Saint Oliver Plunkett

Saint Oliver Plunkett was Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He rebuilt the Church in his homeland after years of persecution and, falsely accused of high treason, died a martyr in London. The Church remembers him on July 1.

He was born on November 1, 1625, at Loughcrew in County Meath, to John Plunkett and Thomasina Dillon. Catholic education was then forbidden in Ireland, so he was taught privately by a relative, Patrick Plunkett, an abbot in Dublin and later a bishop. In 1647 he came to Rome with several other candidates for the priesthood under the care of the Oratorian Pier Francesco Scarampi. He entered the Irish College and studied philosophy and theology at the Jesuits’ Roman College.

He was ordained a priest in Rome on January 1, 1654. The persecution that had left Ireland almost without bishops after Cromwell’s invasion kept him from returning. For three years he served with the Oratorians at the church of San Girolamo della Carità and visited the sick in the Hospital of the Holy Spirit. From 1657 he taught theology for twelve years at the College of Propaganda Fide and represented the Irish bishops in Rome.

In 1669 Clement IX appointed him Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He was consecrated a bishop in Ghent and reached his archdiocese in 1670. He convened synods, visited the dioceses, confirmed thousands of the faithful, and watched over the conduct of the clergy. In Drogheda he founded a school run by the Jesuits, to which even non-Catholics sent their children. He also persuaded armed outlaws to lay down their weapons. When persecution flared up again at the end of 1673, he did not abandon his flock and hid for six months in the woods and mountains.

In 1678 a fabricated “Popish Plot” was proclaimed in London. The archbishop was arrested in December 1679. Although nothing incriminating was found in his papers, false witnesses testified against him, among them clergymen he had once rebuked. The trial in Dundalk collapsed because the accusers failed to appear. In 1680 he was taken to Newgate Prison in London, and in June 1681 he was sentenced for high treason to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He received the sentence with the words “Deo gratias.”

He was executed at Tyburn on July 1, 1681, by the Julian calendar then in use in England. At the gallows he forgave all who had played a part in his death and professed the Catholic faith to the end. In 1883 his relics were moved from Lamspringe in Germany to Downside Abbey in England, and the martyr’s head is venerated in Drogheda.

Benedict XV beatified him in 1920, and Paul VI canonized him on October 12, 1975, presenting him as a model of reconciliation. Cardinal Karol Wojtyła took part in the canonization; as John Paul II, in Drogheda in 1979, he recalled that the saint preached forgiveness and never condoned violence.