Born in Leeds, England
Took the habit in Lys Marie, Sicklinghall on 16 February 1854
Final Oblation in Sicklinghall 17 February 1856 (No. 566)
Left the Congregation after 1866
Michael Donnelly was born in Leeds. He began his novitiate on 16 February 1854 at Lys Marie, Sicklinghall where he made his first oblation on 17 February 1855 before the Provincial. He made his final Oblation on 17 February 1856 along with Brother Mahoney. On 9 December 1856 he went to Dublin as a collector of funds and would have been a member of the Inchicore community at the time of the Founder’s visit in 1857. In October 1857 he attended the annual retreat in Sicklinghall. According to a letter written by Father Arnoux to Father Casimir Aubert, the Brother was one of the members of the first community in St. Kevin’s Reformatory, Glencree (1858).
In the Sicklinghall Codex October 1862 we read: “Brother Donnelly is sent here and remains 3 or 4 months.” On 19 November 1862 Father Joseph Fabre, Superior General, sent his dispensation from vows to the Provincial “to be promulgated as he judged fit,” as the Brother was “irregular and difficult” and could become a means of scandal for the other Brothers. We retain in the archives a letter to Father Fabre dated from London 14 November 1866 in which the Brother, “after thirteen years in the Congregation”, asks to go and see his mother and then to be sent to the foreign missions. His name does not show up again in Oblates sources.
Yvon Beaudoin
and Michael Hughes, o.m.i.
