O'Finan (Finan), Francis Joseph (1772–1847), Dominican priest and bishop of Killala, was the son of Thady Finan or Finnan of Corimla in that part of the parish of Kilmoremoy lying in Co. Sligo. He entered the Dominican order as Francis Finan at San Clemente, the Irish Dominican church and house in Rome (24 September 1792). After studies in philosophy and theology, he was ordained priest (about Easter time, 1795). He then spent six years studying theology elsewhere in Italy (1796–1801), returning to San Clemente in January 1802; he became bursar there in March, but left again towards the end of 1803 to teach theology at the Irish college in Lisbon. He taught theology at the new diocesan college at Waterford from 1805 until, as O'Finan, he was appointed rector of the Irish Dominican college in Lisbon (1812). By that time he had, according to the Dominican archbishop of Dublin, John Thomas Troy (qv), published a book criticising Charles O'Conor (qv), ‘the Irish Jansenist’.
Accompanied by a student and five novices, O'Finan arrived again in Rome (May 1816) with orders to re-establish an Irish Dominican community there. A few days later (11 May 1816) he became prior of San Clemente. Perversely he ‘detested the place’ (Boyle) and so did not establish the community there but at Santa Prassede, where, as the only priest, he acted also as bursar, novice master, and professor. Later he moved it to Santa Maria della Pace, which he acquired for the Irish Dominicans as he did a summer retreat, San Michele in the Tivoli hills. Although he ceased to be prior of the community (May 1819), he continued as bursar until he moved to Lucca (6 July 1824) to take up a post as preceptor and confessor to the grand-archduchess of Tuscany, a sister of the empress of Austria, a post he held for the next seven years. He returned to Rome (1831) as companion to the general of the Dominican order. Thereafter he was briefly socius and Dominican provincial of Scotland.
After the translation of Bishop John MacHale (qv) to Tuam, O'Finan, now in his early sixties, was nominated to succeed him at Killala (1 February 1835) and was duly consecrated bishop on 21 March 1835. He intended to revive the diocesan chapter and found a seminary, but his episcopate was not a success. According to the barrister Oliver J. Burke (1826?–1889) – the main source of information about this episode – on returning to Ireland in October 1835 O'Finan, a reformer, immediately found himself in a quarrel with his clergy, which seems to have arisen from their jealousies and resentments. Before long ‘churches were closed, priests suspended, episcopal authority set at nought’. He sued for libel the owner of the Connaught Telegraph, Frederick Cavendish (1800–87), whose paper had published a letter accusing O'Finan of neglecting his duties and being insulting and tyrannical to his priests. The bishop won his case and £400 in damages but ‘a great portion’ of his clergy now treated him with disdain.
After three years of dissension the pope approved a Propaganda decree to relieve O'Finan of his duties in Killala (19 November 1838). He returned to Rome, to San Clemente (in occupation again by the Irish Dominicans since 1824), and helped the community in many ways. In his will he was generous to his confrères. Francis Joseph O'Finan died at San Clemente on 27 November 1847, in his seventy-sixth year, and was buried at the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. A portrait of him hangs in the priory at San Clemente. A good administrator who revitalised the Irish Dominican community in Rome, he proved unable to readjust to returning to his native Connacht.