Patrick Comerford
Today, the Church Calendar remembers the great Jesuit saint and missionary, Saint Francis Xavier. During my visit to Dublin this week, I visited Saint Francis Xavier Church, popularly known as Gardiner Street Church, the Jesuit-run church on Upper Gardiner Street, near Mountjoy Square.
Gardiner Street Church has associations with many famous Dubliners, including James Joyce, but this was my first time to visit the church since the funeral of Seán MacBride almost 40 yearsago in January 1988.
The church was one of the first to be built in Dublin after Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The church was designed by the Jesuit priest Father Bartholomew Esmonde working with the architect Joseph B Keane, as a classical cut granite stone essay. An earlier chapel at 30 Hardwicke Street was opened by Father Charles Aylmer SJ in 1816, the first public chapel of the restored Society of Jesus.
The four founders of Gardiner Street church were Father Peter Kenny, Father Bartholomew Esmonde, Father Charles Aylmer and Archbishop Daniel Murray. The foundation stone was laid by Father Charles Aylmer on 2 July 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation, and Archbishop Murray on 3 May 1832 celebrated the first Mass in the church on 3 May 1832 at a temporary altar. The church was solemnly blessed by Archbishop Murray on 12 February 1835 in the presence of 14 bishops and a large congregation.
The church is considered one of the best executed churches of the period. The architectural historian Christine Casey describes it in her book Dublin as ‘the most elegant church of the period in Dublin’. The building is known for its sculpted altar piece and paintings, mostly Italian in origin and dating from the Victorian period.
Father Bartholomew Esmonde (1789-1862) was a Jesuit priest, educator, and amateur architect. He was superior of the Society of Jesus in Ireland briefly in 1820. He was born on 12 December 1789, the second son of Dr John Esmonde and Helen (née O’Callan) of Sallins, Co Kildare. His father was executed by hanging on 13 June 1798 for his part in leading the United Irishmen at the Battle of Prosperous in Co Kildare in the 1798 Rising.
Bartholomew Esmonde was a younger brother of Sir Thomas Esmonde (1786-1868), 9th Baronet, MP for Wexford. He was educated at the Jesuit novitiate at Stonyhurst College, England and studied philosophy and theology in Palermo, Italy. Esmonde returned to Ireland as Master of Novices at Clongowes Wood College and later served as Rector of Clongowes, where his nephews, Sir John Esmonde (1826-1876), later the tenth baronet, and Colonel Thomas Esmonde VC (1829-1872), went to school.
Bartholomew Esmonde lived in Rome from 1842 and then in Malta, returning to Ireland in 1850. He died on 15 December 1862. His brother Sir Thomas Esmonde commissioned a portrait of him in the Jesuit building in Gardner Street and a monument in Saint Michael’s Church, Gorey, Co Wexford.
His nephew, Colonel Thomas Esmonde (1829-1872), was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his role in the siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War. His daughter Eva Esmonde married James Charles Comerford (1842-1907), of Ardavon, Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, and their children included the Irish Republican activist Maire Comerford (1893-1982).
The Dublin-born architect John Benjamin Keane, who worked closely with Esmonde in designing Gardiner Street Church, also designed courthouses in Tralee, Co Kerry (1828), Tullamore, Co Offaly (1832), Downpatrick, Co Down (1832-1834), and Nenagh, Co Tipperary (1842). It is said he designed the courthouse in Carlow (1830-1834), but this was designed by William Vitruvius Morrison and is modelled on the Temple on the Ilissus in Athens.
Keane also designed Saint Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, and Saint John’s Roman Catholic Church, Waterford. He also worked with Sir Richard Morrison on the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin and with AWN Pugin and Patrick Byrne on the designs for the Loreto Convent chapel and lantern in Rathfarnham.
He first appears in records in 1819, as an assistant to Richard Morrison. Some biographical sources say that Keane was trained as an architect at the Office of Works, Dublin, but this has been questioned. By 1823, he was working independently. He exhibited regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1828 to 1841.
Keane designed the Gothic Revival quadrangle at Queen’s College, Galway (now NUI Galway) in 1845 very much in the fashion of Christ Church College, Oxford. His other buildings include Ballybay House, Co Monaghan (1830), Belleek Manor, Ballina, Co Mayo (1831), Tullamore Courthouse (1835), the Mausoleum at Oak Park, Co Carlow (1841), the courthouses in Nenagh (1843), Waterford (1849) and Ennis (1852), Saint John’s Church, Waterford (1845), and Barmouth Castle, Co Louth.
He was the engineer on the River Suir navigation in 1846-1848. Towards the end of his life, it appears Keane suffered from alcoholism, falling into debt and was jailed in Marshalsea gaol. He died on 7 October 1859.
Esmonde’s design of Gardiner Street church is informed by his knowledge of the temples of Italy when he lived there. Esmonde and Keane based their designs on Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Paris, designed by Louis-Hippolyte Lebas ca1824, and on the Jesuits’ mother church in Rome, the Church of the Gesù, with a nave with low side chapels, shallow transepts and a deep apsidal chancel.
There are differences, however, with the roof in Saint Francis Xavier’s flat and coffered, while at the Gesù, it is barrel-vaulted.
