Oliver P. Rafferty, S.J. is a Jesuit priest and a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has written extensively on Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries and has also written on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in Northern Ireland from the formation of the state to the present. He is the author of several dozen articles at a scholarly level and very many at the popular level, all touching on the situation in Ireland. He is also the co-author of four books as well as the sole author of four:聽Violence, Politics and Catholicism in Ireland聽(Four Courts Press, 2016);聽The Catholic Church and the Protestant State: 19th Century Irish Realities聽(Dublin: Four Courts Press);聽The Church, The State and The Fenian Threat, 1861-75聽(London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin鈥檚 Press); and聽Catholicism in Ulster 1603-1983: An Interpretive History聽(London: Hurst & Co.; Dublin: Gill & MacMillan; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press).聽
