Wadding, Luke (1588–1657)

Irish Franciscan scholar, born in Waterford, who founded two Irish Colleges in Rome and actively supported the Confederation of Kilkenny. He entered the Franciscan order in Portugal in 1605 and trained in Lisbon and Coimbra. Ordained in 1613, he was briefly professor of theology at Salamanca, Spain (1617), before becoming theologian to the Spanish embassy in Rome (1618). He founded St Isidore's (Irish Franciscan) College in 1625 and the Ludovisian (Irish secular priests') College in 1628. He became the agent for the Kilkenny confederation in Rome in 1642.

Wadding also published extensively on Franciscan history and the 13th-century Scottish scholastic theologian John Duns Scotus.