Fr Joseph Mullooly OP, a Dominican priest from Lanesboro, Co. Longford, who became a pioneering archaeologist in Rome, was honoured this past weekend at a special commemoration in the Basilica of San Clemente.
The ceremony, led by Martin Selmayr, European Ambassador to the Holy See, drew around 100 visitors from Longford as well as descendants from the US. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola praised Mullooly as a man who “contributed another chapter to the story of the Eternal City.”
Fr Mullooly left his family farm in the 1840s and went on to play an integral role in securing San Clemente for the Dominicans, branded it an Irish national college, and famously defended it from Garibaldi’s forces in 1848. His excavations revealed the fourth-century basilica and earlier Christian sites, and he later became a senior figure in the Vatican, offering counsel to Pope Pius IX.
Local MEP Ciaran Mullooly, a distant cousin, said the occasion showed how a figure long honoured in Rome “must also be recognised at home.”
