The Ballingeary Gaeltacht roots of Los Angeles’ Cardinal Timothy Manning

From a small Gaeltacht village in Cork, Timothy Manning went on to become a leading figure in the Catholic Church in the United States.

In the remote village of Ballingeary (Béal Átha an Ghaorthaidh) – nestled in the Muskerry Gaeltacht in Co. Cork – Timothy Manning was born on 14 November 1909.* He would go on to lead the Catholic Church in Los Angeles. Yet despite rising to one of the highest positions in the Church in America, his sense of home – and of being Irish – never left him.

Timothy (Tim) Manning – also known as Tadhg Ó Mongáin – was the son of Margaret (Maggie) Cronin and Cornelius (Con) Manning, a blacksmith like his forebears. Timothy had two older sisters, Johanna (also known as Joan or Siobhán), born in 1905 and Ellen (Nell), born in 1907, as well as a younger brother, James (or Seamus), born in 1912. They lived in a small house in the middle of the village of Ballingeary, with the forge just across the road. The family kept chickens, sheep, pigs and a cow, and made clothes from their own wool.

They were native Irish speakers and Margaret was a strong supporter of the Gaelic Revival. For many years, she ran their home as a guesthouse and provided accommodation for students attending Ballingeary’s Irish college, Coláiste na Mumhan.

School days

Timothy began his education in Ballingeary National School in 1915, which he attended for seven years. He then moved on to the Christian Brothers in Cork city, before beginning his priestly formation at Mungret College in Limerick in 1923. He once remarked of Mungret:

“The food was terrible and the building badly heated. But complaints were few.”

While there, he won a gold medal for storytelling in Irish.

Timothy’s 19-year-old sister Nell sadly died of tuberculosis in 1927, shortly before his graduation from Mungret. With concerns for his own health, his family secured financial assistance to send him to Davos in Switzerland, where he spent a winter under medical supervision in a village reserved for TB patients – though he never actually contracted the disease himself. His condition improved during his stay and he returned to Ireland in better health.

On his return, Timothy and his mother made a pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg in Co. Donegal – a place he would revisit more than 30 times.

Crossing the Atlantic

Responding to a call for priests in the Diocese of Los Angeles–San Diego, Manning entered St Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, in 1928. He had left Cobh aboard the SS Cleveland with a steerage ticket and few possessions. The Atlantic crossing took eight days. Sea sickness was widespread and passengers were forced to move about the ship with the help of ropes.

A F F I L I A T E  A D

According to the Los Angeles Times, Manning once said in an interview that he had wanted to become a priest for as long as he could remember, despite there being no priests in his family when he was growing up. The first priest he ever knew, he recalled, was Fr James O’Callaghan – shot dead by Crown forces in Cork city during the War of Independence “for happening to be staying in a house of a wanted man”. That memory stayed with Manning, and he spoke of it as a reminder that while the Church could rise above politics and preach the values of Christ, it could not lose sight of individuals affected by such conflicts.

Manning was ordained in Los Angeles in 1934. The only family members present were his aunt and his cousin, Fr James Cronin – both were living in the US at the time.

Fr Manning was soon sent to Rome for further study, graduating with a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1938. Slight in build, he was a light eater – a habit shaped by the serious health issues he experienced during his time in Rome. In 1937, he had suffered a major haemorrhage, fell unconscious in his lodgings and was discovered by another priest. He underwent emergency surgery and, for several days, his condition remained critical. He later explained that ulcers had required the removal of two-thirds of his stomach.

Climbing the ranks

After returning to Los Angeles, the young priest served as a curate in several parishes before becoming a pastor. He rose steadily through the clerical ranks, later serving as chancellor, diocesan secretary and monsignor. In 1944, he became a naturalized US citizen and was elevated to auxiliary bishop a couple of years later. In 1947, the Gaeil Chorcaí (the Gaels of Cork) presented him with a replica of the Timoleague chalice.

His father passed away in 1954 and Manning returned home for the funeral. Just the month before, the bishop had attended the golden jubilee of Ballingeary’s Irish college. At the celebrations, he unveiled a commemorative plaque and addressed a large crowd, saying,

“In the long centuries of the bondage of our people, when all our holy traditions were trampled underfoot, here in this valley the sacred fire of our language was concealed and nourished, and kept pure and free.”

The following year, Manning was appointed vicar general of the archdiocese of Los Angeles. In that role, he attended the opening session of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, participated in a small number of subsequent sessions and was present at the closing session in 1965. It was during this period, in November 1964, that his elderly mother died while working at her kitchen table in Ballingeary.

In 1967, he was appointed the first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Fresno. Around the same time, he received an award from Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League).

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Manning returned to Los Angeles in 1969 as coadjutor archbishop under Cardinal James McIntyre and succeeded him as archbishop in 1970. At the time, Los Angeles was the most populous and ethnically diverse archdiocese in the US, and Manning worked closely with many minority communities. He was elevated to the cardinalate three years later.

Manning had a strong interest in missionary work and travelled widely to support various missionary programmes in South Africa, Rhodesia and Uganda, among other countries.

Visits home

He also made regular visits home to Ireland, often spending several weeks each summer in Ballingeary, where he said Mass daily. After his mother’s passing, he would stay at the hotel in Gougane Barra, a few miles west of the village. The hotel was owned by his sister Joan and her husband Connie Cronin and was later run by their daughter Breda and her husband Christy Lucey. It remains in the Lucey family today.

Deeply aware of the population decline from his home parish of Iveleary (Uíbh Laoghaire), Manning commissioned sculptor Seamus Murphy to create a statue to honour those who had left. The resulting work – a statue of St Finbarr – still stands outside Ballingeary church, bearing an Irish-language inscription asking the saint to pray for the exiles of the parish.

In 1973, at the invitation of Lord Mayor Patrick Kerrigan, Manning received the Freedom of the City of Cork. In 1981, Pope John Paul II appointed him papal envoy to the celebrations in Drogheda marking the third centenary of the martyrdom of St Oliver Plunkett.

Cardinal Manning retired in 1985 and planned to return to Cork to live in Clonakilty – a plan that was never realized. A lifelong chain-smoker, the soft-spoken cardinal from Ballingeary died of lung cancer and related complications in Los Angeles on 23 June 1989, aged 79. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles.

A commemorative plaque in his honour can be found at St Finbarr’s chapel in Gougane Barra – near the hotel, bar and café still run by his relatives, including his niece Breda.

* Timothy Manning’s civil birth record carries the date 15 October 1909, but his baptism is recorded as having taken place on 14 November 1909. It appears he was, in fact, baptized on the day of his birth, indicating the date on the civil record is incorrect.

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