Fr Niall O’Brien - Columban Missionaries

Columban Martyrs are a Sign of Hope

by Sarah | Jul 17, 2025 | Latest Updates

In the July/August 2025 Editorial of the Far East magazine, the Regional Director in Ireland, Fr David Kenneally, writes about the anniversaries occurring this year of some of our Columbans who died violently on mission: five Columbans in Malate 80 years ago, seven in...

The Kind of Faith Pope Leo XIV Needs to End Child Abuse and Injustice

by Sarah | May 14, 2025 | Latest Updates

Having the Christian faith means believing and living the great values of justice, truth, love and equality, as well as opposing sin, as preached and practiced by Jesus of Nazareth, writes Columban missionary Fr Shay Cullen. He invites us to accept him as our friend...

Remembering Niall

by Sarah | Aug 15, 2024 | Features

I was blessed to be a classmate and a dear friend of the late Fr Niall O’Brien. He was a wonderful person, artistic, intelligent, an excellent writer, a man of deep spirituality with an infectious sense of humour. He had a gift for learning languages and quickly...

40 Years Later

by Sarah | Jul 10, 2024 | Features

To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of the Negros Nine and the 20th anniversary of the death of Fr Niall O’Brien, Fr Donal Hogan recalls a miscarriage of justice in the Philippines and the RTE reporter that made the Columban missionary a household name. On 3rd...

Remembering Fr Niall O’Brien on his 20th Anniversary

by Sarah | Apr 25, 2024 | News

Fr Niall O’Brien, the Irish Columban missionary who was wrongfully imprisoned in the Philippines by the Marcos regime in the 1980s, died twenty years ago on 27th April 2004. According to his former classmate and friend, Fr Cyril Lovett, Fr Niall’s major...