Donal O'Sullivan (priest)

Fr. Donal O'Sullivan, was an Irish Catholic priest, and chaplain in the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Rifles in World War I. He was killed aged 26, in Albert in France, on July 5, 1916, during the attack on Bouzincourt, a part of the Battle of the Somme. O'Sullivan was mortally wounded by shrapnel from a shell which exploded near him, while he ministering to a wounded English soldier, who survived the war. His brother Dr. J. Ivo O'Sullivan K.M. served with the 5th Connaught Rangers, as a medic in the war, in Ypres, Salonika, Gallipoli, earning a Military Cross.

A Chalice owned by Fr. Capt. Donal O'Sullivan, was presented to the St Joseph's Young Priests Society, by his Nephew Dr. Ivo O'Sullivan.

Life
Donal V. O'Sullivan was born to Dan and Hannah O'Sullivan of High Street, Killarney, Co. Kerry. He was educated in St. Brendan's College, Killarney and St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, he was ordained at Maynooth in 1914 for the Diocese of Kerry. He returned to St. Brendan's to teach for 18 months, before becoming an army chaplain. Fr. Donal ministered to the 7th Battalion, including the Royal Munster Fusiliers, he kept a diary from the day he left Killarney for the war until his death. The soldier who had been ministered by Fr. O'Sullivan when he was killed, travelled to Killarney and met his mother Hannah.

Death
Fr. O'Sullivan is buried in Bouzincourt Communal Cemetery in the Somme. In 1927 the local priest in Kerry, wished to have Fr. O'Sullivan reinterred in a local graveyard, however his mother Hannah disagreed saying he would have wished to remain alongside the men he ministered. According to Tom Johnstone, who sources this to a letter from the curé of Bouzincourt to O'Sullivan's mother in the possession of the O'Sullivan family at Ballydowney House, Killarney, County Kerry, it was the curé who request Mrs. O'Sullivan's permission to reinter Fr. O'Sullivan beside a new calvary erected to replace the one destroyed in the war. But reburial of the war dead was disallowed by the British government at that time, with the sole exception of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was created at Westminster Abbey.