His cause for sainthood gained momentum in the 20th century and in 1975 Plunkett became the first Irishman to be canonized since St. Lawrence O’Toole some seven centuries earlier.
Oliver Plunkett was born on Nov. 1, 1625 into a minor Catholic landholding family in County Meath. In 1647, he was sent to Rome to study for the priesthood and was ordained in 1654. Normally, he would have returned to work in his homeland, but Ireland at that moment was under the heel of Oliver Cromwell following the latter’s conquest in 1649-1650. Chief among the goals of Cromwell and his fellow fanatical Puritans was the crushing of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
So Oliver Plunkett remained in Rome and taught theology to seminarians. A few years later he was named the representative of Irish bishops in Rome and in 1669 was consecrated bishop of Armagh and primate of All Ireland. By then the situation in Ireland was less hostile (the Puritans had been driven from power and Charles II restored to the throne) and Plunkett set off to assume his duties.
He arrived in 1670 to a church still shattered by the Cromwellian tyranny. The destruction of churches and seminaries, coupled with the execution or exile of countless priests, left the institutionalized church in shambles. So too had the vast program of land confiscation that devastated the Catholic landholding class.
Nonetheless, Plunkett set about the daunting task of rebuilding the Church in Ireland. Many of Ireland’s active priests were of very low quality (another of Cromwell’s legacies) with a high incidence of alcoholism and concubinage. He dismissed hundreds of these questionable clerics and established schools and seminaries to raise a new crop of properly trained priests. Plunkett also intervened to settle disputes raging between various religious orders, notably a bitter row between the Franciscans and Dominicans.
Three years after Plunkett’s arrival, signs of a revived church abounded. But in 1673 King Charles II renewed the assault on the church. The restored monarch (whose wife, Queen Catherine, was a devout and practicing Catholic) was under tremendous pressure in post-Cromwell England to prove his Protestant credentials. Plunkett went into hiding with Bishop John Brennan of Waterford, a friend from his seminary days in Rome. Hiding in the mountains, they suffered through a severe winter and nearly starved to death. “We are resolved to die from hunger and cold, rather than abandon our flocks,” wrote Plunkett during the ordeal.
The repression eased enough in the coming years to allow Plunkett to come out from hiding and partially resume his duties. He was thankful for the reprieve, but much of his hard work had been undone — most notably with the closure of his schools and seminaries.
Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come. In 1678, a deranged former Anglican clergyman, who’d briefly studied in a Catholic seminary, caused a sensation in England when he announced that he had discovered a Catholic plot to assassinate Charles II and launch a holy war against English Protestants. As Titus Oates told it, the “Popish Plot” involved a coordinated invasion of 20,000 troops from Catholic France and some 70,000 soldiers from Ireland. The latter, asserted Oates, were secretly funded by a tax levied on Irish parishes by the primate of Ireland — Archbishop Oliver Plunkett. The whole Popish Plot, most historians agree, was fabricated in Oates’s feverish mind. It nonetheless caused panic throughout England. Several powerful Whigs seized upon the alleged plot as a means to boost their party’s political fortunes and soon a full-scale witch hunt was on. Hundreds of alleged conspirators were arrested, including Oliver Plunkett.
Plunkett was first tried for treason in Ireland in 1679. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, but Plunkett was not released. Instead, he was transferred to London — in flagrant violation of the law — and held in prison for more than a year, most of it in solitary confinement. Although he suffered greatly from cold and hunger, Plunkett prayed, fasted and ministered to his fellow prisoners. A second trial began in 1681. Those judicial proceedings amounted to nothing short of a kangaroo court and Plunkett was summarily found guilty of high treason “for promoting the Catholic faith.” His sentence was that especially gruesome punishment reserved for traitors: death by hanging, followed by beheading, disembowelment and drawing and quartering.
On the morning of his execution, Plunkett was allowed to celebrate Mass with his fellow prisoners. He was then tied to a horse and dragged two miles to the gallows where he met his fate while quietly reciting prayers. The mutilation of his body began immediately after he was declared dead.
Plunkett was the last Catholic to suffer execution on account of his faith in England, but the persecution of the church in Ireland only worsened in the years following his death, culminating with the passage of the draconian anti-Catholic Penal Laws in 1695. More than two centuries later, while the Irish waged their war for independence against Britain, Oliver Plunkett was beatified. Fifty-five years later again, on Oct. 12, 1975, Plunkett was canonized as a man who lived a life of exemplary courage, faith and sacrifice.
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