Welcome, Fáilte - Diocese of Cloyne

Light a Candle at St Colman's from 1 Dec 2024

Light a candle at St Colman's

Welcome

Fáilte, Welcome

to the website for the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland

Bishop William Crean

03 March 2026

Carrigtwohill Parish Pilgrimage to Fatima 7th - 14th September 2026

Spiritual Director: Fr. Patrick Winkle

Direct return flights from Cork to Faro, with Bus to and from Fatima included
Full Board - breakfast, lunch and dinner each day
7 nights Hotel Steyler
Limited number of places
€1045 (single supplement extra) - limited single rooms, insurance is also extra
20kg baggage included with Aer Lingus flight.
Guided tours and full spiritual programme

Please make enquires to Fr. Patrick Winkle 021-4882439 or Joe Walsh Tours 021-2427190 or 01-2410800
Or book direct online with Joe Walsh Tours

2026 CARRIGTWOHILL PATRICK WINKLE 07 SEP CORK FARO Fatima Pilgrimage 2026

04 February 2026

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimages 2026

The Annual Lourdes Mass - Friday 13th February 2026

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Kanturk, P51 TY36 at 7.30pm
Bishop William Crean will be the Chief Celebrant of the Mass

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Knock - Sunday 10th May 2026

Parishes to make their own travel arrangements

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes 29th May – 3rd June 2026

All bookings for the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes should be made through Joe Walsh Tours by telephone 01-2410800, online at Joe Walsh Tours or by post to 89 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, D02WY88. No booking is definite until a non-refundable deposit payment of €350 per person (plus insurance premium where applicable) has been receipted by Joe Walsh Tours. Early booking advisable.

Pilgrims who would like to travel with the Special Assisted Section should apply to: Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes, c/o Parish Secretary, 27/28 Bank Place, Mallow, Co. Cork. Tel: 022-20276. This special assisted/sick section is accommodated at the Accueil Notre Dame. Acceptance for travel with the special section for the sick is subject to approval of the Pilgrimage Medical Board. The closing date for receipt of application is 31 March 2026.

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes 29th May - 3rd June 2026

04 October 2025

Bishop William Crean meets Pope Leo on recent pilgrimage to Rome

Watch this short video clip

Bishop Crean meets Pope Leo

Pastoral letter from Bishop William Crean

on pastoral planning for the future

My dear people,

To live is to change, is a pearl of wisdom from St. John Henry Newman, a convert to the Catholic faith in the 19th Century. To live in the 21st Century is an experience of constant change, social, cultural and technological. Viewing “Reeling in the Years,” the television series depicting life in former times is a dramatic reminder of the extent of the change we have experienced.

The Church whose life and presence within our communities and parish has had to adjust to and
manage the change taking place in society. One particular pattern has been evident for some years
now is the decline both in profession of Christian faith and its practice through the attendance at Holy Mass,
which, for the believer, is an obligation in faith. The consequence of this generational shift from family and
parish community attendance has seen a similar decline in responding to the call to Priesthood and Religious life. Despite this pattern in the Diocese of Cloyne, in all the parishes there are faithful practicing prayer congregations who witness to and support one another in faith.

Pastoral Letter

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Latest Homily

17 May 2026 - “Know that I am with you always”

Latest Articles

March 2026
- Fatima Pilgrimage 2026 - Carrigtwohill Parish
February 2026
- Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimages 2026
October 2025
- Bishop Crean meets Pope Leo
September 2025
- "Behold I'm doing a new thing" says the Lord (Isaiah 43)
February 2025
- Recent picture of St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh. Co. Cork
October 2024
- Light a Candle at St. Colman's Cathedral

Coram Fratribus

7. Sunday of Easter

This Sunday falls on 17 May, Norway’s National Day.
Acts 1.12-14: The disciples went back to Jerusalem.
1 Peter 4.13-16: Rejoice when you share in the sufferings of Christ.
John 17.1-11: My glory shines in those who are mine.
For forty days after Read More

