Born on 6 June 1871 in Glankeen, Borrisoleigh, Co Tipperary , he was the third

child in a family of ten. No trace of the Shanahan home in Glankeen remains but a little monument marks the spot. Two or three years after Joseph's birth the father was offered a post as herdsman and provided with a dwelling house in Gortnalaura near Templederry church. This church was begun in 1873 as the Shanahans arrived in that area. It was there that Joseph was to receive his first Holy Communion and Confirmation and it was there also that he served mass over the years. The Shanahans were a devout Catholic family where the family Rosary, recited together and led by the mother, helped form their simple but solid spirituality. Joseph's maternal uncle, Patrick, who had come to live with them at Gortnalaura, became a Brother in the Holy Ghost Congregation. Appointed to Beauvais in north France where the Congregation was conducting a thriving Apostolic School , he persuaded the dynamic Director, Père Amet Limbour, to accept Joseph as a postulant once he had shown a keen interest in joining the Congregation. Joseph set off for Beauvais in 1886. The contrast between the large buildings of Beauvais – especially the magnificent cathedral nearby – and their little farm house and local church in Templederry must have provided a culture shock for young Joseph. Not knowing a word of French while trying to fit in with students who were younger and smaller than himself must have proved a personal challenge, especially as he found himself at times the butt of French humour. Having jibed at them as a bunch of snail eaters he had to swallow a snail himself to prove to them that he was no coward! As he was recognised as possessing sterling qualities he was in time appointed prefect.

In 1889, when the Apostolic School had to move from Beauvais , Joseph was transferred to the French Juniorate of the Congregation in Cellule in the Auvergne where he completed his secondary studies and did part of the university course. He would have liked to have been sent to Blackrock where his uncle and his two brothers had spent some time in the Juniorate but he was told by his French directors that because of his age and the difference between the French and the Irish systems of studies he would not be able to fit in well. So, in the ways of Providence , he was to spend eleven years in exile and be steeped in the French tradition of the Congregation with its clear orientation towards serving on the foreign missions.

Found to be a steady intelligent student with a solid vocation he was asked to begin the university course once he had finished his classical studies. In 1894, when his contemporaries had moved on to the senior Scholasticate, he wrote to the Superior General to be excused the full university course because he longed to go on the missions. He made it clear, however, that he was always ready to do what obedience demanded. He was allowed to join the Philosophy students in the Senior Scholasticate in Langonnet , Brittany . It was there he made his first contact with Irish members of the Congregation, among them Fr John O'Gorman, future bishop in Sierra Leone , who at that tim e was a professor in the Senior Scholasticate.

Shanahan at Rockwell 1898

The following year all the senior students transferred back to the main Senior Scholasticate house at Chevilly near Paris in order to start the theology course. At Christmas 1895, however, Joseph was called on to go as prefect and teacher of English in the college recently entrusted to the Congregation at Merville in the north of France where a knowledge of English was seen as a priority. He also continued his theology studies with other prefects in order not to miss out on that scholastic year. Several of his letters to the Director of Theology in Chevilly keeping him informed of his progress and problems have survived in the General Archives of the Congregation. They reveal a remarkably balanced, mature young man totally committed to his vocation as a Spiritan.

Having returned to Chevilly in autumn he found that all available students were being called on to do their novitiate in one of three separate centres set up to comply with the directive from Rome that all candidates for the priesthood in religious orders were to make their vows before ordination and not after ordination as hitherto. Joseph had the good fortune to be numbered among the group who had Fr Jean-Marie Grizard as master of novices and whose understudy was Fr John O'Gorman. The notes taken by Joseph during that critical year were to mean much to him throughout his life as Fr Grizard proved to be an expert in revealing to each student his strengths and his weaknesses but above all in putting the highest ideals before them as encapsulated in his best remembered motto: Magister unicus Christus – You have only one Teacher – the Christ. In later years as Bishop Shanahan reopened his novitiate Journal he wrote:

Today I came across this little book. I look and read it. God bless our Venerable Master of Novices, Rev Fr Grizard. Thirty years have elapsed since he formed his last group of novices, but the words that he spoke during the novitiate, the example he gave, the perfect instrument he was in the hands of God, have produced in every soul that listened to him, gave itself up to God through him, is the better for it today. To read over the few pages in which my own heart and soul were exposed with their failings of thirty years ago is to understand how wonderful was the director given to us. We were enabled to see ourselves guided as we were by the director, who in his turn was guided by God. We saw and understood ourselves as we were then, and what I am today. The life long struggle has gone on against the self-same failings and weaknesses.

