Fr Joseph Mallin (92), the last surviving offspring of one of the executed 1916 leaders, will travel back to Ireland from his home in Hong Kong on Tuesday as a guest of the Government. He will remain here for a month before returning to the school in which he still teaches.
The Jesuit priest, who has served in Hong Kong since 1948, told The Irish Times yesterday that the invitation to attend the 90th anniversary commemoration of the Rising had come as a surprise.
"I was planning to go to China at Easter as the titular leader of a group from the school but I cancelled that when the airline tickets arrived," said Fr Mallin, who is a teacher and administrator in a Jesuit-run school in Hong Kong.
Fr Mallin, the son of Comdt Michael Mallin, chief of staff of the Irish Citizen Army in 1916, said he was looking forward to his visit, although he had been home last year after the absence of some years.
"I will attend the parade on Easter Sunday, as the Government was good enough to invite me, but what I am most looking forward to is being able to go to the grave of my father in Arbour Hill, with the other families of those executed, for a ceremony in early May," he said.
Fr Mallin will join dignitaries including members of the Government, the Dáil, the Northern Assembly, the judiciary, the diplomatic corps and the social partners on the reviewing stand in O'Connell Street for the parade next Sunday.
Invitations to the reviewing stand and to a reception in Dublin Castle that evening have been issued to almost 250 relatives of those who took part in the Rising.
Fr Mallin, who was ordained in the 1930s, has been in Asia for over six decades. He was in Canton in China in the 1940s but was expelled after the communist takeover.
Fr Mallin was just two years old when his father was executed on May 8th, 1916, leaving a wife and five small children.
Comdt Mallin was born in Dublin in 1880 and joined the British army as a drummer boy. He served abroad and was promoted as a noncommissioned officer.
After 14 years he returned to Dublin where he worked as a silk weaver and became secretary of the silk weavers union.
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