Coram Fratribus

Being Human

Conversation published in America on 11 May.
Gina Christian: You provided the reflections for the Lenten Spiritual Exercises in the Vatican for Pope Leo XIV , and in your final reflection, you focused on the theme of communicating hope. In the U.S. Read More

Coram Fratribus

Vigsling på Stiklestad Prekenen ble holdt ved velsignelsen, og vigslingen av alteret, i Stiklestad katolsk kapell som i dag, på Sigrid Undsets fødselsdag, ble gjenåpnet etter grundig restaurering.
I politikken kan det gå hardt for seg. Den ene dag står en smørblid leder med nellik i knapphullet på en fjong balkong, hyllet av folket; neste dag hiver samme folk ham hjertens gjerne ut av vinduet. Sånn er det nå; sånn var det før. Da Olav Haraldsson i 1015 ankom Norge i en knarr, krevende sin kongsrett, møtte han nok motstand; men velviljen var større.
Folk foretrakk tross alt et norsk septer fremfor danskekongens åk. Olav fikk ti gode år. Han innstiftet kristenretten, samlet landet, fostret tanken om hva det vil si å bestå som nasjon. Nordmenn syntes det var fjågt, først. Så begynte de å murre.
Olav bad liksom om for mye. De nye lovene la bånd på lokale kakser, vant til å fremstå som konger på haugen. Plutselig syntes det ikke så dumt allikevel, å ha en konge som satt langt borte.
De norske storbønders forhandlinger med Danmarks Kong Knut tvang Olav ut av landet. Hvor skulle han hen?
Han reiste til Kyiv-riket, hvor Kong Jarisleiv og dronning Ingegjerd, som Olav i sin ungdom hadde godblunket til, tok ham varmt imot. Halvannet års tid tilbragte Olav hos dem. Jarisleiv muntret ham opp etter evne. Han foreslo for Olav å glemme Norge. Han tilbød ham Bulgaria. Været er bedre der.
Olav, skriver Snorre, vurderte tilbudet, men tenkte også mer radikalt. Skulle han si fra seg kongsnavnet og reise som pilegrim til Jerusalem, dit han hadde vært på vei seksten år før? Han kom så langt som til Cadiz i Spania den gang. Da viste en mann seg for ham i en drøm og sa: ‘Dra tilbake til odelen din, du, for du skal bli konge over Norge til evige tider’. Som tredje mulighet vurderte Olav å bli munk. Eksiltiden i Gardariket var til fordypning. Olav gjorde opp regnskap med seg selv. Han lutret sin motivasjon.
Jeg tenkte på erfaringen hans der da jeg selv, den 10. mai 2023, ruslet rundt i Kyiv mens byen pustet ut etter et urolig døgn: Russland hadde bombet iherdig dagen før. Jeg var, sammen med Kardinal Arborelius, på solidaritetsbesøk på vegne av Den nordiske bispekonferanse. Andektig stanset vi ved muren rundt Kyivs blå kirke, der endeløse oppslag minnes Ukrainas falne ved fronten. Så ble vi tatt med til Sancta Sophia-katedralen, byens helligdom, et herlig bygg.
Man har til alle tider visst at Kong Jarisleiv var byggherren der, men det har vært litt om og men i forhold til datering. Arkeologiske funn gjør at historikerne nå er enige: Kirken ble påbegynt i 1011. Den vil alt ha stått kneisende da Olav kom til landet i 1028. Bygget var Jarisleivs stolthet. Jeg nekter å tro at han ikke, plystrende tilfreds, vil ha tatt med sin norske gjest dit på en grundig befaring.
Så er det gripende å stå nå, som nordmann, i Sancta Sophia, og skue opp mot kuppelen. Den viser en mosaikk av Kristus Pantokrator, Allherskeren.
