14 November 1920: The abduction and murder of Father Michael Griffin on this day. In a month of many atrocities in Ireland the kidnapping and murder of a young Priest in Co Galway was one that stood out in it’s awfulness. His own father Thomas George Griffin was chairman of Galway County Council when he died in 1914, having been associated with the Land League, Parnell, and was imprisoned for his activities in the 1880s, so he came from a strong Nationalist background. 

He was ordained in St Patrick’s Maynooth and in 1918 he was posted to Co Galway. A known Republican sympathiser he had been requested to travel to the USA to give evidence to the American Commission of Inquiry on the atrocities been carried out here by the Crown Forces. He was taken from his bed by armed men who are presumed to have been Auxiliaries, who while nominally ‘policemen’ had a notorious reputation for violence against those they considered their enemies. When  taken from his home at 2 Montpellier Terrace he was  brought to Lenaboy Castle, where he was brutally questioned. On 20 November, his body was found in an unmarked grave in a bog at Cloghscoltia near Barna Co Galway - he had been shot through the head. His Murder was a sensation both at home and abroad. Some 12,000 souls attended his funeral.

Mourning was general in Galway on Tuesday, when the remains of Father Griffin, who, after being a week missing, was found murdered and buried in a bog adjoining the city, were removed for interment in Loughrea Cathedral grounds. Father Griffin is the first priest to be murdered in Ireland since the days of Cromwell. High Mass at St. Joseph's Church, Galway, was attended by the Archbishop of Tuam, the Bishops of Galway and Clonfert, over one hundred clergymen and a very large congregation. 

Messages of sympathy have poured into Fr. Griffin's clerical colleagues and to members of his bereaved family from all parts of the world. Protestant ministers and leading members of other creeds joined in the general expression of horror at a crime that has shocked all Christian people. The remains of Rev Michael Griffin, C.C., the first priest to be murdered in Ireland since the days of Cromwell, were removed to Loughrea for internment on Tuesday after Requiem Mass at the Church of St. Joseph, Galway

Galway Observer, 27th November, 1920