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

Rededication

Homily preached at the rededication of the Catholic chapel at Stiklestad, the site of St Olav’s martyrdom. It took place on the birthday of Sigrid Undset, chairman of the committee that oversaw the building of the chapel in 1930, to Read More

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

Alight ‘The formative impact over time of praying day and night in a Cistercian church comes from the interplay of light and shadow. The world we have made full of glaring lights and those maddening fixtures that switch themselves on at the merest twitch of a spider, making an option for subdued light impossible, can cause us to forget what it is to be at ease in such in-between-ness. Bright light is not always what is needed to reveal an object’s perfection. The gloss of oriental lacquerware shows to best effect in flickering candlelight; gilded medieval statuary takes for granted the flux of dawn and dusk. In the glare of a spotlight the gold just looks vulgar.’
From Alight with Hidden Glory, published this week.

Coram Fratribus

Cistercian Shape I was glad to be able to provide the following blurb for Nathaniel Peter’s excellent book on the early Cistercian movement, just out: ‘The early iconography of Cîteaux tends to show Cistercians engaged in purposeful work: chopping wood, sowing fields, building houses. The Order’s fecundity was enabled by a spirit of enterprise. The enterprise, though, was theologically informed. Nathaniel Peters traces the shape of a twelfth-century movement that somehow produced, at the same time, mystical literature, novel architecture, and advances in sheep-farming. His elegant study of the intersection of Trinitarian and Eucharistic doctrines in three Cistercian thinkers points towards a timeless truth: the sacramental, incarnational realism of Christian doctrine. That is an emphasis we need right now, in times given to virtual flights of fancy.’

