Exile in Erin

"John B. Bannon excelled in four distinct capacities: as a pastor of a thriving Catholic congregation in St. Louis; as a chaplain with the First Missouri Confederate Infantry; as a diplomat winning Irish support for the cause of the Confederacy; and as Ireland's greatest preacher in the 1880s.". "William Barnaby Faherty's Exile in Erin examines Bannon's boyhood in Ireland and his early years as a priest in St. Louis. Bannon gave up a major parish to serve the spiritual needs of the soldiers in the field - the only chaplain in either army to do so. He turned Irish opinion to sympathy for the South, then reoriented himself in his native land after the war. His preaching was part of a devotional revolution that put new life in the Irish Church. Father Bannon was truly an inspirational personality."--BOOK JACKET.