From Edenderry to the Cape of Good Hope: The Story of the Right Rev. Bishop John Rooney, Vicar Apostolic of the Western Cape. By Maurice Egan

‘I found him’ I declared to my wife.

You see, as a child his was the Consecration Cross above my mother and father’s bed. On enquiring the significance of the cross, my mother would dismissively direct ‘Ask your father’. So, the story went that the cross came all the way back from Cape Town, South Africa to Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland and was the Consecration Cross of the late Bishop John Rooney, Vicar Apostolic of the Western Cape Vicariate of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.

Bishop Rooney died 90 years ago in 1927.