Oliver Plunkett

Saint Oliver Plunkett
Martyr, Archbishop and Primate of All Ireland
Born	1 November 1629(1629-11-01), Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland
Died	1 July 1681 (aged 51), Tyburn, London, England
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	23 May 1920, Rome by Pope Benedict XV
Canonized	12 October 1975, Rome by Pope Paul VI
Major shrine	St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Drogheda, Ireland
Feast	11 July
Patronage	Peace and reconciliation in Ireland

Saint Oliver Plunkett (1 November 1629 – 1 July 1681) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He maintained his duties in Ireland in the face of English persecution and was eventually arrested and tried for treason at a kangaroo court after lawful courts had failed to convict him. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681, and became the last Roman Catholic martyr to die in England. Oliver Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years.

Life

Oliver Plunkett was born in Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland in 1629 to well-to-do parents of Hiberno-Norman origin. He was related by birth to a number of landed families, such as the recently ennobled Earl of Roscommon, as well as the long-established Earl of Fingall, Earl of Louth and Lord Dunsany. Until his sixteenth year, the boy's education was entrusted to his cousin Patrick Plunkett, Abbot of St Mary's, Dublin, and brother of the first Earl of Fingall who later became bishop, successively, of Ardagh and Meath. As an aspirant to the priesthood, he set out for Rome in 1645, under the care of Father Pierfrancesco Scarampi, of the Roman Oratory. At this time, the Irish Confederate Wars were raging in Ireland; these were essentially conflicts between native Irish Roman Catholics, English, and Irish Anglicans and Protestants. Scarampi was the Papal envoy to the Roman Catholic movement known as the Confederation of Ireland. Many of Plunkett's relatives were involved in this organisation

He was admitted to the Irish College in Rome in 1646 and there proved an able pupil. He was ordained a priest in 1654, and deputed by the Irish bishops to act as their representative in Rome. Meanwhile, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649-53) had defeated the Roman Catholic cause in Ireland and, in the aftermath, the public practice of Roman Catholicism was banned and Roman Catholic clergy were executed. As a result, it was impossible for Plunkett to return to Ireland for many years. He petitioned to remain in Rome and, in 1657, became a professor of theology. Throughout the period of the Commonwealth and the first years of Charles II's reign, he successfully pleaded the cause of the Irish Roman Church, and also served as theological professor at the College of Propaganda Fide. At the Congregation of Propaganda Fide on July 9, 1669, he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh, the Irish primatial see, and was consecrated on November 30 at Ghent by the Bishop of Ghent, assisted by the Bishop of Ferns and another bishop. He eventually set foot on Irish soil again in March 1670, as the English Restoration of 1660 had started on a tolerant basis. The pallium was granted him in the Consistory of July 28, 1670.

After arriving back in Ireland, he set about reorganising the ravaged Roman Church and built schools both for the young and for clergy, whom he found 'ignorant in moral theology and controversies'. He tackled drunkenness among the clergy, writing 'Let us remove this defect from an Irish priest, and he will be a saint'. The Penal Laws had been relaxed in line with the Declaration of Breda in 1660 and he was able to establish a Jesuit College in Drogheda in 1670. A year later 150 students attended the College.

Persecution

St Oliver Plunkett's head

On the enactment of the Test Act in 1673, which Plunkett would not agree to for doctrinal reasons, the college was levelled to the ground. Plunkett went into hiding, traveling only in disguise, and refused a government edict to register at a seaport to await passage into exile. In 1678, the so-called Popish Plot, concocted in England by Titus Oates, led to further anti-Roman Catholicism. Archbishop Peter Talbot of Dublin was arrested, and Plunkett again went into hiding. The Privy Council in London was told he had plotted a French invasion.

Despite being on the run and with a price on his head, he refused to leave his flock. He was arrested in Dublin in December 1679 and imprisoned in Dublin Castle, where he gave absolution to the dying Talbot. At some point before his final incarceration, he took refuge in a church that once stood in the townland of Killartry in County Louth, in the parish of Clogherhead, seven miles outside of Drogheda. He was tried at Dundalk for conspiring against the state by plotting to bring 20,000 French soldiers into the country, and for levying a tax on his clergy to support 70,000 men for rebellion. Though this was unproven, some in government circles were worried about, and some used the excuse, that another rebellion was being planned.

