangement with his bishop and being barred from celebrating Mass in churches, he continues his ministry at home and through community projects.

Wilson is also a prolific writer, recording diaries, pamphlets, and weekly columns, later commemorated in the documentary “Fr. Des – The Way He Saw It” narrated by Stephen Rea, and in theatre productions celebrating his life. President Michael D. Higgins and countless individuals recognize his significant role in civil rights, education, and peacemaking.

Wilson dies in Belfast on November 5, 2019, at the age of 94, leaving a lasting impact on Belfast and a model for socially committed clergy worldwide. His approach to ministry stands as a testament to living faith in solidarity with marginalized communities, emphasizing education, dialogue, and justice over institutional authority.

The institutions Wilson helps create, notably the Springhill Community House and Conway Mill, continue to support education, enterprise, and community engagement in Belfast, embodying Wilson’s vision of an empowered, inclusive society. His life remains an inspiration for those committed to social justice, peacebuilding, and community-centered ministry.

Wilson is remembered as a priest, educator, community activist, and mediator, whose dedication to the underprivileged and commitment to peace has left an indelible mark on Northern Ireland.


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Death of Richard Downey, Archbishop of Liverpool

Richard Downey, English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, dies in Liverpool, England, on June 16, 1953. He serves as Archbishop of Liverpool from 1928 until his death.

Downey is born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, on May 5, 1881. He is ordained to the priesthood on May 25, 1907, at St. Joseph Seminary, Up Holland, Skelmersdale, Lancashire. He is Professor of Philosophy at Sacred Heart College, Hammersmith, and then Professor of Dogmatic Theology at St. Joseph’s College, Up Holland, where he is also Vice-Rector. On August 3, 1928, he is appointed Archbishop of Liverpool by Pope Pius XI, succeeding the late Frederick William Keating. He receives his Episcopal consecration on the following September 21 from Cardinal Francis Bourne, with Bishops Robert Dobson and Francis Vaughan serving as co-consecrators.

Downey’s tenure sees the construction and dedication of the crypt of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, built to a design by Sir Edwin Lutyens, although the Cathedral itself is never completed as he had envisaged. A picture of Lutyens proposed cathedral is printed on postcards sold to raise funds.

In 1929, before the actual construction begins, Downey states, “Hitherto all cathedrals have been dedicated to saints. I hope this one will be dedicated to Christ himself with a great figure surmounted on the cathedral, visible for many a mile out at sea.” He also declares that while the Cathedral will not be medieval and Gothic, neither will it be as modern as the works of Jacob Epstein, a statement somewhat at odds with the design that is finally realised after his death.

In 1933, after the urn containing the bones of King Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York is removed from Westminster Abbey for examination and then returned with an Anglican burial service, Downey says, “It is difficult to see what moral justification there can be for reading a Protestant service over the remains of these Roman Catholic princes, even though it were done on the plea of legal continuity of the present Anglican Church with the pre-Reformation Church of Britain.”

Downey dies in Liverpool at the age of 72 on June 16, 1953, having served as Liverpool’s archbishop for twenty-four years. His remains are interred in a crypt at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool.


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Birth of Father Willie Doyle

William Joseph Gabriel Doyle, SJ, MC, an Irish Catholic priest, is born in Dalkey, County Dublin, on March 3, 1873. He is killed in action while serving as a military chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the World War I. He is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.

Doyle is the youngest of seven children of Hugh and Christine Doyle (née Byrne). He is educated at Ratcliffe College, a Catholic boarding school in Leicester, England.

After reading St. Alphonsus‘ book Instructions and Consideration on the Religious State, he is inspired to enter the priesthood. In March 1891, he enters the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Ireland. He then enters St. Stanislaus College in Tullabeg, Rahan, County Offaly. Having completed his novitiate, for his regency he is assigned to teach. He teaches at Belvedere College, Dublin, and at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, between 1894 and 1898. He then studies philosophy at Collège Saint-Augustin in Enghien, Belgium, and Stonyhurst College, England. From 1904 to 1907, he studies theology at Milltown College and University College Dublin (UCD).

