Showing 45 results

Letter from Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap., Hermiston, Oregon, to Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OFM Cap., regarding the disposition of Stanfield Church and the progress of building works on other churches in his ministry in Oregan. He wrote: ‘As soon as the weather moderates I will begin the building of the Church at Pilot Rock. I intended to call it Santa Clara but I will get a donation of $1,000 if I call it Saint Agnes. What’s in a name? I’ve been called many names myself, few of them as complimentary in the change as this one’.

Letter from Fr. Kevin OSF to Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OFM Cap., Provincial Minister, seeking support for the building of the first local Franciscan Sisters’ convent at the Nsambya Mission in Kampala, Uganda. The appeal reads: ‘There is a great field of work to be done there, and we need the help of these native Sisters at all the missions so badly’.

Letters to Fr. Peter Bowe OSFC, Provincial Minister, Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OSFC, Fr. Sylvester Mulligan OSFC, Fr. Laurence Dowling OSFC, Fr. Fiacre Brophy OSFC and other Capuchin friars regarding parish missions and retreats. Many of the requests from religious congregations and institutions. The letters refer to retreats in the South Parish (Cork), Eyrecourt (Galway), the Convent of the Poor Clares, Lynton (Devon), Our Lady of Sorrows Capuchin Friary, Peckham (London), Kilrooskey (Roscommon), Crosshaven (Cork), Athy (Kildare), Kinsale (Cork), the Sisters of Mercy Convent, Thurles (Tipperary), the Capuchin Friary, Pantasaph (Wales), Saint Alban’s Convent, Pontypool (Wales), Curragh Army Camp (Kildare), Dunfanaghy (Donegal), Dunmore East (Waterford), Bundoran (Donegal), Mooncoin (Kilkenny), Ballyshannon (Donegal), Sisters of Charity Convent (Dublin), Carmelite Convent, Tallaght (Dublin), Catholic Truth Society (Kerry), Loreto Convent, Navan (Meath), St. Joseph’s Daughters of the Cross Convent, Donaghmore (Tyrone), and the Little Sisters of the Poor Convent (Waterford).

The file includes a letter from Fr. Albert to Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OFM Cap., Minister Provincial [Dec. 1922], referring to his time in the parish. He declares that the priests there have no interest in Ireland. ‘It doesn’t count here apparently’, and added, ‘unemployment [is] very serious. The “Daily News” urges the setting up “unemployment committees” …’. Later, Canon Palmer, Ilford, Essex, wrote to Fr. Peter Bowe OFM Cap., Provincial Minister, Church Street, Dublin, seeking to have Fr. Albert come over to cover for one of his clerical assistants who is unwell. On 11 Oct. 1923 Fr. Palmer wrote: ‘I would gladly give him all accommodation and he could help us. In strict confidence with yourself I wish to say at the same time that if there is any radical objection to his coming or having facilities. I would not presume to ask you at all’. With letter from Fr. Peter Bowe to Fr. Albert granting permission to ‘absent yourself from the Province for the benefit of your health, and to go to Very Rev. Canon Palmer of Ilford … to help in Parochial Work during the absence of the Senior Curate, until the end of February 1924’. The file also includes a letter from Fr. Sylvester Mulligan OFM Cap. to Fr. Peter Bowe OFM Cap., regarding the sending of Fr. Albert to Ilford, Esssex. Some political references are made by Fr. Albert in a letter to Fr. Stanislaus Kavanagh OFM Cap. (4 Mar. 1924). He wrote: ‘I am able to follow the events pretty well. Tis an awful pity that the being in power of the Labour Party is not availed of to scrap or modify the Treaty – a united body at home could now get anything – not that Labour is pro-Irish. It is not, but … because of the support on which it depends it could not turn down a united Ireland – or a large section demanding it’

Letter from the Most Rev. Daniel Cohalan, Bishop of Cork, to Fr. Martin Hyland OFM Cap., Guardian, Rochestown Capuchin Friary, expressing his happiness that Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. is back in Cork again. He notes that he ‘has been a good while in prison [and] previous to that he was a war chaplain’, and requests that he prepare for examination for the renewal of faculties to preach and to hear confessions. The examination will be a written test on moral and dogmatic theology. With copy reply from Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OFM Cap., Provincial Minister, asserting that ‘owing to the degrading and cruel treatments he suffered for the past thirteen or fourteen months at the hands of the British’ it would be unwise to ask Fr. Dominic to prepare for the aforementioned examination.

Letters regarding a dispute over the editorship of the temperance publication, 'The Father Mathew Record', also known as 'The Irish Home Journal'. The file includes a letter from Brian O’Higgins to Fr. Edwin Fitzgibbon OSFC, Provincial Minister, complaining about his dismissal as associate editor of the 'Record' by Fr. Joseph Fenlon OSFC who ‘desired to keep politics out of the Journal’. O’Higgins, a member of Sinn Féin, admits that he is ‘on what is known as “the run”’. With notes by Fr. Edwin regarding the proprietorship of the Journal, and the need to reserve the appointment of editor to the council of the Capuchin Franciscan Order in Ireland. Later, Fr. Joseph wrote to Fr. Edwin confirming his resignation from the Presidency of Father Mathew Hall and the temperance sodality. The file also includes a signed notice of a special meeting of the Hall Committee affirming that the ‘"Record" was started by Fr. Aloysius [Travers], President of the Hall … [and] that the Office of the Record was transferred to the Hall premises’. The committee members contended that the 'Record' magazine was the property of the committee ‘and that the Provincial Superiors acted without consideration of the circumstances when … they decided to take it over and have it conducted independently of the committee and its President’. (10 June 1920).