Irish Priest

Martin Sheen^note Born Ramón Estévez, Irish Catholic on his mother's side, Spanish Catholic on his father's as Fr. Daniel Barry.

"We used to grow priests in Ireland. We used to grow them from bits of people that we didn't like. But we over-planted. We had an epidemic. We were flooded with them. So, we tried to engage the rest of the world in a priest-for-potato swap."

— Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan

Irish Catholic priests or nuns, basically, turn up in a lot of places. It's like Ireland exports them.

This was indeed once very common back in The '50s and earlier when Ireland essentially did export clergy.^note The Irish tradition of exporting Catholic clergy arguably goes back to the 6th century, when the sainted Irish abbots Columba and Columbanus evangelized and founded monasteries in Scotland and France, respectively. Both took significant numbers of Irish monks with them to help. It should also be noted that when dealing with different ethnic communities - German, Czech, Polish, etc - some Bishops tried to assign clergy of the same nationalities. In part this was due to the tradition of Irish priests and nuns going overseas both as students and missionaries and in part simply due to the very high emigration rate in Ireland (12.7 people per 1000 in 1950). It also runs with the stereotype, within Britain and the US, that Irish Catholics are particularly devout.

Having said that, this is definitely not the case today; changing demographics and the growth of secularism mean that these days, Ireland does not even train enough priests for her own needs, and has to import from Poland and Africa. Thus, unless the priest or nun is very elderly or is in a period piece, he or she is not too likely to be Irish. An exception is the United States, where even if priests who actually came from Ireland are fairly rare, Irish-descended clergy dominate the church hierarchy; there's a very good chance that any given American Catholic archbishop or Cardinal (both in fiction and reality) is Irish—it's something of a bit of a joke within the American Church that all the American Cardinals seem to trace at least part of their ancestry from the Emerald Isle.^note Even where you wouldn't expect it—the Cardinal who ordered the construction of the current seat of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is Roger Cardinal Mahoney However, the same is not true of the parishioners; religious surveys done within the last ten years show that Irish Americans are one of the most secularized ethnic communities in America.^note About a third of non-religious Americans claim Irish ancestry, as opposed to just 12% of the total US population. If one figures that about 15% of all Americans are non-religious, then that figure rises to more than 40% for Irish Americans — numbers comparable to the average Western European country. In addition, having been born and raised in America, Irish priests are unlikely to have a heavy Irish accent despite what you find on TV.

Nevertheless, stock characters die hard (as Officer O'Hara can attest), and even if doesn't make much sense any more, Irish priests abroad are not quite a Dead Horse Trope yet.

See also Christianity is Catholic and Bad Habits.

In terms of rank, the authority tropes arguably equal are Badass Preacher, Corrupt Corporate Executive, Preacher Man, Pedophile Priest, Schoolteachers Sexy Priest, Sinister Minister and The Vicar. For the next step down, see Student Council President. For the next step up, see Dean Bitterman.

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Examples:

Comedy

• Tommy Tiernan has a bit on this.
  We used to grow priests in Ireland. We used to grow them from bits of people that we didn't like. But we over-planted. We had an epidemic. We were flooded with them. So, we tried to engage the rest of the world in a priest-for-potato swap. And we were conned by the Africans. Bastards! Took all our priests, not a potato between them. Pagan spudless fuckers! Our priests went over to Africa, and what happened? What do you think happened? They melted! And now we've run out of priests in Ireland. There's none left. And irony of ironies, what's happening? Missionaries! From Africa!

Comic Books

• Parodied in the Babes and Bullets section of Garfield: His 9 Lives, in which Sam Spayed is hired by the widow of a priest called Father O'Tabby, whose superior is Father O'Felix. The parody comes in when he asks how a priest could be married, and is told they're Greek Orthodox. This is not elaborated upon.

Fan Works

• Monsignor Ryan from Angel of the Bat is a priest of Irish descent, though he and his family have been in America long enough that he doesn't have many stereotypes attached to him.
• Tapper Smurf, the Oirish bartender in Empath: The Luckiest Smurf, becomes one in the latter years of his life, calling himself Pastor Nevin (a variant of his birth name Naomhán), during the framing story of "A Wedding To Remember". He isn't Catholic, though he does have some of its trappings like wearing a long black robe.
• Subverted in Hellsing Ultimate Abridged. Father O'Mally'O'Connel'O'Carrol'O'Reilly'O'Brian'O'Sullivan (who is also Italian) is Italian.

