On the 21st of January 1793, as he faced the guillotine, Louis XVI, King of France, was assisted as confessor, by the Irish born priest Henry Edgeworth known in France as Abbe Edgeworth de Firmont.
Henry Essex Edgeworth was born in St. John's Rectory in Edgeworthstown, County Longford in 1745. He was however raised in Toulouse in France to where his father, the Church of Ireland rector of Edgeworthstown, was obliged to move his family following his rather sensational decision to convert to Catholicism. The young man studied for the priesthood and was ordained as a Catholic priest in Paris.
Over the following twenty years he devoted himself to a ministry of the poor in the slums of Paris. His reputation grew such that, on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Paris, he was chosen by the King's sister, Elizabeth of France, as her confessor. He thus became a frequent visitor to the Tuileries Palace and this role led to his part in one of the most important events in the history of France and of its revolution...
From Sunday Miscellany: Sundays, RTÉ Radio 1, 9.10am
