The Founder - The First Brothers - The Sash - The Crest

The public practice of the Catholic Faith in Ireland was outlawed by British Law during these times. Therefore, Daniel was smuggled out of Ireland to France in order to receive his priestly education. After excelling in his studies, Daniel was ordained a priest in 1770. He then spent some six years as a lecturer at St. Omer, France, until his return to Ireland in 1776.

On his returned to his native land he found that the condition of the Catholics had worsened considerably during his absence. Poverty and hunger had turned the country into a land of misery and lawlessness. Drunkeness, fighting, and the lack of religious observance in a Catholic country helped him to decide to return to France. Only the pleas of his mother kept him in his native Ireland.

Father Delany took up his duties as assistant priest in the parish of Tullow. A small village 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Dublin. His work with the people of Tullow made him realise that the cause of much of the evil of the day was the lack of education among the people. Determined that the Irish Catholics deserved better, he started Sunday schools for the children of his parish. In these classes, Father Delany taught the children Catholic doctrine.

Naturally Father Delany needed help to get his catechetical program properly established. Therefore he gathered around him the better educated adults of nearby townships to be catechists. However, he could never rely on having the necessary number of teachers for this task. This was a problem that he solved only in the latter years of his life.

In 1783, at the young age of thirty-six, Father Delany was consecrated a Bishop, and three years later he became the Bishop of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. As Bishop, Daniel Delany did much to better the conditions under which the people of his diocese lived.

After organising many public religious functions which were still illegal under British law. Bishop Delany finally took steps to secure for his Sunday schools a reliable source of catechists: he founded two religious congregations. On February 1st, 1807, he received the first women to start the Sisters of Saint Brigid (Brigidines). A year later on February 2nd, he received four men to start the Brother of Saint Patrick (Patricians).

The Story of the Sash

In 1868 when the Papal States were invaded a group of Irish volunteers went to defend the town of Pio Nono, but sheer force of number told and the town fell. One of these volunteers, John Howlin of Wexford, who had experienced the Pio Nono battlefield and a French prison camp, heard of the Patrician Brothers when he returned to Ireland. He needed no coaxing to enrol under their flag of Saint Patrick. 
When he entered the congregation he took the name Aloysius.

In February of 1883 Brother Aloysius was in Rome on behalf of the Brothers working towards gaining recognition of the Brothers as a Religious Congregation. He was able to obtain a private audience with Pope Leo XIII who had been the Archbishop of Perugia under whom Aloysius had served as an Irish volunteer. During this audience Aloysius asked the Pope if the Brothers could have permission to wear a green sash as a part of their religious habit in honour of Saint Patrick. Pope Leo granted the petition.

It wasn't until more than five years later on the 15th August, 1888, that the Brothers wore the sash for the very first time.

This distinctive badge of the Patrician Brothers is thus a souvenir, perhaps the only permanent one, of the gallant Irish swords taken up in defence of the Pope's temporal power.