A NEW publication – Edinburgh’s First Hibernian: The Mission of Edward Joseph Hannan – details the history of a County Limerick priest behind the origins of a famed Scottish football club.
From the pen of Mike Hennessy, the richly illustrated 390-page publication will be jointly launched by Mayor John Moran and Sports Minister Patrick O’Donovan at Ballingarry FC Grounds this Saturday at 3.45pm, where memorial plaques to the late priest donn the walls of the grounds.
The publication of the first biography of Fr Hannan also marks Hibernian FC’s 150th birthday.
The new book celebrates the life and work of its co-founder, who left his home in Ballingarry, County Limerick, at the age of 19.
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Canon Hannan attended All Hallows College in Dublin from 1855 and then went directly to Edinburgh in 1861. He rarely returned home and died in 1891 at the age of 55. He is interred in Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh.
Up to his death in 1891, Father Hannan spent 30 years working to improve the physical and moral state of his parishioners.
He chose education, exercise, and temperance to improve his parishioners’ lot, and to that end, he opened a branch of the Catholic Young Men’s Society (CYMS).
In summer 1875, along with a CYMS member and fellow Irishman, Michael Whelahan from Roscommon, Hannan announced the creation of a football team, the Hibernian Football Club, for the benefit of its members.
“This book is a moving and meticulously researched tribute to the club’s founder, Edward J Hannan. Canon Hannan’s lifetime’s work among the impoverished people of Edinburgh’s ‘Little Ireland’ is as good a case of a life well lived as anything I know of. Every Hibs goal is in memory of Hannan and all those troublesome immigrants,” commented Charlie Reid of The Proclaimers.