He was ordained a Catholic priest on July 28, 1907. He then undertakes his tertianship at Drongen Abbey, Drongen, Belgium. He takes his final vows on February 2, 1909. From 1909 until 1915 he serves on the Jesuit mission team, traveling around Ireland and Britain preaching parish missions and conducting retreats. In 1914 he is involved in the foundation of a Colettine Poor Clares monastery in Cork, County Cork. He is an early member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association and is considered a future leader of the organisation by its founder, Fr. James Cullen.

Doyle volunteers to serve in the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department of the British Army during World War I. He is appointed as a chaplain with the 16th (Irish) Division. He is assigned to the 8th Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers, and is posted with them to the Western Front. During the Battle of Loos he is caught in a German gas attack and for his conduct is mentioned in dispatches. A recommendation for a Military Cross is rejected as “he had not been long enough at the front.” He is presented with the “parchment of merit” of the 49th (Irish) Brigade instead. On August 16, 1917, he is killed in action at the Battle of Langemarck “while administering the last rites to his stricken countrymen.”

Doyle is awarded the Military Cross for his bravery during the assault on the village of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He is also posthumously recommended for both the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order, but is awarded neither. It is possible that  anti-Catholicism played a role in the British Army’s decision not to grant him both awards.

General William Hickie, the commander-in-chief of the 16th (Irish) Division, describes Father Doyle as “one of the bravest men who fought or served out here.”

Doyle’s body is never recovered but he is commemorated at Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front.

Doyle is proposed for canonisation in 1938, but this is not followed through. His papers can be found in the Jesuit archives, Leeson Street, Dublin.

A stained glass window dedicated to Doyle’s memory is present in St. Finnian’s Church, Dromin, County Louth.

Despite his troubled relationship with the Catholic Church in Ireland, Irish author and playwright Brendan Behan is known to have always felt a great admiration for Doyle. He praises Doyle in his 1958 memoir Borstal Boy. Alfred O’Rahilly‘s biography of the fallen chaplain is known to have been one of Behan’s favorite books.

Irish folk singer Willie ‘Liam’ Clancy is named after Doyle due to his mother’s fondness for him, although they never meet.

In August 2022, the Father Willie Doyle Association is established to petition the Catholic Church to introduce a cause for canonisation for Doyle. In January 2022, the Supplex Libellus, the formal petition, is presented to Bishop Thomas Deenihan. Having consulted with the Irish Bishops’ Conference and the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Deenihan issues an edict on October 27, 2022, announcing the opening of a cause. The Opening Session takes place on November 20, 2022, at the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar.


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Death of Michael J. Browne, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh

Michael J. Browne, an Irish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, dies in Galway, County Galway, on February 24, 1980. He serves as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh for almost forty years from 1937 to 1976.

Browne is born in Westport, County Mayo, on December 20, 1895. He is an important and outspoken member of the Irish hierarchy. His time as Bishop has been described by the historian James S. Donnelly Jr. as “far-reaching and … controversial,” while the historian of Irish Catholicism John Henry Whyte claims that Browne’s “readiness to put forward his views bluntly is welcome at least to the historian.”

Browne is ordained to the priesthood on June 20, 1920, for the Archdiocese of Tuam. He later serves as professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

On August 6, 1937, at the relatively young age of 41, Browne is appointed Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh by Pope Pius XI, receiving his episcopal consecration from Archbishop Thomas Gilmartin on the following August 10. He supports Taoiseach Éamon de Valera‘s defence of arrests and police searches for cached Irish Republican Army (IRA) arms, declaring, “Any Irishman who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God’s law, and there can be no excuse for that crime – not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity.”

In 1939, Browne is selected by Éamon de Valera to chair the Commission on Vocational Organisation.

Browne is attentive to the state of public morality in the diocese, and James S. Donnelly Jr. has noted his role in directing episcopal and clerical censorship of newsagents and county librarians. He is also concerned about public intoxication and other misconduct at the Galway Races, controversies over dancing and the commercial dance halls, as well as immodesty in dress and the closely related issue of so-called “mixed bathing” in Galway and Salthill.

