Société des Missions Africaines - Province d’Irlande

né le 14 mars 1919 à Letterkenny dans le diocèse de Raphoe, Irlande membre de la SMA le 2 juillet 1939 prêtre le 19 décembre 1942 décédé le 25 octobre 2002

1943-1952 préfecture apostolique de Jos, Nigeria 1953-1967 diocèse de Jos, Nigeria 1967-1970 Kilcogan, confesseur 1970-1972 diocèses de Brentwood et d’Armagh, Irlande 1972-1976 diocèse de Lancaster, Angleterre 1977-2002 Blackrock Road, Cork, retiré décédé à Cork, Irlande, le 25 octobre 2002 à l’âge de 83 ans

Martin Heraghty was born in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, in the diocese of Raphoe, in the parish of Conwal and Leck, on 14 March 1919. He died in St. Theresa’s Nursing Unit, SMA House, Blackrock Road, Cork, on 25 October 2002.

Martin was youngest in a family of eight girls and two boys born to Michael and Winifred (nee Gilmartin) Heraghty. Shortly after Martin’s birth the family moved from Letterkenny to Grange, Co Sligo and soon after to Sligo town, living at ‘Mount Carmel’, Albert Line, in the parish of St. John’s. Martin received his primary education at St. Patrick’s national school (known as The Line School) and with the Marist Brothers in Quay Street. He then entered Summerhill College, Sligo (1932-1935) and completed his secondary education in St. Joseph’s College, Wilton, Cork (1935-1937). His decision to enter the Society came after he met Michael Cummins SMA, the Vocations Director, who had been a missionary in Liberia. A function had been organized in Sligo’s Gilhooley Hall during which Fr. Cummins showed a film on the missions. An even greater attraction than the film was the presence of Oswald, a Liberian boy who Fr. Cummins had brought to Ireland. After matriculating Martin spent a year at University College Cork but did not sit his Arts examination owing to an illness which caused him to return to his home in Sligo.

After some months of convalescence Martin entered the Society’s novitiate and house of philosophy at Kilcolgan, Co Galway. Two years later, in September 1939, he was promoted to the major seminary at Dromantine, Newry, Co Down. Martin was first received as a member of the Society on 2 July 1939. He was ordained a priest, along with nine colleagues, in the chapel of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at Moyne Park, Tuam, on 19 December 1942. Society ordinations normally took place in Newry cathedral but a fifty mile limit on car travel due to the war would have prevented his family from attending. Several other classmates were faced with the same problem so the ordinations were arranged for three locations: Dromantine chapel, Skibbereen cathedral (for the southerners) and Moyne Park (for the westerners). The ordaining prelate at Moyne Park was Archbishop Joseph Walsh, of Tuam. Martin celebrated his first Mass in the Mercy Convent in Sligo where he was assisted by Fr. Tom McElhone who died tragically in a drowning accident in London shortly afterwards.

After ordination Martin returned to Dromantine to complete his course and was then assigned to the Prefecture of Jos in Northern Nigeria. Coincidentally his sister, a member of the Holy Rosary Congregation, named Sr. Mary Baptista, was at the time a missionary in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Reaching Lagos, Nigeria’s capital, in November 1943, he made the two-day journey north to Jos where he was immediately taken off to hospital by the bishop for a small-pox vaccination which he had omitted to receive before travelling. An epidemic was currently raging in the town. Martin’s first posting was to Shendam, the oldest mission in Northern Nigeria, dating back to 1907. After six months there, during which he was introduced to the missionary life, he was assigned to the great mining town of Jos in which he was to spend twenty-one of the twenty-four years of his African service.

