Our Founders
St. Columban's Mission Society was born from the vision of two young priests, Edward Galvin and John Blowick.
After
being ordained at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Ireland, Fr Galvin
took up temporary duties in a parish in New York in 1910. He was due to
return to Ireland but had an overwhelming urge to become a missionary
and an encounter with a priest about to return to his mission work in
China, lead him instead to Shanghai. Despite the difficulties of
language and social and political upheaval, Galvin saw the desperate
needs of China and the great potential it presented, and wrote to his
friends and colleagues at Maynooth describing the situation there.
In 1916, Fr Galvin decided to return to Ireland with formal requests for assistance and support. While at home he met Fr John Blowick, a member of the Seminary staff who was attracted to the idea of China. Together and with other friends and supporters, these two men formally requested that a mission house or College be established, under the care and authority of the Irish Bishops, to supply priests for work in China. This request was approved and the young men travelled the country raising support for the idea.
It was in March 1917 that the new society officially took the name of St. Columban's Foreign Mission Society in honour of Ireland's greatest missionary. A house and land were purchased and St. Columban's Seminary established in January 1918. The first issue of The Far East, the society's magazine, was published in the same month. The Columban fathers went on to establish houses in the USA (Nebraska) in 1918 and Australia in 1920.
The first young men to go to China as Columban missionaries arrived there in 1920 to meet the challenges of its language and culture and to share the suffering of its poor. The political turmoil of the 1920's in China, with open hostility between the warlords and the Nationalist Party of Sun Yat-Sen, as well as the growing strength of the fledgling Communist Party, made life difficult for those early missionaries. Anti-foreign sentiments swept the country and priests and nuns were often abused and insulted when they appeared in public.
Over the following years China suffered many tragedies which the Columbans shared. Floods, famine, epidemics of cholera, typhoid and malaria, as well as war and persecution did not stop the work. The Columbans continued in their efforts for the Chinese people through the Japanese invasion, World War II and civil war. Edward Galvin, by now a bishop, was dubbed the most bombed Bishop in the world. It was however, the rule of the Communist Party, which had come to power in 1949, which was to spell the end of the work of the Columbans in China. After a brief period of bitter persecution, the missionaries were expelled by the Communists.
