Arsenius Walsh
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Arsenius Walsh was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and later in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
He was a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a religious order based in Paris and founded by Peter Coudrin during the French Revolution. Walsh arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii on September 30, 1836. During a period of religious persecution of Catholics in the Hawaiian Islands, Walsh led the Catholic underground by presiding over private masses in darkened homes and offering catechism for new Native Hawaiian converts.
Religious persecution eventually ended with the Edict of Toleration proclaimed by Kamehameha III, which led to the establishment of the Hawaii Catholic Church.
