Luke Wadding was born at Ballycogley Castle in County Wexford into a wealthy Recusant mercantile family and was descended from Ireland's Old English nobility.
Following the slaying of his father during the Sack of Wexford by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army and the confiscation of the family's property by the Commonwealth of England, Wadding fled to France and was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest after attending the Irish College in Paris and the Sorbonne.
He continued to do so covertly despite the renewed religious persecution caused by the anti-Catholic witch hunt masterminded by Titus Oates and Lord Shaftesbury.
During the later Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Walter Wadding was killed for this very reason by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army during the 2–11 October 1649 Sack of Wexford and all his property was declared forfeit to the Commonwealth of England under the Act of Settlement.
Writing in 1668, Janvin de Rochefort commented, "Even in Dublin more than twenty houses where Mass is secretly said, and in about a thousand places, subterranean vaults and retired spots in the woods".
[9] According to Barry Crosbie, the fact that Wadding was lodged in Wexford and protected by the highly influential Anglo-Irish and Protestant Wiseman family made it possible for him to smuggle "popular contemporary books of doctrine and devotion, catechisms, and prayerbooks", from Catholic Europe into his Diocese.
"[10] In 1674, Wadding began building a public Mass-house inside the walls of Wexford, which only his friendships with the Anglo-Irish and Protestant elite of the town allowed him to get away with.
[12] According to Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, "He gives details of its glazing, ceiling, thatching, etc., in his account book, and mentions that he had to remove a great heap of dung from the site before he could lay the foundations of his little chapel.
"[13] During the show trials and anti-Catholic hysteria concocted by Titus Oates and Lord Shaftesbury, Wadding was arrested for violating the law commanding all Catholic bishops, vicars general, and regular clergy to leave Ireland by 20 November 1678.
"[19] In March 1685, Bishop Wadding was awarded a pension of £150 a year by King James II, which further aided the struggling finances of his impoverished Diocese.
[20] According to family records, Bishop Luke Wadding died in December 1687 and was buried beneath the aisle and just outside the sanctuary of the Franciscan Friary in Wexford Town.
The Wexford Carols, as they are now called, are traditionally sung during the Twelve Days of Christmas by a choir of six men, who first divide into two groups of three to sing alternating verses.
In a January 1872 letter to the Wexford newspaper The Nation, a local man recalled, "I have stood within many of the grandest Cathedrals of Europe and under the Dome of St. Peter's itself, but in none of them did I ever feel the soul-thrilling rapturous sensation that I did as a boy listening to six aged men on a frosty Christmas morning sing the carols beneath the low straw-thatched chapel of Rathangan.
"[24] According to Barry Crosbie, "Perhaps what is so significant about his life was the fact that his tenure is representative of a Catholic bishop in Seventeenth-century Ireland whose loyalty to the Crown was as important as his religious obligations to the Papacy.
Taking enormous pride in his Old English Catholic heritage and links to the Crown, he was not afraid to voice his discontent with Rome while acting in the best interests of his people.
"[25] Since the Wexford carols have become more widely known, they have been performed and recorded commercially by Nóirín Ní Riain, Allison Krause, Waverly Consort, Zoë Conway, and many other musicians.