Def iant Cork priest says Mass every day
THE news that priests will be allowed to celebrate Mass at the end of this month will make little difference to Fr Kevin Mulcahy.
The parish priest of Ballymacoda, a village in east Cork, has continued to say Mass every day during lockdown to a small congregation who travel to hear him.
Each morning about 10 people arrive to his large church, some ‘clearly outside their 5km limit’. ‘I don’t ask any questions,’ says Fr Mulcahy.
‘We have a huge church here, it’s nearly as big as the cathedral in Cobh. It’s nonsense to say people can’t keep their distance in it, of course they can. And I’ve only about a half dozen people and they can stand yards apart from each other.’
The 86-year-old admits that someone reported him to the Bishop of Cloyne, William Crean, but says even that has not deterred him. ‘The bishop rang me and asked me what I was doing and I told him and he listened and he didn’t say to stop and he didn’t say to keep doing it. So I just kept it up,’ Fr Mulcahy said. ‘The doors of a church should always be open to people, especially in times of crisis. I can’t understand how the Government ordered that churches should shut.
‘To me it was a funny decision. I was looking at an article in the paper the other day and there was a picture of a mammy and her two children praying outside a locked church in Dublin and that just seemed wrong to me.
‘I just keep the door open, if people want to come they can, if they don’t they can stay away. It’s a simple invitation I put out.
‘I’m 86 myself and supposed to be cocooning but I’d go mad at home all day staring at the four walls. And no, I don’t wear a mask and I don’t suppose I ever will.
‘I’m not someone who has ever looked for publicity, I just do what
I do which is to be a priest.’
Places of worship will be allowed to hold services on June 29 three weeks ahead of schedule, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced on Friday.
However priests in larger parishes have asked ‘as a matter of urgency’ to have Government guidelines released to them so they can begin planning for the earlier reopening.
Fr Charlie McDonnell, parish priest of Westport, says Mass to some of the largest congregations in the country during the summer months and can have 2,000 in the church for Masses on a Sunday.
‘Our congregations are swelled here by tourists in the summer months and we can have 900 at 12 Mass on a Sunday,’ he said. ‘The church here holds 1,200 but that number could go down to between 150 and 250 with social distancing.
‘Basically we have a lot of stuff we need to work out before we reopen and we need the guidelines to know how to do it.
‘It’s fine for the smallest churches out there, they can just open up. But this is a big church with a lot of visitors in the middle of a town and we have to get it right.’
Welcoming the bringing forward of Masses, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin stated that he was ‘greatly looking forward’ to celebrating public Mass. He added that next week, the bishops of Ireland will meet for the first time over video-call for their Summer General Meeting and will finalise a framework document for the return to Mass.