“The Most Bombed Bishop in the World”

Today marks the death of Bishop Edward Galvin (1882-1956), founder of the Columban Fathers. A native of Crookstown, he was ordained in Ireland in 1909. At the time, however, his diocese had too many priests, and he was sent across the water to Brooklyn. For three years he worked at Holy Rosary parish in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where most of his parishioners were from Tipperary. While he was there he read almost every book the Brooklyn Public Library had on China. In 1912 he volunteered for the Chinese missions, where he would spend most of his life.

On a visit back to Ireland, he met Father John Blowick, a seminary professor also interested in China. The two formally and (successfully) petitioned the Irish bishops for a mission house to supply Irish priests for China. The new community was named St. Columban’s Foreign Mission Society for the great Irish missionary. Father Galvin (seen here on the left) told his missionaries: “You are not here to convert the Chinese; you are here to make yourself available to God.” The Colunbans worked throughout Asia, but their main focus was always China. In 1927 Father Galvin was named a Bishop and Vicar Apostolic of Hanyang.

The Columbans in China lived through 25 years of civil war in China, the Japanese invasion in the 1930’s, the Second World War, and the Communist takeover in 1949. Bishop Galvin was known as “the most bombed Bishop in the world.” By the early 1950’s, Bishop Galvin and the Columbans were expelled from China. They then turned their attention elsewhere, mainly to Latin America and other parts of Asia. Bishop Galvin went back to Ireland by way of America. Diagnosed with leukemia shortly after his return, he died in Ireland and was buried by the hill of Tara. Today there are over five hundred Columban Fathers working in fourteen countries.