The 250th anniversary of the birth of the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell will be celebrated in his native Kerry on August 6. While O’Connell is arguably the most famous Kerryman of all time, Dublin claims him too, as Lord Mayor and distinguished citizen. Indeed, there are a number of O’Connell monuments in Dublin: the statue in the street that bears his name, the round tower over his tomb in Glasnevin and one of Dublin’s most distinguished churches, St Andrew’s on Westland Row.
O’Connell had a key role in ensuring the building of that fine church in the immediate aftermath of Catholic Emancipation. There had been a plan to rebuild an old and inadequate parish church on nearby Townsend Street, but O’Connell championed the cause of moving to a more prominent site in the heart of the fashionable south city district. O’Connell was a parishioner, living in Merrion Square in a house now occupied by the Notre Dame University Centre for Irish Studies.
O’Connell wrote of listening to the eloquent preaching of Archbishop Daniel Murray in St Andrew’s. Parish lore has it that he donated a wine cooler from his home in Merrion Square to serve us the baptismal font in the church. Whatever the truth of that, he certainly headed the list of subscribers to the cost of building this noble expression of the Catholic tradition of houses of prayer.
What is also certain is that O’Connell donated to the church a fine painting of the Martyrdom of St Thomas á Beckett which he commissioned from the important Cork artist, Daniel Maclise. O’Connell had a devotion to Beckett, seeing in him a martyr for freedom from State interference in the life of the Church.
Having commissioned the painting, O’Connell sent it on tour around the country to be seen by the public in local hotels on payment of a fee. By the time it arrived in Westland Row, where it may still be seen, much of the cost of the commission had been recouped.
St Andrews is not of course, the only prominent expression of O’Connell‘s impact on Dublin. The O’Connell Schools continue to bear his name, reflecting his encouragement to Blessed Edmund Rice to develop his schools for poor boys. Glasnevin Cemetery itself bears testament to his civic activism. Indeed, many initiatives in Victorian Dublin received the encouragement and practical support of O’Connell, such as his support for Fr John Hand in founding All Hallows Missionary College.
St Andrew’s honours the memory of O’Connell to this day, remembering him at Mass on the Sunday nearest the anniversary of his death in Genoa on May 16, 1847. Appropriately, his elaborate funeral in Rome ordered by Pope Pius IX was celebrated in another church of St Andrew, San Andrea Della Valle, where O’Connell is also commemorated.
This year, O’Connell will also be remembered on the anniversary of his birth at Masses in St Andrew’s, living testament to the significance of the life and legacy of O’Connell.
