Saint Oliver Plunkett July 1

Saint Oliver Plunkett

Oliver Plunkett (or Oliver Plunket) (Irish: Oilibhéar Pluincéid), (1 November 1625 – 1 July 1681) was the Catholic Archbishop  of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland who was the last victim of the Popish Plot. He was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, thus becoming the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years.[1]

Saint Oliver Plunkett

Oliver Plunket by Edward Luttrell.jpg

Martyr, Archbishop and Primate of All Ireland

Born

1 November 1625

Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland

Died

1 July 1681 (aged 55)

Tyburn, London, England

Venerated in

Catholic Church

Beatified

23 May 1920, Rome by Pope Benedict XV

Canonized

12 October 1975, Rome by Pope Paul VI

Major shrine

St. Peter's Catholic Church, Drogheda, Ireland

Feast

1 July

Patronage

Peace and Reconciliation in Ireland

Biography Edit

Oliver Plunkett was born on 1 November 1625 (earlier biographers gave his date of birth as 1 November 1629, but 1625 has been the consensus since the 1930s)[2] in Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland, to well-to-do parents with Hiberno-Norman ancestors. A grandson of James Plunket, 8th Baron Killeen (died 1595), he was related by birth to a number of landed families, such as the recently ennobled Earls of Roscommon, as well as the long-established Earls of Fingall, Lords Louth, and Lords Dunsany.[3] Until his sixteenth year, the boy's education was entrusted to his cousin Patrick Plunkett, Abbot of St Mary's, Dublin and brother of Luke Plunkett, the first Earl of Fingall, who later became successively Bishop of Ardagh and of Meath. As an aspirant to the priesthood he set out for Rome in 1647, 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 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.

Portrait of Oliver Plunkett

He was admitted to the Irish College in Rome and proved to be an able pupil.[3] He was ordained 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 Catholic cause in Ireland; in the aftermath the public practice of Catholicism was banned and Catholic clergy were executed. 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.[3] Throughout the period of the Commonwealth and the first years of Charles II's reign, he successfully pleaded the cause of the Irish Catholic Church, and also served as theological professor at the College of Propaganda Fide. At the Congregation of Propaganda Fide on 9 July 1669 he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh,[3] the Irish primatial see, and was consecrated on 30 November at Ghent by the Bishop of Ghent, Eugeen-Albert, count d'Allamont. He eventually set foot on Irish soil again on 7 March 1670, as the English Restoration of 1660 had begun on a basis of toleration. The pallium was granted him in the Consistory of 28 July 1670.

After arriving back in Ireland, he tackled drunkenness among the clergy, writing: "Let us remove this defect from an Irish priest, and he will be a saint". The Penal Laws had been relaxed in line with the Declaration of Breda in 1660[4] and he was able to establish a Jesuit College in Drogheda in 1670. A year later 150 students attended the college, no fewer than 40 of whom were Protestant, making this college the first integrated school in Ireland. His ministry was a successful one and he is said to have confirmed 48,000 Catholics over a 4-year period. The government in Dublin, especially under the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormonde (the Protestant son of Catholic parents) extended a generous measure of toleration to the Catholic hierarchy until the mid-1670s.