Castlepollard history professor receives prestigious accolade
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The window in the local Catholic Church in Castlepollard that bears the Roddy family name features in the introduction to Dr Sarah Roddy’s award winning Money and Irish Catholicism: An intimate history, 1850-1921, and may have inspired the book.Image 2 of 3
Money and Irish Catholicism: An intimate history, 1850-1921 by Dr Sarah Roddy from Castlepollard won this year’s prestigious James S Donnelly Sr Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences.Image 3 of 3
Dr Sarah Roddy, a native of Castlepollard and Associate Professor of History at Maynooth University, who was recently declared the winner of the prestigious James S. Donnelly Sr Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies.Dr Sarah Roddy has been awarded the prestigious James S Donnelly Sr Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences by the American Conference for Irish Studies for her book Money and Irish Catholicism: An intimate history, 1850-1921.
Speaking after the announcement last week that she had won this major prize, Dr Roddy remarked that it was a huge honour, given the list of past winners which includes some of the biggest names and most influential books in Irish history: “I’m especially pleased because the book took a long time to research and write, and I often thought I’d never get it finished,” she said.
The Castlepollard History Professor pointed out that her home place features in the introduction to the book: “I discuss a window with my family name in the local Catholic Church and how, in a roundabout way, it might have inspired the book,” she explained.
The book examines the finances of the Irish Catholic Church between the end of the Famine and the advent of Irish independence.
“This was a period when the Church grew enormously in infrastructure, personnel and influence. As I show, money raised from millions of ordinary Irish Catholics was instrumental in that growth,” she commented.
“I initially wanted to ask how much money ordinary Irish people gave, and I was able to access the surviving records of multiple dioceses, parishes and religious orders across Ireland and outside it. As the project developed, and led by the richness of the archival material, I became much more focused on the question of why – why did all of these lay people give the money, what did it mean to them, what did it tell us about their lives?” Dr Roddy pondered.
She went on to point out: “These church sources offered glimpses into people and relationships that were often completely unrecorded elsewhere. With some interpretive work, they showed the private concerns, and the everyday and long-term priorities of people who otherwise left little trace of such intimacies”.
Sarah is the daughter of Eileen and the late Seamus Roddy. She was educated at St Michael’s NS, Castlepollard, Loreto College, Mullingar, University of Limerick and Queen’s University Belfast.
She has been Associate Professor in Irish Social History at Maynooth University since 2021. Sarah has penned previous books on the churches, emigration from Ireland, and British charity fundraising, and has published many essays and articles on various topics.
Money and Irish Catholicism: An intimate history, 1850-1921 was published in 2025 by Cambridge University Press. The project the book is based on was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK while Dr Roddy was a lecturer in History at the University of Manchester.