Bishop Séamus Freeman, the eldest of the eight children of James and Bridget Freeman, was born on 23 February 1944 in Clonlahy, parish of Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary, in the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly.  When he was eight months old his family moved to Coolagh in the parish of Callan, Co. Kilkenny, in the Diocese of Ossory.  His mother continues to reside there today.  As a child he attended Coolagh National School and Callan CBS. He completed Secondary School at Thurles CBS, as a postulant of the Pallottine Minor Seminary.

He entered the Society of Catholic Apostolate (Pallottines) in Thurles, Co. Tipperary and made his first Pallottine Consecration in 1965. He studied philosophy at the National University of Ireland, University Collage Dublin and Theology at St. Patrick’s College, Thurles. He was ordained a priest on 12th June 1971.

Subsequent to his ordination, Bishop Freeman was sent to the Jesuit University of Detroit to pursue studies in psychology but was called to Rome not long afterwards to act as personal secretary to the Rector General of his Society, Fr. Nicholas Gorman. Two years later he returned to the USA and completed his studies at the Catholic University of America, Washington DC.

In 1975, he was appointed Rector of the Church of San Silvestro in Rome, “a Church with a long tradition of welcoming the stranger to Rome”, a Church designated by Pope Leo XIII (1885) to the pastoral care of English-speaking visitors and residents in Rome. During this time, in May 1978, he was elected a member of the Provincial Council of the Irish Province of the Society. In 1981 he returned to Ireland to take up the post of Rector and Director of Formation at the Pallottine College in Thurles.

While participating as delegate in the General Assembly of his community in 1983, Bishop Freeman was elected to the General Council of the Pallottines for a term of six years in Rome, a community dedicated to the pastoral and missionary role of all the baptized in the life and mission of the Church. In 1989 he was elected Vicar General of the Society. Barely three years later, in 1992, Fr. Martin Juritsch, the then Rector General of the Society, fell gravely ill and submitted his resignation. At the subsequent Extraordinary General Assembly, Bishop Freeman was elected to succeed him. He was re-elected for a second six-year term in 1998.

In 1994 Bishop Freeman took part as an “auditor” in the 1994 Synod of Bishops, dedicated to the theme of “Consecrated Life and its Mission in the Church and in the World”. During his term as Rector General, on the 28th October 2003, the Pallottine Family, known as the “Union of Catholic Apostolate”, was declared a “Public Association of the Faithful, of Pontifical Right” by the Pontifical Council for the Laity. At an International Assembly of the UCA, held in Rome in December 2005, Bishop Freeman was unanimously re-elected President of the General Coordination Council for a term of three years.

At the conclusion of his second term as Rector General of the Society of Catholic Apostolate, Bishop Freeman spent a year with the Irish Pallottine Community of San Silvestro in Rome after which, on 7th October 2004, he was appointed Parish Priest of the parish of San Vincenzo Pallotti at Pietralata in Rome (13.000 people approx), where he served until his appointment as bishop of Ossory by Pope Benedict XVI on 14th September 2007.

Bishop Freeman is the 94th Bishop of Ossory and was ordained in St Mary’s Cathedral, Kilkenny on Sunday 2nd December 2007.  The principal Consecrator on that day was Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin and the Co-Consecrators were the Apolostolic Nuncio, Guiseppe Lazzarotto and former Bishop of Ossory, Laurence Forristal.