1916 Remembered

Frs Ned Galvin and John Blowick - Photo: St Columbans, Navan, Ireland

This month I have been remembering my mother, Brigid, who was born on April 9, 1916, and thinking about some of the other major events of that year that are still impacting my life today.

Just months before she came into the world, the Allied forces completed their retreat from the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey on January 9, 1916. It ended what was a disastrous campaign but one which was to create what is called the Anzac spirit, which is remembered and celebrated each year on April 25.

She was born 2 weeks before the Easter Rising in 1916 when a small group of Irish rebels took over the General Post Office in Dublin and issued a proclamation of independence.  The rising started on April 24 but 6 days later the rebels surrendered. Sixteen of the leaders including Padraig Pearce, James Connolly and Joseph Mary Plunket were executed in early May. Initially the local population was indifferent if not hostile to the rebels.  Their execution turned them into martyrs and started a movement that eventually brought about the independence they proclaimed during the rising.

Mum would have been just 3 months old when the battle of the Somme began during WWI. It continued until November resulting in over 1,000,000 killed or wounded, 19,000 on the first day alone. This was just one of several major battles on land and sea that happened that year.

In August of 1916 Fr Ned Galvin arrived in Dublin to talk to the Irish bishops about setting up a missionary group to go to China.  In September of that year, he was introduced to Fr. John Blowick, who resigned his chair at Maynooth to head the mission. In October the Irish Bishops blessed and approved their proposal and it was presented to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome in December. The Maynooth Mission to China, later to be named after St Columban, was approved in 1918.

At one level it was a very bad time to take on a mission to China. However, our founders were able to present this mission as a splendid cause that called for the kind of heroic commitment and self-sacrifice that so many were showing during WWI and the Easter Rising. It stuck a cord with many people so that many men volunteered to join this missionary venture and many others provided the support for the mission to happen.

Now in 2026, one hundred years later, I find myself an Irish member of the Missionary Society that Galvin and Blowick founded and working in New Zealand, the land of one half of the Anzacs. I am reminded that sometimes events that at one level seem to have been failures, like the Easter Rising, or the campaigns at Gallipoli and the Somme can be the catalyst for real change. The self-sacrifice and dedication to a worthy cause demonstrated in these events still serve as an inspiration to successive generations, as they did for the Columbans as they took on the challenges of bringing the message of the gospel to China.  The blood of martyrs can be the seeds of new life not only in the church but in the world.  

Fr Patrick O'Shea lives and works in Aotearoa/New Zealand