September 26^th marks the 150^th anniversary of the death of Bishop John Farrell, the first Ordinary of the Diocese of Hamilton. Farrell was born in Armagh, Ireland on June 2, 1820 and immigrated to Canada with his family in 1832. They settled in Kingston, Ontario. Farrell was ordained a priest in 1845. He served briefly as Pastor in L’Original, Ontario, then as a teacher at Regiopolis College in Kingston, before being appointed to Peterborough in 1853. Following his episcopal ordination in Kingston on May 11, 1856, he was installed as Bishop of Hamilton at St. Mary’s, the city’s only Catholic Church, which he made his Cathedral.

Bishop Farrell was dedicated to establishing a strong Catholic school system. By the end of his tenure, twenty-six Catholic schools were established in the Diocese of Hamilton. Bishop Farrell also encouraged the founding of what has become St. Jerome’s University in Kitchener-Waterloo. The first Catholic library in Hamilton was opened under Bishop Farrell in 1858, only two years after the establishment of the Diocese. Bishop Farrell was chosen as the namesake of our current Library & Archives not just because of his role as our first bishop but due to his commitment to education and dedication to sharing the Catholic faith.

Bishop John Farrell died in 1873 at the young age of 53, when he succumbed to peritonitis. He was laid to rest in a vault beneath St. Mary’s Church. In 2017, his remains were reinterred at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Burlington and placed alongside five of the successor bishops of the Diocese of Hamilton. Bishop Farrell’s pectoral cross and episcopal ring were found in his crypt at the time of reinternment. These items are worn by bishops to signify their fulfillment of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, along with the mitre, crozier, and pallium. They are beautiful symbols of lives dedicated to teaching and dispensing God’s spiritual gifts.

Bishop Farrell’s  cross, episcopal ring, and missal are on display in the Bishop Farrell Library & Archives, along with an exquisite mitre from the end of the 18^th century. 

You can learn more about Bishop John Farrell and the beauty of these emblems of faith in an earlier post: Symbols of Faith: The Regalia of Bishop John Farrell