Who is Father Conmee in Ulysses?
Father John Conmee is a real Jesuit priest, superior of the Jesuit house on Gardiner Street in 1904. Episode 10 opens with him setting out to walk to Artane, greeting parishioners, noticing everything and thinking pleasant, worldly thoughts.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 10, Wandering Rocks. The opening sentence of Wandering Rocks.
The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps.
What it means in plain English
He is going to arrange a school place for Paddy Dignam's son. On the way he blesses a sailor, chats to a politician's wife and reads his breviary.
Joyce treats him gently: kind, smug and comfortable.
Literary context
Conmee was rector of Clongowes Wood College when Joyce was a boy there, and appears in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 10, “Wandering Rocks”
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
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Questions readers ask
Was Father Conmee real?
Yes. He helped Joyce get a free place at Belvedere College.
Related terms
Paddy Dignam
Paddy Dignam is the Dublin man whose funeral Bloom attends at Glasnevin Cemetery in Episode 6. He died suddenly of a stroke, helped by drink, leaving a widow and five children. Bloom spends part of the day helping to collect insurance money for the family.
Elijah
“Elijah is coming” is the headline of a religious flyer, a “throwaway”, handed to Bloom in Episode 8. He crumples it and throws it into the Liffey, and it floats through Wandering Rocks. In Circe, Elijah himself appears. In the Bible, the prophet's return announces the end of the world.
Stephen Dedalus
The young writer who opens the novel — brilliant, grieving, and adrift. Joyce's Telemachus, the searching son.