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Daniel O’Connell, lithograph attributed to R. Evan Sly (EP OCON-DA (17) II) from the National Library of Ireland. / Credit: National Library of Ireland

Dublin, Ireland, Aug 9, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Daniel O’Connell, known as “The Liberator,” was a pivotal figure in 19th-century Ireland, championing the cause of Catholic emancipation.

Opposed to violence, he advocated for Catholic rights through peaceful means, emphasizing dialogue and legal reform, and organizing mass demonstrations to rally public support and raise awareness about the injustices faced by Catholics.

“Daniel O’Connell’s achievement in forcing the British government to concede Catholic emancipation in 1829 was immense,” Bishop Niall Coll of Ossory told CNA. “The penal laws, a series of oppressive statutes enacted in the 17th and early 18th centuries that targeted the Catholic majority in Ireland, restricting their rights to own land, hold public office, and practice their religion were set aside.”

O’Connell’s efforts culminated in the passage of the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament and hold public office and significantly transformed Irish politics.

O’Connell was born in 1775 in Caherciveen in rural Kerry. His parents had managed to maintain their land despite the penal laws, thanks to their remoteness, business sense, and help from Protestant neighbors. O’Connell’s earliest years, until he was 4, were spent with an Irish-speaking family that instilled in him an inherent understanding of Irish peasant life. 

After studying in France at the English Colleges in St. Omer and Douai during the French Revolution, he returned to Ireland, completed his studies, and was called to the bar. In 1802, then a successful barrister, he married a distant cousin, Mary O’Connell, and they had 12 children — seven of whom survived to adulthood. In 1823 he founded the Catholic Association with the express aim of securing emancipation.

O’Connell’s early experiences were critical to his political and social formation, according to Jesuit historian Father Fergus O’Donoghue, who told CNA that O’Connell’s exposure to European influences undoubtedly shaped his character, his opposition to violence, and his deep-seated opposition to tyranny.

“He witnessed the French Revolution, which appalled him and set his heart completely against violence,” O’Donoghue told CNA. “What Daniel O’Connell really did was produce a political sense in Ireland that was never previously generated. Irish Catholics lived in appalling poverty and were neglected. He energized them. He brought Church and laity together into politics and constitutionalism.”

O’Donoghue explained how O’Connell’s arousal of a nationwide Irish Catholic consciousness impacted politics and society but also had far-reaching consequences beyond Irish shores. 

“When Irish Catholics emigrated, which of course many were forced to do, many of them were already politically aware. That’s why Irish people got so rapidly into American politics and into Australian politics later.”

“He was part of the enormous revival of Irish Catholicism in the 19th century. Before the Act of Union, various relief acts had been passed so Catholics officially could become things like judges or sheriffs, but none really were appointed in numbers. He was blistering in highlighting the difference between the law and reality. He was liberal, which amazed people; he believed strongly in parliamentary democracy. Many Catholics were monarchists and tending to be absolutists and he was having none of that. Under no circumstances would he approve of violence.”

Coll told CNA how O’Connell’s personal reputation extended his influence worldwide: “The fact that he could remain a devoted and practicing Catholic — while supporting the separation of church and state, the ending of Anglican privileges and discrimination based on religious affiliation, and the extension of individual liberties, including those in the sphere of politics — made him a hero and inspiration to Catholic liberals in many European countries.”

Coll continued: “The fact that his political movement was based upon popular support and the mobilization of the mass of the people, while yet being nonviolent and orderly, gave proof that political agitation did not necessarily have to be anticlerical or bloody. The attention his movement and opinions received in the continental European press was remarkable, as were the number and distinction of European writers and political figures who visited Ireland with the express purpose of securing an audience with O’Connell.”

Coll agreed firmly with historians who believe no other Irish political figure of the 19th or early 20th century enjoyed such an international reputation as did O’Connell throughout his later public career. 

Among those whom O’Connell also influenced were Eamon de Valera, president of Ireland; Frederick Douglass, social reformer and slavery abolitionist in the United States; and Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Indeed, de Gaulle, when on an extended visit to Ireland, insisted on visiting Derrynane House in Kerry, the home of Daniel O’Connell. 

When asked how he knew about O’Connell, de Gaulle replied: “My grandmother wrote a book about O’Connell.” The grandmother in question was Joséphine de Gaulle (née Maillot), a descendant of the McCartans of County Down and his paternal grandmother, who wrote “Daniel O’Connell, Le Libérateur de l’Irlande” in 1887. De Gaulle’s father, Henri, was also a historian interested in O’Connell. 

In The Tablet, Dermot McCarthy, former secretary to the Office of the Irish Prime Minister, wrote that O’Connell’s primary legacy was “lifting a demoralized and impoverished Catholic people off their knees to recognize their inherent dignity and realize their capacity to be protagonists of their own destiny.”

Minister for Culture, Communications, and Sport Patrick O’Donovan said last month: “Daniel O’Connell was one of the most important figures in Irish political history, not just for what he achieved, but for how he achieved it. He believed in peaceful reform, in democracy, and in civil rights; ideas and concepts to which we should still aspire today.” 

However, in its official communiques praising O’Connell, the Irish government minister failed to mention the word “Catholic” even once. 

For O’Donoghue, the absence of any Catholic context is unsurprising given the prevailing secular attitudes among many of the country’s politicians. 

Bishop Fintan Monahan, bishop of Killaloe, visited O’Connell’s grave in Rome during the Jubilee for Youth, telling CNA: “In 1847, the Great Famine was at its most severe and O’Connell’s final speech in the House of Commons was an appeal for help for its victims. Due to his physical weakness, this final speech was barely audible.”