Like other members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Browne regularly condemns communism in his pastoral letters. When Cardinal József Mindszenty is detained by Hungary‘s post-war communist government, Browne in 1949 forwards protest resolutions from Galway Corporation, Galway County Council and the University College Galway student body to Pope Pius XII. He also frequently condemns the Connolly Association, an Irish republican socialist group in Britain close to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In 1957, in response to a growing tension between Catholics and Protestants at Fethard-on-Sea, including the Fethard-on-Sea boycott, Browne says, “non-Catholics do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest.”

The most enduring monument or physical legacy of Browne’s time as Bishop is the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas, commonly known as Galway Cathedral, which is dedicated in 1965 by Cardinal Richard James Cushing of Boston, Massachusetts. The site of the old jail had come into the possession of the diocese in 1941 and Browne leads the campaign to construct a new Cathedral. This includes a 1957 audience with Pope Pius XII where the plans are approved.

Browne attends the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and retires in 1976. He dies four years later in Galway, at the age of 84, on February 24, 1980.

Browne is parodied in Breandán Ó hÉithir`s novel Lig Sinn i gCathu, which fictionalises late 1940s Galway as “Baile an Chaisil” and Browne as “An tEaspag Ó Maoláin.”

The Irish cabinet minister Noël Browne (no known relation) in his 1986 memoir Against the Tide describes the physical attributes of his episcopal namesake:

“The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean. Around his great neck was an elegant glinting gold episcopal chain with a simple pectoral gold cross. He wore a ruby ring on his plump finger and wore a slightly ridiculous tiny scullcap on his noble head. The well-filled semi-circular scarlet silk cummerbund and sash neatly divided the lordly prince into two.”


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Birth of Thomas Gilmartin, Archbishop of Tuam

Thomas Patrick Gilmartin, Irish clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, is born in Castlebar, County Mayo, on May 18, 1861. He serves as Bishop of Clonfert from 1909 to 1918 and Archbishop of Tuam from 1918 to 1939.

Gilmartin is the son of Michael Gilmartin, Rinshiona, Castlebar.[1] He is educated at the Franciscan monastery boys school in Errew and at O’Dea’s Academy in Castlebar. He attends St Jarlath’s College in Tuam, and then St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1883, he becomes a professor of mathematics and natural science at St Jarlath’s.

In 1891, Gilmartin serves as Dean of Formation and Vice-President of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He is awarded a Doctor of Divinity by Rome in 1905.

He was appointed the Bishop of the Diocese of Clonfert by the Holy See on July 3, 1909 and is consecrated on 13 February 1910 by the Most Reverend John Healy, Archbishop of Tuam. On the death of Archbishop Healy, he was translated to the Metropolitan see of Tuam as archbishop on July 10, 1918.

During the Irish War of Independence, Archbishop Gilmartin speaks out strongly against violence. In January 1920, he criticizes the “undisguised ruffianism” in the rebel ranks. He counsels his priests that whatever their personal political beliefs, they should not take an aggressive part on behalf of either side. However, many younger clerics support Sinn Féin and the IRA.

Gilmartin is involved in the controversy over the appointment of Letitia Dunbar, a member of the Church of Ireland and graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, to the County Mayo librarianship in 1931.

T.H. White describes meeting the Archbishop on the top of Croagh Patrick on an annual Reek Sunday pilgrimage during the 1930s in his book The Godstone and the Blackymor and having a cup of tea with him on the top after overenthusiastically kissing his ring.

Gilmartin dies at the age of 78 in office in Tuam on October 14, 1939.

Gilmartin writes the memoir of Primate Joseph Dixon in Healy’s Centenary History of Maynooth in 1895. He is also a contributor to the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, the Irish Theological Quarterly, and the Catholic Encyclopedia.


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Birth of William MacNeely, Bishop of Raphoe

The Most Reverend William MacNeely, the Bishop of Raphoe from 1923 until 1963, is born in County Donegal on December 28, 1889. He has the distinction of being Raphoe’s first completely Roman-educated bishop.

