Mags GarganMags Gargan looks at the life of Fr Joseph Mallin SJ
At the age of 102, Fr Joseph Mallin SJ has the double accolade of being one of the oldest Irish priests in the world and the last surviving child of an executed 1916 leader.
The son of Cmdt Michael Mallin, then chief-of-staff of the Irish Citizen’s Army who led the St Stephen’s Green garrison during the Rising, with Countess Markievicz second in command, Fr Joseph was just two and a half years old when his father faced a firing squad.
Cmdt Mallin had signed up to the British army when he was 14-years-old. He loved music and joined the army as a drummer. (Fr Joseph used to play the flute which had belonged to his father – the same one his father had played in Liberty Hall in the Workers’ Orchestra on the eve of the 1916 Rising. The flute and his father’s watch are now in the National Museum in Dublin).
Michael Mallin served for many years in India and Afghanistan, winning the India Medal of 1895 with the Punjab Frontier and Tirah clasps in 1897-98. His experiences in the British army saw him turn to socialism and on his return to Ireland he became a leading official in the silk weavers’ union and second in command and chief training officer of the Irish Citizen Army, which was formed during the 1913 lock-out to protect workers.
Cmdt Mallin surrendered on Sunday, April 30, 1916 under orders from James Connolly. At his court-martial he downplayed his involvement in the Rising. In his statement, Mallin said, “I had no commission whatever in the Citizen Army. I was never taken into the confidence of James Connolly. I was under the impression that we were going out for manoeuvres on Sunday.”
He added, “Shortly after my arrival at St Stephen’s Green the firing started and Countess Markievicz ordered me to take command of the men as I had been so long associated with them. I felt I could not leave them and from that time I joined the rebellion.”
However, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Michael Mallin summoned his wife, pregnant with their fifth child, and his young son Joseph to his cell in Kilmainham Jail just before he was executed on May 8, 1916.
Fr Joseph has no memory of the visit to his father’s cell. Now based in Hong Kong, he told a local newspaper: “But what were the feelings my father must have had? Four children, another one coming, we were destitute, he’d brought his family to that. And during the court martial, my father did try to avoid execution. He knew they wouldn’t shoot Countess Markievicz, a woman – should he use that? It must have been a terrible thing for his conscience. He said she was the commander. Of course it wasn’t true but what could he do? When you’re faced with these things, what answer do you give?”
In his last letter to his wife, Michael Mallin said that “I find no fault with the soldiers or the police” and asked her “to pray for all the souls who fell in this fight, Irish and English”. He also addressed his baby son in the letter saying, “Joseph, my little man, be a priest if you can”, and also requested that his daughter Una become a nun, which she also did.
Indeed, three of the five Mallin children ultimately entered religious life, with brother Sean leading the way as a Jesuit, then followed by Joseph, and Una, who joined the Loreto order.
Mrs Mallin was the only relative of the executed leaders to participate in the State’s first official commemoration of the Rising in 1924, but in recent interviews Fr Mallin has said that his mother rarely talked about her executed husband: “I think she didn’t want us to brood on it”, but he did see her cry once on the anniversary of his death.
“I saw her crying once, that would have been in the early 1920s. My sister and I were playing, and I went to the kitchen and my mother was standing at the window. I can be very clear about the day – it was a fine, May day. And I’ve often thought since: was it May 8? That was the anniversary of when he was executed. I walked away, told my sister and we both kept quiet,” he said.
The Jesuits were a natural choice for the Mallin brothers who had been educated by them. Joseph joined in 1932, after attending the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin that year, and was ordained in 1946. Perhaps, inevitably, due to that timeline, while previous seminarians travelled to continental Europe to further their studies, World War II kept Fr Joseph firmly on Irish soil until he was selected to lead a group of young Jesuits overseas in 1948 – to China.
By his own description, Fr Joseph was not particularly unsettled by this posting. “Others make the decision and we follow,” he explained simply in an interview with The Irish Catholic during a brief visit home to Ireland in 2009 from Hong Kong, where he is regarded as a leading light in Catholic education.
Spritely and patiently willing to submit to all questions posed, he warned, however: “The eyes are excellent, the ears are not so good.”
His original mission in China was terminated after two years following the rise of Mao Tse Tung. “We had to leave at once to Hong Kong,” Fr Joseph said, relating the story of a river journey on a steamboat, constantly alert to attack. “The captain graciously offered me his bed on the bridge, an area otherwise sealed off for protection,” he said.
Hong Kong was being flooded with refugees and difficult times were made worse by a great fire on Christmas Day in 1953, which killed some 65,000 people. While living under threat from the neighbouring Communist regime, Fr Joseph said “the Jesuits moved with the times” and set about building what became the first of three schools, and Fr Joseph dedicated the rest of his working life to education in Hong Kong.
Fr Joseph came back to Ireland in 2006 for a place of honour viewing the major commemorations of the 1916 Rising, which included a wreath-laying ceremony in Kilmainham Jail led by the then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Fr Joseph visited Kilmainham again during his 2009 visit to Dublin and tells a story of being asked for an entrance fee at the door.
“I couldn’t refrain from a wee joke. I said, ‘The first time I came here I didn’t have to pay an entrance fee’ – but went on – “Ah, that time I was only two and a half years of age – and I was asleep’.”
After his private 102nd birthday celebrations in Hong Kong in September this year, Fr Joseph’s niece Una O’Callanáin said her uncle remains as mentally alert as ever and still writes to her in Irish on a regular basis.
However, it is believed unlikely that Fr Joseph will be able to attend the 1916 Rising commemorations next year because of a lack of mobility.