Domen er vigslet til Kristus som det inkarnerte uttrykk for Gud Faders Visdom. Hengivenhet til Visdommen var del av Olavs politiske og, jeg våger ordet, eksistensielle prosjekt. Derav kom en del av motstanden som gjorde at han hadde måttet rømme landet. Kirken i Kyiv gav arkitektonisk og billedlig uttrykk for hans gjennomtenkte sans for meningen med livet.
Minnet om Sancta Sophia vil vel ha opplyst Olav da han på nytt fikk en utslagsgivende drøm: Olav Tryggvason viste seg for ham og sa: ‘Hva venter du på? Reis til ditt eget rike som du har fått ved arv!’ Ja, så red han fra Kyiv-riket hit til Stiklestad, til drømmen om himmelstigen, til øksa, sverdet og stenen han falt ved.
Da vi innså, litt senere utpå året i 2023, at vårt katolske kapell her på haugen måtte restaureres grundig, virket det naturlig å synliggjøre aksen mellom Gardariket og Værdalen. Pantokrator-motivet som nå pryder apsis får oss til å tenke på kuppelen i Sancta Sophia. Motivet står rett overfor glassmaleriet av Hellig-Olav på kapellets vestvegg. Han står dere og skuer mot Kristus mens han gjør seg rede til slag.
Visdommen Kristus bringer er rettesnor for siste, bestemmende fase av Olavs liv.
Det er visdom som, verdslig sett, kan synes som dårskap. ‘Ingen har større kjærlighet enn han som gir sitt liv for sine venner’. Det var nettopp ved å gi sitt liv, etter å ha kastet sverdet fra seg, at Olav, i døden, vant landet. Derved gir han den dag i dag, hvis vi akter ham, landet retning som vår evige konge.
Vår samtidige verden gir stort sett Visdommen på båten. Jaroslavs Rus’ er ennå daglig gjenstand for forrykte angrep. Olavs Norge er sårbart for forføring av ufornuft.
Så er det nyttig å se mot apsisbildet her i kapellet og huske: Visdommen Kirken bærer og vitner om, er ikke et valgfritt verktøy til selvforbedring; det står for prinsippet som en dag vil dømme både oss og valgene vi tar.
Ansikt til ansikt med Guds Visdom, tegner to veier seg mot horisonten: dødens vei og livets vei. Vi kan ikke gå begge samtidig. Vi må velge.
Det var noe Sigrid Undset var seg inderlig bevisst i 1930, da hun sørget for at kapellet her fikk oppstå. Undset hadde ufeilbarlig teft for hva som var i gjære i Europa. Hun foraktet fascismen av hele sitt hjerte. Fascismen forvrenger, så hun, menneskers virkelighetssans, for den nærer luciferiske drømmer om allmakt. Når mennesket tror seg selv ‘pantokrator’, det ypperste kriterium for alle ting, da er det i stand til den verste grusomhet. I et essay fra 1935 advarer Undset mot det hun kaller ‘fetishismens isolation — tilbedelsen av selvgjorte ting og idéer. Dét’, skriver hun, ‘er i bunn og grunn selvtilbedelse, og fordi menneskene selv ikke kan bestaa uten overnaturlig hjelp, betyr det opløsning og død.’
Undset så ‘fetishismens isolation’ som en vesentlig fare på 30-tallet. Vi vet hva den førte til da, selv om folk i stadig større grad velger å glemme.
Er vi oss bevisst hvor den tendensen kan komme til å føre oss i dag, nå som den igjen finner voldsomme, hatefulle uttrykk?
Dét at bildet av Guds hellige Visdom, synliggjort som selvoppofrende kjærlighet, nå fremstår fredelig her på Stiklestadhøyden, som på sett og vis er Norges hjerte, forekommer meg som et profetisk tegn og en kilde til selvransakelse frem imot tusenårsjubileet for Olavs offer i 2030. Amen.

