The Relics of Saint Oliver Plunkett will be in our parish at all Masses on the weekend of July 6th and 7th. We cordially invite all parishioners to join with us asking the intercession of Saint Oliver Plunkett for our families, our parish and for peace in our wider world, and especially in Gaza and the Holy Land.
St Oliver Plunkett was born at Loughcrew, Oldcastle in our diocese on 1 November 1625. Having studied at the Irish College in Rome, he was ordained a priest in 1654 and became Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in 1657. He maintained his duties in Ireland in the face of English persecution, reorganising the ravaged Irish Church, but was eventually arrested and tried for treason in London.
Having been found guilty of high treason on perjured evidence, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681, and became the last Catholic martyr to die in England. Oliver Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, now 49 years ago, by Pope Saint Paul VI, the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years.
