Patrick O'Reilly (1843–1914) was a Catholic priest and educationalist in the Diocese of Auckland, New Zealand.

Early life

He was born in

Rosscarbery Rosscarbery () is a village and census town in County Cork, Ireland. The village is on a shallow estuary, which opens onto Rosscarbery Bay. Rosscarbery is in the Cork South-West (Dáil Éireann) constituency, which has three seats. History The ...

County Cork County Cork () is the largest and the southernmost Counties of Ireland, county of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, named after the city of Cork (city), Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

in 1843 and was brought by his parents to Auckland in 1852. He was educated in Auckland at the primary school attached to St Patrick's Cathedral and at St Peter's School (Auckland's first Catholic secondary school for boys). He trained for the Catholic priesthood at St Mary's Seminary.

Priesthood

O"Reilly was ordained a priest on 24 February 1866 and was one of the first Catholic priests to have received most of his training for the ministry in New Zealand. O'Reilly's major pastoral efforts were in Coromandel (where in 1864 he baptised Matthew Brodie, who was later the first New Zealand-born Catholic priest and who became the second Bishop of Christchurch) and

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...

where he built churches and established schools which were "well-run institutions ... models of their kind". O'Reilly assisted Bishop Edmund Luck in reorganising Catholic education in the Diocese after the passage of the Education Act 1977 which excluded the possibility of public financial assistance for privately run schools. O'Reilly was appointed the first Diocesan Inspector of Catholic Schools and was raised to the rank of

Monsignor Monsignor (; ) is a form of address or title for certain members of the clergy in the Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" can be abbreviated as Mons.... or Msgr. In some ...

for this work. O'Reilly was administrator of St Patrick's Cathedral for a period from 1899 before returning as parish priest to Thames where he served until 1908. After some years of ill-health, he died in Dunedin on 25 August 1914.Carolyn Moynihan. 'O'Reilly, Patrick – Biography', from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10
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Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:OReilly, Patrick 19th-century New Zealand Roman Catholic priests Irish emigrants to New Zealand Religious leaders from Auckland 19th-century Irish people 1843 births 1914 deaths People educated at St Peter's College, Auckland People from Rosscarbery