Brother Sylvester (Macklin)of the B.V. 22 May 1901 Province of St. Joseph. Brother Sylvester of the Blessed Virgin was born August 30th 1832 at Mount Mellick, Queen’s County, Ireland. In his very early days he was intended for mercantile life and, in fact, did occupy, within the knowledge of the writer, the most important position in one of the most important of its kind in Dublin City. It is within our knowledge that so highly was he thought of by his employer, who was a princely merchant, that he offered him an establishment where he might easily have become an independent merchant in a relatively short time. However, in the year 1857, instead of availing himself of the opportunity presented to him, he entered the Congregation of the Passion as a Lay Brother and was professed in St. Saviour’s Retreat, Broadway, Nov. 16th 1858. During the 43 years of his truly religious life, Brother Sylvester unintentionally made himself remarkable by his love of religious poverty and retirement, his habitual industry, his charity to his brethren, his constant self-sacrifice, his remarkable reverence for priests, in his profound regard for obedience and authority. He was one of the two lay brothers sent to St. Mungo’s Retreat,by the Provincial at the time, Rev. F. Ignatius Paoli (who was subsequently Archbishop of Bucharest) to undertake his duties in the first community of St. Mungo’s, Aug. 5th, 1865. During the many years he spent here and elsewhere, he was employed as collector, tailor, sacristan and infirmarian, in all of which offices his ability, zeal and charity were remarkable, not only to the religious community but to the congregation outside. He was never so happy as when sacrificing himself for his sick and dying brethren except when he was attending to the wants of Christ our Lord in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. After bearing with a most painful disease for many years, and suffering with the most religious patience and at the same time attending to the duties of his office, he calmly expired and went to the reward of his labours being fortified with all the consolation of religion in the presence of his religious brethren on 22nd May, 1901. May he rest in peace.