They Shall Bear You Up: Memories of a Catholic Priest

Chapter One:

The Longest Night

The sun halted in the middle of the sky. Not for a whole day did it resume its swift course. Never before or since was there a day like this (Joshua 10:13). This is Joshua’s description of the longest day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites to the Israelites. There is nothing in the Bible about the longest night!

I am going to tell you it was the night of August 14–15, 1939. I was nine years old then. Despite my young age, my parents had allowed me to join them on their pilgrimage to Knock Shrine in my native County Mayo—an all-night vigil that began at dusk and ended at dawn. At the age of nine, I knew that for dawn to come the sun must rise and the moon must get out of its way. But that night the moon simply stood still. How I longed for the comforts of a bed and blankets! There never was a night as long as this.

I was standing with my parents near the gable end of the church, site of the apparition of Our Lady on August 22, 1879. In the intervening years, Knock had become a place of pilgrimage visited by thousands of people from all over Ireland. Crutches hung in various places as a reminder of the power of the Virgin who had literally sent patients home without any need for the crutches that helped them get there. The apparition had taken place on the evening of August 22, but for some reason, most likely that it was a holy day, the all-night vigil had developed on the eve and morning of August 15, the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption.

On the morning we were there, it had just been announced that Mass would begin at dawn. After being up all night for the first time in my life, how I longed for any sign of that morning sun that would herald the dawn! It would just have been my luck that my first night up would coincide with the moon standing still and holding up the arrival of the sun for the first time in the history of the world.

Photograph of author's parents taken c.1927.

Look to the east, my dad encouraged. In due course it happened. The moon got out of the way! The first rays of a new day began to come above the horizon. A bell rang to announce that Mass would shortly begin. We were standing outside with the crowds awaiting the start of Mass at the spot Our Lady had appeared. The priest came to the altar at the gable end. My father stooped down and whispered that I should ask God for what I wanted most. We have been here all night honoring His mother, and ask her too for what you want.

The very first words of the Mass in those days were Introibo ad altare Dei, or, in English, I will go unto the altar of God. That was what I wanted most! To go to God’s altar as a priest. I whispered my petition to the Mother of God. And I kept it secret, of course!

After Mass that morning, we departed for home. I don’t recall the journey because, like Robinson Crusoe after his shipwreck, Mary Queen sent the gentle sleep from Heaven that sped into my soul. But the Mother of God had heard my petition. My journey to priesthood would possibly be a little different than that of most others. That was of no importance to me. I would have been a deliriously happy youngster had I known my prayer was heard.

There was really nothing very unusual about a nine-year-old making a pilgrimage and praying the rosary. Praying the rosary together as a family was the normal ending to our day. At nine I was well aware of God’s presence in my life. And I had a yearning to please His mother too. I’m sure that yearning was absorbed in me by our nightly recitation of the rosary. Looking back, although I had no notion how it affected me and entered into my soul, it left a happy memory of a tranquil and effervescent home.

And so this story begins at home. It was a wonderful home—a place of peace, contentment, and love. It was a place to be remembered forever. It was a happy home, and it still holds a special place in my heart. It stands a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean on the north Mayo coast, just a short distance from historic Killala and the pier at Kilcummin where a French force landed in 1798 to help an Irish revolution. My father would know Kilcummin and its quiet and friendly people well. He was principal teacher of their school for a quarter of a century.

That was long before the modernization of Ireland.

When I go home—to the very same kitchen—it is now equipped with all the paraphernalia of modern times. The open hearth is no more. Gone too is the crane that hung across the turf fire and served to hold the utensils in which the breads were baked or the food was cooked. Naturally the kerosene-oil cooker, which put forth so many wonderful odors of my mother’s cooking, is no more either. The kitchen is comfortable, with the comforts of modern times, still beautiful in its own way. But it is not the kitchen of my childhood!

The house is centrally heated now. Sometimes my mind wanders back to the old days, when the family was gathered of a winter evening around the blazing turf fire, which provided the only heating for the house. But in those days it was normal to have just one peat fire in the home, and most of the heat was therefore in the kitchen.

There were eight of us children, five girls and three boys. Mary Teresa was the oldest, followed by another sister, Ita Bernadette. Then came Patrick Enda, and later I arrived on the scene. I was followed by Aidan, the last boy in the family, and later by Carmel, Anne, and Monica. Both my parents were teachers, but when my mother married, she quickly gave up her profession in order to care for her family.

