Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Miley, John
MILEY, JOHN, D.D. (1805?–1861), catholic divine, a native of co. Kildare, was born about 1805. He was educated at Maynooth and Rome, in which city he resided from 1833 to 1835, devoting himself chiefly to the study of theology and the history of the papacy. On his return to Ireland in 1835 he was appointed curate of the metropolitan parish, Dublin. He was an ardent admirer of Daniel O'Connell, and warmly defended his attitude on certain politico-religious questions, notably national education and the Catholic Bequest Bill in 1838. He attended the Liberator during his confinement in Richmond Gaol in 1844. He was greatly distressed at the rupture between O'Connell and the young Ireland party, and in December 1846 he laboured hard to effect a reconciliation between him and Smith O'Brien. With the permission of Archbishop Murray he accompanied O'Connell as his private chaplain to Italy in 1847, and by his assiduous devotion did much to alleviate his last sufferings. In obedience to O'Connell's injunction he carried his heart to Rome, and having seen it placed with impressive ceremonies in the church of St. Agatha, he returned with his friend's body to Ireland, and on 4 Aug. preached his funeral sermon in the metropolitan church, Marlborough Street. In 1849 he was appointed rector of the Irish college in Paris, and ten years later became parish priest of Bray, where he died on 18 April 1861. He was an accomplished preacher, well read in ecclesiastical history, and the author of ‘Rome under Paganism and the Popes,’ 1848; ‘History of the Papal States,’ 1850; ‘Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes,’ 1856; ‘L'Empereur Napoléon III et la Papauté,’ 1859.
[Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Fitzpatrick's Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell; Freeman's Journal, 7 Aug. 1847, 19 April 1861.]