Coram Fratribus

7. Sunday of Easter This Sunday falls on 17 May, Norway’s National Day.
Acts 1.12-14: The disciples went back to Jerusalem.
1 Peter 4.13-16: Rejoice when you share in the sufferings of Christ.
John 17.1-11: My glory shines in those who are mine.
For forty days after Easter Jesus goes in and out among the disciples. He sticks to their small group. He does not put on compelling son-et-lumière performances over Jerusalem. There’s no trace of triumphalism in him who vanquished the worst of man’s enemies, death himself. He proceeds with quietness. He converses and explains; he shares meals; he hosts them when he performs gestures the Eleven recognise from the Last Supper. His explicit intention is that the Gospel should reach the ends of the earth. But he doesn’t envisage this happening through compulsion or shock collective impact. No, his liberating message is to spread from soul to soul, from person to person.
If I want to see the world transformed by Christianity, I have to be transformed by it myself. There’s no other way. It is useful to recall that in these times of culture war.
On the fortieth day ‘he was lifted up’ after having promised, once again, that the Church would receive the Holy Spirit, power from on high. Believers must get used to Christ’s being present on different terms. They must learn to live sacramentally, ready to recognise him in baptism, in the breaking of bread, the forgiveness of sin, the anointing of the sick. From now on they must be conscious that daily life is divinely illumined.
A Christian isn’t call to stand around purposelessly gazing heavenward. Angels made this clear when they, on the day of Christ’s Ascension, told the Eleven a little brusquely: ‘Why do you stand looking into heaven?’ The message is clear: a pressing earthly task is waiting. That task is entrusted to the Church until Jesus ‘will come again even as [the apostles saw] him go into heaven’ (Acts 1.8-11).
That is where today’s reading picks up the thread, telling us how the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet. In term of physical distance, it was a short walk. Symbolically speaking, it was an interplanetary voyage.
How can the promises and commandments of Jesus gain access to a world, a society that has not had a share in the apostles’ experience? How can the Gospel, like leaven, be kneaded into the dough of humanity at large, to raise it?
The apostles will have pondered such things during the Pentecost Novena as they, with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, waited to be equipped, mystically, to face a task that seemed to them utterly excessive.
That same task challenges us today. Like the apostles then, we are called, now, to climb down from the Upper Room into the streets. We are charged with communicating faith to our world. We cannot withdraw into protected enclaves. To be a Catholic is not to be a member of a special-interest society or a secret fraternity. Catholics are by definition universally minded, asked to share with generosity the treasure committed to their keeping.
It is good to think of this commission today, on Norway’s National Day. Historically this day commemorates the establishment of our constitution in 1814. We express our will to exist as a nation, we claim our right to self-determination. But it happens without aggression.
On the news this morning I listened to a report about yesterday’s happenings in London. Two different marches wound their way through the city’s streets. Both held the banner of England high. But the perception among the respective marchers of what that banner stands for was diametrically opposed. Four thousand policemen were mobilised to keep the two marches apart, for fear a clash might erupt in a street fight.
In Norway everyone, thank God, joins a single procession. It belongs to the children, above all. Adults can take part as guests. We wave our flags, we say to each other, and to perfect strangers: ‘Congratulations!’ But our togetherness for Norway is not a movement against anyone else. It wouldn’t occur to a Norwegian to mark the 17th of May with a military parade. Only the guards before the royal palace carry guns, and they’re ornamental.
Today we express our gladness on account of all the good things we enjoy in this country: the liberty, generosity, and justice that mark Norwegian society. We look back with gratitude, forward with hope. But we cannot permit ourselves to be naive. We remember the Fathers of the Nation from 1814 reverently. But we know that the Norway they founded was built on a degree of exclusion. The second paragraph of the original constitution is openly anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. It appears it isn’t typically Norwegian, after all, to be inclusive. That wasn’t the case 212 years ago at Eidsvoll; and it isn’t the case today. In many ways society is narrowing. An ice-cold totalitarian wind is blowing through Europe. We feel occasional gusts of it up here, where we are, too.
It is vital, therefore, to keep building our national unity, the beautiful things about the Norway we love, on a firm foundation.
The apostles’ soul-wrestling with the import of Christian responsibility during the days between Ascension and Pentecost gives us a paradigm to follow. An early Christian text written not long after the book of Acts points out that Christians are to be to the world what the soul is to the body. Now, there‘s a task.
In the Gospel we have heard Jesus’s cry: ‘Father! Everything mine is yours. My glory shines in those who are mine.’ We are to make sure that that glorious light does not go out, that it keeps shining brightly like a lighthouse, a dependable coordinate for navigation globally and in our local Norwegian reality.

