Patrick Neeson Lynch

Right Rev. Patrick Neison Lynch
Bishop of Charleston
Church	Roman Catholic Church
See	Charleston
In office	December 11, 1857—February 26, 1882
Predecessor	Ignatius A. Reynolds
Successor	Henry P. Northrop
Orders
Ordination	April 5, 1840
Consecration	March 14, 1858
Personal details
Born	March 10, 1817 Clones Parish, County Fermanagh, Ireland
Died	February 26, 1882 (aged 64) Charleston, South Carolina, United States

Patrick Neeson Lynch (March 10, 1817 – February 26, 1882) was an Irish-born clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Charleston from 1857 until his death in 1882.

Biography

Patrick Lynch's birthplace is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Clones, County Monaghan but he was actually born in the County Fermanagh portion of the Parish of Clones, most likely in the townland of Kibberidogue where his family had settled in the mid to late 17th century. His parents were Conlaw Peter and Eleanor (née Neison) Lynch. Through his mother, he was said to have been related to Marshal McMahon, who served as President of France (1873–1879). In 1819, he and his parents came to the United States, where they settled in Cheraw, South Carolina.

He was ordained to the priesthood in Charleston in 1840 and consecrated as bishop in 1858. On February 20, 1864 he was named by President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America to be its delegate to the Holy See which maintained diplomatic relations in the name of the Papal States. Pope Pius IX, as had his predecessors, condemned chattel slavery. Despite Bishop Lynch's mission, and an earlier mission by A. Dudley Mann, the Vatican never recognized the Confederacy, and the Pope received Bishop Lynch only in his ecclesiastical capacity.^[1][2]

He was the third bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston which at the time covered North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, the Bahamas and Bermuda. It was later subdivided leaving the Diocess of Charleston to cover only the state of South Carolina.

Bishop Lynch was a granduncle of pioneering US Naval aviator Patrick N. L. Bellinger.

References

1. Lonn, Ella (2002). Foreigners in the Confederacy. UNC Press. p. 592. ISBN 9780807854006.
2. John Bigelow, The Southern Confederacy and the Pope, in 157 The North American Review 462, 468-75 (1893).

Further reading

• Heisser, David C. R., and Stephen J. White Sr. Patrick N. Lynch, 1817-1882: Third Catholic Bishop of Charleston (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015) 271 pp.
• Madden, Richard C. (1985). Catholics in South Carolina: A Record. University of America Press. ISBN 978-0-8191-4458-4.