The Irish Diaspora

Extract

The fifth volume in Patrick O’Sullivan’s ground-breaking series The Irish World Wide (1996) is devoted to Irish religion. In his choice of contributors and contributions, the editor has achieved a careful balance between Catholic and Protestant, the latter being a category often too ill-researched to appear in such collections. O’Sullivan’s introduction opens with a retelling of the tale of a confused sixteenth-century Irish Catholic lad who conformed to Protestantism in England, became a sailor and fell victim to the Mexican Inquisition. The introduction concludes with another American tale, also told in Janice Tranter's essay on the Sisters of St Jospeh in Australia, of a Sister from the order who was executed by Shining Path guerillas in Peru. Yet another moving narrative is Anne-Maree (sic) Whitaker’s story of the Irish convict priests and rebels who founded the Catholic Church in Australia.