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Pietro Fumasoni Biondi (4 September 1872 – 12 July 1960) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in the Roman Curia from 1933 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1933.

Fumasoni Biondi was born in Rome to the aristocratic Filippo and Gertrude (née Roselli) Fumasoni Biondi; he had a sister who entered the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and became known as Mother Gertrude.[1] After studying at the Pontifical Roman Seminary, he was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Lucido Parocchi on 17 April 1897. From 1897 to 1916, he was a professor at the Pontifical Urbaniana University and then an official of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

On 14 November 1916, Biondi was appointed Apostolic Delegate to the East Indies[2] and Titular Archbishop of Dioclea. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 10 December from Cardinal Domenico Serafini, OSB, with Bishops Joseph Legrand, CSC, and Agostino Zampini, OSA, serving as co-consecrators, in the chapel of the Urbaniana University. In this post, he actively tried to improve relations between the Vatican and the Emperor of Japan.[3] Biondi was later named Apostolic Delegate to Japan on 6 December 1919, Secretary of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith on 14 June 1921 and Apostolic Delegate to the United States on 14 December 1922. In 1927, he declared the Vatican had no interest in the presidential campaign of Al Smith, the Catholic governor of New York.[1]

Pope Pius XI created him Cardinal-Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in the consistory of 13 March 1933, in advance for his appointment as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith three days later, on 16 March. Cardinal Fumasoni Bondi served as papal legate to the National Eucharistic Congress in Teramo on 20 August 1935. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 1939 papal conclave, and again in the conclave of 1958.

Biondi died in Rome, at age 87. He is buried in the Campo Verano.

In the early 17th century, as a result of continued persecution of Catholics, it was illegal for women to train in Ireland as religious so many opted to travel to Spanish Flanders, France or Spain in order to fulfill their calling. This was the case with the foremothers of our community. They travelled to the Poor Clare monastery in Gravelines, then in the territory of Spanish Flanders, modern-day Northern France. Some of them had brothers who were already Franciscans in the Irish Franciscan College in Louvain. That college had been founded in 1607.

The Poor Clare monastery of Gravelines was founded in 1609 to provide a house for English women who wished to become Poor Clares.As the Irish friars were already established in Louvain they provided spiritual assistance to this monastery before their Irish sisters arrived. Our foremothers joined this community in the early 1620s and by 1626, they numbered five sisters. In that same year on the 20th of May they left the Gravelines community and set out to found a separate house specifically for Irish women in the neighbouring town of Dunkirk. As circumstances changed they eventually decided to return to Ireland in 1629 now numbering seven. After a short period in Dublin they eventually settled in a rural part of Co. Westmeath not far from Athlone. The monastery was appropriately called 'Bethlehem' to emphasise the central focus of Franciscan spirituality, namely the poverty and humility of the Son of God in taking on our human flesh and becoming one with us in the Incarnation.

As the number of women joining the community grew daughter houses were established in Galway, Drogheda, Athlone and Wexford.

We thank God for the life and witness of our sisters and for their faith, courage and dedication to Christ and His holy Mother after the example of St. Francis and St. Clare. We pray that whatever our state in life, we may be faithful to God as they were and that our lives may bear great fruit as theirs did.

This year, 2022, marks the 400th anniversary of the solemn profession of blood sisters Cecily and Eleanor Dillon on the 8th of September 1622. . Sr. Cecily was the Abbess of Bethlehem monastery, the motherhouse of our Galway monastery at the time that the foundation was made in 1642.

John Carroll was born in 1899 in Dromkeen, Co Limerick and educated at Castleknock College.
He joined the Vincentian community in 1918 and was ordained in 1926.
He had two appointments in Castleknock, with Strawberry Hill in between.
He then went to Cork and in 1934 was lent, with Fr Willie McGlynn, to Australia to help with missions.
In 1940 he volunteered as a chaplain with the Australian army, and served until 1945, when he returned to Ireland.
He was in Phibsboro twice, with superiorship in Lanark, Scotland, in between. His main work was missions.
He went to Castleknock in 1968, and spent his final eleven years there in retirement, but not idle.
He died there in 1987 aged 87: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/260399833/john-carroll_cm

Baptismal name: Matthew Dowd
Religious name: Fr. Maurice Dowd OFM Cap.
Date of birth: 31 Oct. 1904
Place of birth: Castlegregory, County Kerry
Name of father: Jeremiah Dowd
Name of mother: Catherine Dowd (née Fitzgerald)
Date of reception into the Capuchin Order: 17 Sept. 1923
Date of first profession: 18 Sept. 1924
Date of final profession: 18 Sept. 1927
Date of ordination (as priest): June 1931
Educational attainments: BA (1927)
Missionary activities: Travelled to Cape Town, South Africa, on 22 Sept. 1970.
Date of death: 15 Nov. 1989
Place of death: Cape Town, South Africa
Place of burial: Maitland Cemetery, Cape Town, South Africa

Baptismal name: John O’Mahony
Religious name: Fr. Alfred O’Mahony OFM Cap.
Date of birth: 21 Jan. 1912
Place of birth: Farrankeal, Rathmore, County Cork (Diocese of Kerry)
Name of father: Michael O’Mahony
Name of mother: Nora O’Mahony (née Cahill)
Date of reception into the Capuchin Order: 3 Oct. 1932
Date of first profession: 4 Oct. 1933
Date of final profession: 4 Oct. 1936
Date of ordination (as priest): 23 June 1940
Educational attainments: BA (1936)
Missionary activities: Travelled to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) on 8 Apr. 1942. Regular Superior of the Livingstone Mission from 1950 to 1967. He returned to Ireland on 5 Oct. 1973.
Date of death: 25 Dec. 1988
Place of burial: Cemetery, Capuchin Friary, Rochestown, County Cork