About the Author- Fr. Joseph Conaghan
About the Author: Fr. Joseph (James) Conaghan, O.C.S.O
James Conaghan was born on March 30, 1853 in Ireland.
After surviving what he called "an incident in my early life", a near death experience after being pushed into the River Clyde, he enrolled in the Roman Catholic St. Mungo's Academy and was baptised and confirmed.
A few years later, he entered Rockwell College, a Catholic boarding school in Tipperary, Ireland. The spiritual director of the school at the time, Fr. Richard, after hearing about James' near death experience, told him that "in gratitude for [his] preservation, it was [his] bounden duty to become a priest"... He was ordained into the priesthood in 1877.
After becoming a priest, Fr. Joseph taught theology and Greek at Maynooth College (Saint Patrick's Pontifical University) in Maynooth, Ireland. He later became a curate of Saint Patrick's Church in Glasgow, Scotland, before entering the Trappist Order in 1886 at l'Abbaye du Petit Clairvaux in Tracadie, Nova Scotia. He was one of the founding monks who first came to Rhode Island with Fr. John Mary Murphy in 1900 after a series of fires destroyed Petit Clairvaux in 1892 and 1896.
During his time at Our Lady of the Valley, Fr. Joseph acted as Guest Master, Confessor, and Official Correspondent. He was well known, in particular, for greeting "thousands" of visitors to the Monastery as the Guest Master, and was "full of great personal charm" ("Death Claims Third", 1926, p. 1).
Fr. Joseph was also known as a "real scholar" (Toye, 1923), being able to speak Latin and Greek, and was called the "scribe of the monastery" ("Death Claims Third", 1926, p. 1). In addition to his regular duties, he wrote poetry and essays (which he wrote in his diary), some of which were published and could be found in local churches.
In the months of March and April of 1926, the flu tore its way through the community. At its peak, 34 monks were in the infirmary at the same time. On April 23, 1926, at 5:40 A.M. Fr. Joseph died at the age of 73 at Saint Joseph's Hosptital in Providence, Rhode Island. At the time of his death, he had been a priest for 49 years, 40 of those years were spent in the Trappist Order.
References:
Death claims third monk of Cistercian Order in Cumberland. (1926, April 23). The Pawtucket Times, 1. https://pawtucket.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?i=f&d=01011825-12311976&e=former%20theology&m=between&ord=e1&fn=pawtucket_times_usa_rhode_island_pawtucket_19260423_english_1&df=1&dt=4
Toye, J. (1923, November 17). Joe Toye learns Trappist Monks are real men, thoroughly educated, firm in purpose, disciplined, most hospitable. The Boston Traveler, 2. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v_ALYGZXuCghWeMbxkxajOt3bSmZQezH/view?usp=sharing