By Fr Michael Mohally

The author, from Cork city, Ireland, has spent many years working with Columban seminarians in both Ireland and the Philippines. He continues to do that in Quezon City.

The King’s Speech won four Oscars this year. It tells the true story of how Lionel Logue, an Australian, helped the future King George VI of England overcome a bad stammer. Fr Mohally here tells a story about an Irish priest who helped many, none of them kings and many of them very poor, overcome speech difficulties. In the incident reported here, nobody could have foreseen the consequences, not only in Ireland but in Fiji and the Philippines.

I was confined to bed in the infirmary of our headquarters in Manila and, to keep myself occupied, decided to view a BBC television documentary, first shown on 17 January 1961, about a beloved priest of my native Diocese of Cork, Ireland, Father James Christopher (Christy) O’Flynn. Fr O’Flynn was 80 years old when the documentary was made.

He was famous for helping people overcome speech impediments such as stuttering and introducing young people to Shakespeare through a youth club he had in a loft over a warehouse in his parish.

As I was viewing the documentary an older Columban, who was also confined next door to me in the infirmary section, came to visit me, Fr Paddy Hurley. He is 86 years old and has spent 61 years in the Philippines. As Father Paddy watched the documentary with me he asked ‘Who’s he?’ referring to the priest on the screen. I replied that he was Fr O’Flynn and asked if he had ever met him. He replied, ‘I never met him but I’m here because of him’.

Father Paddy then told me his story.

His father was a young teacher in a village in West Cork, one of the most scenic areas in Ireland. He had difficulty with his voice and had gone to London twice to have it treated, but in vain. He decided to resign his position as a teacher and emigrate to Australia. He went to the village of Durros to tender his resignation to the parish priest and then intended to carry on to the town of Bantry to buy his ticket to Australia. As it happened, the young Fr O’Flynn[ii] was visiting the parish priest and asked Father Paddy’s father not to resign and assured him that he would sort out his voice problem within a week. He did.

Mr Hurley continued teaching. He met and courted Father Paddy’s mother. They married and had ten children, three of whom became Columban missionary priests and a daughter who became a Columban missionary Sister.

Mystery is truly an aspect of our lives. 9 January 2011

There’s a short biographical note on the website of the Diocese of Cork and Ross.

[i] This incident happened on the 8 January 2011 in St Columban’s, Manila.

[ii] Father Paddy’s father graduated as a teacher around 1900. Fr. O’Flynn was ordained in 1909. So I think we’re talking about an incident that happened about 100 years ago.

The Luck of the Irish

By Fr Patrick Hurley

Fr Patrick Hurley is one of four siblings who became Columbans. Fathers Dermot and Gerard, now deceased, worked in Fiji for many years. Sr Catherine, who has served in the Philippines and in Chile, is a former Superior General of the Columban Sisters. Father Paddy, as he is known, worked in Negros Occidental from 1950 until last year. He is now retired in Manila, after breaking his hip in a fall the day before he was to fly to Ireland on vacation.

Fr Michael Mohally’s story gives us a glimpse of God’s loving and mysterious ways in terms of our life’s vocation. Here, Father Hurley tells of being blessed by God in another way.

The other part of the story is that the first Bishop of Kabankalan Diocese, Bishop Vicente M. Navarra, now Bishop of Bacolod, from which Kabankalan was taken in 1987, was building a bishop’s residence.

What was the connection, you may say?

The Bishop needed funds to build his new house and requested financial help from his flock. I had been working in the area since 1950. When I learned that my good Where did this story start? At two far-apart spots in the world.

A first cousin of mine, an old lady and retired doctor, Dra Rena McGovern, died in Birmingham, England, and left me £200, at the time worth about P9,000.

relative had left me some money in her will, I decided to give it as a donation towards the construction of the new house for the bishop. On second thoughts, as he was having a raffle to raise funds, I decided to buy tickets instead.

So I bought about thirty tickets at P300 each and, lo and behold, I won First Prize, a brand new Nissan Sentra car.

As I was living in a faraway place with bad roads, my parish was no place for a nice new car. So I sold it at once, As the bishop’s funds were still lacking, he held a smaller raffle, sweepstakes style, with cash prizes. Each ticket had five shares. If you bought only one share you only got 1/5 of the prize, etc. I decided to invest my original P9,000 in this second raffle. I bought part shares in many tickets and again, lo and behold, out of the eight cash prizes I won parts of three:

a) Third Prize P10,000 – I had two shares – so 2/5 of P10,000 = P4,000.

b) Consolation Prize P5,000 – three shares – so 3/5 of P5,000 = P3,000.

c) Consolation Prize P5,000 – two shares – so 2/5 of P5,000 = P2,000

Total = P9,000.

So my P9,000 came back to me. Then to finish off the house, Bishop Navarra decided on another raffle – this time for motorcycles, etc. as prizes. I felt I should help in the buying of prizes, seeing I had won the car, so I donated P60,000 to the bishop and told him that this could buy two small motorcycles and two bicycles if he wished. But his committee decided to buy two bigger motorcycles and a few extra items such as sewing machines, refrigerators, etc. The tickets cost P100 each. So again, I decided to invest my original P9,000, which bought 90 tickets.

A few days before the raffle, I submitted all stubs and cash to the bishop. But when I returned to my faraway parish, I found eight tickets in my office that I had overlooked. I was going to throw them away but decided to buy them, as there was a priest going to the bishop. I got the tickets quickly, wrote my name on three, that of our Catholic school on three, our local Sisters on one and that of my own sister, Columban Sister Catherine Hurley in far away Chile, on the last. The stubs got to the Bishop on the morning of the raffle and were included in the draw. These tickets were numbered from 7881 to 7888.

They system of drawing was as follows: there was a master-list with all sold tickets and names of donors. Then there was a raffle drum with table tennis balls numbered from 0 to 9, four balls to be drawn for each prize. The numbers were drawn in public and written on a big blackboard. 7-8-8 were the first three numbers drawn for the First Prize. So the final number, unless it was 9, would decide which one of us would win – the school, my sister, the local Sisters or myself. Again, lo and behold, out comes No.6 for ticket 7886, which was in my name. So again, I won First Prize, a brand new motorcycle, costing about P60,000, which is what I gave as a donation for prizes. So again my money came back to me.

I was too old to ride a big motorcycle, so I sold it on the spot. Actually, I only rode a motorcycle once in my life, nearly 50 years ago, traveled only 30 meters and spent six weeks in hospital in Manila.