MacNeely is the son of a butcher in Donegal Town. He is educated at the High School in Letterkenny, and in Rome from 1906–12. He is ordained to the priesthood on February 4, 1912, and upon his return to Ireland is appointed to the staff of St. Eunan’s College.

MacNeely serves for two years as chaplain with the Irish Battalions in the British Army in World War I. He sees action on the Western Front and is injured in a gas attack.

On July 27, 1923, at the comparatively young age of 35, MacNeely is ordained as Bishop of Raphoe in succession to Bishop Patrick O’Donnell who had been appointed coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh the previous year. In this role he is responsible for the completion of the Cathedral of St. Eunan and St. Columba in Letterkenny and negotiating with Harry Clarke to finish the work of glazing the cathedral.

Keen to develop religious life in his diocese, MacNeely invites the Capuchin Franciscans to the Creeslough area in 1930 to a site that becomes known as Ards Priory.

In a diocese where farming is the main industry, MacNeely maintains a strong interest in farming, being himself a successful breeder of Shorthorn cattle.

In 2008, it is reported that MacNeely was one of the two Irish episcopal coordinators who worked alongside “an intelligence-gathering secret service” set up in 1948 to monitor any sign of a “Communist takeover” of Ireland.

In 1953, MacNeely is a member of the inaugural Episcopal Commission for Emigrants reflecting the high levels of migration that afflict his diocese and wider Donegal for much of the twentieth century.

MacNeely serves as Bishop for over forty years, attending the early sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Shortly before his death, he is appointed Assistant to the Papal Throne. He dies on December 11, 1963, and is interred beside the Cathedral of St. Eunan and St. Columba.


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Opening of the Royal College of St. Patrick in Maynooth

The Royal College of St. Patrick in Maynooth, County Kildare, is established by the Maynooth College Act 1795 and opens on October 1, 1796. Today known as St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, the college and national seminary on its grounds are often referred to as Maynooth College.

Thomas Pelham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduces a bill for the foundation of a Catholic college, and this is enacted by parliament. It is built to hold up to 500 students for the Catholic priesthood of whom up to 90 are to be ordained each year. It is once the largest seminary in the world.

The town of Maynooth is the seat of the FitzGeralds, Earls of Kildare. The ivy-covered tower attached to St. Mary’s Church of Ireland is all that remains of the ancient college of St. Mary of Maynooth, founded and endowed by Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. On October 7, 1515, Henry VIII grants licence for the establishment of a college. In 1518, the 9th Earl presents a petition to the Archbishop of Dublin, William Rokeby, for a license to found and endow a college at Maynooth, the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1535 the college is suppressed and its endowments and lands confiscated as part of the Reformation.

The present college is created in the 1790s against the background of the upheaval during the French Revolution and the gradual removal of the penal laws. The college is particularly intended to provide for the education of Catholic priests in Ireland, who until this Act had to go to Continental Europe for their formation and theological education. Many are educated in France, and the church and government are concerned at the Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, and at the same time at the risk of revolutionary thinking arising from training in revolutionary France. A number of the early lecturers in Maynooth, are exiles from France. Also among the first professors is a layman, James Bernard Clinch, recommended by Edmund Burke. Also relevant is the enactment of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793.

The college is legally established on June 5, 1795, by the Maynooth College Act 1795 as The Royal College of St. Patrick, by act of the Parliament of Ireland, to provide “for the better education of persons professing the popish or Roman Catholic religion.” The college is originally established to provide a university education for Catholic lay and ecclesiastical students, the lay college is based in Riverstown House on the south campus from 1802. With the opening of Clongowes Wood College in 1814, the lay college is closed and the college functions solely as a Catholic seminary for almost 150 years.

