At the centre of this world was Ireland, and arcing out of Ireland like shooting stars were lines leading to Australia, North America, Argentina, Africa − the contours of a spiritual conquest that had begun in 1802 when Edmund Ignatius Rice founded the Christian Brothers in Waterford. Shining over it all was the five-pointed radiant star of the Brothers’ logo. It was our Empire, our answer to the British maps of the world in which its colonial possessions glowed scarlet in every continent, while the rest skulked in dull and watery hues.