Coram Fratribus

Trapped Only this morning, on a visit to the medieval cathedral in Trondheim, did I notice this detail of adornment on the baptismal font, carved in the early twentieth century to patterns found on old fragments. It shows the devil, man’s enemy – whom the Fathers called ‘the hater of good’ – trapped in the branches and foliage of the Tree of Life. The message is clear: baptism strips him of power. Faced with the grace that issues from incorporation into Christ’s Body, he has no freedom of movement. A baptised Christian already has the resources needed for spiritual battle. He or she must just learn to put them to good use. The Christian task is to let the grace of baptism be realised through free choices for good, as we have no truck with the evil one, refusing to give him attention he does not deserve. The trapped one may growl, but has no power to harm unless we restore it by contradicting our baptismal pledges, and so give him freedom to roam.

Coram Fratribus

Good Taste To watch András Schiff teach is like standing next to the little child who had the courage to shout, ‘The emperor is naked!’ While remaining unfailingly courteous and kind to his pupils, he is clear in his judgements. ‘Stop the snake-charming!’ What is the difference between sentiment and sentimentality? Sentiment is emotion, part and parcel of who we are; sentimentality is ‘fake art, bad taste’. ‘What good taste is’, admits Schiff, ‘I don’t know; I just know that our world today is full of bad taste, and many people don’t know the difference.’ To discern it, education in depth is needed, and depth of global culture, but that is what, most of the time, we don’t get. ‘It’s like in medicine: if you’re an eye doctor, you don’t know where the nose is.’ The man who says these things can say them without rancour because he has acquired, by genius and patient slog, mastery of a vast repertoire. He is able to reproduce from memory subtle details from works by Bach, Scarlatti or Beethoven as if he’d just come up with them himself. Do we realise that in order to create something truly original and new, we need to have assimilated what is classical?

