The elevation of American-born Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and his decision to take the name Leo XIV, has prompted coverage about his namesake predecessor, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until his death in 1903.
And that’s reason enough to reprise two stories about the former pope’s 19th century intrigues in Ireland. Each story linked below covers the same episode from different perspectives.
Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Pope’s decree: American journalist William Henry Hurlbert was in Ireland when Pope Leo XIII issued a decree that condemned the “mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign” and the associated violence of “a form of proscription … known as boycotting.”
As prior general of the Augustine order from 2001 to 2013, Prevost made numerous visits to Ireland. It will be interest to see if he returns to the country, which this century has turned radically secular, as Leo XIV.
John Kernan Mullen of Ballinasloe, County Galway, helped to fund the Catholic University of America (CUA) library that bears his name. The cornerstone was laid April 25, 1925, on the Washington, D.C., campus.
Mullen emigrated to America in 1847, when he was nine. “He began working in a flour mill in Oriskany Falls, N.Y.,” according to a CUA profile. “At 20, Mullen went West, leasing a flour mill in Denver, Colo., and soon after buying several more mills. By 1911 he had built the first grain elevator in the state, established the Colorado Milling and Elevator Company, and operated 91 elevators, warehouses and mills in Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Oregon.”
He became a millionaire.
In 1924, Mullen pledged $500,000 to CUA to build a library, which opened as the John K. Mullen of Denver Memorial Library in September 1928. Since then the library has been open to the public. My work has benefited from access to the Mullen Library and CUA’s Special Collections, which are held in a different building. See the library’s online centenary exhibition.
There is no doubt of Mullen’s business success and generous philanthropy, especially to the Catholic church. He might have been motivated by having escaped the Great Famine.
His political views about Ireland’s struggle for independence are more of a mystery. He surely knew that Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, CUA’s rector from 1909 to 1928, had been an ardent Irish nationalist and national vice president of the Friends of Irish Freedom during the country’s revolutionary years. Exiled Fenian John Devoy attended the 1925 cornerstone ceremony. Coverage of the event in his Gaelic American newspaper mentioned only Mullen’s financial gift.[1]”Cardinal Lays Cornerstone Of Library, Gaelic American, May 2, 1925.
Mullen died in August 1929 in Denver. US Catholic newspapers and secular press obituaries also were silent as to Mullen’s views about his homeland. The digital Irish Newspaper Archive contains no coverage of his death or funding the library.
Bust of John K. Mullen on the main stairway landing between the library’s lobby and second floor.
This plaque is located inside the library’s front door.
My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to explore several places visited by American journalists in their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are a few more of my travel photos of these places, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. This is the last post of this series. MH
My travel to County Donegal allowed me not only to follow the 1888 journey of American correspondent William Henry Hurlbert (See Part 1), but also three other US journalists who trekked to Dungloe during Ireland’s revolutionary period. Ruth Russell of the Chicago Daily News, 1919; Savel Zimand of Survey Graphic magazine, 1921; and Redfern Mason of the San Francisco Examiner, 1922, came to interview Patrick Gallagher, leader of the successful Templecrone Co-operative Agricultural Society Ltd. See “When three American journalists visited ‘Paddy the Cope’ in Dungloe, 1919-1922,” published earlier this year in The Irish Story.
Dunleavy, Holan, McGarvey, and Sharkey.
“The Cope” today remains a thriving enterprise, with 12 retail businesses in four locations: Dungloe, Annagry, Kincasslagh, and Falcarragh. I was welcomed to Dungloe by Patrick J. Dunleavy, chairman of the Cope’s board of directors, who gave me a detailed driving tour of the Rosses region. Mark Sharkey, CEO; and Emma McGarvey, business support manager, hosted us for a lovey lunch at the Caisleain Oir Hotel, Annagry. Our wonderful meal came from award-winning chef Cathal Armstrong, who also owns Restaurant Eve in greater Washington, D.C. The warm hospitality of all these people matched the fine April weather. It was a highlight of my trip. Thank you.
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“I arrived at Dungloe on a cold and rainy morning. And as the station is about three miles from the center of the village, I sent my luggage up by donkey cart and set out walking. Wild beauty was all around me. In ten minutes the rain stopped. The sky cleared and the wind freshened over the blue and golden hills.” — Savel Zimand, from “The Romance of Templecrone”, Survey Graphic, November 26, 1921.
