Saint Oliver Plunkett
Saint Oliver Plunkett was born on the 1st of November 1629.He was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and the Primate of all Ireland. He maintained his duties in Ireland in the face of English persecution and was eventually arrested and tried for treason at a kangaroo court after lawful courts had failed to convict him. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681,at age 51, and became the last Catholic martyr to die in England. Oliver Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years.
It is known that Oliver Plunkett was born in Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland in 1629 to well off parents who had ,Hiberno-Norman origin. He was related by birth to a number of landed families, such as the recently ennobled Earl of Roscommon, as well as the long-established Earl of Fingall, Earl of Louth and Lord Dunsany. Until his sixteenth year, the Oliver's education was entrusted to his cousin Patrick Plunkett, Abbot of St Mary's, Dublin, and brother of the first Earl of Fingall who later became bishop, successively, of Ardagh and Meath. As an aspirant to the priesthood, he set out for Rome in 1645, under the care of Father Pierfrancesco Scarampi, of the Roman Oratory. At this time, the Irish Confederate Wars were raging in Ireland; these were essentially conflicts between native Irish Roman Catholics, English, and Irish Anglicans and Protestants. Scarampi was the Papal envoy to the Catholic movement known as the Confederation of Ireland. Many of Plunkett's relatives were involved in this organisation. Because of having such strong roots in the christian background it was almost fate for him to lead a religious life.
In the year of 1647, Plunkett was admitted to the Irish College in Rome and proved himself an able pupil. He was ordained as a priest in 1654, and deputed by the Irish bishops to act as their representative in Rome. Meanwhile, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649-53) had defeated the Roman Catholic cause in Ireland and, in the aftermath, the public practice of Roman Catholicism was banned and Roman Catholic clergy were executed, there was a lot of violence and bloodshed at that period in time, and many gruesome murders were committed. As a result, it was impossible for Plunkett to return to Ireland for many years.
He petitioned to remain in Rome and, in 1657, became a professor of theology. Throughout the period of the Commonwealth and the first years of Charles II's reign, he successfully pleaded the cause of the Irish Roman Church, and also served as theological professor at the College of Propaganda Fide. At the Congregation of Propaganda Fide on July 9, 1669, he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh, and was consecrated on November 30 at Ghent by the Bishop of Ghent, assisted by the Bishop of Ferns and another bishop. He eventually returned to Ireland after many years in March 1670, as the English Restoration of 1660 had started on a tolerant basis. The pallium was granted him in the Consistory of July 28, 1670.
After arriving back in Ireland, he worked on reorganising the destructed Roman Church and built schools both for the young and for clergy, whom he found 'ignorant in moral theology and controversies'. He managed to establish a Jesuit College in Drogheda in 1670. A year later 150 students attended the College.
On the enactment of the Test Act in 1673, which Plunkett would not agree to for doctrinal reasons, the college was levelled to the ground. Plunkett went into hiding for most of the remainder of his life. He travelled by disguise.
Titus Oates accused Plunkett of planning a foreign invasion of Ireland which depicted from Oates' fabrication of tales about the Popish Plot. This led to Plunkett's arrest. He was tried and acquitted in Ireland; he was then taken to London, tried again, convicted, and hanged, drawn, and quartered. The accusations and the witnesses' testimony against him were in fact false from beginning to end. Plunkett was the last Roman Catholic to be executed at Tyburn on politico-religious grounds. He was beatified as a martyr in 1920 and canonized in 1975. Feast: July 11.
More reading and sources
- St. Columba - Catholic Encyclopedia
- On the Life of St. Columba - CELT
- St Columba's Church - Long Tower Derry
- Life of St. Columba - book available on Amazon.com
- Life and Work of St. Columba - book available on Amazon.com
- Christainity and Saints of Ireland - YourIrish.com