Coram Fratribus

Being Human Conversation published in America on 11 May.
Gina Christian: You provided the reflections for the Lenten Spiritual Exercises in the Vatican for Pope Leo XIV , and in your final reflection, you focused on the theme of communicating hope. In the U.S. there’s been a real interest in Nordic Noir films and books — often bleak and morally ambiguous — and a perception that Nordic culture is broadly the same. Do you find any irony in a Nordic bishop focusing on hope?
Bishop Varden: Well, your question makes me smile, because I’ve lived in a number of different countries, mainly in Europe, and I find that the more you move south in Europe, the more people have extravagant notions of the North, the more they assume that it is an area of the world plunged in perpetual darkness, where everyone is given to drink and excess, and where everyone is on antidepressants, and where people keep killing themselves with axes.
And it isn’t really quite like that. I think this idea of the long Norwegian winter powerfully impacts the imagination. But what most people don’t realize is the extreme luminosity of a Norwegian summer: exposure to light without any trace of darkness. That is intrinsic to our way of living the cycles of the year.
The phenomenon of Nordic Noir is interesting. I suspect that it is a genre that has arisen precisely because a few cunning authors have noticed that it corresponds to what people expect. And so they feed the stereotype because it sells, and because people find it entertaining in a slightly perverse sort of way.
But when you look at our own literature, poetry and music, it is to such an overwhelming extent a celebration of light and of spring. The amount of Norwegian poetry and music dedicated to spring, to the melting of the ice and the appearance of the first flowers, is fascinating.
By all means, I’m not trying for a moment to deny that there isn’t violence, too, in our story, that the Vikings weren’t brutal… But that wasn’t all they were about. I think that there is a constructed Nordic identity that spans centuries.
In your Lenten reflection about hope, you noted the modern tendency to either attach ourselves to our wounds or to airbrush them altogether. How do we avoid either extreme?
It’s largely because we absolutise our own experience that our wounds are so problematic. We’re drawn either to think, “I’m carrying this thing, and this is my great tragedy, and this is the drama of my existence.” Or to think, “Let’s make absolutely sure that no one suspects this wound that I’m carrying.”
We do that rather than looking around and saying, “Actually, being wounded is the human norm. And my wound may not be all that dissimilar from my neighbor’s wound.”
If I learn to live with my wound, and if I learn to believe and to entertain the hope that it might actually be healable, and if I pursue the correct sort of remedies, I may even be able to step beyond it.
And what will remain is a remembrance of healing.
There is so much around us that encourages us to live enclosed in ourselves, as if each of us were the only significant subject on planet Earth. Immersed in my own experience and its pathos, I forget to look around, and I forget to consider others’ experience, their exhilaration, and their suffering. And I shut myself off from the motor of compassion that enables community and even communion.
As a shepherd, how would you like to see community built in your parishes? What’s your master plan?
Well, I’m a little bit skeptical of master plans. I’m not sufficiently entrepreneurial. But I rejoice in particulars. I think of a study day we had recently at the cathedral parish in Trondheim. It was a very, very mixed crowd, lots of people came who didn’t know one another.
In the evening we had a supper together, and the room was absolutely heaving with conversation. I stood in a corner and could see all these little clusters of people who’d met one another that day, enjoying one another’s company, taking food and drink together, listening to one another, learning from one another — not even thinking of looking at their mobile phones.
The more our parishes and communities can foster that sort of togetherness, the more they will have an impact also beyond themselves, because that’s the sort of thing that draws other people in.
It has to be said that [the Trondheim cathedral parish event] had been a day made up of some conferences, but also of prayer. We’d had Mass, we’d celebrated the Divine Office together, we’d had a time of quiet prayer together.
Because our community of the day had taken both intellectual food and spiritual nourishment, had shared both silence and conversation that it could be so effective in such a short time. Those various elements have all got to be in place — the spiritual, intellectual, social and convivial.
What are your hopes and fears for artificial intelligence and its use to foster spirituality?
In terms of fostering spirituality I’m afraid I have absolutely no hopes at all for AI.
Anything can be used as a tool, but I don’t think AI is going to generate any spiritual renewal, because any spiritual renewal worthy of its name is one that pierces the human heart, and that is something that an algorithm can’t do.
Obviously there are things I can use in digital media and artificial intelligence that may save time and even make me discover useful things, but I have little faith in it as an agent of conversion.
You’ve previously spoken to the dangers of weaponizing Christianity for political aims. How do we stop that process, instead of continuing to admire the problem?
Good question. You do see this tendency all over the place; I see it in my own country as well.
First of all, I would stress that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is an end in itself, an end that is significant of a goal. Any attempt to instrumentalize the Gospel for a subsidiary purpose, be it cultural or ideological or political, is suspect.
And we must beware of any attempt to brandish Christianity void of the message and presence of the Wounded and Risen One. Any presentation of Christianity that abstracts the scandal of the Cross or perversely uses the Cross as a weapon with which to strike others is veering toward heresy or even blasphemy.
So we must remain resolutely Christocentric and resolutely committed to following Christ and to applying his commandments, as well as his promises — first of all to ourselves. And beware of too much rhetoric, beware of too many words.
We must focus rather on living coherent lives.
Ultimately, that is how Christianity spread and that is how Christianity renewed a weary world in late antiquity. By all means, there was an element of preaching and teaching and catechesis. But what bowled people over and turned societies round was seeing a new way of being human, and a new way of creating and fostering community, seeing and recognizing the possibility of reconciliation, of forgiveness, and of building a society, a new city, on the basis of reconciliation and forgiveness.
And so when Christianity is invoked as a component of what is ultimately hate speech, we’ve just got to not jump on that train.
How do we ensure that we’re not falling into the danger of getting on that train, and how do we help others to disembark from it?
The foundational principle — which is an old one, it’s there in St. Paul — is to train ourselves to speak the truth in love.
To love those who make mistakes is not to pretend that the mistakes don’t exist, but it is to address them in a constructive way, instead of yielding to an exacerbation of conflicts.
So what matters is to speak the truth in love, to make sure I’ve really studied the truth, that I understand the truth, that I’m prepared to give an answer, that I’m prepared to give an account for the hope that is in me, and that I don’t just hold on to some tribal instinct. It’s really important.
The best thing all of us can do is to study the faith more thoroughly, to read the Scriptures, to become learned in the Scriptures, to understand and live the sacramental grace of the Church deeply, in order to speak from within that.
I’d say that presents the ultimate healing remedy that you addressed in your question, because when one sees the splendour of the Church as a community of the redeemed, living by grace and illumined by Christ’s love, instantiated in a concrete community, then that has an attractiveness and a beauty that makes any other allurement of allegiance just pale into insignificance.
Some of that weaponization of Christianity is an effort to “hasten the coming of God’s kingdom on earth” through human means. As Christians, how do we balance that tension between the present life and our hope for a future in heaven?
Above all, by practising patience, which is not a very fashionable virtue, and one that everything militates against — because we live now with the illusion that if I have a need or a desire, it must be satisfied immediately. There must be something I can download, or a number I can ring, or some delivery man who can come to the door with stuff in his rucksack that will give me what I crave, or what I long for, or what I feel I can’t live without.
Such satisfaction, though, will never be final. It works out to some extent, if we have money on our credit card; it can keep us fed and clothed, and to a certain extent entertained.
But a human life is a drawn-out affair. And things take time.
Great things take time. That’s a principle Newman liked to stress.
And to be a human is a great thing.
A Norwegian summer’s night – and it’s real, not a dream.

