I’ll be reducing the number of new posts and republishing some of my earlier work over the summer as I work on larger projects for the fall and beyond. Stay safe. Here’s the May roundup: At least 1,652 people have died of COVID-19 in the Republic of Ireland, with another 522 in Northern Ireland. Both […]
A century ago, Oliver Plunkett (1625-1681) was beatified in Rome, the penultimate step to his canonization as a saint, which occurred in 1975. As the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, the County Meath-born Plunkett was the last of 22 martyrs in the “Popish Plot,” a conspiracy theory run amok in England’s […]
I’ve been away most of the month working on long-term projects. Thanks for supporting our archived content. Here’s the monthly roundup. MH U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on June 6 at Shannon Airport. Trump wanted the meeting at his Doonbeg golf resort in County Clare, where he will […]
In May 1919, the American Commission on Irish Independence arrived in Dublin. Before long, all hell broke loose in London and Paris. The ACII was a non-government delegation of three prominent Irish-Americans formed in the wake of the February 1919 Irish Race Convention in Philadelphia. The trio of labor lawyer Frank P. Walsh; former Illinois […]
Irish voters overturned a 35-year-old constitutional abortion ban by a decisive two thirds margin. More about that at the bottom of this post. First, a quick look at some other Irish news in May, from both sides of the Atlantic: Ireland moved to sixth place from ninth place in the E.U. Digital Economy and Society Index. The improvement […]
Pope Francis will visit Ireland in 2018, according to statements by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who has just visited the Pontiff in Rome. Catholic bishops in the Republic of Ireland had extended an invitation to Pope Francis to visit Dublin in August 2018 for the World Meeting of Families. The BBC reports that some Northern Ireland political leaders […]
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has decided to remove three seminarians from his dioceses at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, due to “an atmosphere of strange goings-on” at the national seminary. Martin is transferring the trainee priests to the Irish Pontifical College in Rome, according to The Irish Times. In May, The Irish Catholic reported on […]
Earlier this year an English judge used an obscure section of 19th century election law to unseat the mayor of Tower Hamlets, a borough of London. The Guardian tells how the term “undue spiritual influence” was passed down from the 1880s, when it was intended “specifically to constrain the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy […]
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn positions himself in the long line of Irish-American political figures. During his first term in office he instituted the Mayor’s River O’ Green Fest, coloring the Hillsborough River a fine shade of emerald. Now in his second term and with an eye on the Florida governorship, Buckhorn and other Tampa Bay officials have […]
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh was named Irish American of the Year by Irish America magazine. He was elected in November and moved into City Hall in January. In remarks at the magazine’s ceremony, Walsh said: Whether they were in the South during the turn of the century in counties like Cork and Kerry, or in the North in […]