In 1800, John Butler, 12th Baron Dunboyne, dies and leaves a substantial fortune to the college. Butler had been a Roman Catholic, and Bishop of Cork, who had embraced Protestantism in order to marry and guarantee the succession to his hereditary title. However, there are no children to his marriage, and it is alleged that he had been reconciled to the Catholic Church at his death. Were this the case, a Penal Law demands that the will is invalid, and his wealth is to pass to his family. Much litigation follows before a negotiated settlement in 1808 that leads to the establishment of a Dunboyne scholarship fund.

The land is donated by William FitzGerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster, who had argued in favour of Catholic emancipation in the Irish House of Lords. He lives nearby at Carton House and also at Leinster House. The building work is paid for by the British Government with the parliament continuing to give it an annual grant until the Irish Church Act 1869. When this law is passed the college receives a capital sum of £369,000. The trustees invest 75% of this in mortgages to Irish landowners at a yield of 4.25% or 4.75% per annum. This is considered a secure investment at the time but agitation for land reform and the depression of the 1870s erodes this security. The largest single mortgage is granted to the Earl of Granard. Accumulated losses on these transactions reaches £35,000 by 1906.

The first building to go up on the site is designed by, and named after, John Stoyte. Stoyte House, which can still be seen from the entrance to the old campus, is a well-known building to Maynooth students and stands very close to the very historic Maynooth Castle. Over the next 15 years, the site at Maynooth undergoes rapid construction so as to cater for the influx of new students, and the buildings which now border St. Joseph’s Square (to the rear of Stoyte House) are completed by 1824.

The Rev. Laurence F. Renehan (1797–1857), a noted antiquarian, church historian, and cleric, serves as president of St. Patrick’s from 1845 until 1857. Under Renehan, many of the college’s most important buildings are constructed by Augustus Pugin.

In 1876, the college becomes a constituent college of the Catholic University of Ireland, and later offers Royal University of Ireland degrees in arts and science. Even after the granting of the Pontifical Charter in 1896 the college becomes a recognised college of the National University of Ireland in 1910, and from this time its arts and science degrees are awarded by the National University of Ireland. However, during this time the Pontifical University of Maynooth continues to confer its degrees in theology, because until 1997 theology degrees are prohibited by the Royal University of Ireland and its successor the National University of Ireland.

In 1997, the Universities Act, 1997 is passed by the Oireachtas. Chapter IX of the Act provides for the creation of the separate Maynooth University. This new university is created from the college’s faculties of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, and Science.

In 1994, W. J. Smyth had been appointed to the position of Master of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth (NUI). In 1997, this position is converted into President of Maynooth University. After his 10-year term ends in 2004, he is replaced by John Hughes as president of Maynooth University and a new line of heads for the college.

By 2016, the number of resident seminarians has dropped from several hundreds to just 40 to 60. In August 2016, it is revealed that, due to frequent use of Grindr by college students, the then Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin decides to transfer the students from his diocese to the Irish Pontifical College in Rome. According to Martin, “there are allegations on different sides,” one of which of an “atmosphere that was growing in Maynooth” of a “homosexual, a gay culture, that students have been using an app called Grindr,” which “would be fostering promiscuous sexuality, which is certainly not in any way the mature vision of sexuality one would expect a priest to understand.” Subsequently, the college trustees order a review of the college’s policy on social media use.


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Birth of Joe Higgins, Politician & Member of the European Parliament

Joe Higgins, a former Socialist Party politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency from 1997 to 2007 and from 2011 to 2016, is born in Lispole, County Kerry, on May 20, 1949. He serves as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency from 2009 to 2011.

One of nine children of a small farming family, Higgins goes to school in the Dingle Christian Brothers School, and after finishing he enrolls in the priesthood. As part of his training, he is sent to a Catholic seminary school in Minnesota, United States, in the 1960s. He becomes politicised at the time of anti-Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement. He is a brother of Liam Higgins, who plays football with the Kerry GAA senior team in the 1960s and 1970s. He is bilingual in English and Irish.

