The leonine John McHale, the Papal Archbishop of Tuam, pursued a policy which drove the children of his flock into the mission schools.

The only other kind of education available was that which some humorous English statesman had called 'national,' and it did not seem to the Archbishop desirable that an Irish boy should be beaten for speaking his own language, or rewarded for calling himself 'a happy English child.' He refused to allow the building of national schools in his diocese, and thus left the cleverer boys to drift into the mission schools, where they learnt carefully selected texts of Scripture along with the multiplication-table.

The best of them were pushed on through Dublin University, and crowned the hopes of their teachers by taking Holy Orders in the Church of England.
There are still to be met with in Galway and Mayo ancient peasants and broken-down inhabitants of workhouses who speak with a certain pride of 'my brother the minister.' There are also here and there in English rectories elderly gentlemen who have almost forgotten the thatched cottages where they ate their earliest potatoes.
Among these cleverer boys was one AEneas Conneally, who was something more than clever.

He was also religious in an intense and enthusiastic manner, which puzzled his teachers while it pleased them.

His ancestors had lived for generations on a seaboard farm, watered by salt rain, swept by misty storms.