Patrick Augustine Sheehan (1852—1913) was a Catholic priest, author and political activist. Born on St Patrick’s Day, 1852, Co. Cork. He attended St. Colman’s and afterwards passed through ‘the sphinx-guarded gates’, as he called them, of Maynooth College on 25 August 1869 to prepare for the priesthood. In 1903 he was appointed canon of the diocese of Cloyne. Sheehan established the custom of weekly meetings with his parishioners in Doneraile. The aim of these meetings was the improvement of the housing of his parishioners in light of the Land Purchase Acts and the Irish Labourers Act. Afterwards he took an interest in promoting modern agricultural methods, especially tillage and dairy farming. He was also a prolific author, writing a series of articles ruminating on a variety of topics, and a number of novels, the most successful of them being My New Curate. He was diagnosed with a cancer in 1910, and died 5 October 1913.