Fr Des’s online Mass is a worldwide hit
FR DES FORDE’S daily morning Mass is attracting worshippers in numbers that his church in Ennistymon, Co. Clare, was never built to house.
His head-count for last Friday’s 11am service came in at 5,000, even though he celebrated it on his own.
For the last three weeks, he has celebrated Mass on the parish Facebook page he started up three years ago, and the response has overwhelming.
‘It is going really well and it is being accessed right around the world,’ he said. ‘I have people contacting me from places I never heard of. We would have a lot of emigrants from this parish in America.
‘When we started out we were on to a few nursing homes and our community hospital in Ennistymon,’ he said.
‘Now we have people from the UK, Germany, Holland, US, Canada, Australia, Abu Dhabi and Gambia,’ said Fr Forde.
The decision to offer Mass on Facebook would be timely against the backdrop of the pandemic, but a health crisis prompted Fr Forde into going online three years ago.
‘I had not been feeling well and my doctor sent me to a specialist who diagnosed me with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
He said: ‘I was told to mind myself so I thought this might be going on for a while so I decided to put Mass on Facebook and it started from there.’
Does Fr Forde think he could be setting a blueprint for the future of services?
‘I don’t think with the present leadership in the Church here and in Rome, I would not think so, but we live in hope,’ he said.