A history of the Capuchins in Kilkenny by Fr. Angelus Healy OSFC. The text covers the period from the arrival of the Order in the city in 1643 to about 1825. The text includes transcripts and extracts from contemporary sources including:
• The petition of the Capuchins in Kilkenny to the General Assembly of the Irish Catholic Confederation [c.1645/6]. In Latin.
• Reply of the General Assembly of the Irish Catholic Confederation ‘fully admitting the Capuchins to establish themselves as members of the regular clergy in Ireland …’. [c.1645/6]. In Latin.
• Letters and petitions from the Franciscans and Dominicans to the Most Rev. David Rothe, Bishop of Ossory stating their opposition to the establishment by the Capuchins of a foundation in Kilkenny. [c.1647]. In Latin.
• Letter from Fr. Inocencio de Caltagirone OSFC, Minister General of the Capuchin Order, to Fr. Barnabas Barnewall OSFC, Commissary General, Kilkenny, reporting on the favourable conduct of the Capuchins in Ireland. 22 Apr. 1650. In Latin.
• Extracts from The Laffan Papers re the Capuchins in Kilkenny (1689).
• Declaration of the state of the Irish Capuchin mission signed by Fr. Cyprian of Armagh. 1 Dec. 1689.
• Report on the state of the Diocese of Ossory sent to Propaganda Fide, Rome. 1769.
Biographical details compiled by Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap. of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Cork Capuchins. The document is titled ‘Vassy, 23rd April 1833’. Those named are: ‘James O’Leahy. Died in France, 22 January 1817; Thomas Chinnery. Received in Vassy, 3 November 1783. Information is also given in respect of Edward Nugent (from Dalytown, County Longford), Died in France, 1795; James Jones (from Dunshaughlin, County Meath) ‘Died in Dublin in 1805, whilst seeking priests to help in his missions’.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priest
A certified copy of a historical memorandum deposited on 13 August 1896 within a makeshift time capsule underneath a newly constructed lawn tennis court at the Capuchin Friary in Rochestown, County Cork. The narrative records that a body of Capuchin students initiated construction on 8 April 1895 and completed the project in 1896. Signed by Brother Angelus Healy OFM Cap., the text documents contemporary ecclesiastical, imperial, and civic authorities across both years (including Pope Leo XIII, Queen Victoria, Bishop of Cork Thomas A. O’Callaghan, and successive Mayors of Cork P. H. Meade and Sir John Harley Scott) alongside a register of the eleven participating student friars. Furthermore, the text details the preservation methods used for the original deposit (parchment sealed in a waxed glass bottle, embedded in cement, and protected by an earthenware flowerpot) and provides explicit geometric surveying coordinates to locate the capsule between four wooden corner posts. The document is supplemented by classical maxims in Latin and Greek celebrating labour and industry.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priest
Notes documenting clerical transfers, house appointments, educational lectureships, and student relocations across the Irish Capuchin Franciscan Province from 1898 to 1906. The extracts trace changes arising from provincial chapters and local assignments, primarily moving personnel between major Irish ministries in Rochestown, Kilkenny, Dublin, and Cork, alongside international assignments to the mission (Fr. Luke Sheehan OFM Cap.) in Aden and higher studies in Louvain, Belgium. The records track individual careers (such as the early assignments of Fr. Camillus Killian OFM Cap.) and document the movement of philosophy and theology students, appointments to the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Association, and lectureship posts held by individual friars.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priestChronology (probably compiled by Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap.) of important events associated with the Capuchin presence in Kilkenny dating from 1643 to 1876. Many of the later entries are references from local newspapers.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priestThe file comprises a small collection of fragmentary notes and lists of friars associated with the American mission compiled by Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap. Some of the information appears to have been taken from articles published in ‘The Father Mathew Record’.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priestTranscript by Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap. of an appeal seeking support for a number of Capuchin friars ‘expelled under circumstances of peculiar hardship from the Nantes Convent’, as a result of the ‘policy of persecution adopted by the present French ministry’. The appeal may have been made in circa 1880. The appeal refers to the need to expand Holy Trinity Friary, and to ‘the heavy charge of forty religious actually dependent on a house, already full and heavily weighted with a large ground rent for Church and Convent and with building work on hand’. Subscriptions are to be directed to Fr. Simeon Gaudillot OSFC, Commissary General, Mr. Thomas Lyons, JP, Passage West, and others. The original printed appeal is extant in a volume at CA HT/7/20.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priest
Copy letter from Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap. to Fr. Luke Sheehan OFM Cap. affirming that another priest will be sent to Oregon in early Spring to join him and Fr. Casimir. The letter refers to Bishop Charles Joseph O’Reilly’s desire to have a resident priest in the ‘Indian mission at Warm Springs’ which the Capuchins would not find desirable.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priest
A bound volume containing an article draft titled ‘Croagh Patrick Pilgrimage / A.D. 441-A.D. 1941’. The article was written by Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap. and assesses the historical significance of the Croagh Patrick Pilgrimage in County Mayo. Fr. Angelus wrote ‘At the risk of appearing egotistical, but as a justification of my writing these pages, I may mention that my experience of Croagh Patrick goes back to the year 1906, when I climbed it for the first time, and that every year since, with only two exceptions, I have taken part in the pilgrimage’. The article was probably intended for publication in a Capuchin periodical.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priestDraft resolution forwarded by Fr. Angelus Healy OSFC, Vice-President, Father Mathew Hall. Fr. Angelus suggest that the resolution ‘asks two things … first to endorse the work of the Irish Temperance Association and secondly to appeal for further financial support to enable the Hall Committee to extend their temperance propaganda’. The resolution refers to efforts to curtail the sale of alcohol on Sundays. The report notes that ‘we have Sunday drinking not in the interest of the public but in the interest of the publican’.
Healy, Angelus, 1875-1953, Capuchin priest