This is a picture of "Frs. Ryan and Gilligan with Fr. T'ao, the first priest to be ordained for the Wuzhou mission. Taken at Jiangmen where he was ordained by Bishop Walsh." They are posing on the steps of the mission house, two wearing white and the center in black. Rev. Gilligan was born in New York City. He entered The Venard, Maryknoll's Apostolic College in 1923 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1930 and assigned to Wuchow, South China, and working in seminaries there and in Kongmoon. After home leave in 1941 he served as a U.S. Army chaplain in the European theater until 1946. He returned to Wuchow in 1947. In 1950 he was arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement until his expulsion from China in 1951. He was then assigned to Hong Kong where he helped to build the Servicemens' Guides Center. After returning to the U.S. in 1958 he worked in various chaplaincies until his retirement. -- Born in Massachusetts and educated at Boston public schools, Bp. Walsh attended Boston College and Harvard University before entering St. John's Seminary at age 19. He was ordained on May 20, 1892. He spent the first ten years as a priest in pastoral work at St. Patrick's Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In 1903 his mission spirit came alive when he was appointed Diocesan Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. As Director, Father Walsh founded "The Field Afar", a publication to supplement the Annals of the SPF. In 1910, Fr. Walsh met Fr. Thomas F. Price of North Carolina at the Eucharistic Congress in Montreal. They worked out a plan for the American foreign mission seminary. The plan was approved by the American Hierarchy and Pope Pius X in 1911. In 1912, property was purchased to build a Seminary in Ossining, NY. In 1917 Maryknoll was ready to go to the missions and Fr. Walsh traveled through the Orient in search of a mission. Bishop de Guebriant in South China entrusted his mission in Yeungkong and Loting in the care of Maryknoll. The first mission set out for China in 1918. In 1933 Fr. Walsh was consecrated Titular Bishop of Siene. Bishop Walsh lived to ordain thirty-seven Maryknollers and to consecrate as Bishop his first Seminarian, Francis X. Ford. Bishop Walsh died in 1936 and is buried
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