Military Archives: The day a priest - maybe - shot and killed Patrick Pearse

A Catholic priest shot and killed Patrick Pearse and two other Irish republicans in west Cork during the Civil War, leading anti-Treaty IRA members later claimed, writes Niall Murray.

Pearse happened to share his name with the figure-head of the Easter Rising six years earlier — but his mother was also named Margaret, and he had a younger brother Willie, just like Wilie Pearse who was also executed in May 1916.

The new claim emerges in files just made available to researchers about the deaths of Pearse, Daniel O’Sullivan and Michael Hayes outside Upton on October 4, 1922.