Bishop Joseph Shanahan

Bishop Joseph Shanahan

Bishop Joseph Shanahan (1871 – 1943)

Joseph Shanahan was born in Ireland on June 6, 1871 and baptized the Sunday after he was born. Joseph’s later interest in education as the key to progress, materially and spiritually, in Africa consciously owed much to his paternal inheritance of the value of education. At the age of twelve, Joseph entered Rockwell College opened by the Holy Ghost Fathers. Young Shanahan made his first profession in 1898, ordained priest on April 22, 1900, and took perpetual vows in 1901. Fr. Shanahan was ordained bishop on 6 June 1920, his 49th birthday. Bishop Shanahan ordained his first native lgbo priest in 1930, who later became the Bishop of Enugu, Monsignor John Anyogu. Bishop Joseph Shanahan of the Holy Ghost Congregation died in Nairobi on Christmas Day 1943 and his body was brought back to Onitsha Nigeria where it reposes in the Catholic Cathedral.

Bishop Joseph Shanahan was a magnificent, bearded figure destined to become a symbol of Irish missionary effort in Nigeria. The teachers became colleagues in his missionary endeavor. Bishop Shanahan spoke of them very highly: “*The Catholic teachers are men of whom the mission has every right to be proud. They are men of sterling honesty. They help to preach the gospel without counting the cost. If it had not been for their devotedness, their zeal and their self-sacrifice, the Fathers would have achieved very little. I salute them and pray God to reward them”.

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