MONSIGNOR PAUL MACLACHLAN   D.D., V.G.

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Monsignor Paul Maclachlan was undoubtedly one of the most zealous and efficient of all the missionaries who laboured in Scotland in the last century.

He was born at Balnacnockan, in the Braes of Glenlivet, on the 18^th September 1805.  In March 1819 he was admitted into the Seminary of Aquhorties.  Just three years later he was sent to the Petit Seminaire of St Nicholas at Paris.  In 1827 he went to Issy, and in 1829 to St Sulpice.

In the following year his health became so seriously affected that he was obliged to return to Scotland.  He entered Blairs College in June 1830, and after completing his theological course, was ordained priest by Bishop Paterson, in Edinburgh, on the octave-day of the Assumption, 1831.

His first charge was the newly opened mission of Campsie.  This embraced the villages of Torrance, Lennoxtown, Kilsyth, Milngavie, and Kirkintilloch, with a total Catholic Population of a thousand souls.  But the entire county of Stirling came under his care, and in its whole extent he found neither chapel, school, nor presbytery.

Whilst administering to the sick during the cholera epidemic of 1832, he caught the disease himself.  But soon after his recovery he continued his missionary journeys, and opened a Mass Station in Dunfermline.  Afterwards he began to minister to the Catholics that were dispersed over Clackmannanshire and a large part of Perthshire and Fife.  His parish now stretched from Milngaviee to Kirkaldy.

With a view to the more efficient working of the vast district confided to him, he went in the course of 1834 to reside in Stirling, as a more central position.  Hitherto he had been obliged to assemble his people in private houses or rented halls, but now he felt there was a need for something more permanent.  To obtain money for a church and presbytery in Stirling he went on ‘appeals’ to richer parishes in England and Ireland.  The church in Stirling was opened on Trinity Sunday 1838 and two years later he was able to write to Bishop Carruthers that the debt on the mission of Stirling had been paid off to the last farthing.

In January 1840 he was relieved from the care of the Campsie district, and turned his energies to places nearer home, to Falkirk, Linlighgow, Bo’ness and Bathgate.  He built a church and presbytery in Falkirk and took up residence there in 1843.  The Rev William Bennet took over the Stirling parish.  In 1847 he obtained an assistant, the Rev Robert Cameron, who tragically died of cholera three months later in January 1848.  Fr. Maclachlan contacted the disease himself for a second time and almost died.  He alsos suffered from Rheumatic Fever.

Towards the end of 1851 he was once more relieved of part of his charge by the erection of Linlightow (with Bo’ness and Bathgate) into an independent mission.  In 1853 he opened a Catholic School in Falkirk.

At the beginning of Lent 1856 he returned to Stirling and remained there for the next twenty years.  The Catholic population of Stirling at that time was about one thousand five hundred.  Alloa (Catholic Population 150) and Doune (Catholic Population 130) were both served from Stirling.  IN 1863 Alloa got a priest of its own, the Catholic Population there having risen to 600.  Within a month from this his life was once more in danger from scarlet fever.  Bishop Strain urged him to retire to St Mary’s in Dundee and take thing easy, but he would not.

He had long been anxious that the Catholics of Doune should have a resident priest.  He built there a commodious presbytery and a church, which was opened at the end of 1875.  In March 1876 he was permitted to take up his abode there, as a charge better suited to his age and increasing infirmities.  From Doune he served the Catholics in dunblane, Blackford, and Auchterarder.  He built a chapel and dwelling-house in Dunblane intending to retire there but he died before this could happen.

In 1881 he celebrated his golden jubilee.  In November 1882 he was made Vicar General of Dunkeld Diocese.  In March 1883 he was given the title of Monsignor.  He died on the 21^st August 1883.  The funeral service took place at Doune on 24^th.  He was buried in the grave-yard at Dunblane Cathedral.  A magnificient Cross marks the spot.

Apart from his missionary journeys he published a number of pamphlets in defence of the Church.  He engaged in controversy in various papers especially ‘The Stirling Observer’,  He contributed articles to ‘The Dublin Review’, ‘The Edinburgh Review’ and for a time was correspondent to the Paris ‘Universe’.

One who knew him well wrote in a local paper of how gentle and courteous he was, of his great learning, of how devoted he was in the service of his people, of how ‘ample and brilliant’ he was in conversation

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These details about him are taken from ‘The Catholic Directory’ of 1885.  Incidentally, the founder and first editor of the ‘Directory’ was his cousin, Dr John Macpherson.