Through an oversight, the strict canonical requirements for the novitiates at Chevilly were not fully implemented in time; so the professions had to be postponed till the following Christmas. By then Joseph was in Rockwell College to where he was unexpectedly seconded as prefect in late August 1897.

Having been eleven years away from Ireland , Joseph found some difficulty in reverting to English in the classroom. To cope with this he developed a special technique. He read passages in French as “they would be read by a Frenchman”, then did a literal translation and finally challenged the students to recast this literal version in “classical English” and read it out to see who had done best. This approach aroused the students' enthusiasm. Concurrently their teacher was relearning his native language. Because of his splendid physique he was soon initiated into the fundamentals of rugby and drafted on to the Club team where his totally committed and fearless performance won him the admiration of the students and the fear of his opponents. He made his profession on Easter Sunday 1898, the first such ceremony to be held in the new college chapel at Rockwell.

When a senior scholasticate was launched in the Lake House , Rockwell, in 1898, Joseph was among the eleven students selected to do their Theology. Some of them were also drafted in by Dean of studies, Dr Edward Crehan, to serve as part-time prefects at the College - among them Joseph Shanahan. The following year he was allowed to concentrate on his studies and when the time came for his ordination the place chosen was Blackrock College chapel. The choice of venue was to arrange that the first Blackrock past student to be ordained bishop, Mgr Emile Allgeyer from Alsace , would perform the first ordination to the priesthood in the college chapel. The ordination took place on 22 April 1900 . It was a memorable occasion in that among the students were Eamon de Valera, future President of Ireland, John D'Alton – future Cardinal and Primate, Frank Duff , Founder of the Legion of Mary, and a number who were later to serve with Bishop Shanahan in Nigeria. Fr Shanahan said his first mass at the altar where he was ordained, and the following year he was to pronounce his perpetual vows at that same altar.

In the meantime he had been appointed to Rockwell as Dean of discipline and with a full day's teaching class and other duties to perform also. It was during these years that some of his future co-workers got to know and admire him: Edward Leen, Thady O'Connor, Tommy Ronayne etc. He was remembered for his inspiring addresses as he put before them the highest ideals. The most spectacular event of his tenure was the occasion when he was taking the senior rugby team to Cork for a Munster Club competition. Having missed their train connection at Limerick junction they were informed by phone that if they did not turn up in Cork they would have to forfeit the match. Fr Shanahan – with the support of the team which included the internationals Mike and Jack Ryan – decided that ordering a train from Dublin was the only alternative and he did just that. Inspired by his daring option the team gave of their all and won the match. It has often been said that it was because of the bill that had to be paid by the bursar that Fr Shanahan was encouraged to go on the missions. Bishop Shanahan firmly stated that the team footed the bill and that his going to Africa was entirely due to his having requested that from the Superior General Mgr Alexander Le Roy, who knew his often-expressed desire to be sent on the missions. He did mention that the only clash he had with the management in Rockwell was that though it was the custom in the last school term to drop Christian doctrine classes for students doing public examinations, he refused to comply. By mid July 1902 Fr Shanahan had received his appointment for Nigeria .

Shanahan's first assignment was to help Fr Léon Lejeune in making bricks to build the first proper mission house in Onitsha . The work was hard but as we learn from this entry in his diary for October 1903:

Thanks be to you, my God, for having preserved me up to this in your holy Apostolic Congregation. Thanks for having been so good as to send me to Africa . May your holy name be blessed and praised for all eternity. May my heart never wander from you. May I never neglect spending every atom of my energy, mental and physical, in saving those souls you love so much…

He soon learned that the future of the mission depended mainly on the use of schools as part of the new strategy of evangelising the parents through their children. On September 26th 1905 he was nominated by Rome as Prefect-Apostolic in succession to Fr Lejeune, and in that capacity he attended the General Chapter of the Congregation in 1906 together with Bishops Allgeyer and O'Gorman representing the English missions confided to the Congregation. In 1908 he opened the first permanent Mission in the interior of the country at Ozubulu, and in 1913 he launched the first Teachers' Training Centre at Igbariam. In 1918, at the request of Rome , he undertook the legendary thousand-mile trek from Onitsha to Cameroon to minister to the Catholic communities bereft of their German pastors during the 1914-18 war.