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Brendan, May 16th.
St. Brendan, is best known for his famous voyages and for his achievements as a monk labouring for Christ in the early days of Christianity in Ireland.
Like St. Brendan we Read More 2 Comments

Brendan WilmotAndrew Coleman what a scholar Andy not like me lol

Glanire Commercial Cleaning Long hours and steady focus like Brendan’s voyages—that’s what keeps us ahead here.

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Posted: 4 days ago

Feast of Our Lady of Fatima
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima. It was on this day in 1917 when Our Lady appeared to three children in Fatima and asked them to pray for sinners and an Read More 6 Comments

Our Lady of Fatima pray for us 🙏🙏🙏

Saints of the Gospel Amen 🙏Amen 🙏

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Posted: Last week

Today we celebrate the first anniversary of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate.
Holy Father, we thank God for your pastoral leadership and tireless work for peace & on behalf of those who suffer in the world. We remember your intentions in prayer.
Trocaire Read More 1 Likes

Posted: Last week

See you this evening 😎 1 Likes

Posted: 2 weeks ago

This weekend sees the Cork International Choral Festival come to Cobh.
Today at 3pm! See you there!
#corkchoral #lovechoral #corkchoralfestival

Posted: 2 weeks ago

Fatima Pilgrimage 2026 - Carrigtwohill Parish

Carrigtwohill Parish Pilgrimage to Fatima 7th - 14th September 2026

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimages 2026

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimages 2026

Bishop Crean meets Pope Leo

Bishop William Crean meets Pope Leo on recent pilgrimage to Rome

"Behold I'm doing a new thing" says the Lord (Isaiah 43)

Pastoral letter from Bishop William Crean

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