Film — Live-Action

• Father Delaney from the original The Amityville Horror (1979).
• The 1947 film Captain Boycott depicts the Origin Story for the familiar term. Alastair Sim plays Father McKeogh who supports the tenant farmers in the non-violent ostracism of Boycott, their evil English land agent. At the end he tells the victorious farmers that "in the future, if any man offends against the community you can ostracize him — you can isolate him — you can boycott him."
• Father Everett in Daredevil (2003).
• In The Delta Force, a heartwarming moment as Father O'Malley says that he should be grouped with the Jewish hostages, because he considers himself both a Jew and a Christian.
• A very memorable one is played by Liam Neeson in Gangs of New York.
  • Though he wasn't an actual clergyman (just a very devout mobster), as Bill is quick to point out.
• Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way played by Barry Fitzgerald defines this trope. He came over from the old country as a young man and yearns to visit Ireland again.
• Father Janovich in Gran Torino. Despite the name, he's given an Irish lilt.
• Father Alex in Mamma Mia!.
• In Million Dollar Baby, the character played by Clint Eastwood keeps pestering an Irish priest with intentionally silly questions about Catholic doctrine, even causing him to drop an F-bomb.
• Father Brennan in The Omen (1976).
• Father Barry in On the Waterfront.
• Father Peter Lonergan and Father Paul in The Quiet Man. Of course, an Irish priest in 1920's Ireland doesn't exactly stick out.
• Lots of them show up in Spotlight, it being set in Boston.
• Fr. Devlin (played by Dennis O'Dea) in The Story Of Esther Costello convinces prosperous Margaret Landi to take Esther from her village to a deaf-blind school. She's shown typing a letter to him. At the very end, Margaret sends for him to become Esther's guardian since she's about to kill her husband and herself.
• In Trading Places, Coleman dresses as one.
• Father Geoghagan in The Wild Geese.

Literature

• Father Duddleswell in the original stories which inspired Bless Me Father
• Father Luis Quinn in Ian McDonald's Brasyl.
• Baby Kochamma falls in love with one in The God of Small Things.
• Father Callahan of 'Salem's Lot and The Dark Tower.
• Mike Bennett's grandfather (he become a priest after he was widowed) Seamus in the James Patterson novel Step on a Crack.
• Father Wolfe in A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil.
• Father Ralph of The Thorn Birds
• Military thriller Victoria has Father Murphy, who memorably ministers to protagonist John Rumford and some new converts in the field during the battle for Boston.

