Background
Robert Molyneux was born on 24 July 1738, near Formby, Lancashire. He was a scion of a noteworthy North Briton cavalier family which contributed a number of members to the Society of Jesus.
Robert Molyneux was born on 24 July 1738, near Formby, Lancashire. He was a scion of a noteworthy North Briton cavalier family which contributed a number of members to the Society of Jesus.
Educated by private tutors and reared in the seclusion enforced upon Catholics by the penal laws, Molyneux entered the Society of Jesus on September 7, 1757, and studied theology in Belgium, teaching for a time in his community's college at Bruges.
Soon after his ordination, Molyneux was assigned to the American missions, where a relative, Richard Molyneux, had previously labored as a Jesuit missionary and superior. Arriving in Maryland in 1771, he served two years on the missions and was then appointed to St. Mary's Church, Philadelphia, to succeed Robert Harding, who had died in September 1772. Later, he became joint pastor of St. Joseph's Church as well. Here, after the suppression of his society, he continued as a secular priest along with Ferdinand Farmer. During the Revolution, he was a moderate patriot, taking the oath of allegiance to Pennsylvania, welcoming the attendance of members of Congress at two funeral masses for foreign envoys, tutoring the Chevalier de la Luzerne in English, burying himself in his library in order to avoid association with the invaders during the British occupation. He opened a parochial school, purchasing its site in 1781, and that same year improved the church. In 1783, he was one of the signers of a petition praying that Congress return to Philadelphia. A zealous churchman, he urged his intimate friend, John Carroll, to accept the appointment as prefect apostolic in order that the church in America might be freed from English jurisdiction. This step accomplished, he advocated the appointment of an American bishop, joining with Carroll and the Rev. John Ashton in a memorial to Rome on this subject. After papal approval had been secured, the convention of clergy met at Whitemarsh, Carroll's name was submitted to Rome, and he was forthwith named bishop. Meanwhile, Molyneux left Philadelphia for Bohemia Manor (1788) and later Newtown, Maryland. As Bishop Carroll's vicar general for the southern district, he took part in the diocesan synod of 1791. Soon afterward, he succeeded Father Robert Plunkett as president of Georgetown College, where he remained until transferred back to Newtown in 1796. Deeply concerned in the negotiations with the Rev. Gabriel Gruber, general of the Society of Jesus in Russia, Molyneux rejoiced in the preliminary restoration of the Society, of which he was named American superior, June 21, 1805. In 1806, upon the resignation of Bishop Leonard Neale, he again assumed the rectorship of Georgetown. Two years later, weary and realizing that his end was near, he named Charles Neale as acting superior of the Jesuit priests in America.
Perhaps Molyneux was never married.