My earliest memories go back to the building of our home in 1933. It was located at Moneen, just three miles from the historic town of Killala. The word Moneen comes from the Gaelic for little bog or little meadow—you can take your pick. The present home replaced the old home, a thatched three-room cottage my father had purchased from a local farmer as well as the little farm that came with it. It bordered my grandfather’s own farm, which in time my father came to own. Indeed, our new home was one of the first two-story homes in the neighborhood, with a slated roof and decorative front walls.

My father had qualified as a primary teacher in Waterford College, and his first position was in the quaint town of Baltimore, not far from Skibbereen and perhaps forty miles from Clonakilty in County Cork where he was born. The sack of Baltimore is still remembered in Irish lore, keeping alive the recollection of that terrible evening when Algerian pirates came ashore on June 20, 1631, sacked the village, and made off with almost all its inhabitants, the majority of whom were never seen again. It is believed that they finished their lives as slaves in North Africa.

The revolution of 1916 changed the lives of many Irishmen, including my father. His family was involved in the war for Irish freedom, and one of his brothers, Patrick, was arrested while playing a football game in Clonakilty. Patrick was an officer of the original Irish Republican Army in the most rebellious county in Ireland. To this day, Cork is known as the Rebel County. Toward the end of July 1920, British troops captured him, along with a companion, Tom Hales, and brought him to the mansion of a landowner in the area. Here he was severely tortured. With his face smashed in and his nose broken by a soldier’s rifle butt and almost every tooth gone, his nails were removed one by one with a pliers in order to get him to give information on his companions. He refused. Later on, after a British court had found him guilty, he was sent to Pentonville prison in England. The severity of his torture took its toll, and he died some short years later, never having recovered from the ordeal. Tom Hales lived to tell the tale, which he narrated on his release from Dartmoor prison later on. The story is retold in The IRA and Its Enemies, by Peter Hart (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998). There are many Cork locals who believe that the recent movie The Wind that Shakes the Barley told in its own way the story of the capture and torture of Patrick Harte.

Toward the end of World War One, the British government opened its jails and sent volunteer criminals to repel the Irish revolution. The British called them auxiliaries, but to the Irish natives they were known as the Black and Tans by reason of their uniforms. Being natural criminals, now given unrestrained freedom, they ran amok throughout the countryside. Civilians going about their everyday affairs were not spared by their rampaging. They left an unenvied record of murder and mayhem in their wake and are to this day remembered for their deeds of infamy against innocent civilians.

Following Patrick’s arrest, the hated Black and Tans arrived in Clonakilty one evening, in search of my father. Fortunately, he was out of town, and the Tans wrought their revenge on some other poor unfortunate. When Timothy Harte got home, he was advised by his friends and a local priest to get out of County Cork as expeditiously as possible. His escape—with the help of the priest—took him to an island off the west Mayo coast where he was to become the principal teacher in the small island school.

There’s a movie called The Great Escape that reminds me of my own father’s journey to freedom. His priest friend advised him to head west, where a teaching post would be awaiting him. He took a bus from Clonakilty to Tralee, having been warned to be careful of Limerick City, where the Tans were rampant at the time. All went well until his Tralee bus arrived at the outskirts of Limerick City. There in front of it was a roadblock with a group of auxiliaries standing on the roadway, signaling the bus to stop. One of those criminals—because criminals they were!—boarded the bus at the rear, where the bus entrances were placed in those days. My father was sitting toward the front, not quite sure what was happening or if they might be searching for him. But as if through some angelic intervention, the leader of the group called off the intruder, and the entire band jumped into their truck and rode away at reckless speed.

Everything else went well until he got to Westport a couple days later. There he began to inquire about the whereabouts of his destination—the island of Innishkea. There is no bus there, sir; it’s an island, you know, someone said roguishly, and you’ll have to take a hackney car to the dock to meet the boat. With little choice he took the hackney car, paid a moderate fare, and found himself in a seemingly deserted area with a few homes looking out upon the Atlantic Ocean. Nor was there any sign of an island out there! The boat was no steamer! Apparently it was a modern-day outboard, or something akin to it; he remembered the spray washing over the few occupants as the boat wended homeward. His arrival signaled the end of an era: he was not on the run anymore, and there was little danger of the Tans or any British soldiers coming ashore.

