O'Connell, Terence (Theodore de Pietate ) (d. 1668), Dominican priest, was a filius of Sligo. He was already a priest when he was sent to study at Lérida in Spain. From 1629 he was designated a ‘collegial’ (honours) student at S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, where he was awarded the lectorate in theology in 1637. In that year he submitted two petitions to Propaganda Fide for missionary faculties and financial aid to go to Scotland. It was decided that he should not go alone, whereupon O'Connell requested apostolic faculties for those areas where there was no ordinary, with the right to communicate them to companions. Already in 1629 the order's chapter had entrusted ‘Scotland and the Isles’ to the Irish province, asking provincial Nicholas Lynch (qv) to send men there. (The Irish Franciscans had sent John Ogilvie OFM from Louvain in 1612 and were active in the highlands and the Isles (1619–37).) In 1634 the Dominican master general, Nicholas Ridolfi, had appealed to the Irish Dominicans, at the bidding of Propaganda Fide, to select at least four or preferably six suitable missionaries for Scotland, but when the provincial chapter of Youghal (1638) decided to do so it was discouraged by the general.
O'Connell had, nevertheless, reached London by December 1639 on his way to Scotland, but he was turned back at the border because of incipient war between Charles I and his Scottish subjects. He therefore returned to London, where he stayed, becoming priest to the Spanish embassy chapel. He remained in England for the rest of his life. From 1639 onwards, he wrote regularly from London to Rome, providing, as agent of Propaganda Fide, a well-informed commentary on the religious and political situation in England. When reporting on catholicism in London, he remarked that hardly a day passed but two or three priests travelling from Ireland, France, or Flanders arrived at the Spanish chapel. His bulletins were critical of Luke Wadding (qv) OFM, who he claimed ruled the church in Ireland and was not impartial in his judgments on appointments to Irish dioceses; and he claimed that the secular clergy and the Franciscans sought to suppress the Dominicans in Ireland.
In the early 1640s O'Connell reported that the imprisoned English Dominican superior was threatened with execution. Indeed, O'Connell feared the destruction of all catholics because of the king's imprudent ecclesiastical policy and his preoccupation with Scotland. O'Connell continued to delay his attempt to reach Scotland because travel was dangerous and because of Scottish hostility. Rome counselled him to remain in London until conditions improved, but in the event political circumstances conspired against his mission, as the highlands and western Scotland became increasingly isolated from London. In 1647 the hopes of five Irish Dominicans to set out for Scotland were dashed by Propaganda Fide, probably owing to the civil war; a Dominican mission to Scotland was finally realised in the eighteenth century.
O'Connell died in London in 1668, bequeathing £30 sterling to Sligo, whose prior, Phelim O Connor, put it to fruitful use. While his original aspiration to minister in Scotland was frustrated, Theodore O'Connell's life was one of consistent service to transient Irish priests, the English catholic community in times of great crisis and terror, and to the semi-public Spanish embassy chapel of London.