His father, who died in 1864, was from Fifeshire, a Protestant convert to Catholicism; his mother was a Catholic from County Cavan.
[1] Finlay was educated at St Augustine's College, Cavan, and became a novice of the Society of Jesus in 1866, at the Jesuit theological faculty, Milltown Park, Dublin.
There he encountered Prussian agricultural methods and the Raiffeisenbank system; and gained an interest in biology from colleagues.
At St Beuno's Finlay started The Lyceum, the college magazine, in the year he arrived, but could not induce Hopkins to contribute.
[5][6][7] Finlay in 1880 was ordained priest, and in 1881 he was made head of St Stanislaus College in Tullabeg, replacing William Delany.