It so happened that a young woman came to teach on Innishkea too. Her name was Elizabeth O’Neill. It was love at first sight. The couple were married in Binghamstown in west Mayo and in time went on to have the children mentioned above. Somewhere or other there is an irony in the name! Bingham was an English landlord, an avaricious and unfeeling man. In order to hinder his tenants from taking their livestock for sale to the neighboring town of Belmullet, he erected a barrier through which the cattle had to be driven after a tax on each had been rendered. To this day, the Gaelic name for Binghamstown is An Geata Mor, translating directly into English as The Large Gate. And so an Irish citizen recently on the run was married in a village whose name recalled the injustices against which he had railed!

My father was a quiet man, not given to boasting or quarrelling. He had a great love for Ireland. A compatriot and cousin of the great Michael Collins, he was always saddened by the Civil War that followed the successful Easter Rising. To him Collins was a hero. We beat the might of the British Empire, he would say, and then sadly we turned our guns on ourselves. He would rail against the stupidity of those who could not see the political intent of everything Collins did in his life. Collins died at thirty-two, he would say, and how could anyone not understand the life he dedicated to Ireland’s freedom? According to DeValera and his followers, Collins erred when he took part in signing the treaty that gave an Irish government control over twenty-six counties but left the six northern counties of Ireland to be governed by Orangemen loyal to the Union Jack—this despite the fact that over 80 percent of the population had approved the treaty in a public plebiscite. Indeed, Collins had requested not to be included in the group traveling to London at the time of the treaty, as the British had not the faintest notion of what he looked like. DeValera insisted that Collins be a member of the deputation to London, and the rest is history. A vicious Civil War ensued at DeValera’s instigation, a war in which Collins lost his life.

In my younger years, my father kept a small revolver. Following the Civil War the country was divided, and it was well known which side my father had been on! On his arrival in north Mayo he was regarded as a blow-in who didn’t really belong. His partiality to Michael Collins also became known. Civil wars come from dangerous and irrational thinking that does not end with the conclusion of armed skirmishing. Indeed, I remember my early years of primary school. I should mention here that we did not attend my father’s school as children but were enrolled in Kilfian school, a school closer to home and within the parish in which we resided, though still two miles walking distance. Roadside workers would call me a blueshirt as I walked home from school with my companions. I really did not know what they meant, nor did my parents alarm me by telling me. Here was a child of six being badgered by adults because they judged his father on the wrong side in an irrational civil war.

Many years later I would find out about Blueshirts. After ten years of pro-Treaty government DeValera’s party was elected to power in 1932. Pro-Treatyites were naturally disturbed at the turn of events. When Eoin O’Duffy was removed as chief of police almost as soon as the new government took office, there was an outcry that those who had not sided with DeValera would all suffer recriminations. O’Duffy himself began a protest movement, encouraging those who took umbrage at what was happening in the country to gather at town meetings wearing blue shirts for the purpose of identification. The movement eventually came to nothing, but the name blueshirt was now attached to anyone who was seen not to favor the DeValera government. For the roadside workers, the six-year-old son of Master Harte was a blueshirt! And the same Master Harte had involved himself in the struggle against Britain, though not one of the workers most likely had ever had their finger on a rifle.

First, as already mentioned, my father taught on the little island of Innishkea, off the west coast of Mayo, where islanders remembered him for many a year. Years later a school came vacant at Banagher near the town of Killala; it was a mile or so removed from the historic site of a French landing to help the Irish in the uprising of 1798. My father applied for the school. Another applicant expected to receive the post, but the local parish priest who was manager of the school preferred my father’s qualifications and appointed him as principal. Following my father’s appointment, all hell broke loose. A boycott of the school was recommended but failed, and for a quarter of a century Timothy Harte was the principal teacher of Banagher National School, close to Kilcummin on the shores of the Atlantic. His wake and funeral Mass were crowded with past pupils who remembered him with affection.

When my father left the island of Innishkea to take up his new teaching post, my mother resigned from her duties on the island too. Indeed, she was glad to do so and throughout the rest of her life reminisced on the perils of the boat journey from the mainland to the island. They were taken by rowboat over treacherous waters, to the mainland and back, journeys my mother never quite forgot—journeys she endured with the rosary beads in her hands. In 1927, those waters were the site of a terrible drowning tragedy that took the lives of several fishermen who were caught in a sudden night storm at sea.

