He was renowned for his strong political and religious views which alienated him from many of his colleagues, and resulted in his being twice suspended from clerical duties.
[2] The family lived a comfortable existence as John's father ran a successful stonecutting business, a public house and a grocery shop.
His first appointment was to Ennis, County Clare, where he published a scholarly pamphlet, entitled "A discourse on the use and history of Christian Churches".
[9] Nonetheless, throughout the famine he worked tirelessly as a member of the Dolla & Killeneave and the Templederry & Latteragh relief committees.
[10] Apart from normal relief measures, Kenyon also established his own work scheme, whereby he employed locals to build a wall around his property.
The moral force which won Emancipation was a firmly expressed demand for justice of resolute men; it was an overflowing treasury of the Catholic Association, every shilling of which stood for two stout arms and one brave heart".
He suggested that a democratic, rather than dictatorial, attitude would accept varying viewpoints and that unanimity could rarely be achieved because of "the constitution of the human mind, with all its faculties."
[13] When O'Connell died in May 1847 Kenyon wrote to The Nation criticising expressions of sympathy offered by the Young Irelanders.
"[14][15] Despite the embarrassment caused by his criticism of O'Connell, Kenyon was of immense importance to the Young Ireland movement.
Kenyon was the Young Ireland polemicist, and was seen in party circles as the person to win the support of the Catholic population.
He visited Charles Gavan Duffy, along with Terence Bellew MacManus, and suggested the reorganisation of the Irish Confederation into a secret society, capable of acting as a quasi government in the event of a rising.
[6] When in April 1848, he encouraged a crowd of ten thousand people at Templederry to arm themselves, Dr Kennedy immediately suspended him from clerical duties.
Unfortunately he did not explain this constraint to his colleagues – a fact that caused much misunderstanding and anger as the Confederates assembled in Ballingarry, County Tipperary, a few weeks later.
On Thursday 27 July as the Confederates assembled at Ballingarry, William Smith O'Brien dispatched Thomas Francis Meagher, John Blake Dillon, and Maurice Leyne to Templederry, to request Father Kenyon to lead out his men.
It was intended that Kenyon's leadership would extend the rising to North Tipperary and into Limerick where Richard O'Gorman was awaiting orders.
Later he wrote in the parish register: "This evening I have heard of a rebellion in South Tipperary under the leadership of William Smith O'Brien – may God speed it.
The issue arose when James Haughton, a Quaker, and a strong moral force campaigner, insisted that the new organisation should be totally committed not only to anti-slavery but to teetotalism and the abolition of capital punishment.
He made it quite clear what he himself would do with such subscriptions: "It is quite an error to suppose that our great and noble cause would be polluted by receiving such contributions, or that it must not be injured by rejecting them.
For their transgressions, at the worse, shall no more convince the slavery system of evil, than the cruelty of exterminating landlords shall prove that the condition of tenant farming is unchristian, or profligacy in family relations, that the marriage state is unholy."
He concluded that "flinging back bags of dollars over the Atlantic ocean into the pockets of these slaveholders, enriching them at our expense, is such a Utopian remedy for the supposed evil as only homoeopathists could countenance."
He advised those who disagreed with his views to mind their own business, wait until the Union was repealed, and then when Irish problems were solved it may be appropriate to "set about abating it with our surplus funds".