The principal station of Jos, founded in 1929 under the patronage of St. Patrick, was in the 1940’s the largest in the prefecture, usually staffed by three priests who catered for a Catholic community of over 10,000 members and some 2,000 catechumens, with six large outstations and of course schools and hospitals. Martin came home for his first leave on 18 October 1947. It was to be a sad homecoming. He arrived just after the death of his father, of which he had learned ten days previously. Given permission to spend Christmas with his mother, he returned to his mission in February 1949 and took his next home leave in December 1952. He was to do four further tours of duty until May 1967 when he was invalided home. Martin’s ministry during these years was varied. He engaged in most of the pastoral activities open to the missionary – house, hospital and school visitation, celebrating Mass and administrating the sacraments in the main centres and the numerous outstations, the furthest of which – Maiduguri – some 367 miles distant, is now the headquarters of a diocese.

When Martin returned to Ireland on home leave in May 1964 he experienced the first symptoms of an illness which was to afflict him for the remaining years of his life. Complaining of slurred speech and a ‘general slowing up’ he was diagnosed as having encephalitis, or ‘sleepy sickness’, the illness which evidently had caused him to leave Wilton in 1937. Martin’s condition deteriorated and he was diagnosed as having ‘post-encephalitic Parkinsonism’, with disturbing symptoms resembling the ‘shaking palsy’ characteristic of an elderly man. After treatment in a Dublin Hospital there was a significant improvement to the extent that Martin felt able to return to Jos. The improvement was maintained with the help of heavy medication during his next tour of duty. Returning to Ireland in May 1967 the Provincial sent him to fill the vacancy of principal confessor at Kilcolgan. When in the summer of 1969 the students were transferred to Wilton, Martin accompanied them to their new home, remaining confessor until July 1970.

Martin had hoped that he might return to Africa but his doctors were now adamant that he should stay clear of the tropics. Instead he was given ‘light pastoral work’ by his superiors. He ministered first in Brentwood diocese (Essex - November 1970-January 1971), then in Armagh diocese (Clonoe, Coalisland - February 1971-July 1971), next in Kerry diocese (Causeway parish during August 1971) and briefly in Sligo. Martin’s health continued to deteriorate and in October 1971 he took up residence in Blackrock Road where he assisted in the Main Office. Striving to remain active, he was chaplain to the St. Vincent de Paul Summer Camp at Mornington, Co Meath, during the summer of 1972. In November of the same year he took on a longer-term curacy in Lancaster diocese, in St. Margaret Mary parish in Carlisle, spending four very happy years there until illness - and especially a sharp deterioration in his speech - forced him back to Blackrock Road in June 1976. It was in Carlisle that the doctors diagnosed that his illness had developed into full-blown Parkinson’s. He was to spend the remaining years of his life in Blackrock, with intermittent spells in hospital.

In the funeral homily at Martin’s obsequies, the Provincial, Fachnta O’Driscoll, described well Martin’s approach to his illness. ‘He bore his sickness graciously and with no little humour. The utter frustration it must have evoked on so many levels was generally not apparent externally. Whatever inner mental torment was being churned up was not usually visible to the observer… He learned to be at peace with his condition.’ Martin was an extremely sociable man and kept up contact with friends throughout his life, mainly by correspondence. He enjoyed female company and formed close friendships with the nurses in the hospitals and the staff of St. Theresa’s nursing unit. The fact that he had grown up with eight older sisters may account for this ease in such relationships. He had also a good eye for quality when purchasing clothes, perhaps inherited from his sisters, or from his business background – the family retained a shop in Sligo.

His interest in Africa never waned and he supported many projects out of his own resources long after leaving that continent. He loved football and especially any football connected with Sligo; moreover he was a life-long fan of Glasgow Celtic football club. There was another side to Martin, not generally known. During his years in Nigeria he was a frequent contributor to the African Missionary and other Society publications. Among the titles of his contributions were ‘Midnight Mass in Africa’ (1944); ‘Returning…’ (1950); ‘Sermons in Stones’ (learning and preaching in the Birom tongue) (1953); ‘’Mancha, one of Nature’s Noblemen – profile of the Chief of Zawan who became a Catholic’ (1957); ‘What is it like, out there? An answer to frequent questions about a Missionary’s life in Africa’ (1958); ‘Casting out the Devil – the Baptism of young pagans’ (1959); and ‘Talk about Rain – the Rainy Season’ (1959)

He is buried in Wilton cemetery.