{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2024}} [[The Most Reverend|The Most Rev.]] '''James Gallagher''' (died 1751), was a [[Bishop (Catholic Church)|Roman Catholic bishop]].
==Life== Gallagher was a member of the [[Ulster]] [[sept]] of ''Ó Galchobhair'', anglicised Gallagher. He was born about 1684, possibly near [[Kinlough]], a village in the north of [[County Leitrim]] in the north of [[Connacht]], and was educated at the [[Irish College in Paris]], where he received an MA in 1715. He entered the priesthood of the [[Catholic Church]], and was consecrated [[Bishop of Raphoe]], whose diocese covered most of [[County Donegal]], in November 1725 at [[Drogheda]].<ref name="mac">[https://books.google.com/books?id=i35QDwAAQBAJ&dq=James+Gallagher+%28bishop%29&pg=PA79 Mac Murchaidh, Ciarán. "Notes on the Use of the Bible in the Sermons of James Gallagher", ''Ireland and the Reception of the Bible: Social and Cultural Perspectives'', (Bradford A. Anderson, Jonathan Kearney, eds.), Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018]{{ISBN|9780567678881}}</ref>
Bishop Gallagher administered his diocese, the [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Raphoe|Diocese of Raphoe]], until 1735, when he left due to threats to his safety in regards to the [[Penal Laws against Irish Catholics|Penal Laws]]. It has been reported that he went to an island in [[Lough Erne]], where he worked on the sermons which he published the following year. In May 1737, Gallagher was translated from the bishopric of Raphoe to that of [[Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin|Kildare]],<ref name="mac"/> and in the same year he was appointed administrator of the [[Diocese of Leighlin]].
In April 1741, Bishop Gallagher, then at [[Paris]], was one of four bishops who gave a certificate of approval regarding [[Andrew Donlevy]]'s Irish-English catechism of the Christian Doctrine.<ref name="mac"/> This work, with Gallagher's certificate prefixed, was printed in the following year at Paris by James Guerin.
Gallagher succeeded in evading the Penal Laws against [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] ecclesiastics, and died in May 1751.
==Works== In 1736 he published in Dublin ''Sixteen Irish Sermons, in an easy and familiar style, on useful and necessary subjects, in English characters, as being the more familiar to the generality of our Irish clergy''. In his preface the author mentioned that he had composed those discourses principally for the use of his fellow labourers, to be preached to their respective flocks, as his repeated troubles debarred him "of the comfort of delivering them in person". He added: <blockquote>I have made them in an easy and familiar style, and of purpose omitted cramp expressions which be obscure to both the preacher and hearer. Nay, instead of such, I have sometimes made use of words borrowed from the English which practice and daily conversation have intermixed with our language.</blockquote> Several editions of his sermons were published, the latest of which was issued in Dublin in 1877, with an English translation.
==References== {{reflist}} {{DNB|wstitle=Gallagher, James}} {{Subject bar |portal1= Biography |portal2= Catholicism |portal3= Ireland}} {{Roman Catholic Bishops of Kildare and Leighlin}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gallagher, James}} [[Category:Year of birth missing]] [[Category:1751 deaths]] [[Category:18th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland]] [[Category:Roman Catholic bishops of Raphoe]] [[Category:Roman Catholic bishops of Kildare and Leighlin]] [[Category:Alumni of the Irish College in Paris]]