I was the fourth child in my family, two girls and a boy having been born previously. Not very long after my birth my father purchased a farm that adjoined our own and quickly decided to build a new home. The decision was made that our family would move to my grandmother’s while the new home was under construction. Her cottage was just a few minutes walk from where our new home was being erected. Here I find my first memories. The cottage had a large kitchen and two bedrooms as well as a dining room. There were roses on the whitewashed walls outside, and a neatly trimmed box hedge separated a little front garden from the street. There was a stile with steps in order to get into the little garden, and on that stile I spent many an hour viewing the surrounding countryside at the age of three! To this day, I recall the morning I disappeared in my nightclothes and my mother found me by the roadside inspecting the new home. I remember being swept into her arms and being carried back to breakfast, though I had little understanding of what all the fuss was about.

While we lived at Grandmother’s during the building of the new home, happenings both sad and glad took place. A younger sister (Carmel) was born. And a younger brother died at the age of two. I remember the grief that struck the home. About four o’clock in the evening, when my little brother Aidan had trouble breathing, the doctor was called. He came to the house and prescribed something that had to do with the vapor from a steaming kettle being loosed around where the sick child lay. My other older brother and I were sent to bed early that night, but I remember the concern of my mother and the fear that showed itself on her face. The doctor had determined my brother had diphtheria, a disease of the time from which there was little escape. And it was also contagious.

By morning my brother had died. My father went to the parish priest, who assured him he now had an angel in heaven. It was my first encounter with death, though its awful finality had not yet struck me. That would come much further down the road and many years later. Aged four, I was not allowed to see my dead angel brother. There was no Mass for him, it being understood that a young child would journey straight to heaven. In today’s Church there would be a Mass for the consolation of the parents and perhaps to assuage their grief. The Mass, after all, is Christ’s great gift to us. It enables the true believer to feel and be consoled by His Divine presence.

Chapter Two:

Memories

To this day, I have vivid memories of my mother kneeling on a chair in front of a picture of the Sacred Heart, in my grandmother’s home during the days after my brother died. Even as a child I took note of the streams of tears running down her face as she confided her troubles to God and tried to accept the cross that had been thrust into her life. Naturally, I had no recognition of what she was really doing, and it was only years later that the memory also became a lesson in faith.

Nor do I have any idea why this particular image has stayed with me all those years. Most likely it was to be for me a moment of grace that would endure a lifetime. In the seminary I would study about the problems of holy Job and come to realize too the statement of Saint Paul that to those who love God all things work together unto good. The Son of God would carry a cross and would be asked to endure a horrific death. In her own way, my mother experienced and realized the will of God in her life and united herself with the suffering Christ. She was no theologian, just a woman of faith. She had never studied Saint Paul, but here she was, just after the burial of her baby son, carrying out what Paul had written to make good what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ.

I grew up in a loving home, and whenever I think of it that home always included the presence of my grandmother, Mary O’Neill, known to us as Nan. Indeed, when I was a child she could have had Nan as her Christian name, her only name! I must have been eight years old before I found out her last name was O’Neill.

If there are angels in childhood, Nan was the one. She advised, but she never found fault; her love was the stuff that dreams are made of, and she was a pillar of assurance whenever assurance was needed. Saint Paul must have had a woman like her in mind when he wrote his dissertation about love. In the early years, Nan lived in a beautiful thatched cottage about three minutes walk from our home. That cottage was second home to me.

Nan was so gentle and kind. She was compassion itself. She loved to sing. To this day, The Stone outside Dan Murphy’s Door warbles within my memory. She was also a good cook, especially when it came to confectionaries and sweets. Often, at a mere suggestion, she would whip out a pan, a pound of butter, some sugar, and presto—we were eating butterscotch. And it was much better than any store variety. Butterscotch was not her only talent however. She made all kinds of jam tarts, cakes, and scones. Those scones were a source of disappointment one Sunday evening. I had been at her side as she applied her skills. Everything smelled so good. Then my mother arrived in a tizzy. (There were no phones in those days.) Company had unexpectedly called, and she had not a thing in the house. Did Gran have anything? We lost the scones!

While Gran lived at this house she locked the door every midmorning and spent most of the day at our home. Her husband, John O’Neill, had died some years previously, indeed previous to the time we spent living with her while our new home was being built. She had a cat that made the journey with her. The cat would sit on the wall outside and appear to be awaiting the walk up the road. The cat stayed the day too, returning with my gran in the evening. The cat, however, never walked on the road but always chose to walk on the stone wall by the wayside. I remember once asking my father why the cat never walked on the road. It was then I learned that cats like to keep their paws clean, and besides they feel safer and more in charge when they look down from a higher position. God made all His creatures with their own particular features.