The Letterkenny and Burtonport railway extension opened in 1903 and closed in the 1940s. The Dungloe station has been converted into a private residence, seen at right from a small bridge over the former railroad right-of-way, at left, now used as a hike and bike trail.
“… If [Gallagher] had not been a co-operationist for Ireland he might have been a capitalist in America. He took me up the main street, making plain the signs of growing industry: the bacon cured in Dungloe, the egg-weighing, the rentable farm machinery. After viewing the orchard and beehives behind the cooperative store, I remarked on the size of the plant and its suitability for the purpose. — Ruth Russell, “Building The Commonwealth”, The Freeman, May 26, 1920. Magazine story based on 1919 reporting for the Chicago Daily News.
Early 20th century view, looking down Main Street in Dungloe.
Looking up Main Street, Dungloe, April 2025.
“[Gallagher] rises. ‘Come down to the harbor with me. I want to show you something.’ We stroll to the waterfront. From the rocks juts a pier on which men are working. ‘We have to thank America for that,’ says Gallagher.” — Redfern Mason, Rebel Ireland. Self-published booklet based on his 1922 reporting for the San Francisco Examiner.
These two storage buildings were erected as part of the cooperative in the early 20th century. They are located on the Dungloe waterfront, seen on the right at low tide. The pier related to this enterprise was erected in 1923 with funding from the American Committee for Relief in Ireland. The pier was destroyed by several storms in the 1990s. It has since been replaced, seen below at left.
My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are more of my travel photos, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. MH
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“It is seldom that reporters can sit in a hotel room and by peeping through drawn blinds see revolutionary history being made, as I am doing today and did yesterday.” — Arthur S. Draper of the New York Tribune, “Fierce Fighting Rages in Fire-Swept Dublin” in the Tribune, April 30, 1916 (Dateline April 29, 1916)
London & North Western Railway (LNWR) logo on the facade of the former hotel. Click image to enlarge.
“We watched the bombardment from a window on the third floor of a hotel. Naval boats, swinging in close to (the Liffey) shore, sent shells screaming into the city, bringing the rebel strongholds crashing down with loud roars. … Soldiers were posted in large force along the quays and in the warehouses across the street from our hotel, answering the sharp volleys of the sniping rebels.” — Wilbur S. Forrest of United Press, ”Shells Rout Rebels” in the Washington Post, April 30, 1916. (Dateline April 29, 1916)
Draper and Forrest were among the 14 correspondents embedded on a British naval destroyer that steamed for Dublin in April 1916 at the outbreak of the Rising. The the London and North Western Hotel is the lookout referenced in their stories. It was located on the Liffey riverfront next to the London and North Western Railway Company train station and steam packet terminal. After a long dormancy, the hotel property was reopened in 2022 as part of the Salesforce Tower campus, seen below. The station and terminal remains vacant.
The former London and North Western Hotel seen in April 2025. The red brick structure at left is part of the former railway and steam packet terminal, now abandoned. The dark glass at right is part of the Salesforce Tower, which incorporates the former hotel. The building faces the River Liffey across the street.
Looking upward to a rooftop skylight from the main stairwell of the former hotel lobby. I was unable to access the upper floors, where reporters watched the fighting in 1916.
Note stained glass designs at top of the arched windows, seen from the exterior.
West side of the former hotel. Note that a large arched window bricked over above the door.
This event is concluded. I will make the recording available at a later date. MH
As historiographer of the American Irish Historical Society, County Cork-born Michael J. O’Brien focused on Irish contributions to colonial America. In 1919, as the Irish War of Independence heated up, he published A Hidden Phase of American History: Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty. The book was deployed to help make the case for why America should support Ireland’s struggle for liberty. When US Senator John Sharp Williams, a Mississippi Democrat, attacked the Irish in a widely reported speech, O’Brien was drafted to issue the reply.
My zoom presentation, “Michael J. O’Brien: Defending Ireland’s Record in America,” begins at 6 tonight, USA Eastern time. Thanks to the Irish American Heritage Museum, Albany, N.Y., which has stepped up to save this presentation after a new round of turmoil at AIHS. More about that in a future post.