Higgins returns to Ireland and attends University College Dublin (UCD), studying English and French. For several years he is a teacher in several Dublin inner city schools. While at university he joins the Labour Party and becomes active in the Militant Tendency, an entryist Trotskyist group that operates within the Labour Party. Throughout his time in the Labour Party, he is a strong opponent of coalition politics, along with TDs Emmet Stagg and Michael D. Higgins. He is elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party by the membership in the 1980s. In 1989, he is expelled alongside 13 other members of Militant Tendency by party leader Dick Spring. The group eventually leaves the party and forms Militant Labour, which becomes the Socialist Party in 1996.

Higgins spends over half his salary on the Socialist Party and causes he supports. He is elected to Dublin County Council in 1991 for the Mulhuddart electoral area and is until 2003 a member of Fingal County Council. In 1996, he campaigns against local authority water and refuse charges and contests the Dublin West by-election, losing narrowly to Brian Lenihan Jnr.

Higgins is first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1997 Irish general election and re-elected at the 2002 general election. He loses his seat at the 2007 general election but regains it at the 2011 general election. From 2002 to 2007, he is a member of the Technical Group in the Dáil which consists of various independent TDs, Sinn Féin and the Green Party grouped together for better speaking time.

Higgins speaks out against the Iraq War while a TD, and addresses the Dublin leg of the March 20, 2003 International Day of Action. He is also prominent in the successful 2005 campaign to bring Nigerian school student Olukunle Eluhanla back to Ireland after he had been deported. He remains an opponent of the deportation policy.

Higgins uses his platform in the Dáil to raise the issue of exploitation of migrant and guest workers in Ireland. He and others claim that many companies are paying migrants below the minimum wage and, in some cases, not paying overtime rates. He expresses opposition in the Dáil to the jailing of the Rossport Five in July 2005. He raises the outsourcing of jobs by Irish Ferries in the Dáil in November 2005, requesting new legislation to regulate what he describes as “these modern slavers.”

Higgins successfully contests the 2009 European Parliament election for the Dublin constituency, beating two incumbents, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin and Eoin Ryan of Fianna Fáil, for the third and final seat. He is elected on the same day to Fingal County Council for the Castleknock electoral area, topping the poll. As Irish law prohibits politicians having a dual mandate, he vacates the council seat in July 2009 and is replaced by Matt Waine. He was a member of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (EUL–NGL) group in the European Parliament, the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, and the delegation for relations with the countries of South Asia. He is also a substitute member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, the Committee on Petitions and the delegation for relations with the Mercosur countries. Paul Murphy replaces him as an MEP when he is re-elected to the Dáil in 2011.

Higgins is elected again as TD for Dublin West at the 2011 Irish general election. He wins the third seat (of four) with 8,084 first preference votes. In his first speech in the 31st Dáil, he opposed the nomination of Fine Gael‘s Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. On May 4, 2011, Kenny is forced to apologise to Higgins in the Dáil after falsely accusing him of being a supporter of Osama bin Laden after Higgins offers criticism of his assassination by the CIA. He had asked the Taoiseach, “Is assassination only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?”

In the Dáil, Higgins accuses Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore of doing nothing for the 14 Irish citizens being held “incommunicado” by Israel in November 2011. In December 2011, he describes as a disgraceful campaign of intimidation the fines imposed by the government on people who are unable to pay a new household charge brought in as part of the latest austerity budget and says to Enda Kenny that he will be “the new Captain Boycott of austerity in this country.” He asks that Minister for Finance Michael Noonan provide EBS staff with the 13th month end-of-year payment they are being denied.

In September 2012, Higgins publicly disagrees with former Socialist Party colleague Clare Daly, saying it is “unfortunate” that she has resigned from the party, but that it is impossible for Daly under the banner of the Socialist Party to continue to offer political support to Mick Wallace, who is at that time embroiled in scandal.

Higgins announces in April 2014 that he will not contest the next Dáil election. At the time he states his belief that the “baton of elected representation” should be carried by another generation of Socialist Party politicians — like Ruth Coppinger and Paul Murphy.


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Birth of Michael J. Browne, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh

Michael J. Browne, an Irish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, is born in Westport, County Mayo, on December 20, 1895. He serves as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh for almost forty years from 1937 to 1976.

