Gabriel Leonard was an Irish Catholic priest who lived in Dublin during the early 20th century. He saw Ireland as a "promised land" and supported the Irish Republic during the Irish War of Independence, and, in 1920, IRA member Jimmy Mahon convinced him to help Ursula Sweeney recover her child from nuns who planned to send her child to an adoptive family in Boston. In 1921, he became a supporter of the anti-Treaty IRA, seeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty as Michael Collins selling his soul. After the British evacuated Dublin, Leonard led several anti-Treaty republicans in an attempted armed uprising.