Lord Shaftesbury knew Oliver Plunkett would never be convicted in Ireland and had him moved to Newgate Prison, London. The first grand jury found no true bill, but he was not released. The second trial was claimed to be a kangaroo court; Lord Campbell, writing of the judge, Sir Francis Pemberton, claimed it a disgrace to himself and his country. Plunkett was found guilty of high treason on June, 1681 "for promoting the Roman faith," and was condemned to a gruesome death.

Portrait of Oliver Plunkett by Edward Luttrell, 1681

On July 1, 1681, Plunkett became the last Roman Catholic martyr to die in England when he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. His body was initially buried in two tin boxes next to five Jesuits who had died before in the courtyard of St Giles. The remains were exhumed in 1683 and moved to the Benedictine monastery at Lamspringe, near Hildesheim in Germany. The head was brought to Rome, and from there to Armagh and eventually to Drogheda where, since June 29, 1921, it has rested in Saint Peter's Church. Most of the body was brought to Downside Abbey, England, where the major part is located today, with some parts remaining at Lamspringe. Some relics were brought to Ireland in May 1975, while others are in England, France, Germany, the United States, and Australia.

Oliver Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years, and the first of the Irish martyrs to be beatified. For the canonisation, the customary second miracle was waived. (He has since been followed by 17 other Irish martyrs who were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1992. Among them were Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley, Margaret Ball, and the Wexford Martyrs.)

Nevertheless, his ministry during its time was most successful and he confirmed over 48,000 people over a four-year period. In 1997, he became a patron saint, adopted by the prayer group campaigning for peace in Ireland, and was named 'St Oliver Plunkett for Peace and Reconciliation'.

Timeline of events

The shrine of St Oliver Plunkett, in St Peter's, Drogheda

• 4 March 1651 - tonsure & minor orders
• 20 December 1653 - ordained as subdeacon
• 26 December 1653 - ordained as deacon
• 1 January 1654 - ordained as priest in Rome
• November 1657 - appointed Professor of Theology at Propaganda college, Rome
• 23 November 1669 - consecrated as archbishop
• 7 March 1670 - landed at Ringsend, Dublin, ending 23 years of self imposed exile abroad
• 6 December 1679 - arrested
• 23 July 1680 - trial
• 24 October 1680 - transfer from Ireland to London
• 8 June 1681 - trial
• 15 June 1681 - sentenced to death
• 1 July 1681 (OS) = 11 July 1681 (NS) - hanged, drawn, quartered (the punishment for treason against the state), beheaded
• 17 March 1918 - declaration of martyrdom
• Whitsunday, 23 May 1920 - beatified
• 12 October 1975 - canonized

References

• In Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, McCann asks Stanley "What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?"
• In J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, Sebastian Dangerfield repeatedly calls on the name of "the Blessed Oliver" and, towards the end of the book, receives a wooden carving of the saint's head.
• In David Caffrey's 2001 film On The Nose, Nana, played by Francis Burke refers to an aborigine's head in a large specimen jar as "Oliver Plunkett".
• In the 2009 musical comedy short film The Holy Ghost of Oliver, the head of Oliver is stolen and comes to life.

Works Cited

• Blessed Oliver Plunkett: Historical Studies, Gill, Dublin, 1937.
• Desmond Forristal, Oliver Plunkett in his own words, Veritas Publications, Dublin, 1975, ISBN 1853905674
• John Hanley (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett, Dolmen Press, Dublin, 1979.

External links

• Loughcrew gardens, site of Plunkett family church
• Biography of St Oliver Plunket
• St Peters Church, Drogheda - shrine of Oliver Plunketts head
• St Oliver's Catholic Church in Georgia, United States
• Catholic Community Forum St Oliver Plunkett
•  "Blessed Oliver Plunket". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Blessed_Oliver_Plunket. 

This article incorporates text from the entry Blessed Oliver Plunket in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.