My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Over the next few weeks I will publish some of my travel photos, plus links to the correspondent’s original reporting and my work about them. MH
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“(Traveling into County Donegal we) entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore.” — William Henry Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American
Hurlbert was born in Charleston, South Carolina, educated at Harvard, and worked as a New York City newspaperman in the second half of the 19th century. He visited Ireland early in 1888 and published a book about his travels before the end of the year. Passages about his travels in County Donegal are found here on pages 77 to 124. My 2018 Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited serial placed his journey in historical context. I followed Hurlbert’s footsteps to Killone Abbey in County Clare in 2018.
The village of Dunlewy seen at the right side of the same-name lake in County Donegal. April 2025.
The Dungloe River at the edge of Dungloe town. April 2025
DUBLIN–The Dublin Writers Museum opened in 1991 inside an 18th-century Georgian townhouse at 18 Parnell Square. It was dedicated to the county’s literary giants, including Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and others. Sure, Trinity College on the south side of the Liffey held the globally famous Book of Kells, but DWM displayed Joyce’s typewriter, Beckett’s telephone, and Behan’s press credentials.
The COVID 19 pandemic closed the museum in March 2020. Even before then, complaints had begun to mount that it did not feature enough women authors or living writers. An assessment commissioned by Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development agency, concluded later in 2020 that DWM “no longer meets the expectation of the contemporary museum visitor in terms of accessibility, presentation and interpretation.” It never reopened.
Plaque outside Newman House.
Simultaneously, discussions had been taking place since 2010 between the National Library of Ireland and University College Dublin for a creative alliance between their two unique assets – NLI’s Joyce collection and UCD’s historic Newman House property at 86 St. Stephen’s Green. Built in 1765 as a private residence, it was transformed in 1854 into the Catholic University of Ireland , precursor of UCD, under the rectorship of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Joyce studied there from 1899 to 1902.
A panel in the new museum recalls the old museum.
In September 2019, Newman House opened as the Museum of Literature Ireland (or MoLI–after the Joyce character Molly Bloom. This was six months before COVID closed the DWM and the rest of Dublin. Now that it has survived the pandemic, MoLI features “dynamic, immersive exhibitions that tell the story of Ireland’s literary heritage from our earliest storytelling traditions to our celebrated contemporary writers.” One room of the new museum is dedicated to the DWM, including the artifacts mentioned above. Other materials that are not on display have become part of the MoLI’s archives.
In March, MoLI named David Cleary as its new director and CEO. He had been director of sales & operations at EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin’s Dockside district. MoLI receives government and private sector support.
In addition to its displays, MoLI offers a gift shop and cafe, including outdoor seating in a lovely courtyard. The courtyard provides access to Iveagh Gardens, described here as “among the finest, but least known, of Dublin’s parks and gardens.” Or, in the words of a popular Irish woman writer affixed to the entrance gate:
The gate between the Museum of Literature Ireland courtyard and the Iveagh Gardens.
Below are four recent stories about American journalists in Ireland. The six correspondents highlighted in these pieces visited the country between 1919 and 1925. Their work drew attention on both sides of the Atlantic. My research in this subject area continues. Suggestions and comments are welcome.MH
Richard Lee Strout: A Young American Reporter In Revolutionary Ireland After spending a year interning at London newspapers, Strout stopped in Ireland on his way back to America. He arrived in Dublin a day before Bloody Sunday, 1920. Published in American Journalism, the peer-reviewed quarterly of the American Journalism Historians Association.
When three American journalists visited ‘Paddy the Cope’ in Dungloe, 1919-1922: Correspondents from the Chicago Tribune, Survey Graphic magazine (New York), and the San Francisco Examiner traveled to the northwest corner of County Donegal to write about Patrick Gallagher, a cooperative leader. Published in The Irish Story (Dublin).
When the Irish ‘exposed’ a New York Herald reporter In June 1919 the Irish American press praised Truman H. Talley for publicizing a report that criticized the British administration of Ireland. A few months later, the same papers called him a British propagandist.
Cardinal McElroy at St. Patrick Church, Washington, DC, March 17, 2025.
Robert Cardinal McElroy has confirmed his Irish heritage and praised earlier generations of Irish immigrants who contributed to the success of America. The fifth generation San Franciscan did not specify his family’s county of origin as he celebrated his first St. Patrick’s Day Mass as the newly installed archbishop of Washington. He assured the congregation at St. Patrick Church in downtown DC that his heritage has been confirmed by DNA testing.
