Church Of St. Anne

Church of St. Anne Shandon
Church Street
Cork City, Ireland

Tel: 353 21 4505906

Francis Sylvester Mahony (Father Prout 1804 - 1866)
Only for this man our Church would be one of many in our city but thanks to his poem "The Bells of Shandon" we are known throughout the world. Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known as "Fr. Prout", a name he acquired from an eccentric but well-learned Parish Priest in Watergrasshill, whom he had known and admired since childhood.
He was born in 1804 on Camden Quay, a stone's throw away from the Church, and was the second child of Martin Mahony. Martin was the son of Timothy Mahony, who founded the famous Blarney Woollen Mills.
They were descended from one of Kerry's oldest families, the Mahony's of Dromore Castle and they came to Cork (Glanmire) in the middle of the 18th century under the duress of the Penal Laws. There they established the Woollen Mills, later they moved to Rochestown and finally settled in Blarney.
At the tender age of 12 Francis Sylvester entered the famous Jesuit College of Clongowes Wood and four years later moved to France entering the Jesuit College at Amiens and from there to the Jesuit Noviciate in Paris. In 1823 he went to Rome to Study Philosophy for two years. He was a brilliant student, exceptionally fluent in languages, ancient and modern, and his family were keen that he enter the Priesthood. He himself was keen to join the Jesuits.
During his stay in Rome he failed in his ambition to be ordained and in the summer of 1825 he returned to Clongowes where he was appointed Perfect of Studies and later Master of Rhetoric. As a teacher he was highly successful but his stay in Clongowes was short-lived and he moved to Switzerland still clinging to his ambition of becoming a priest. Once more he travelled to Rome and sponsored by Dr. Murphy, Bishop of Cork, he entered the Irish College, studied Theology for two years and was finally ordained priest in 1832. He returned to Cork where he was appointed Hospital Chaplain at the North Infirmary and in the Cholera outbreak of 1832, he devoted himself to the stricken people of the city. He shared this work with Fr. Theobald Matthew, the "Apostle of Temperance", who 15 years later gave written testimony that Fr. Mahony was a truly "Apostolic priest".
Having attained the full office of Priest he now abandoned it and devoted the next 30 years of his life to his literary works, never relinquishing fully his priestly functions. His poem "The Bells of Shandon", probably first scribbled on the walls of the seminary in Rome found its way into the "Oxford Book of Victorian Verse" and has been enjoyed the world over, bringing fame to Shandon, its bells and the city.
(Profiles in Integrity: Ethel Mannion)