The Healy Brothers: Two priests and a Bishop

Pat McNamara has posted the story of the Healy brothers. If you aren't familiar with them yet, you should be:

By any standard, the Healys were an impressive family. Michael, the father, was an Irish immigrant who became a successful Georgia planter. His children included two nuns, a Coast Guard captain, a bishop, and two priests (one of them a university president). They seemed the quintessential Irish Catholic clan.

But they harbored a secret, one that by nineteenth century white America’s standards was considered terrible. Their mother Eliza Clark had been a slave on their father’s plantation. Although Michael and Eliza had a committed, exclusive relationship, Georgia banned interracial marriage and defined their children as slaves. [more]