Cardinal McElroy also gave a shout out to Epic: The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin. He said the museum’s modern story-telling techniques of Ireland’s nineteenth century immigrants was “a beautiful, moving experience.” He said that despite different personalities and backgrounds, the immigrants were “filled with Christian hope,” the belief that God is always with us, regardless of our circumstances. He reminded the congregation that “hope is at the center of our faith and the theme of this Jubilee Year.”
ORIGINAL POST:
It’s now five years since COVID-19 began spreading sickness and death across the world. The cancelation of St. Patrick’s Day parades and related events in America and Ireland became an early, signal sign of the pandemic’s impact on our daily lives. It was hardly the most important development, to be sure, but it certainly presaged the misery and disruptions that lay ahead. Annual parades did not return in most cities until March 2022. This year, I want to remember all those who suffered, especially the earliest fatalities in March 2020. May God rest their souls.
For something lighter, below are a few links to previous posts with historical perspectives on the Irish holiday in America, and my page devoted to St. Patrick’s churches. Enjoy. MH
Trump’s golf course at Doonbeg, County Clare, has been vandalized. Greens were dug up and Palestinian flags were planted in the ground. The attack followed his Oval Office meeting with Martin. Last week pro-Palestinian graffiti sprayed “Gaza Is Not For Sale” on a building at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland.
Meanwhile, the Irish Times details the “problematic planning history” at the west of Ireland property. Naturally, it is not as simple as Trump rambled on about in the Oval Office.
UPDATE 3:
Media reports from the US, Ireland, and United Kingdom generally agree that Martin and Ireland did as well as could be expected in the day-long dance with the mercurial Trump. Some website headline writers seem intent on conveying more peril and tension than I think existed. Unsurprisingly, the best news round up comes from veteran correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik of Politico.eu, an American who has spent 35 years covering Ireland and Northern Ireland. Or watch the video of the Oval Office meeting:
I’ll top off this post with more opinion pieces as they emerge over the next few days.
UPDATE 2:
Martin appears to be surviving the Washington whirlwind. He was not helped by today’s European Union announcement of reciprocal tariffs on the US. Trump has fumed all day about the EU. RTÉ has quoted Martin as describing the “very positive engagement” of the day and said that Trump was “quite complimentary” of Ireland’s economic management.
Martin missed the DC visit in 2021 and in 2022 due to COVID. The pandemic erupted at St. Patrick’s Day in 2020 when Leo Varadkar was taoiseach. He addressed the Irish nation nation from Washington before heading back to Dublin.
UPDATE 1:
A luncheon with US congressional leaders and the annual gifting of a bowl of shamrocks will occur later today.
Trump dominated the Oval Office meeting. (Hardly a surprise.) “I think the Irish love Trump,” Trump says. “We don’t want to do anything to hurt Ireland but we want fairness.”
Martin has arrived at the White House. Trump is wearing a red tie, not the traditional green. Read into that what you will.
ORIGINAL POST:
Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin has began making the rounds in Washington. This year’s bilateral meetings are so highly anticipated that it only makes sense they would occur five days before St. Patrick’s Day. Martin is the first foreign leader to visit the White House since US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28.
The Irish leader will need to navigate a minefield that includes trade and tariffs, Ukraine, and Gaza. In addition, the Burke family of County Mayo, activist evangelical Christians with a long history of protest against LGBTQ rights in Ireland, were reportedly flying to DC, which could signal a possible made-for-television confrontation.
Martin has survived a breakfast meeting at Vance’s official residence and will be headed to the Oval Office later in the day. According to a transcript published by the Irish Times, Martin told Vance:
“Last year we marked 100 years of Irish-US diplomatic relations. Together we have built deep and enduring political, cultural and economic bonds, greatly enriching our two nations in the process.”[1]See my post, ‘Special relationship’ or the fading of the green?
“Nowhere is the strength of the US-Irish relationship more in evidence than in our peace process. Forty-four years ago, President Reagan called for a “just and peaceful solution” to the conflict that had for so long devastated lives on our island.[2]See my post, Remembering Jimmy Carter’s words on Northern Ireland Politicians from both sides of the aisle rose to the occasion. The lasting peace we enjoy on our island today is a signature achievement of US foreign policy.”
Sinn Féin has boycotted the annual festivities for the first time. The opposition party contends that Trump’s talk of transforming Gaza into a “riviera” amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Martin’s US swing began with a stop at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.
