Dr. Manning's Sermon

The Roman correspondent of the Dublin Freeman's Journal, in his letter of the 18th ult., thus alludes to the celebration of St. Patrick's Day in Rome:

Never before was there such a commemoration of St. Patrick's Day as that which took place yesterday within the venerable walls of the Irish Franciscan Convent of St. Isidore here at Rome. Children of the old land, many of whom had not seen it for years, and many of whom, perhaps, would never see it again, were assembled within the Convent Chapel, and prayed around its altar for blessings on their country with more of fervor than perhaps they had ever prayed with before. They were there, prelates, priests and people from Ireland, America, Australia, New Zealand, the Indies — all proud of the land to which they owe their origin, and many of them wearing on their breasts the little green leaf, (the greeting from friends in Ireland,) cherished throughout the world as "Old Erin's Native Shamrock." And the place they knelt was one well-suited for the gathering together of the scattered children of the Irish race.

St. Isidore's is an Irish convent, founded by an Irish priest, and inhabited from that time down to this by Irish priests and Irish levites of the holy order of St. Francis. The monastery is situated close to the church and convent of the Capuchins, of which I made mention in one of my earlier communications. The place had originally belonged to a community of Spanish Franciscans, but it was not till after it had passed from under their charge that it was enlarged into its present dimensions. The convent, as it now stands, was constructed under the immediate supervision of the illustrious Father Luke Wadding, who purchased the original building from the Spanish Regulars I have already mentioned (who had dedicated it to St. Isidore, one of the principal of their country's saints,) and handed it over for ever to the use of his order.

Father [Wadding] was born, as nearly everybody knows, in Waterford, and left it at an early age that he might seek in foreign lands that knowledge which the penal laws made it treason for him to look for at home. He spent much of his time in Spain and Portugal, and when ordained to the priesthood, and admitted into the Franciscan Order, he gave lectures in theology at Salamanca and other seats of learning, and preached often from the pulpits in several of their principal towns. He finally bent his steps towards Rome — taught in the Franciscan school attached to the Church of St. Peter, in Montario, and soon after, about the year 1617, founded the Irish house of his order in his new purchase at St. Isidore's. The venerable man lived to his seventieth year, and died in the convent on the 13th of November, 1657. His epitaph is a glowing, but not exaggerated, tribute from his spiritual children to the memory of one who was "a learned man, adorned with virtues well deserving of church, religion, and country, the historian of the whole Order of Minors — their best, and best beloved father and founder."

Scattered through the chapel are other records of Irish Franciscans, who have left noble monuments of their genius and industry in the ecclesiastical literature of their country. Among them I may mention the names of Archbishop Cavill, Primate of Ireland; Father Bonaventure Baron, Father Francis Porter, and Father James [Taaffe], who had been confessor to the wife of James the Second.

The chapel of the convent is small, but it contains some exquisite gems in painting and in statuary. The Irish visitor will not fail to stop with interest before the statue of our patron saint that meets him as he passes the little steep that conducts him into the convent, and the painting of him by an unknown artist that decorates the side chapel on the left of the principal altar. They may not be of the very highest order of art, but any short-comings in that particular will not lessen the affectionate appreciation with which an Irish eye will gaze upon them.

I have said that the chapel is small, and never was this fact more painfully felt than it was yesterday. Year after year, on the recurrence of the festival, an appeal is made on behalf of the community, and I am happy to be able to say that the Fathers have always felt that the appeal was not made in vain. But this year the number of Irish, or Irish-descended, persons stopping in Rome is unusually large, and the anxiety of all to be present on the occasion was proportionately great. The consequence was that the chapel was completely filled at an early hour.

At the conclusion of the High Mass the Archbishop of Westminster preached the panegyric of the saint, and delivered one of those eloquent, thoughtful, suggestive discourses that one always expects, and is sure to hear, from the lips of his Grace. He gave a brief but interesting sketch of the early life of the saint, and of the supernatural character of his vocation, and the conversion of Ireland; he traced his progress throughout the island, and how that wheresoever he went he found a soil ready to open to receive the seed of faith which he came to sow there. He described him as unwearied and untiring in preaching [...]

[...] This portion of his sermon was particularly beautiful, and all present felt the share that Ireland has had in spreading the Catholic faith to the newly-discovered continents, north and south [...]

His Grace then went on to say that, glorious as was the past, and bright as is the present of the Irish Church, no single country has so large a proportion of its children scattered as exiles over the world. He believed that the Irish and Irish-born prelates were destined to have a memorable part in the results of the Vatican Council. It was a feature of the Catholic Church at all times in Ireland that it kept itself independent of the control of existing dynasties. It is a feature of all the churches abroad, where Irish bishops hold jurisdiction, that the same independence exists as well, and he conceived that there was a more than natural significance in this important fact.

There have been rumors, menaces, indications of what will be done in one place, of what will be thought in another place by the powers of this world, in case the Council should declare this or refuse that, but he had no fear of all those menaces, for he believed that the children of St. Patrick and of Ireland throughout the world had made up their minds not to suffer any human hand to touch the Church of God. He had no fears for the Church or for the Council — for God was on their side, and those who were against them would, in the end, be conquered. The truth would go forward — for truth never fails, and though the world may clamor and hate, the truth would triumph over all.

Nothing could exceed the earnestness with which his Grace delivered this portion of the sermon, and after an eloquent exhortation to his hearers to pray to St. Patrick for God's blessing on the Church, he commended the community of St. Isidore's to their generous consideration.