Life
1825-1886; b. Murrish Mullagh, Louisburgh, Co. Mayo; ed. Maynooth and Irish Colleg, Paris; resigned professorship in Paris after dispute with Rev. Thomas riley; parish priest of Tourmakeady (Mt. Partry), and later Cong; campaigned against proselytism; opposed Archb. Paul Cullen in preaching the funeral oration for Terence Bellew MacManus in 1861; vice-pres. National Brotherhood of St. Patrick; supported by IRB; protected by MacHale; later foresook militant nationalism; associated with Lord Ardilaun during his period at Cong; legend that he attempted to remove the Cross of Cong from the National Museum under his cloak; d. Nov., and was mourned by no nationalists. DIH
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Criticism
Donal McCartney, ‘The Church and the Fenians’, in Maurice Harmon, ed., Fenians and Fenianism ([Univ. Review] 1968); Gerard Moran, The Mayo Evictions of 1860: Patrick Lavelle and the ‘ War in Partry’ (Westport: Foilseacháin Náisuinta Teoranta 1986); Moran, A Radical Priest in Mayo: Fr. Patrick Lavelle, The Rise and Fall of an Irish Nationalist, 1825-1886 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1994), 240pp.; Moran, Radical Irish Priests 1660-1970 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998).
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