Coram Fratribus

Rededication Homily preached at the rededication of the Catholic chapel at Stiklestad, the site of St Olav’s martyrdom. It took place on the birthday of Sigrid Undset, chairman of the committee that oversaw the building of the chapel in 1930, to mark the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Stiklestad. You can find photographs of the opening here.
Politics is marked by rough and tumble. One day a smiling chief stands on an smart balcony, a carnation on his lapel, lauded by the people; the next day, the same crowd quite happily throws him out of the window. That’s the way it is now; that’s the way it’s always been. When Olav Haraldsson came back to Norway in 1015, claiming the kingdom, some people resisted, true; but most pressed him to their heart. They preferred a Norwegian sceptre to the foreign yoke of the Danish king.
Olav had ten good years. He established a Christian code of law; united the country; nurtured the notion of what it might mean to form a nation.
Norwegians liked this at first. Then they started murmuring.
Olav seemed to ask too much. His laws restricted local grandees, used to ruling the roost. Suddenly it seemed quite nice, after all, to have a king who lived far away.
The machinations of the Norwegian gentry at the Danish court forced Olav to leave the country. Where should he go?
He went to Kyivan Rus’, where Grand Prince Yaroslav and his queen Ingegjerd — whom Olav had loved in his youth — received him warmly. Olav spent a year and a half with them. Yaroslav tried to cheer him up as best he could. He advised Olav to forget about Norway. He offered him Bulgaria. The weather is a lot better there.
Snorre tells us that Olav considered this offer. At the same time he weighed up more radical options. Should he relinquish his royal title and set off as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, where he had been bound sixteen years earlier? He had got as far as Cadiz then, when a man appeared to him in a dream, and said: ‘Return to your inheritance! You are to be king of Norway for perpetuity.’ Olav further considered becoming a monk.
His time in Kyivan exile deepened him. He settled accounts with himself. His motives were purified.
I thought of his experience when, on 10 May 2023, I was sauntering around Kyiv while the city took a deep breath after a night of heavy bombing. Cardinal Arborelius and I were making a visit of solidarity on behalf of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference. With reverence we paused before the Blue Church, where countless notices commemorate the fallen of Ukraine in Russia’s ongoing war of aggression.
Then we were taken to see Sancta Sophia, Kyiv’s cathedral, a magnificent edifice.
One has always known that Yaroslav masterminded its construction, but there has been disagreement about when it began. Archeological evidence has now brought near unanimity: foundations were laid in 1011. The church will have looked splendid when Olav visited Rus’ in 1028. Yaroslav was proud of Sancta Sophia. I refuse to believe that he wouldn’t have taken Olav there on a thorough tour, whistling with contentment.
It is profoundly affecting, then, for a Norwegian to find himself in Sancta Sophia and look up towards the cupola. It shows a mosaic of Christ Pantokrator, ‘Ruler of all’.
The cathedral is dedicated to Christ as the incarnate expression of God the Father’s eternal Wisdom. Devotion to Wisdom was part of Olav’s political and (I’ll risk the term) existential project. The church in Kyiv gives architectural and visual expression to his long-pondered sense of the meaning of existence.
The memory of Sancta Sophia will have illumined Olav when, again, he had a decisive dream. Olav Tryggvason appeared to him and said: ‘What are you waiting for? Go back to the kingdom that is your inheritance!’ So he set out from Rus’ bound for this place, Stiklestad, where he would find the vision of the heavenly ladder as well as the axe and sword by which he fell, and the stone upon which he died.
When, a bit later into 2023, we realised that our Catholic chapel here on the hill required urgent restoration, it seemed natural to manifest the axis that unites Kyiv with Værdalen, this area. The Pantokrator that now embellishes the chapel’s axis recalls the cupola of Sancta Sophia. It is positioned opposite the stained-glass portrait of Olav on the west wall. There he stands, eyes set on Christ, as he gets ready for battle.
The Wisdom Christ brings oriented the final, defining stage of Olav’s life.
Seen with worldly eyes, this Wisdom seems like foolishness. ‘No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his friends.’ It was by giving his life, after throwing away his sword, that Olav, in death, won the nation. Thereby he gives it direction to this day, if we would pay heed. He is still Rex perpetuus Norvegiae, Norway’s perpetual king.
Today’s world does not, on the whole, give a damn about Wisdom. Yaroslav’s Rus’ is still under mad attack. Olav’s Norway is easily seduced by senselessness.
It is useful, then, to look intently towards the apse in this chapel, and remember: the Wisdom the Church brings, to which she testifies, isn’t an optional tool for self-improvement; it stands for the principle by which we, and our choices, will be judged.
Face to face with Wisdom two paths appear on the horizon: the path of death and the path of life. We cannot walk both at the same time. We must choose.
Sigrid Undset was conscious of this when, in 1930, she oversaw the construction of this chapel. Undset sensed which way the wind was blowing in Europe. She despised fascism with an undivided heart. She saw how fascism perverts the human heart, nurturing Luciferian dreams of omnipotence. When man starts to think himself pantokrator, the ultimate criterion for all things, he is capable of terrible stupidity, and even more terrible cruelty.
In an essay from 1935, Undset warns against what she calls ‘the isolation of fetishism — worship of things and ideas we have fashioned ourselves.’ Such worship, she writes, ‘is ultimately self-worship, and since humankind cannot subsist without supernatural help, it spells extinction and death.’
Undset recognised the ‘the isolation of fetishism’ as a grave peril in the 1930s. We know what it led to then, even though people are more and more inclined to forget.
Are we conscious of where this tendency might take us today as it continues, now, to find new and hateful expression?
The fact that the image of God’s Holy Wisdom, made tangible as self-giving love, is now peacefully manifest here on the hill of Stiklestad, which stands for our nation’s heart, Cor Norvegiae, seems to me a prophetic sign and a call to self-examination as we look forward to the millennium in 2030 of Olav’s oblative death.
Amen.
A sound recording of the homily, in Norwegian, is available here:
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Stiklestad-20.-mai-2026.mp3

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.

Thursday May 21st, Rosary, Mass and Adoration at 7.30pm in our chapel in Ballybutler 🙏 1 Comments

Cloyne Diocese will u get the mass shown

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Posted: 2 days ago

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: 6 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: 2 weeks ago

See you this evening 😎 1 Likes

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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