Scathlan 1

The Gweedore Case By Dr. Sean 6 Sfoda In 1888 Fathers James McFadden, P.P., Gweedore, and Daniel V. Stephens, C.C., Falcarragh, were jailed for six months for their advocacy of the Plan of Campaign, in contravention of Balfour's Coercion Act of 1887. Failure of the potato crop owing to wet seasons and the lack of migrant work in England and Scotland had brought great distress to Gweedore, as to other parts of Ireland. Rents could not be paid, and evictions, midnight arrests and trials followed. Making themselves spokesmen of their distressed people, the two priests intensified the Plan of Campaign in West Donegal; and this in turn made them men marked by Balfour, the Chief Secretary. Their trials caused great excitement, and at Fr. McFadden's, at Dunfanaghy, there were an estimated 12,000 people present. Anticipating trouble, Archbishop Logue of Armagh (who was Canon McFadden's cousin) telegraphed the Chief Secretary that if he would keep the police under restraint the archbishop would keep the people quiet. Balfour agreed, and Michael Logue was as good as his word. A score of priests were there, and a military officer present said that .'the people seemed more afraid of the umbrellas of the priests than of the rifles of his men'. Archbishop Logue's sympathies were entirely with the downtrodden peasantry of West Donegal, whose chief pastor he had been until very recently. His successor, the young (aged 32) untried Bishop O'Donnell, was consecrated (3rd April, 1888) only after the trials. Only after the convictions too came, from the Holy Office, a Roman condemnation of the Plan of Campaign and the boycotting tactic. Even at that, the Irish bishops addressed a very strong letter to Pope Leo XIII in December 1888 saying that they could not enforce the Holy Office decree; and Leo did not insist. The season was again wet, the potatoes once more largely failed in Gweedore, and more evictions threatened. Meanwhile events were happening .in the world of high diplomacy ~hich were to have a quite direct effect on Fr. McFadden's activities. Leo VIII wished to impress upon governments that in the Church they 47.