Browne is an important and outspoken member of the Irish hierarchy. His time as Bishop has been described by the historian James S. Donnelly Jr. as “far-reaching and … controversial,” while the historian of Irish Catholicism John Henry Whyte claims that Browne’s “readiness to put forward his views bluntly is welcome at least to the historian.”

Browne is ordained to the priesthood on June 20, 1920, for the Archdiocese of Tuam. He later serves as professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

On August 6, 1937, at the relatively young age of 41, Browne is appointed Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh by Pope Pius XI, receiving his episcopal consecration from Archbishop Thomas Gilmartin on the following August 10. He supports Taoiseach Éamon de Valera‘s defence of arrests and police searches for cached Irish Republican Army (IRA) arms, declaring, “Any Irishman who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God’s law, and there can be no excuse for that crime – not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity.”

In 1939, Browne is selected by Éamon de Valera to chair the Commission on Vocational Organisation.

Browne is attentive to the state of public morality in the diocese, and James S. Donnelly Jr. has noted his role in directing episcopal and clerical censorship of newsagents and county librarians. He is also concerned about public intoxication and other misconduct at the Galway Races, controversies over dancing and the commercial dance halls, as well as immodesty in dress and the closely related issue of so-called “mixed bathing” in Galway and Salthill.

Like other members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Browne regularly condemns communism in his pastoral letters. When Cardinal József Mindszenty is detained by Hungary‘s post-war communist government, Browne in 1949 forwards protest resolutions from Galway Corporation, Galway County Council and the University College Galway student body to Pope Pius XII. He also frequently condemns the Connolly Association, an Irish republican socialist group in Britain close to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In 1957, in response to a growing tension between Catholics and Protestants at Fethard-on-Sea, including the Fethard-on-Sea boycott, Browne says, “non-Catholics do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest.”

The most enduring monument or physical legacy of Browne’s time as Bishop is the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas, commonly known as Galway Cathedral, which is dedicated in 1965 by Cardinal Richard James Cushing of Boston, Massachusetts. The site of the old jail had come into the possession of the diocese in 1941 and Browne leads the campaign to construct a new Cathedral. This includes a 1957 audience with Pope Pius XII where the plans are approved.

Browne attends the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and retires in 1976. He dies four years later, at the age of 84, on February 24, 1980.

Browne is parodied in Breandán Ó hÉithir`s novel Lig Sinn i gCathu, which fictionalises late 1940s Galway as “Baile an Chaisil” and Browne as “An tEaspag Ó Maoláin.”

The Irish cabinet minister Noël Browne (no known relation) in his 1986 memoir Against the Tide describes the physical attributes of his episcopal namesake:

“The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean. Around his great neck was an elegant glinting gold episcopal chain with a simple pectoral gold cross. He wore a ruby ring on his plump finger and wore a slightly ridiculous tiny scullcap on his noble head. The well-filled semi-circular scarlet silk cummerbund and sash neatly divided the lordly prince into two.”


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Birth of Playwright Michael Joseph Molloy

Michael Joseph Molloy, Irish playwright, is born March 3, 1914, in Milltown, County Galway, the son of William Molloy, originally of Glenamaddy, County Galway, who runs a shop at Milltown, and Maria Molloy (née Tucker), a native of Claremorris, County Mayo, and a teacher at Milltown girls’ school.

Molloy is the fifth in a family of five boys and three girls. Two other children die at birth. He is educated at Milltown national school and St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, County Galway, from 1927 to 1931. His father dies when he is six years old and his uncle, Sonny Tucker, becomes an important influence, encouraging his life-long habit of extensive reading. In 1931 he goes to St. Columba’s Seminary at Dalgan Park, Shrule, County Mayo, but discontinues his studies for the priesthood when he contracts tuberculosis. He undergoes several operations, has to use crutches for three years, and is left with a permanent limp. While under the care of the sanatorium in Newcastle, County Wicklow, in the late 1930s, he is encouraged by a friend to attend a performance of two plays by George Bernard Shaw, Candida and Village Wooing, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. He becomes a regular playgoer and is inspired to begin a career as a dramatist.

