Anthony Fahy

Anthony Fahy was born in Loughrea, Co. Galway, in 1805 by most accounts; Juan José Delaney gives 1804. He took the Dominican habit in 1828, studied at San Clemente in Rome and was ordained in 1831. After missionary years in Kentucky and Ohio he became prior of Black Abbey, Kilkenny. In 1843 Archbishop Murray of Dublin named him Irish chaplain to Buenos Aires, to help the ailing Fr Patrick O'Gorman. McKenna says the archbishop was worried that Irish settlers around Chascomús were marrying into local society. A contemporary newspaper, The British Packet, recorded his arrival on the brig Plata from Liverpool on 11 January 1844, when the community was put at 3,500.

For most of his ministry he lived in a house given free by the merchant Thomas Armstrong. He described himself as consul, postmaster, judge, pastor, interpreter and provider of work for his people. McKenna describes him holding immigrants' savings and property in his own name, acting as their banker and agent, matching land sellers and buyers, and in later years naming assistant chaplains around Chascomús and Dolores. The historians Murray, Lange and McKenna describe a policy of keeping the Irish rural, English-speaking and marrying among themselves. In 1847 he formed a committee that sent more than £400 to Dublin for famine relief. Through his sister, a Carmelite prioress in Loughrea, he brought the Sisters of Mercy to Buenos Aires in 1856.

Historians also record a harder side. Moira Casey calls him a firm defender of Rosas. In the Camila O'Gorman case of 1848, Murray, citing Julianello, says Fahy and the lawyer Vélez Sarsfield demanded exemplary punishment; Casey says Rosas consulted Fahy and that he approved the execution. No primary source for his role has been opened. He was confessor to Admiral Brown and gave him the last rites in 1857.

He died in Buenos Aires on 20 February 1871, during the yellow-fever epidemic, days after giving the last rites to a dying Italian against advice. Chronicles blame yellow fever; his death certificate, per Casey, gives heart disease. He was buried in the clergy pantheon at Recoleta, and a later tomb of Irish marble topped by a Celtic cross faces Brown's.