Dossier 15 - Correspondence of Fr. Henry Anglin OFM Cap.

Copy letters of Fr. Henry Anglin OFM Cap., mainly to contributing authors in 'The Capuchin Annual'. Some of the correspondence also relates to requests for advertising and subscriptions and permissions to reproduce articles and photographs. Some of the correspondents relate their disappointment on hearing that the 1977 edition of the 'Annual' will be the final publication. The file also includes several original letters to Fr. Henry Anglin OFM Cap. The correspondents include Donal Brennan, Edward G. Allen, Sister M. Bernard Boran, Professor Richard Ellman, Christopher J. Finn, Matthew Culligan, John McColgan, Walter McGrath (Cork Examiner), Conleth Ellis, Moira Lysaght, Arthur Mitchell, Kevin Faller, Fr. Brendan O’Mahony OFM Cap., Fr. R. Burke Savage SJ, Clongowes College, Patrick Callan, Seán Cronin, John P. Cosgrave, Padraic Fiacc, Monsignor Tomás Ó Fiaich, T. O’Keefe ('Irish News'), Tadgh O’Sullivan (Irish Embassy, Vienna), Bernadette Quinn, Burke Wilkinson, Fr. Paschal Larkin OFM Cap., Dr. Margaret Sheridan, Maura Scannell, Mary Stack, Charles J. Haughey, Jack Lynch, Tadhg Gavin, and Geoffrey Coulter.
• A copy letter to Bernadette Quinn notes that Fr. Henry ‘kept periodicals and papers for a long time until we came down from the Father Mathew Hall to this office and it was then they were all destroyed’ (28 Apr. 1976).
• A copy letter to Fr. R. Burke Savage SJ refers to the involvement of the Capuchins in the labour movement from 1891-1931 and to the role of Fr. Aloysius Travers OFM Cap. in the temperance movement. Reference is also made to the contemporary work of Br. Kevin Crowley OFM Cap. in social outreach. Fr. Henry wrote ‘… beginning in Church Street the Capuchins set up a Clothing Guild for the poor and a Co-operative Work Guild. These have since spread to Cork and Kilkenny. More recently still Brother Kevin [Crowley] has set up a Day Centre in which a number of men who spend the night in the Morning Star and others can spend the day especially in Winter and can have served to them free at least two simple meals’. Fr. Henry also suggests that ‘since Vatican II sodalities seem to have lost their impact’ (9 July 1976).
• A copy letter to Professor Ellmann affirms that Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap. ‘has had nothing to do with this place [the Capuchin Periodicals Office] for over twenty years’ (21 July 1976).
• A letter from Fr. Edward, a Passionist priest, St. Joseph’s Retreat, Cloonamahon, Collooney, County Sligo, refers to the decision to cease publication of The Capuchin Annual. He wrote ‘we of the Passionists in County Sligo voice our surprise and disappointment to learn of the conclusion of the “Capuchin Annual” with the 1977 issue and for the future of those how have a genuine love for all that’s nationalist, cultural and the spiritual well-being of the Irish people and we pledge our wholehearted support to any effort to be made for its survival’. (22 Nov. 1976).
• A copy letter to Dr. Margaret Sheridan suggests that Fr. Henry believed ceasing publication was ‘a mistake’ but it had not caused him ‘any personal grief’ (22 Dec. 1976).