O’Connell died in Genoa on May 15, 1847, on the 17th anniversary of the first time he presented himself at the House of Commons.

It was hoped that his heart might be interred in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. However, Pope Pius IX feared offending the British government on whose goodwill Catholic missionaries depended in many parts of the world. A requiem Mass was offered for O’Connell in the Roman baroque basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle. The attendance included the future cardinal, now canonized saint, John Henry Newman. 

O’Connell had said he wished to bequeath “his soul to God, his body to Ireland, and his heart to Rome.”

[…]

Moscow, Russia, Aug 23, 2017 / 12:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After a joint meeting during Cardinal Pietro Parolin’s visit to Russia this week, both he and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill said the trip marks “a new stage” in relations between their Churches.

This stage, they said, is thanks not only to Pope Francis’ meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Havana in February 2016, but is also due to the loaning of the relics of St. Nicholas to Russia over the summer, drawing millions of Orthodox faithful for veneration.

Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, was welcomed to Patriarch Kirill’s residence at the monastery of St. Daniel Aug. 22, where the two met as part of Cardinal Parolin’s Aug. 21-24 visit to Moscow.

Taking place 18 months after meeting between Francis and Patriarch Kirill, Parolin’s visit marks the first time a Vatican Secretary of State has traveled to Moscow in 18 years.

According to an Aug. 23 statement from the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow, at the beginning of the meeting Patriarch Kirill said the meeting between he and Cardinal Parolin was possible due to “the development of relations between the Russian Federation and the Holy See.”

“But it is with still greater satisfaction that I see the development of relations between our Churches,” he said, noting that his meeting with Pope Francis provided new impetus for cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.

“This fact testifies that a new stage has indeed begun in our relations with events of great importance, which have been possible because in Havana we agreed our positions on many current issues,” he said, adding that “this communion of positions allows us to build plans and give them real content.”

Cardinal Parolin echoed the sentiment, offering Pope Francis’ greeting to “my brother Kirill,” and affirming the patriarch’s observation that the Havana encounter “has laid the foundation for a new stage in the relationship between our Churches, giving new impetus to these relations,” according to Vatican Radio.

A key highlight of the conversation between the two was the transfer of the relics of St. Nicholas of Bari, one of the most revered saints in the Russian Orthodox Church, to Moscow earlier this summer.

Consisting of several fragments of his ribs, the relics were flown on a chartered plane to Moscow, where they stayed in the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior from May 22-July 12 before going to St. Petersburg from July 13-28, marking the first time in nearly 1,000 years that the relics of the 4th century saint had been moved from their resting place in Bari.

Calling the visit of the relics an “exceptional event for the story of our Churches,” Cardinal Parolin said the event is an example of “the ecumenism of sanctity, it’s true, it exists.”

“The saints unite us because they are close to God and so it is they who help us to overcome the difficulties of past relations due to previous situations, and to always walk more rapidly toward fraternal embrace and Eucharistic communion,” he said.  

According to the statement from the patriarchate, more than 2.3 million Orthodox faithful from all over Russia cued up to venerate the relics, at times waiting 6-10 hours to get in. Many elderly and sick also came, and were able to skip the long lines.  

Patriarch Kirill noted that when they waived goodbye to the relics, he told his faithful that “neither ecclesiastical diplomacy nor government diplomacy could do as much for the development of relations between the Catholic world and the Orthodox world as what St. Nicholas did.”

St Nicholas, he said, “has entered into the history of relations between our Churches as a particularly brilliant and luminous page. It is a spiritual consequence of our meeting in Havana.”

As with prior meetings Cardinal Parolin had this week, other key talking points between the two were conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the need to seek peaceful solutions while working together to provide humanitarian aid.

On the crisis in Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill stressed that the Church “can play no other role than that of pacification when people are in conflict with each other,” and voiced gratitude for the fact that “our Churches share much the same position on the role of the Church in the conflict in Ukraine.”

Cardinal Parolin voiced much the same point of view in his meeting with Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, President of the Department for External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, the day before.

In his comments, Patriarch Kirill noted that “conflicts do not last forever and sooner or later they end,” but questioned that “if all social efforts are involved in the conflict, then who will pick up the stones?”

“I appreciate very much the fact that once again we have found mutual understanding on the role that our Churches must play in the reconciliation of the population in Ukraine,” he said.

When it comes to the Middle East, mention was made of the agreement the two Churches found on conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa during last year’s meeting in Havana.

“The collaboration between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church in providing humanitarian assistance to the populations suffering due to conflicts in the Middle East can be an important factor of unity,” Patriarch Kirill said, adding that cooperation in providing aid can provide a basis for common projects in the Middle East in the future.

Following his meeting with the patriarch, Cardinal Parolin visited Putin at the presidential residence in Sochi, nearly 900 miles southwest of Saratov.

During their hour-long meeting “carried out in a positive and cordial climate, one of respect and listening to each other,” they had an “open exchange of views on various subject matters relating to international and bilateral relations,” according to a statement from the Holy See press office.

They exchanged gifts, with Cardinal Parolin giving the Russian president a bronze olive branch as a symbol of peace, and Putin giving the Vatican secretary of state a set of collector coins commemorating the 2014 Olympics, which were held in Sochi.

Cardinal Parolin is travelling back to Moscow, where he will say a private Mass at the nunciature Aug. 24 before his return to Rome.

[…]

Bishop Erik Varden. / Credit: Pål Johannes Nes

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