Friday, 08 January 2010 19:10

old-pic-gettysFather Edmund Burke Kilroy was a priest of the diocese of London for forty years, from 1864, when he was appointed to the parish in Sarnia, to 1904, when he died after three decades as pastor of Stratford. He was one of a group of outstanding clergymen during this period whose fidelity, diligence and plain hard work helped to stabilize the diocese during the chaotic and unhappy episcopacy of Bishop Pierre-Adolphe Pinsoneault (1856-66), and in the process to prepare an institutional foundation on which Bishop John Walsh (1867-89) and then Bishop Denis O’Connor (1890-99) were able to build and maintain a thriving Catholic community in the nine southwestern counties of Ontario.

The other priests in the group were Kilroy’s contemporaries and included Paul Andrieux, Joseph Bayard, Bartholomew Boubat, Jean-Marie Bruyère, Joseph Gerard, Eli M. Jahan, Pierre-Dominic Laurent, François Marseille, James Murphy, Antoine-Phileas Villeneuve, James Theodore Wagner and Louis August Wassereau.