Page 14, 30th June 2006
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SAINT OF THE WEEK
St Oliver Plunket (July 1)
OLIVER Plunket (1629-81) strove manfully to re-invigorate the Church in Ireland after the depredations of Cromwell. before being martyred in another wave of anti-Catholic mania.
Plunket was born at Loughcrew, Meath, into a well-connected family. At 16 he accompanied the Oratorian Fr Scarampi to Rome, where he excelled at the Irish College. Ordained in 1654, he became professor of theology at Propaganda, and for years pleaded the cause of the Irish bishops in Rome.
Appointed Archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland in 1669, Plunket tray-. elled widely in straitened and dangerous circumstances to restore the faith, confirming 48,655 persons in the first four years of his mission.
In 1678, at the titne of Titus Oates's fabrications, Plunket was charged with plotting to bring 20,000 French troops to Ireland. In London the use of false witnesses secured his conviction. The judge, Sir Francis Pemberton, reprehended the accused's promo
tion of Catholicism, "than which there is not anything more displeasing to God or more pernicious to mankind in the whole world". Charles II dared not lift a finger to help.
Plunket was hanged at Tyburn. His body is now at Downside Abbey, and his head in Drogheda. He was canonised in 1975.
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