Fr Sean McManus, born in Kinawley, County Fermanagh, is a brother of Frank McManus, former MP, and Patrick McManus, an IRA member killed in an explosion in 1958. In 1971, McManus, a Redemptorist priest then based in Scotland, was arrested in Northern Ireland during an anti-internment demonstration. His superiors sent him to the United States in 1972 where he founded the Irish National Caucus in 1974, a Washington D.C.-based Irish-American lobby group.