Patrick O'Hely

Patrick O'Hely (born between 1543 and 1546, died 31 August 1579) was an Irish Franciscan priest from Creevelea Abbey, near Dromahair, County Leitrim, and illegal and underground Bishop of Mayo, who was tortured and executed as part of the Elizabethan era religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Bishop O'Hely was Beatified, along with his fellow Franciscan Friar and companion in martyrdom, Conn Ó Ruairc, by Pope John Paul II along with 15 other Irish Catholic Martyrs on 27 September 1992. Their martyrdom is commemorated every year on 20 June.

Biography Although little or nothing is known of his early life, Patrick O'Hely is believed to have been born between 1543 and 1546. He later described himself in a letter dated 24 June 1575, and which survives in the Archivo General de Simancas as fray Patricio Oheli de Petra. Petra is believed by some historians to be a shorthand rendering of Petra Patricii, the usual Hiberno-Latin rendering of , the name in Connaught Irish for the hill upon which stood Creevelea Abbey , the Franciscan Friary at Dromahair, County Leitrim. If so, it would suggest that O'Hely was a native of the region, an alumnus of the Friary, or both.

English Franciscan Thomas Bourchier roomed from 1578 to 1579 with Patrick O'Hely in Paris and became his late friend's first biographer. According to Bouchier, O'Hely received a classical Christian education during his youth in Ireland and was sent, due to his great intellectual brilliance, four years after his profession to Rome. later merged in the archbishopric of Tuam. As the Catholic Church in Ireland was still strictly illegal and underground, Pope Gregory XIII empowered Bishop O'Hely to officiate in adjoining dioceses, if no Catholic bishop were at hand, and supplied him generously with money. At Paris he took part in public disputations at the Sorbonne university, amazing his hearers by his mastery of patristic, Renaissance humanist, and Counter-Reformation theology, as well as of Scotist philosophy.

In autumn, 1579, he sailed from Brittany and arrived off the coast of Kerry after James Fitzmaurice had landed at Ard na Caithne from Portugal with the remnant of Thomas Stukeley's expedition. All Munster was up in arms.

The House of Desmond was divided, and the Earl had withdrawn from the scene of action. The bishop and his companion, Conn O'Rourke (Irish: Conn Ó Ruairc, born c. 1549), a Franciscan Friar, son of Brian, Lord of Breifne, came ashore at Corca Dhuibhne and sought hospitality at Askeaton Castle, where, in the Earl's absence, the Countess entertained them. Next day, they departed for Limerick; but the Countess, probably so instructed, for the Rebel Earl later claimed the merit afterwards, gave information to the Lord Mayor of Limerick, who three days later seized the two ecclesiastics and sent them to Kilmallock, where Lord Justice Sir William Drury then was with an army.

Drury responded, "And do you dare to defend the authority of the Pope against the laws of the Queen and Parliament?!"

According to Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, "These orders from Drury were executed with an uncommon degree of barbarity. The two prisoners were first placed on the rack, their arms and feet were beaten with hammers, so that their thigh bones were broken and sharp iron points and needles were cruelly thrust under their nails, which caused an extreme agony of suffering."

According to Cardinal William Allen, the Elizabethan era English use of torture by the driving of needles and spikes under the finger- and toenails was, "one torment that people in Spain imagine to be that which will be worked by the Antichrist as the most dreadfully cruel of them all." The Cardinal further explained that whenever a Recusant or Catholic priest would not "confess" or take the Oath of Supremacy under other forms of torture, the iron spikes would be used, "so that the nails of their fingers and toes were turned back."

Cardinal Moran continues, however, "For a considerable time they were subjected to these tortures, which the holy confessors bore patiently for the love of Christ, mutually exhorting one another to constancy and perseverance."

Bishop O'Hely and Friar Conn O'Ruairc were hanged from a tree just outside the gates of Kilmallock on 22/31 August 1579.

Despite his own role in their arrest, the Rebel Earl of Desmond arranged for both Franciscans' bodies to be buried in the monastery Church of their Order in Clonmel, County Tipperary. In 1647, the relics were re-exhumed and solemnly reburied alongside the bodies of the Earls of Desmond at Askeaton Abbey, County Limerick.

In September 1992, Pope John Paul II beatified O'Rourke and O'Hely alongside 15 other Irish Catholic Martyrs.