When the Southern Nigeria mission was given the status of a Vicariate in 1920 Fr Shanahan was nominated Vicar Apostolic. He chose St Patrick's College, Maynooth, for his ordination as bishop in order to try to influence young Irish secular priests to volunteer for Nigeria as had been done for the mission to China . The ordination ceremony took place on 6 June 1920 . He took as his episcopal motto “ Domine ut videam ” – Lord that I might see. The occasion was celebrated by the first ever singing of ‘The Missionary Hymn' using music from Gounod's oratorio “The Redemption” – the music which had been used at his own ordination as priest twenty years earlier. The opening lines of the Missionary Hymn are as follows:

Go ye afar.

Go teach all nations Bear witness unto me

O n earth in every clime

And I with you shall be

Until the end of time.

 

Realising too that the success of their mission to Nigeria in the future would depend on the early formation of a native clergy, he set about starting a senior seminary in 1922. Among the first group of students were John Anyogu, first Igbo priest and later Bishop of Enugu, and Cyprian Tansi, who was to join the Cistercians and be Beatified.

Mindful all along of the necessity to provide a good Christian education for women, Bishop Shanahan tried for years to find a missionary society specially devoted to that ministry. Eventually in 1924 he decided to found his own missionary society which he named the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary. Their Mother house he located in Killeshandra, Co Cavan, where he was assisted in the formation of the future missionaries by two Dominican Sisters with Fr Edward Leen CSSp as spiritual father. Samples of the advice Dr Shanahan himself was to give to the Sisters in their missionary activity are:

Be both sympathetic and understanding to African people, especially the women: meet the people of Africa with courtesy and respect; never do for them the things they can do for themselves. Teach, demonstrate and encourage them to develop, but let them develop in their own way. Do not usurp or supplant them in anything. Be ready to move off as soon as your missionary work is done. Do not dig in permanent roots – that is not your function as missionaries. While leading others to Christ and the true Christian spirit that Christ is bringing to them through you, be always careful to respect their pagan customs as an expression of the human spirit.

 

And again:

By your life in all its activities, teach them the secret of God's living love in the very centre of their own soul…And so, the stream of divine life will continue to flow from heart to heart, pouring out from the heart of Christ and passing through your heart to the millions of other hearts through which it will continue to flow until the last soul is saved. God's life passing through our hearts and lips and our whole life into other hearts and souls. How beautiful and how true.

1920: Bishop Shanahan with the women ofCalabar

As failing sight was becoming a problem for Bishop Shanahan he offered his resignation in 1925 in order to allow a more active man to take over the increasing responsibilities of the rapidly expanding mission. He was asked by Rome to remain on in charge but was given a coadjutor in the person of Fr Charles Heerey, currently Director of the Senior Seminary. When Bishop Heerey took over officially in 1932 it was decided that Bishop Shanahan should retire completely from the mission and so allow him a free hand. When Bishop Shanahan arrived in what was known as Southern Nigeria in 1902 the number of Catholics was given as around 2000. In the last official report from his hand dated 1 September 1930 the figure had reached some 210,000 and, due to the solid foundations laid, the numbers were increasingly rapidly.

As Bishop Shanahan was winding up his affairs before leaving his beloved Nigeria he wrote the following in the spiritual notebook he had begun during his novitiate in Chevilly – words that have been referred to as his ‘ Magnificat ':

Once again I wish to say how full my heart is with gratitude to Our Lord and for all those who in His Name and authority – with such charity and mercy have co-operated with Him

– in bringing me into the world and into the Catholic Church – my good Catholic parents and the Parish Priest.

– in teaching me in school – my school teacher.

– in making my home life happy – my parents and Our Lord.

– in making it possible for me to be a religious – poor old Bro Adelm

– in taking me, a poor boy, for nothing into a secondary school – Fr

Limbour CSSp at Beauvais ,

– in receiving me into the Congregation – Fr Bertsch at Cellule.

– in allowing me to make my profession in Rockwell 1898.

– in ordaining me a priest – Blackrock 1900.

– in sending me – to Africa – 1902-1932.

– in appointing me Ordinary of Nigeria , Pref. Ap. 1905-1931.

– Bishop and Vicar Apostolic 1920-1931.

– in giving me time to prepare for a good, holy, happy death.

For these and other countless graces from the bottom of my heart I thank God and all those who have been and are still His visible representatives, relatives and friends, for my personal welfare and sanctification. May God grant me pardon for all the ingratitude I have shown to Him and to all His friends during these years. And Mary, Mother of God, Mother of Jesus Christ, Mother of Divine Graces, Mother of Sorrows, my Mother – all my heart goes out to you, with all my love – to you my beloved Mother for having been such a good Mother to me.