Live-Action TV

• Caitlin O'Shaughnessy, in Airwolf, one pretended to be an Irish nun.
• Ballykissangel lampshades this since it's (initially) about an English priest assigned to a parish in Ireland.
  • Had a crossover episode with The Vicar of Dibley. Geraldine expects the priest visiting Dibley to be a stuffy old man, but is pleasantly surprised to see he's young, attractive, and down to earth. Similar to Geraldine who doesn't fit the description of a typical Vicar.
• Father Duddleswell in the TV sitcom Bless Me Father, based on original short stories (see Literature).
• City on a Hill: Father Doyle is originally from Northern Ireland though he moved to Boston for an escape from The Troubles (it's set in 1992), with a strong Irish accent.
• Father Peter from the south in Derry Girls.
• A variant in the Drake & Josh episode Megan's First Kiss occurs when the titular duo dress up as rabbis to spy on Megan at the premiere. Josh tells Drake it doesn't matter what accent he uses As Long as It Sounds Foreign, so they speak to Helen in Irish accents.
• Father Ted is about three Priests (a drunkard, an idiot, and the title character) on an Irish island. This trope is invoked not so much Once an Episode as Once A Minute.
  • In one episode, a nun gushes to a black priest about what wonderful work he must be doing among those poor Africans, and ask how the missions there are doing. The priest replies in a thick Irish accent: "Sure, I wouldn't know, I'm from Donegal."
• The Priest in S2 of Fleabag is a Catholic priest played by Irish actor Andrew Scott, using his own accent.
• Nick impersonates one in an episode of Forever Knight. He gets to hear Schanke's confession.
• In Frasier, the Seattle radio station's religious presenter is Father Mike, who in accent and demanour is affably Irish-American. Except for his surname being a Spanish one (Mendosa). This infers that all priests become Irish, regardless of ethnic origin.
• One appears on Good Eats, along with a rabbi and a nutritional anthropologist. Alton asks the priest about corned beef in Ireland, and the priest replies that he doesn't eat it. The rabbi doesn't provide much insight into the origin of the dish, either. The nutritional anthropologist explains that a traditional dish in Ireland is bacon and cabbage.^note What the original Irish immigrants thought of as "bacon" was very different from what North Americans call "bacon". North American "bacon" is cut from the pork belly. In the UK and Ireland, "bacon" was and still is a cut made mainly of pork loin, often with a small piece of belly meat attached. When Irish immigrants came to the US, what they called "bacon" was out of the financial reach of many of them.^note A more complete explanation of why it was out of their reach can be found in the "Particular dishes" folder of Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Food. Meanwhile, American bacon, while relatively cheap, would just disintegrate if boiled with cabbage, so it was useless for the traditional dish. But the Irish did have lots of new Jewish neighbors, who couldn't eat bacon of any kind^note Beef bacon and turkey bacon being much later inventions because of Kosher laws forbidding pork and pork products. They had lots of brisket, though, and showed their new Irish neighbors a way of preserving it that results in a meat product kind of, sort of like bacon—corned beef.^note Note that some form of corned beef was known in Ireland for centuries, the island being excellent cattle country (hence its world-renowned dairy industry today). Salt beef is known in Irish texts dating back to at least the 12th century, and some kind of salted beef product has been made in Ireland pretty much continuously ever since. But by the 19th century, Irish corned beef was mostly produced for export—whether as "bully beef" in tins for the shops in England and the ration packs of the British Army, or more traditional salt beef for the Royal Navy. The Irish generally couldn't afford it and so didn't eat it. As a result, it became the replacement for bacon in the traditional dish in the US. (In fact, it's so popular that if St. Patrick's Day happens to fall on a Friday during Lent, when meat is forbidden to Catholics, the Catholic Church actually grants an exception to that rule for corned beef and cabbage!)
• Father Liam Riley from the Paris episodes of Highlander The Raven.
• On iCarly, Sam Puckett is obsessed with meeting Father McGurthy, the world's fattest priest, combining both this trope and the show's perchance for Punny Names.
• Harry O'Rourke, Vatican investigator in the JAG episodes "Miracles" and "Salvation".
• One appeared in the Pedophile Priest episode of Law & Order: SVU
• Though he's not a priest, Nate Ford from Leverage is Boston Irish and attended a seminary in his teenage years intending to become a priest. Him portraying clergy is a common occurrence to the team's cons. We also meet one of his friends who is an Irish Priest.
• On Magnum, P.I., one of Higgins' half-brothers is an actual Irish one (played by John Hillerman in a dual role in two episodes).
• Father Mulcahy of M*A*S*H is of Irish heritage.
• Midsomer Murders: Father Behan in "[[ Midsomer Murders S 14 E 7 A Sacred Trust]]". Being Catholic, however, does not spare him from the same fate as so many of his Anglican counterparts.
• Father O'Leary, Dot's parish priest in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Not only is his name Irish, he speaks with a pronounced Irish accent, so it's likely he came from Ireland to Melbourne to be a priest. He also punches out an astronomer for promoting an atheistic theory of cosmology bearing some resemblance to the Big Bang.
• One episode of Sharpe has an Irish priest in Spain, who turns out to be something of a badass.
• Sons of Anarchy featured a prominent Belfast priest who was one of the top leaders of the Real IRA.
• Patrick Fitzpatrick of Veronica Mars. Also most likely a Corrupt Priest and a member of Irish Mafia.

Video Games

• Father Daniel Wales from BioShock 2 has traits of this, despite his last name and him not even being Christian himself. ^note He actually is preacher of a Cult that Sofia Lamb created for experiments.
• Gabriel Knight poses as one to get information out of an older woman in his first game.
• Koudelka: Father James O'Flaherty. A survivor of The Great Famine, he studied at an English university and then entered the Vatican and embarked upon a long career as a Bishop. His haughty, quarrelsome, and arrogant personality puts him at odds with both Koudelka and Edward.

Web Original

• A Rubber Chicken Films sketch [1] features a classic Irish priest.

Web Comics

• One Girl Genius plot-arc features Brother Ulm, a monk in the Corbettites, a monastic order devoted to operating a politically neutral free-to-all rail liner service throughout Europa. He serves as the conductor aboard the Wyrm of Limerick, and eventually has his consciousness transferred and becomes the controlling intellect on a new super-train.

Western Animation

• Played with in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Trial", where the Joker dresses up as a priest and assumes a thick Irish accent to take Batman's "confession" before the villains (attempt to) kill him.
• It seems that at least half of Springfield's Catholic clergy in The Simpsons is Irish. And one of them is actually voiced by Liam Neeson.

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