Having lived in the family home at Milltown until 1955, he takes up residence at a nearby farmhouse on the marriage of his brother Christy. Despite his handicap, he works the small farm for the rest of his life to supplement the irregular income from his plays. He never marries and is attended by his housekeeper, Agnes Johnston. He is a familiar sight as he travels around his local area on the high bicycle he had fitted with one fixed pedal. The purpose of these journeys is to collect folklore, which provides a rich body of material for his plays and which he gathers into a prose volume, though this remains unpublished and privately held.

Molloy has nine of his thirteen plays produced at the Abbey Theatre, from Old Road in 1943 to Petticoat Loose in 1979. His plays reveal him as a folklorist in the line of John Millington Synge and draw on the same mixture of Christian and pagan beliefs, but with a more sympathetic understanding of his characters’ Catholicism. There is also the same strong vein of grotesque physical humour. His accomplished one-act play The Paddy Pedlar (1953) is based on a folk tale about a man carrying the body of his dead mother around in a sack and takes its bearings from an extraordinary amalgam of beliefs about the afterlife.

Molloy’s history plays re-create a world that shows the oppressions of colonialism on a subject race who respond with a wild anarchy mixed with subdued acceptance. His plays with a contemporary setting most often take emigration as their theme and are prophetic of later work by John B. Keane and Brian Friel. He writes in a heightened folk idiom, which only rarely loses touch with natural speech. Old Road wins an Abbey Prize and is staged in 1943 with Cyril Cusack as the young farm labourer trying to decide whether to emigrate to England or to stay in Ireland. Joseph Holloway gives a touching account of the shy author taking his curtain at this first production, who, though his lips move, is unable to say anything. The Visiting House follows in 1946, and dramatises a night of singing, dancing, and storytelling, peopled by a richly diverse cast of characters.

Molloy’s first masterpiece, The King of Friday’s Men, is launched in 1948. It takes the uncompromising theme of the droit du seigneur exercised by an eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish landlord on the most beautiful young women on his estate. His latest prey seeks to evade her fate by enticing the aged faction fighter, Bartley Dowd, to fight the landlord on her behalf. The play recreates that eighteenth-century world with colour, immediacy, and a strong sense of how the colonial system envelops all of the characters save the marginalised Bartley, who in the first production is played by the actor and author Walter Macken.

Molloy’s even greater The Wood of the Whispering follows in 1953 at the Queen’s Theatre, where the Abbey company is now playing. It is his most probing treatment of the effects of emigration, an issue of which Molloy, living in Galway, is only too aware. It is the most Beckettian of Irish plays, with its old tramp, Sanbatch Daly, and a host of older characters who are not so much eccentric as damaged in some profound way. At the play’s close Sanbatch feigns madness to gain entry to the asylum, though he is not in truth far from genuine madness. The various younger couples agree to stay and marry in Ireland rather than go their separate ways back to England. This idea of cultural renewal also underscores the importance Molloy places on the staging of his plays by amateur drama companies.

From the 1960s onwards Molloy’s plays are less readily accepted by the Abbey Theatre and a Dublin audience, but they still find a ready reception in his native place. In later works, such as Daughter from Over the Water (1963), the older characters retain their exuberance, but the younger ones seem beyond his reach. His last play, The Bachelor’s Daughter, is given its first performance by the Tuam Theatre Guild on March 3, 1985. The revival by Galway’s Druid Theatre of The Wood of the Whispering in 1983, which Molloy lives to see, is a revelation, and a reminder to the wider theatrical and academic world of the continuing importance of this playwright, not just as the ‘missing link’ between Synge and Keane but as an original in his own right.

In later years Molloy is a member of Aosdána. He dies of aortic aneurysms at Galway Hospital on May 27, 1994. He remains a committed Catholic all his life and his tombstone reads: “Woe to those who call evil good and who call good evil” (Isaiah, 5: 20).

(From: “Molloy, Michael Joseph” by Anthony Roche, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)