Société des Missions Africaines – Province d'Irlande

Born fourth of a family of twelve children, James left his Mayo home as a young man to seek his fortune first in England and later in America, where he worked in building construction. However after a few years, experiencing a call to the missionary vocation, he abandoned his position there to return to Ireland, and he was still in his early twenties when he began his studies for the priesthood. The circumstances which led James to follow this course are not known in any detail, but he is said to have been influenced by his sister Margaret who became a Dominican nun in South Africa. James studied in the colleges of the Society. He came to the Sacred Heart college, Ballinafad, Co Mayo, in 1914. There he completed his intermediate certificate studies before going to St. Joseph's college, Wilton, Cork, in 1916. Here he studied for three years, taking his leaving certificate in 1919. James then entered the Society's novitiate and house of philosophy at Kilcolgan, Co Galway, in the autumn of l9l9. He was admitted to membership of the Society on 16 July l921. Next he went to the Society's theological seminary, then at Blackrock Road, Cork. Four years later, on 11 June 1925, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Thomas Broderick, vicar apostolic of Western Nigeria, in the public church adjoining the seminary. He was one of a group of six ordained on that day. He was one of a group of thirteen ordained on that day.

After ordination James was assigned to the Liberian mission and sailed for Monrovia in October l925. The Liberian field was perhaps the most difficult of the Society's West African missions, for many reasons, not least a hazardous climate and a lack of even the most rudimentary medical facilities. There was much isolation too in this impoverished, strife ridden Black Republic with its small, scattered population. It was certainly an inappropriate appointment for a man as delicate as James and it was perhaps inevitable that his health should break down. James was invalided home within a year.

When he had regained some of his strength James was assigned to teach at the apostolic school at Whitsun Court, near Newport, Wales. This school had been opened in 1923 by the Superior General, Jean-Marie Chabert, with a view to extending the Society to Britain. James occupied this post until 1928, when the school was abandoned and the remaining student-body transferred to the care of the Dutch Province which opened a minor and major seminary at Ore Place, Hastings, in the south of England. In 1929 James fell ill with the tuberculosis that had always threatened. He went to Switzerland for seven months and made a partial recovery. Subsequently he was attached to the Provincial house at Blackrock Road where he assisted in promoting the Society and the missions. However after a number of years his condition worsened and he was compelled to entered Mount Desert hospital, then a sanatorium for large numbers of young men and women suffering from tuberculosis. There, at the age of forty‑four years, he was to end his days.

James' obituary in the African Missionary records that after his health broke down he 'devoted himself to a life of prayer, making it a work of missionary activity in place of the active ministry from which he was untimely cut off. With him it was a work worthy of his missionary calling, a worthy substitute too, for the African labours that were denied him. He took a particular interest in extending the "League of Suffering and Spiritual Adoption" by which our missionaries individually are sponsored by faithful souls afflicted with the cross of suffering, who daily offer to God their unceasing pain and the merits of their lives of affliction on behalf of their missionary, and for the success of his work.'

He is buried in the SMA cemetery, at Wilton, Cork, Ireland.