Mayo's forgotten famine hero

by Auld Stock

MANY parishioners in Castlebar have probably never heard of Fr. James MacManus, an heroic figure during the Great Famine from 1845 to 1847.

This was a time when thousands of people from all over Mayo and other parts of Ireland died from hunger, their emaciated bodies lying on roadsides and in ditches.

Thousands of starving people made their way to workhouses in different parts of Mayo seeking food and shelter.

A headstone over the grave of Fr. MacManus in the Old Cemetery, Westport Road, Castlebar, reads as follows: ‘O Mother of God, pray for the soul of the Rev. James MacManus.

‘After 17 years on the mission, this beloved priest died of fever, caught whilst attending the fever victims, on the 7th of April, the fatal year of ’47, aged 45 years. The parishioners of Castlebar, having obtained the consent of his relatives, erected this tomb to his memory.’

The words on the tomb tell their own story.

Fr. MacManus was a man of immense charity, a priest who loved the poor and helped them in every way possible before his untimely death.

He deserves to be remembered by the people of Castlebar and surrounding areas with prayers and gratitude, unquestionably a man of deep faith with a strong social conscience.