Walfrid: A Life of Faith, Community and Football

by Michael Connolly

Andrew Kerins [Brother Walfrid] [1840 – 1915] was one of the most significant Irish immigrants to Scotland. He was an outstanding individual in relation to Catholic education and charity in Glasgow and a major contributor to the emergence of organised sport in Scotland in the late nineteenth century.

He was but one individual, amongst countless thousands of victims, who survived the catastrophe of An Gorta Mor in Ireland, only to be forced to leave behind family, community and homeland in the hope of finding a better life overseas. Over one million others perished owing to the prevalence of starvation and disease during Ireland’s darkest period. Kerins left for Glasgow as a fifteen-year-old boy and the spectre of hunger, accompanied by a concern for the spiritual and physical well-being of others, are motifs which endured throughout his long and impactful life.

Dr Michael Connolly’s research points up three major themes which motivated Walfrid’s actions in life with the Marist Brothers – namely, his Catholic faith, communitybased charitable action, alongside a close and enduring association with football, and Celtic FC in particular. He played a leading role in originally founding Celtic in order to support the impoverished Irish Catholic diaspora in Glasgow. Later in life he did the same work in London’s East End.

‘Managed to read this lovely book on long haul flights this week! Who knew that when my children were cheering on Glasgow’s legendary Celtic football team that the club’s foundational story was of an altogether different kind of heroism and one that richly deserves this scholarly telling. History has for too long overlooked the seminal role in Celtic’s narrative of Brother Walfrid, a humble Irish monk whose life was one of utterly unselfish but visionary service far from home. Michael Connolly in this beautifully told biography, makes Brother Walfrid visible again as he deserves to be. Congratulations and best wishes for its success. I loved the book!’
Mary McAleese

‘An extraordinary book on an extraordinary man. The definitive story of Brother Walfrid. . . ’
Hugh McDonald, journalist

‘I would like to congratulate Dr Michael Connolly for this excellent and definitive biography.’
Peter Lawwell, Celtic Football Club

‘. . . a well-researched and fascinating account of Brother Walfrid’s life. ’
Alison Healy, journalist and author

‘Michael Connolly’s research provides fascinating and important information on the life and work of a man who had a significant impact on the development of the city of Glasgow. . . the combination of his Irish heritage, Marist formation, passion for sport, and religious faith brought improvement to the lives of the poor children.’
Brother Brendan Geary, F.M.S., PhD.,
Provincial of the Marist Brothers, 2010 – 2019

‘Walfrid is the poignant, authoritative account of an Irish migrant who transformed society by his dedication and commitment to the poor. Dr Michael Connelly has provided a narrative that goes well beyond the Celtic story, with timeless thoughts for this age as well as of years past.
Bart McGettrick

‘In this biography, Dr Michael Connolly explores Walfrid in the context of late Victorian Scottish life and in the process explains the reasons why Celtic, a football institution in Scotland as well as a socio-cultural Irish diasporic symbol, means so much to so many. This book adds to knowledge and understanding of charity, education, Catholicism, Irishness and football in modern Scotland and further afield.’
Dr Joseph M Bradley University of Edinburgh

‘This is a story which requires telling and re-telling down the generations and Michael Connolly has made an outstanding contribution to that endeavour.’
Jeanette Findlay, Chair, Coiste Cuimhneachain An Gorta Mòr
(Famine Memorial Committee)

‘The book engages deeply with the masculine worlds of Catholic religious Brothers and football players but it also explores struggles to support Irish multigenerational immigrant communities with education and basic living needs.’
Bronwen Walter Emerita Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

‘A charitable conscience and a caring work ethic are attributes that helped Brother Walfrid create one of the most powerful charitable sports organisations in the world. Michael Connolly’s fascinating account of his life will help deliver that mission globally.’
Paul McStay, former Celtic and Scotland captain

228 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2022

About the author

Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

For bestselling author of the Harry Bosch series see Michael Connelly.

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

hat the Marists, a Catholic teaching order, had a profound global influence as a key element of the Catholic education system is hardly surprising, and widely known. That, as an order, it also played a role in one of sport’s most significant rivalries, Glasgow’s Old Firm, is perhaps more surprising. One half of that rivalry, Glasgow Celtic, formed as a Catholic charity, as a fundraiser for, mainly church supported, charitable work in Glasgow’s East End, on the initiative of a Marist brother – Walfrid, born Andrew Kerins in Co Sligo in 1840.

It’s a rich story – the second son of an Irish farmer leaves the country as a million or more did during the famine of the 1850s, An Gorta Mor, in one of the two great journeys – to Britain or to America. The 15 year old Andrew takes perhaps the shortest of journeys, at least from the west coast, to Glasgow – about 24 hours in the hold of cargo ship. Within a few years he has joined the Marists, a new French order in town catering to the growing demands for schooling and a Catholic infrastructure in an overwhelmingly Protestant country with a deep-running anti-Catholicism. He takes his vows in the early 20s, slightly older than many of his peers, teaches, rises through the ranks and quickly becomes one of the Order’s senior figures with teaching posts in Glasgow, France, London and Kent during his 50 years in that role, dying aged 75 in 1915.

Michael Connolly tells this as a linear narrative, with Walfrid a difficult character to delve into. As a religious he no doubt had a rich internal life, but like many in like-minded communities where those internal lives are shared he left very little in the way of personal documents – no doubt also an effect of vows of poverty and service. Connolly is, however, able to trace his movements, locations, and identify where he worked through those long years – so the biography is as much about the expectations of the Marist order, its work, the social world it operated in – at least for the long Glasgow element – and through that heavy inference of Walfrid’s work.

There lies an advantage in building a biography of an individual in a form of institution – a religious order; Connolly may not know what he was doing specifically, but he can work through what his days and weeks looked like from church and school records, where they still exist. In the case of a notable public institution such as a football club, he also has public discussion in the form of newspaper stories, stories and popular memory, early memoirs of key club figures, and records of debates over club organisation (Connolly makes good use of newspaper reports and related material debating the shift to professionalism in Scottish football). He’s also lucky that Walfrid’s life is recent enough that there is some oral evidence to draw on – he has interviewed family members and has access to life history recordings, making extensive use of one from the early ‘80s dealing with a former pupil of Walfrid. All this may seem distant or patchy, but such is the evidence base of much historical work – especially when dealing with those outside the elite.

The style is very much in form of a religious biography, respectful without being hagiographic. Walfrid comes across as effective, respected (rather than loved), a little cantankerous, but with a deep and powerful commitment to voluntary service and charity work, focused strongly on children (I can’t help but wonder how much his childhood experience of the famine lay in one of his major programmes being cheap and free meals for kids – but Connolly wisely, as should I, avoids this kind of shallow psychology). That is to say, this is very much a conventional narrative of a life publicly lived; we don’t hear much about life within the order (with one exception), we do get a lot about service and being outward facing – a phrase Connolly uses often.

It’s not my usual thing, and even so I found it engaging and informative. I expect someone closer to Walfrid’s world – Catholic, the Marists, Glasgow, Celtic, or whatever – would get a lot more out of it. Even so, Connolly works a world around and through Walfrid to tell an insightful story of that world changing rapidly, of institutions set up to serve and support people in that world, to aid the marginalised, and in the case of Catholic Scotland in the later 19th century a set of institutions that were still seen as hostile interlopers. That makes it all the more worthwhile.