And then you, St. Joseph , my great patron saint, what do I owe to you? And you, my beloved Guardian Angel, how I thank you. I crave for mercy and pardon, for Your love and grace, my Lord Jesus and for final perseverance unto the end of my life.

The Congregation of the Holy Ghost and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Jos. Shanahan, CSSp., Onitsha .

25th November 1931

His leaving his beloved Nigeria was a great sacrifice, especially as he was then facing into a life of retirement in the old mansion, Clareville, attached to Blackrock College . It was from this house – then the Provincialate – that he had set out for Nigeria in 1902. It was now a dormer house for the College with mostly retired members of the community living there and referred to jokingly as the “House of Lords”. His room was on the ground floor to the left and the oratory where he said mass was directly overhead. He found himself now on the periphery of a large community which was actively involved in the routine of school life – academic, athletic etc – and where the missions were a faraway operation. Clareville was removed a distance from the college and he found his daily routine involved coming down to the college in all sorts of weather for community morning prayer and meditation in the college chapel, then returning to Clareville to say mass, returning to the college for breakfast, again for lunch, then for evening prayer and supper, and finally for night prayer with the community.

For the first two years he was rarely asked to take part in any pastoral work. Ceremonies requiring participation by a bishop were monopolised by the retired Bishop John Neville who was his senior and, as a former member of the community for many years, was better known in Blackrock and in the local church. Bishop Shanahan would have loved to visit Killeshandra to converse with the community of Sisters he had founded but that avenue was for the most part blocked because of the strict regulations governing houses of formation in those days.

Matters changed from 1934 onwards under the new Provincial, Dr Dan Murphy. For the next four years he was seen to make a remarkable contribution to mission promotion activities in Ireland and was remembered for his splendid addresses to the senior scholastics and to the mission helpers. During these years he also wrote very many inspiring letters to members of the Holy Rosary Sisters where we get a wonderful insight into his apostolic outlook and his spirituality which was a refreshing celebration of the human and the Divine in life. A brief quotation from his message to the Holy Rosary Sisters giving a simple but sublime spirituality reveals the human and the divine in his outlook on life:

Every little detail is meant to mould our souls and draw them nearer to Himself. Then let us throw all – our sins, our faults and all besides into the boundless ocean of God 's mercy and love and let us say: “My God, I give thee all”. Our life is as a psalm. At the end of every psalm, and often in the liturgy, we say: ‘Glory be to the Father'; we shall say it for eternity. My dear Sisters, accept all – your weakness, imperfections, trials and difficulties and offer all to God. Above all, do not be proud; love God, praise God, trust God.

Bishop Shanahan suffered greatly but silently from his confinement to Clareville as he longed for apostolic work on the missions. He was very happy to be invited back to Nigeria in December 1935 to perform the official blessing of the new cathedral at Onitsha and would have loved to be able to continue active ministry in some remote area of the mission. That was not to be. He gladly availed of Bishop John W Heffernan's invitation in 1938 to come to live in his Vicariate in Kenya . As he was bidding farewell to the Holy Rosary Sisters in Killeshandra he said:

Eighteen years ago I first came in contact with you. I had been in Africa for eighteen years before that, and now, at the close of my life I am returning. When I was working there as a young missionary, I thought Nigeria could not get on without me. God brought me home, and showed me that it could. I thought then that Killeshandra could not get on without me, but again, God showed me that it could. In Kenya Bishop Shanahan was to find that he had very restricted duties involving little contact with pastoral work among the African people. He served mainly as chaplain to the Carmelite Sisters near Nairobi . He spent a few months in South Africa at the invitation of the Holy Rosary Sisters.

Having suffered much from ill health, Bishop Joseph Shanahan died at Nairobi on Christmas Day 1943 aged 72 years, and was buried in the community cemetery in St Mary's School.

In 1956, due to a popular appeal by the people of Nigeria , Fr Tom Fox CSSp supervised the transfer of his remains to Nigeria for his “ Second Burial ” in Onitsha Cathedral. The intense devotion of the people of Nigeria to Bishop Shanahan during his life time and after his death is well summarised in the spontaneous statement of a senior Nigerian when asked if he thought Bishop Shanahan should be canonised: “If not Shanahan then who?” Always revered as a saint by those in close contact with him, his cause for Beatification was introduced officially on 15 November 1997 in Onitsha Cathedral.

Elsewhere Bishop Shanahan had paid a very generous tribute to his Master of Novices, Fr Jean-

Marie Grizard.