But whenever I walk this road now, memories come out to greet me of a loving grandmother who made me feel special. And with the increase in modern traffic it certainly would not be a safe road for a child to walk in his nightclothes before breakfast. And when I walk the road, I can see in my mind’s eye the roses blooming on the wall of her cottage, the box hedge that surrounded the little garden in the front, and the garden at the back with apple trees, pear trees, blackcurrants, and raspberries.

John O’Neill had been a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary. This was the police force of the British government. Its members were to uphold the law. They were always a target for the fundamentalist patriots who saw no good in anything British. Many of that police force lost their lives during the Revolution of 1916–1921, killed by their own countrymen for wearing a British uniform. My mother would tell the story of how she had been denied as a twelve-year-old from being granted the prize that went with first place in an Irish dancing competition, the reason being advanced that she was the daughter of a policeman who wore a British uniform. Later in life the same lady was remembered by her pupils in an elementary school in which she taught as the teacher who taught us rebel songs. Throughout the revolution many of those same policemen became double agents, because their profession allowed them valuable information that was passed on to the revolutionaries. It would seem that the British were never able to resolve this problem from within. And to disband the force would have left the country without any police force at all.

I never knew my grandfather O’Neill. I was but two years old when he died at the age of sixty-seven, in the year 1932. He had contracted cancer of the lip, which in time killed him. But his reputation lived on as a man of tough spirit, who put up with little nonsense and who did not suffer fools gladly.

Some of his genes must have been passed on to my mother. She might be said to have had little patience for those who contributed to life’s follies. She had her own sense of humor, but although she had a hearty laugh and could certainly enjoy a joke, her humor did not match my grandmother’s. She was a strict disciplinarian. Add to this a keen faith and a lively love for the Lord that was there for all to see.

But one asset of my mother remains in my mind to this day. She loved company, she loved a chat, and if you were going to be her friend you had better be able to converse. And believe me, she had lots of friends. Indeed, in her own way she taught me to be boldly curious. As a youngster, whenever I went somewhere on my own, she would always inquire about what news I might have heard. If the information was sketchy, it brought further inquiries with an admonishment that I should have asked further questions of my friends. So in my early years I learned that I should never be afraid to ask.

War broke out in September of 1939. Certain commodities quickly grew scarce. Some trades were just about going out of existence. Among them was the thatcher. Thatched homes should have been redone every five or six years. The thatch really came from straw that was sold for the purpose. The thatcher was a rare artisan. There was a scarcity of straw, now used for cattle feed because of the war. It was hard to find the artisan either since thatched homes were now being replaced and going out of existence.

It was decided that my grandmother would leave her home and come to live with us. My father felt she would be safer with our family, and the problem of the thatched roof would go away. The house would be demolished. Looking back on it all, I remember my delight that Nan had moved in. It never occurred to me that perhaps there might have been pain in her heart as she left her independence behind, as well as the memories of bringing up her family of three in a quaint and comfortable home. And my own daily journey down the road was also over.

Nan was not the kind to sit around. She was no Norman Rockwell grandmother, sitting on a chair! When she moved in, she assumed certain tasks of her own. These kept her busy from morning to night. She slept little, so her first chore in the morning was to rekindle the fire and in her own way bring the house to life. She was up before anybody else had stirred, and she was the last to retire. The open hearth had an ash pit as part of it, and at day’s end she would cover the fire with ashes. This served to keep the coals burning all night, so that when she came back in the morning, the fire could be rekindled with ease. That done, she lit the little red lamp under the picture of the Sacred Heart in our kitchen.

She brought her sewing machine with her to our home. She was the perfect seamstress. When something needed to be mended, Nan was sitting in front of her sewing machine, her foot on the pedal, her right hand guiding the wheel. To me it was all very mysterious and impressive, all the more so as my mother had never learned to use the machine. Nan was the only one who had that power. It turned out to be my luck.

It was a Sunday morning. We had gone to early Mass as usual. In my very young days, we had a horse and buggy to take us the two miles to the church. While the family was young, this served a purpose. We were all together, and we grew up with a Sunday morning discipline of attending Mass. But the procedure also entailed having the horse ready, harnessing him, and getting him yoked to the buggy. This entailed a certain amount of preparedness. My father was no horseman and had never managed horses. Another man had to come by and get the transport ready. Not too many men were prepared to get up early on a Sunday morning to get this chore done. By the time we were ten, we were either walking to Mass or cycling.

