Item 11 - Letter from Dorothy Godfrey to Fr. Peter Bowe OFM Cap.

4 pp; Manuscript

Letter from Dorothy Godfrey, 267 West, 139 Street, New York City, to Fr. Peter Bowe OFM Cap., Provincial Minister, Holy Trinity Friary, Cork, referring to the poor treatment which Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. received from the higher echelons of the clergy and the Order. She asserts: ‘May God forgive the clergy or Free Staters who had a hand in his exile. Sending a dying priest 3,500 miles across our land. I went with him to the train and it left a picture in my mind that cannot be blotted out. Another Christ carrying his cross. He was not able to drag his feet across the platform and carrying a heavy bag’.

Thanks are due to both Jim Fahy and Elizabeth McGovern for the identification of Dorothy Godfrey as the author of this letter. Her signature was initially indecipherable.

For biographical information on Dorothy Godfrey (1893-1975) see https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms014049.3