Seán McManus (Irish priest)

Father Seán Gabriel McManus (born 1944, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland) is an American-based Irish nationalist activist and Roman Catholic priest.

McManus was born in Kinawley, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. He is a brother of Frank McManus, former Unity MP, and Patrick McManus, a member of the IRA who was killed in an explosion in 1958 during the IRA's "Border Campaign".

In 1971, McManus was a Redemptorist Father in Perth, Scotland. In August 1971 he was arrested in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, after a demonstration, because he helped a stone thrower to escape the police. In the following court proceedings he was sentenced to a fine of £20 and proclaimed:

"I do not, I never have and I never will recognise the colonial State of British-occupied Ireland ... I want to state publicly and unequivocally that I am in sympathy with the IRA - indeed sympathy is too weak a word ... I cannot join them in the fight for freedom of my country, but the very least I can do is speak up for them when they are being slandered and vilified by unscrupulously vicious propaganda. The oppressors of Irish freedom call the IRA terrorists and murderers, but I call them by their proper titles; I call them freedom fighters, I call them heroes; and I venerate their dead as martyrs for Ireland."

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