IRISH
156
IRISH
was born in Limerick in 1549, and spent ten years in
Brazil and forty in the famous missions of Paraguay,
of which, with Father de Ortega, he was the founder.
At one time he was the only missionary in all Para-
guay, and he lived there longer than any other mem-
ber of his order. Father Thomas Field's parents were
William Field, a physician, and his wife Janet Creah.
He took a classical course at Paris, studied pliilosophy
for three years at Louvain, and then entered the So-
ciety of Jesus at Rome, 6 October, 1574. After six
months in the novitiate he showed such progress and
solidity of virtue that he was allowed to volunteer for
the missions in Brazil. Leaving Rome on 2S April,
1575, he begged his way on foot to St. James of Com-
postela in Spain and thence to Lisbon, where he re-
mained two years, mainlj^ at Coimbra. He arrived in
Brazil in 1577, and in the records thenceforward his
name is usually found transformed into " Filde ". Here,
under the guidance of the venerable Father Joseph
Anchieta, " the Apostle and Thaumaturgus of Brazil ",
he was trained in the apostolic life and by him was
selected to go to evangelize Tucumdn and Paraguay.
Father Ancliieta, in his " Annual Letter " to his su- periors for the year 1591, says: "There are three fathers in Paraguay who it appears have been sent from Brazil . . . they traverse many and vast re- gions and are bringing many thousands of barbarians to the fold of Christ, a work in which they are much helped by their knowledge of the Guarani language." And the "Letters" for 1592 and 1594 say: "Father Solanio sent Fathers de Ortega and Filde to the Guaranf, and it is known that they converted more than two thousand of them." "Father Thomas Filde and Father de Ortega were sent into the province of Guayri, which lies Ijetween Paraguay and Brazil. They have a residence established at Villa Rica, and from thence they go out in missions to give spiritual help to innumerable peoples." Among those converted by them were the Ibiragaras, a nation of ten thousand cannibals. The two missionaries remained in Guayrd for eight years and then proceeded to Asuncion. In the early part of 1605, Father Filde was the only Jesuit left in all Tucuman and Paraguay. During the thirteen years he toiled in these missions it is estimated that Father Filde and his companions baptized 150,- 000 Indians. It was at the village of Pirapo that, on 2 July, 1610, 200 of these converts were gathered and formed by Father Macheto Cataldino into "Loretto", the first of the historic " Reductions ", and the model for all the subsequent communities that made up the "Christian Republic of Misiones". In 1615 Father Filde was made the teacher of Guaranf and other Indian languages to the young Jesuits who were being trained for the missions. In the catalogue of Irish Jesuits for 1617, Father "Thomas Field" is set down as being in Paraguay. He died at Asuncion in 1626, retaining an extraordinary physical vigour to the end, in spite of heroic mortifications and zeal for souls.
With this illustrious pioneer, the record, honour- able in all its details, of the Irish element in the Latin American countries begins. Its ramifications are as extended as they are curious and unexpected. At the period preceding the wars of independence the remark- able fact is presented of Irish-born viceroys governing Mexico, Peru, and Chile for Spain. There were eight Irish regiments in the Spanish service at the opening of the eighteenth century. At its close the Napo- leonic wars bro\ight Spain as an ally of France under the harrow of many English scliemes for the spolia- tion of her South American treasure house ami the emancipation from lier rule of the several colonies there. In the invading as well as in the colonial armies Irish solilicrs were conspicuous. It was then that the ft.uMclatinns of the chief Irish colony, that of the Art^ciitiiic Republic, were laid. In 1705 a Captain MacNainani with two privateering ships at temptci I to take Colonia (in front of Buenos Aires) from the Span-
iards. His ship caught fire, and he, and all but 78 of
liis crew of 262, were lost. The saved were in large
part Irish who settled down in the country and be-
came the progenitors of many famihes with Celtic
patronymics still to be found in the Argentine rural
provinces. On 24 June, 1806, General William Carr
Beresford, an illegitimate son of the Marquess of
Waterford, at the head of another English expedition,
which had in its ranks hundreds of Irish soldiers, cap-
tured the city of Buenos Aires and held it for nearly
two months, only surrendering then to overwhelming
odds. Again these soldiers contributed numbers of
Irish settlers to the country. On 27 June, 1807, a
third English expedition under Cieneral Whitelocke
arrived off Buenos Aires. One of its regiments was
the 88th, the famous "Connaught Rangers". It also
ended disastrously, but left its Irish addition to the
local population.
Following we come to the period, 1810-1824, when Buenos Aires was the revolutionary centre of the various efforts that led to the separation from Spain of her South American colonies, and in most of these Irishmen and their sons were prominent. In Buenos Aires there is no name more honoured in the list of Ar- gentina's patriots than that of Admiral William Brown (q. v.). He had as companions in arms Dillons, O'Gor- mans, O'Farrells, Sheridans, Butlers, and others. Peter Sheridan, who arrived from Cavan early in the eigh- teenth century, and Thomas Armstrong from King's County were among the founders of Argentina's great wool industry. Sheridan's brother, Dr. Hugh Sheridan, served under Admiral Brown, and his son, who died at Buenos Aires in 1861, was a famous painter of South American landscapes. The interests of religion in the little Irish colony were first looked after by a friar named Burke, and when he died, Archliishop Murray of Dublin sent out by request Father Patrick Moran, who arrived at Buenos Aires, 11 February, 1829. He died there the following May, and was succeeded October, 1831, by Father Patrick O'Gorman, also from Dublin, who was chaplain until his death, 3 March, 1847, his flock greatly increasing.
In the great Irish exodus following the famine years Argentina received a substantial part of the exile throng. Their counsellor and friend was the Domini- can, Father Anthony D. Fahy. Born at Loughrea, County Galway.in 1804, he made his ecclesiastical stud- ies at St. Clement's, Rome. Then he sjient two years on the missions in the United States, in Ohio and Ken- tucky, after which he was sent to Buenos Aires, where he arrived in 1843. For more than a quarter of a cen- tury, until his death from yellow fever, caught while attending a poor Italian, in 1871, his name is intimately identified with the progress and welfare, spiritual and temporal, of the large Irish community in Buenos Aires. In February, 1856, he brought out a com- munity of Sisters of Mercy under Mother Mary Evan- gelist Fitzpatrick from Dublin, and built a spacious convent for them. To this have since been added a hospital, a boarding-school for girls, and a home for immigrants. In 1873 a branch convent was estab- lished at Mercedes about sixty miles distant. In April, 1881, the irreligious sentiment rife in Buenos .4ires drove the whole community of eighteen sisters to Australia. In the meantime the real Catholics of Buenos Aires had l>ecome ashamed of the cowardice that had allowed the Sisters of Mercy to be forced out of the citvl)V the anti-clerical faction. Petitions were a<ldressedtotheSistcrs, to the Bishop of Adelaide, and to Rome asking that the eommunit\' be sent l>ack. In 1890 six of the Sisters from the Mount (iam- bier convent, Adelaide, were permitted to return. Their old convent at Hio Baniba was restored to them; their schools reopened; a house for innnigrant girls estalilislie<l and within a year .IfL'O.OOO subscribed to put their orphanage on a secure footing. Father Fahy, moreover, had jiriests specially trained for this