The church is significant for its use of native granite for the portico and the fact that it was completed within a relatively short period of time. The apse was originally rectangular and shallow, but was enlarged in 1851, and this was further influenced by the style of the Gesù.
Outside, the figures on top of the front pediment, the Sacred Heart, Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier, are by the sculptor Terence Farrell (1798-1876). The Latin text on the pediment is Deo Uni Et Trino Sub Invoc S Francisci Xaverii , ‘To God one and Three under the invocation of Saint Francis Xavier’.
It is said Father Esmonde designed and assembled the High Altar in Rome. The paintings and sculpture inside the church include the ‘Madonna and Child’ by Ignazio Jacometti (1881), ‘The Agony in the Garden’ by Jacques Augustin Dieudonne (1848, bought in 1853) and ‘Saint Francis Xavier preaching in Japan’ (1860) over the High Altar by Bernardo Celantano (1835-1863).
There is a cast-iron foliated pulpit, with the ‘IHS’ monogram of the Society of Jesus and gilded portrait heads of ‘Christ Crowned with Thorns’ and the ‘Sorrowful Mother of Christ’, and a balustraded timber rail between the nave and the transept. The retention of these interior fittings is of considerable importance in church architecture.
Four oil paintings in the nave are attributed to Pietro Gagliardi (Rome) and were hung in church when Father Nicholas Walsh was the rector (1877-1884).
The organ has been rebuilt several times, always in original organ case. The original instrument was made by Flight and Robson (London) in 1836, and was bought by the Jesuits for 800 guineas.
The presbytery is on the north side of the church and the Convent of the Sisters of Charity is on the south side. Together, these three form part of a group of impressive ecclesiastical buildings that standing out among the Georgian terraces on the street.
The Jesuits opened a school at Hardwicke Street close to Gardiner Street church in 1832, and this later became Belvedere College on Denmark Street. The church also has close associations with Mother Mary Aikenhead and the early days of the Irish Sisters of Charity.
Over the years, many well-known people have been associated with Saint Francis Xavier’s Church. Matt Talbot, regarded by some as the patron of people struggling with alcoholism, prayed there each morning. John Henry Newman celebrated Mass there when he lived on Dorset Street in 1854. The funeral of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was held in the church in 1889.
The church was also the place where Father James Cullen founded the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association in 1898.
The church features in James Joyce’s short story ‘Grace’ in Dubliners and in the 1991 film The Commitments, the church organ is used to play A Whiter Shade of Pale. Many Dubliners also know the church hall, known as the SFX Hall.
Father John Sullivan, who was based at the church for a short time in 1907, was beatified (declared blessed) in the church, and he is now buried in the church.
John Sullivan (1861-1933) was a Jesuit priest known for his life of deep spiritual reflection and personal sacrifice, and for his dedicated work among the poor. He taught at Clongowes Wood College, Clane, Co Kildare, from 1907 until he died in 1933.
He was born on 8 May 1861 at 41 Eccles Street, Dublin, a son of Sir Edward Sullivan (1822-1885), later the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and he was baptised in Saint George’s Church of Ireland parish church, Hardwicke Place, on 15 July 1861. Later that year, the family moved to 32 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin.
He attended Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, studied classics at Trinity College Dublin, and studied for the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, London. He then travelled across Europe, visiting southern Italy, Macedonia, Greece and Asia Minor, and spent several months in a monastery on Mount Athos.
As a barrister, he was appointed in 1895 to a commission to investigate the massacre of Armenians in Adana, Asia Minor. He joined the Roman Catholic Church at Farm Street Church in Mayfair, London, on 21 December 1896.
From 1900, Sullivan studied with the Jesuits at Tullabeg, near Tullamore, Co Offaly, Stonyhurst and Milltown Park. Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin ordained Sullivan priest in the chapel at Milltown Park in 1907. He said his first Mass at Mount Saint Anne’s convent, Milltown, and was based in Gardiner Street. He then taught at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit-run school near Clane, Co Kildare. For five years he was the rector of the Jesuit house at Rathfarnham Castle (1919-1924), but then returned to teaching at Clongowes Wood.
He died in Saint Vincent’s Nursing Home, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, on 19 February 1933 with his brother Sir William Sullivan at his side. He was buried at Clongowes Wood, but his body was moved to the Sacred Heart Chapel in Gardiner Street Church in 1960.
Archbishop George Simms spoke at a memorial service on 8 May 1983, to honour Sullivan’s life and work in Saint George’s Church, where Sullivan was baptised. The Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Bishop James Kavanagh, brought greetings from Pope John Paul II.
His beatification was celebrated in Dublin in Saint Francis Xavier Church on 13 May 2017, the first ever beatification to take place in Ireland.
• The Church Co-ordinator (parish priest) is Father Brendan Comerford SJ. Sunday Masses are Sunday 9:15 am, 11 am and 7.30 pm; weekday Masses (Monday to Friday) are at 11 am and 1 pm; Saturday Masses are at 11 am, 1 pm and 6 pm. Gardiner Street Gospel Choir sings at the 7:30 Sunday Mass, except on bank holiday weekends.
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