I must have been at least ten at this particular time. After breakfast my mother told me to change out of my Sunday clothes. In those days everyone going to Mass was dressed in what was known as their Sunday best. Casual wear had not yet arrived on the scene. Breakfast after Sunday Mass was always a feast. There was a certain amount of satisfactory anticipation in just waiting to be served. On this particular morning I took no heed of my mother’s command. For some reason she paid no attention to my inattention either. By noon she had retired for a rest while my father read the newspaper in the sitting room—a room, I might add, that was rarely used by us children.

My brother and I were outside at the five-barred gate which led into the farmyard. He was sitting on the pillar, and I decided to sit on the top rung of the gate. Unfortunately for me there was a rusty broken rung just below. This caught in my trousers, and the ripping cloth sent shudders through me that in later life would have induced a heart attack. What was I to do? Surely my life was nearing an end! My mother would simply end it for me.

I sneaked into the kitchen, first making sure the way was clear. My grandmother was there, readying one of her cakes for the oven. At this moment she was my only refuge in life. I told her what had happened. Go now and take it off, she said calmly and with a twinkle in her eye, and I will fold it for you and hang it up. Later on, I will mend it when your mother is doing the shopping, and I’ll bet she won’t notice. The crisis was over! Thank God for grandmothers who can sew! The trousers were restored to normalcy and it must have been several months later that my mother remarked that my trousers looked as if it might have had a tear in it—to which my grandmother replied, Mmm. Did my mother know? Had Nan told her about my dilemma? I never found out. But Nan was no telltale!

In the era in which we live I often feel sad for children who are separated by long distances from their grandparents. My grandmother was the light of my life in my early years. We now live in times when debates take place as to the rights of grandparents, and whenever I hear this debate, I am saddened that we have reached this stage in the world in which we live.

In my own life, I have no doubt my grandmother played a very important role in my Catholic formation. She taught me many things. When I visited the Holy Land—a long time after Nan had been called from this world—I remembered my grandmother by the Lake of Galilee. She was a great storyteller and her imparting of the story of the miraculous draft of fish left nothing further to imagine. She had it all for the young mind, including the look on Peter’s face! She told me too about the Valley of Josaphat and how God would line people up at the last day, and separate the good from the wicked. And you and I will be smiling, she said, because God will have us right by Himself.

Today the secular has invented its own stories, but mostly they are tales without God. And as far as I am concerned, I had the better part. My grandmother’s stories would help me throughout a lifetime. And her tales were founded on revealed truth. Nan accepted her faith as it had been passed on to her. She gave it to her children, and she shared it also with her grandchildren, creating memories for them that would enhance their journey through life.

Nan was a believer. We lived two and one half miles from church. I can never remember her missing Mass until the latter days of her life. If the buggy wasn’t going, she walked. Once a month she faithfully went to confession. Occasionally I walked with her. She would don her black overcoat and carry her umbrella, and I had the sure knowledge that she would be back in a little less than two hours. Even before my own first confession I knew that she was going to confession and that somehow or other it was a meeting with a forgiving God. I knew it was important to her to go, although I couldn’t conceive in any way, shape, or form how Nan could commit a sin!

Chapter Three:

Faith Steeped in History

I was six years old when the long shadow of the future cast itself back toward me. A close relative of my mother—John O’Neill—was ordained to the priesthood at Maynooth Seminary. His first Mass was celebrated in the parish church in his native Killala. I well remember, even though I was barely five years old, the journey by horse and buggy to Killala Church that morning long ago to be with my family at Father John’s first Mass.

Killala is one of the oldest towns in Mayo. It stands on the north Mayo coast. From my youth I remember that it had wonderful, warmhearted people who were always concerned about their neighbors. It was, and still is, a historic town. There is something aged about Killala, and perhaps something changeless. The town of my childhood has not changed; only the names are different, and the stores are either closed down or have been taken over by successors who ply different trades. The population was always small and still is, consisting of probably less than one thousand people. Perhaps it’s the round tower that makes Killala seem aged, or it may be the spire of the Protestant cathedral reaching into the sky. The tower is the oldest building in town and has seen the variations of history down through the centuries since it was first erected, probably in the sixth century.

There is a tradition that it was from Killala that Saint Patrick made his escape from slavery under an Irish landowner