A LIFETIME OF DEVOTION TO THE COMMUNITY
Fr F A. B O’Shea on retirement
FOR many in the community of Riverstown, parish priest, Fr A. B O’Shea has been an anchor. He has celebrated with them on happy occasions such as christenings and weddings, and was there for them on the darkest of days. After shy on 28 years of faithful service to his parishioners, Fr O’Shea is ready to enjoy retirement, partially!
Enjoying the prose of Michael Harding, to Sally Rooney, and pouring over The Telegraph and The Guardian guiltlessly, that is how Fr O’Shea plans on spending his time going forward.
The Fermanagh native will still be on hand however, to assist his protégé, Fr Yashin Jos, but looks forward to taking a back seat in the community he has been intrinsically part of for close to 30 years.
What becomes readily apparent from Fr O’Shea’s warm welcome, is that meeting the community was always at the heart of his work.
“If you don’t go out to meet the people you’ ll never achieve anything,” he tells The Sligo Champion from his homestead overlooking the Church of the Sacred Heart.
Happy occasions are ones he will most cherish. “They’re coming to get married, coming to get baptisms and I used to enjoy those occasions, I used to bring the camera with me and take loads of photographs of everyone in their finery.”
Arriving to the parish in 1992, after a stint at Sligo Cathedral, Fr O’Shea hints it was almost like a homecoming, noting his birthplace of Belleek, Co Fermanagh being quite similar to Riverstown.
“I grew up in a community very like this, rural. The people around here and the set up around here is not terribly different from what I would have known.”
Initially a curate, aiding Canon McLoughlin who retired and subsequently passed away in 2000, Fr O’Shea then took over as PP.
Drawing on his own upbringing and open communication style, the parish priest continues his love of activism and was involved in the community through fund raisers and ensuring local schools remained open and thrived.
“When I heard I could come out here I was thrilled, back to basics and my own type of set up. When I arrived to Sooey there were nine children in the school and we considered closing it and there’s 140 here now. We built a play school and créche.”
Education and the importance of it is something Fr O’Shea has always had a deep appreciation for, having taught in Nigeria for ten years after having qualified in University College Cork.
“It seems like an age ago. I came in there at the end of the civil war, the Biafran War, in 1969. It was difficult in a way because a lot of the facilities that would normally be there had got destroyed and there was still a lot of strong military presence there. We had difficulty getting books for kids but we worked at it. There was a good few expatriates working there at the time,” he explained.
After ten years, Fr O’Shea felt it was time to do some ‘updating’, returning to Ireland to do a post graduate course in liturgy in the National Institute in Carlow and subsequently worked there for five years.
Admittedly getting tired of education eventually, Fr O’Shea says he felt he needed to ‘get back into what a priest is about’.
Filling in for another missionary priest in Elphin for five years, Fr O’Shea remembers he got a telling tip on the shoulder from Bishop Conway.
“He tipped me on the shoulder coming out of a meeting and said he wanted to see me, I knew the good days were over,” he laughs.
Soon he found himself in Sligo Cathedral, working alongside Bishop Christy Jones and eventually to his home from home in Riverstown/Sooey.
Asked if there were any notable differences between serving a large population of church goers in Sligo town and those of rural Sligo, the priest is candid.
“Looking back on it now, it’s not that different because the people are always the same, it doesn’t matter whether they’re based on the Strandhill Road, which I was looking after, or based here in Riverstown, a lot of them came from these areas anyway.”
Reflecting on his time based in Sligo, Fr O’Shea says he used to knock on doors in the evenings to meet parishioners.
“I found the people lovely. In the beginning I didn’t know what to do with myself, I suppose they didn’t know what to make of me, knocking on doors, it wasn’t the traditional thing to do. But, I felt if I was going to work, I had to get to know the people. The only way to do that was to knock on their door and say hello.”
A champion for causes, Fr O’Shea remembers being involved in a fundraiser for a young boy which raised over £70,000 in Sligo town.
“Through that again I got to know an awful lot of people. When you’re working with people going from door to door asking them to buy a ticket you get chatting.”
Known for his honest and accepting style, Fr O’Shea speaks frankly about how he sees the church and churchgoers right now.
“People talk now about numbers going down in the churches and that’s probably true, but the people are the same, they don’t change, even if they’re not going to be sitting down in the church every Saturday or Sunday,” he says.
Adding, “I have no sense of antagonism or any of these things they’re talking about nowadays. The people are the same as far as I can see. I’ ll admit they mightn’t be there in the same numbers, but, they couldn’t be nicer.”
In his 27 or so years the parish priest presided over many occasions, one in relatively recently times was the 75 th anniversary of the church. It was an anniversary marked by the production of an impressive body of work, drawing on his experience of editing the diocesan newspaper for 26 years. Fr O’Shea along with a capable committee compiled a comprehensive and impressive book, ‘Church of the Sacred Heart, Riverstown: The story of a church and its people’ .
Asked if he believes the church is moving in the right direction with its parishioners, the priest is refreshing in his outlook.
“It’s hard to know. When you talk about ‘church’, the church is the people, and should be. I’ve always felt they should be the people to know what direction the church should be marching in.”
He believes lay people should and can take on greater responsibilities within the church set up.
“They should be involved in every aspect of church life and in my time as a priest they were and that’s going to increase. One of the things that stands out is the amount of involvement of women in the church, of all ages. I think it has been very significant. They’re so talented. Everyone is the same, they’re very willing to play a role, you just have to let them and not be getting in their way or tripping them up.”
He adds, “I think more and more administration will be done by lay people, because the numbers of us is getting fewer and fewer. And that frees you up to talk to the children in the schools and visit people who are sick.”
Asked what his favourite memories are from the last 27 years, the retiring priest simply cites ‘friendship’.
“The friendship of the people and the warmth of them and the welcome, those are the kind of things that stand out for me now and will never leave me.”
And is he sad to be partially saying farewell to his role in the community as he knows it?
“As long as I’m involved in the pastoral side of things I’m not a bit sad, I’m perfectly happy with that and delighted to be left where I am, where I know the people, and they know me.”