DEFENDERS OF THE PAPAL STATES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 2, 10 January 1901, Page 15

DEFENDERS OF THE PAPAL STATES.

In connection with the Irish pilgrimage to Rome, the Manchester Guardian says it is of interest to note that the general election has removed from the House of Commons the last Parliamentary survivor of the Irish contingent which assisted in the defence of the Papal States in 1860-1. Mr. Bernard Charles Molloy, who has given place to Mr. Reddy. a nominee of the United Irish League in the Birr Division of King's County, was in his younger days a private chamberlain at the VaticaD, and during the stormy Garibaldian period he had enough excitement to last him for a lifetime Mr. Jeremiah Sheehan, who sat for East Kerry from 1885 until 1895, and who now plies the peaceful avocation of hotelkeeper at Killarney, is another of the warlike spirits who enlisted in the Pope's service in the early sixties. When the new* came that the Vatican was in danger Mr. Sheehan, then a youth of IS, promptly joined the contingent which was being organised by Major Mylea O Reilly. In the sanguinary engagement of Spoleto be was in the thickest of the fight, and when he was picked up on the field of battle it was found that a bullet had passed through his neck and that his thigh had been terribly torn. He was able to leave the hospital after six weeks, but it was 12 months before he was restored to health. He was also present at the battlep of Perugia, Ancona and Macerata. The total strength of the Irish Brigade in the Papal war was about a thousand rank and file. Major O'Reilly, the commandant, sat in Parliament for Lougford from 1862 until his death in 1879, when Mr. Justin M'Carthy was elected unopposed in his stead.