Courtney McGrailFinola Kennedy
November is the month of the Holy Souls. It is a time when we pray for the dead, and many visit the graves of their loved ones. But cemeteries attract visitors for other reasons too. A cemetery might seem an unlikely tourist attraction but Glasnevin has been drawing increasing numbers especially following Aoife Kelleher’s prize-winning documentary, One Million Dubliners.
The Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires is probably the top tourist attraction in that vast city. The tomb of the Duarte family – of which Eva Peron is the best known member – draws a steady stream of visitors. Although opinion is divided about Peron in Argentina, some continue to leave flowers over six decades after her death in 1952.
Emigration
A number of notable Irishmen are buried in the Recoleta. John Thomond O’Brien or Juan O’Brien (1786-1861) is one of them. O’Brien, from Baltinglass in Co. Wicklow, travelled to Buenos Aires where he joined the army in 1812, rising to the rank of general. In the 1820s, together with John Mooney from Streamstown in Co. Westmeath, he promoted a wave of emigration from the Irish midlands.
The most famous Irishman in the Recoleta is Admiral William Brown (1777-1857) who is hailed as the father of the Argentine Navy. In 2016 when Ireland marked the centenary of the 1916 Rising, Argentina marked the bi-centenary of the Declaration of Independence from Spain.
William Brown played a key role in Argentina’s fight against Spain and is regarded as a national hero.
Born in Foxford in Co. Mayo, Brown’s family emigrated to the United States where Brown obtained a post as a cabin boy. From that humble start he sailed to Argentina where he rose to lead the Argentine Navy.
Victory
Fighting the Spanish in March 1814, Brown ordered the band to play ‘St Patrick’s Day in the morning’ which is thought to have raised spirits and contributed to victory. Not far from Brown’s tomb there is a substantial monument to another Irishman, the Dominican priest Fr Anthony Fahy (1805-1871).
Fr Fahy, who hailed from Loughrea, was sent to Buenos Aires in the 1840s by the Archbishop of Dublin to act as chaplain to the Irish community. In no time Fr Fahy became leader of the Irish community helping some of the Irish immigrants to acquire land; others to acquire wives. He also raised money to alleviate the Great Irish Famine.
An important school in Buenos Aires is called after the cleric and the Fahy Centre has provided a venue for the Irish/Argentine community. Associated with the Fahy Centre are GAA teams as well as Irish music and culture.
A fourth Irishman buried in a vault in the Recoleta is Alfie Lambe (1932-1959). Lambe was an Irish lay missionary from Tullamore. He worked as an envoy of the Legion of Mary in a number of South American countries. Lambe covered a vast territory that included Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, Uraguay and Bolivia as well as Argentina. He died in Argentina in 1956 at the young age of 26. In South America, Lambe was affectionately known as el corderito or lambkin.
Less than 20 years after his death the Cause for Lambe’s canonisation was introduced in Buenos Aires. When work in Buenos Aires concluded in 2015 the Irish Ambassador in Argentina, Justin Harman, took charge of the despatch of the documents to Rome.
Harman had a link to Alfie Lambe through his late uncle John Murray. Murray gave up his civil service job to dedicate himself full time to the Legion of Mary – he did this first in the Morning Star hostel for homeless men and then travelling through the Eastern States of America as an Envoy. In Dublin he took special interest in the care of circus people.
I’m not quite sure why, but when I stood in the Recoleta, in the former diocese of Pope Francis, and when I saw the many Irish names on graves, I was reminded of the universality of the Church and I wondered what had possessed the Irish government to close our embassy in Rome even if they later backed down.