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Wednesday, June 09, 2010
The road from Rome
By Fr Brendan Hoban
THE Pope has announced that an ‘apostolic visitation’ will take place in the autumn.
In simple terms it’s a look at the Irish Church, its procedures and its processes, through the eyes of specially appointed representatives of the Vatican.
Nine “heavy-hitters”, as the Irish Times described them, will survey the workings of the Irish Catholic Church in a kind of organisational stock-taking.
While words like ‘renewal’, ‘reflection’ and ‘healing’ are being bandied about, the focus will be, as the Irish bishops described it, “on the needs of survivors of abuse, to build upon the strong procedures and guidelines for the safeguarding of children and to work for a renewal of faith”.
In the West, the first diocese to be ‘visited’ will be Tuam and it’s not clear whether all or just some of the other dioceses will be ‘visited’ later. The archbishop of Ottawa, Terrence Thomas Prendergast, will lead the visitation to the West and among those involved with visiting religious orders will be Sr Máirín McDonagh, a religious of Jesus and Mary and a naive of Ardnaree, Ballina, who taught in Gortnor Abbey and Enniscrone for some years as well as working for the diocese of Killala.
While ‘visitations’ from Rome are not new, they are fairly exceptional.
In 1836-7, Rome sent an apostolic delegation to Killala diocese to investigate the divisions in the diocese during a time of great turbulence. The delegation comprised Archbishop William Crolly of Armagh, Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam and Bishop Cornelius Denvir of Down and Connor. They visited the diocese on three occasions from June 1836 to January 1837 and sent three reports to Rome. During their stays in the diocese they travelled to Crossmolina and also to Kilmore Erris, where they stayed with Fr Michael Kelly in Belmullet.
The ‘Killala Troubles’, as they came to be known, centred on the 20 or so months Francis Joseph O’Finan spent as bishop of Killala. O’Finan – a native of Corrimbla, Ballina – was a Dominican in Rome when Bishop John MacHale, then coadjutor bishop of Killala, met him. MacHale was impressed by O’Finan who was second-in-command of the Dominicans and who, as well as having an impressive list of attainments, was “a man of refined manners, courtly address and dignified presence”.
A few years later, when MacHale was appointed to Tuam and there was a vacancy in Killala, MacHale suggested to the Killala priests that O’Finan would make a great bishop for Killala. MacHale had his own reasons for sponsoring O’Finan’s candidature. One was that he felt the obvious candidates for promotion – notably, Patrick Flannelly of Easkey and Bartholomew Costello of Ballina – were ill-suited to the task.
The other reason was that for almost half a century there were problems over the division of marriage dues between bishop and parish priests, with the balance weighted unfavourably in the direction of the bishop. This was a long-standing grievance with the Killala clergy as it was out of sync with regulations in other dioceses.
The Killala clergy took MacHale at his word regarding the suitability of O’Finan and in Rome in March 1835 he was consecrated bishop of Killala. He didn’t, however, arrive in Killala until October and by the time he had arrived, the word filtered through that he had appointed the parish priest of Kilmore Erris, John Patrick Lyons, as dean and vicar general. This upset Flannelly who had been vicar general and Costello who had hoped to be bishop.
When O’Finan arrived in Rome he met the clergy who objected both to the appointment of Lyons, whom many of them regarded as an outsider – he was a native of Bekan, near Ballyhaunis – and whom they envied for his ability and energy and to the arrangement about the marriage fees. O’Finan was appalled by the reception he received and, supported by Lyons, he attacked the clergy as “a conventicle of Jansenists”.
The clergy repaired to a local hotel and decided that they would appeal to Archbishop MacHale to intervene.
And so a great division appeared among the Killala clergy: some loyal to O’Finan but even more loyal to MacHale who soon realised his mistake and tried to pressurise O’Finan to concede to the clergy’s demands. O’Finan would have none of it and in the ensuing changes he promoted his own loyalists and demoted those loyal to MacHale.
For instance, he removed John Barrett as PP of Crossmolina (whom MacHale had appointed) and replaced him with Edward Murray, a friend of Lyons. The people of Crossmolina objected and as a result the church was closed for several months as Barrett and Murray said Mass for their respective supporters at either end of the Crossmolina chapel.
A similar problem existed in Kilfian where Patrick Duffy, an O’Finan appointee, and Michael Conway, a friend of MacHale, fought over the parish and the constabulary had to keep the peace at Kincon chapel.
Patrick Flannelly of Easkey wrote a series of anonymous letters to the Castlebar Telegraph, criticising O’Finan.
The letters were so scurrilous that O’Finan, egged on by Lyons, decided to sue the proprietor of the paper for libel. A celebrated libel trial was held in Sligo during Holy Week, 1837, at which (to their great embarrassment) the archbishops of Armagh and Tuam were subpoenaed to give evidence and O’Finan won the case.
The ‘visitation’ found against O’Finan and Lyons. The latter was removed as vicar general and the former was recalled to Rome where he retained the title ‘Bishop of Killala’ but lost all responsibility for the administration of the diocese.
Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin was appointed as ‘apostolic administrator’ of Killala and later Thomas Feeny, PP, Kiltulla, was appointed his deputy. Feeny later became bishop, succeeded O’Finan in 1847, and served as bishop until 1873.
The Vatican visitation this time around may not be anything as exciting as the visitation to Killala almost two centuries ago.
(Note: At present I am researching this area and hope to publish a book entitled, Turbulent Diocese, The Killala Troubles, 1798-1848, later in the year.)
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