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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

16 February 2026

Baptised and Sent - Lenten programme in Macroom

This Lent, parishes, schools and groups across Ireland are invited to journey together through a set of reflective resources inspired by Baptised and Sent which is the preparatory document for the 2025 National Pre-Synodal Assembly in Kilkenny

Grounded in the conviction that baptism is the foundation of our identity, dignity and mission, these resources help us return to the heart of Christian life: being reborn in Christ and sent out by the Spirit in service of the Gospel

You are warmly invited to join with us each Monday evening during lent in St. Colman’s Church Parish Centre, Macroom from 7pm to 8pm

Each weeks’ Lectio Divina, offers us an opportunity to reflect on the upcoming Sunday Gospel, which is prayerfully linked to key insights from Baptised and Sent.

Facilitated by Bill Kelly

St Colman's Macroom

10 February 2026

Camp Creideamh, Catholic Faith Camps for teenagers, boys and girls, will take place again in Knockadoon (East Cork) over the dates 7th – 13th June. For those who are Post-Primary school age.

Activities will include catechesis, prayer, sports, hillwalking, kayaking, swimming, music, arts and crafts and other activities.

For bookings go to the website Camp Creideamh

For more information please call Fr. Eamon Roche on 086 9972539

Camp Creideamh - Knockadoon

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

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Bishop Crean meets Pope Leo

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15 Feb 2026 - The Spirit reaches the depths of everything

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February 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

Entering Lent

From the first conference of this week’s Lenten Retreat. Italian text below.
Lent confronts us with essentials. It takes us, materially and symbolically, into a space stripped of superfluities. Things apt to distract us, even things wholesome in themselves, are removed for Read More

Coram Fratribus

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2.12-18: Between vestibule and altar, let the priests weep.
Matthew 6.1-18: Do not do what hypocrites do.
We associate Lent with self-denial. The association is correct. Self-denial is important. We must remember, though, that it is a means to an end. Read More

Coram Fratribus

Entering Lent From the first conference of this week’s Lenten Retreat. Italian text below.
Lent confronts us with essentials. It takes us, materially and symbolically, into a space stripped of superfluities. Things apt to distract us, even things wholesome in themselves, are removed for a season. We embrace an abstinence of the senses.
Fidelity to Christ’s example and commandments is the hallmark of Christian sincerity. The extent of the peace we embody — that signal peace ‘which the world cannot give’ — indicates Jesus’s abiding presence in us. We must insist on this now, when the Gospel is sometimes deployed as a weapon in culture wars.
Instrumentalisations of Christian language and signs should be challenged, not just by wan outrage, but by teaching the terms of authentic spiritual warfare. For Christian peace is not a promise of ease; it is a condition for transformed society.
It is timely to articulate the radicality of Christian ‘peace’ while we remind ourselves and others of the truth in St John Climacus’s words: ‘There is no greater obstacle to the presence of the Spirit in us than anger.’
The Church instils our Lenten programme with peace. She detracts nothing from her call to do battle against vices and harmful passions — her language is ‘Yes, yes’, ‘No, no’, not ‘sometimes this’, ‘sometimes that’.
She gives us instead, as we start each Lent’s battle, a peaceful melody as a seasonal soundtrack: a tract of great beauty that, for over a thousand years, the Church has sung on the First Sunday of Lent, to introduce the account of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness.
The tract sets the text of Psalm 90, the Qui habitat. This work of melodic exegesis deserves attention. It is not just a relic of ancient aesthetics. It carries a vital message.
St Bernard of Clairvaux was attentive to this message. In the Lent of 1139 he preached a cycle of 17 sermons on the Qui habitat, reflecting on what it means to live by grace as we fight evil, foster good, uphold truth, and follow the exodus path from unfreedom towards the land of promise, veering neither to the right nor to the left, remaining peaceful, conscious that underneath what may at times seem to us a tight-rope walk ‘are the everlasting arms’.
He summons us to loving and clear-headed discipleship.
***
La Quaresima ci mette di fronte all’essenziale. Ci porta in uno spazio materiale e simbolico liberato dal superfluo. Le cose che ci distraggono, anche quelle buone, vengono messe temporaneamente da parte. Abbracciamo liberamente un periodo di astinenza dai sensi.
La fedeltà all’esempio e ai comandamenti di Cristo è il segno distintivo dell’autenticità cristiana. La portata della pace che incarniamo — quella pace esemplare “che il mondo non può dare” — testimonia la presenza costante di Gesù in noi.
È importante insistere su questo punto mentre il Vangelo tante volte viene strumentalizzato come arma nelle guerre culturali.
Ogni manipolazione delle parole e dei segni cristiani per altri scopi va vigorosamente contestata. Allo stesso tempo, è importante correggere le idee sbagliate non solo contestandole con l’indignazione, ma insegnando e mostrando in cosa consista l’autentica lotta spirituale. La pace cristiana non è una promessa di vita facile; è la condizione per una società trasformata.
È tempo di articolare la radicalità della “pace” cristiana, il suo radicamento nel giusto, coraggioso dono di sé, ricordando allo stesso tempo a noi stessi e agli altri la verità delle parole immortali di san Giovanni Climaco: “Non c’è ostacolo più grande alla presenza dello Spirito in noi che la collera”.
La Chiesa instilla la pace nel nostro programma quaresimale. Non sminuisce l’invito a combattere i vizi e le passioni nocive: il suo linguaggio è “Sì, sì”, “No, no”, non “ora questo”, “ora quello”.
Ma la Chiesa ci offre all’inizio della battaglia quaresimale una melodia che porta pace, come colonna sonora per questo tempo. Da oltre mille anni la liturgia romana della Prima Domenica di Quaresima mantiene come componente fissa un tractus di squisita bellezza che prepara al Vangelo, sempre quello della tentazione di Cristo nel deserto.
Il tractus riporta quasi integralmente il testo del Salmo 90, Qui habitas. È un’opera di esegesi melodica che merita la nostra attenzione. Non si tratta della reliquia di un’estetica obsoleta. Il tractus comunica un messaggio vitale.
Un uomo attento a quel messaggio fu san Bernardo. Nella Quaresima del 1139 predicò ai suoi monaci un ciclo di diciassette sermoni sul Qui habitat. Affronta cosa significhi vivere nella grazia quando combattiamo il male, promuoviamo il bene, difendiamo la verità e seguiamo il percorso dell’esodo dalla schiavitù verso la terra promessa, senza deviare né a destra né a sinistra, rimanendo in pace, consapevoli che sotto quello che a volte può sembrare un camminare sul filo del rasoio “ci sono le braccia eterne”.
Ci invita a impegnarci con slancio nuovo a un discepolato pieno d’amore e lucido.
Photograph: Brother Martin Horwath, Mount Saint Bernard Abbey

Coram Fratribus

Fully Alive Many people are rightly fond of quoting a remark from the fourth book of St Irenaeus’s treatise Against Heresies. In its Latin version it comes down to us as, ‘Gloria enim Dei vivens homo’, often translated:’The glory of God is man fully alive’. It speaks of the promise of our nature, the beauty of existence, humanity’s dignity. Yet let’s beware of reading it in a self-congratulatory way. It does not invite complacency, but conversion. I thought of this phrase when reciting the Office of Readings this morning. It gives us a passage from the same book of Irenaeus’s Against Heresies: ‘Haec enim gloria hominis, perseverare et permanere in Dei servitute’: ‘For this is man’s glory, to persevere and remain in God’s service.’ This is to be fully alive, heeding Paul’s counsel to awake from sleep, rise from the dead (cf. Eph 5.14). The same Irenaeus says, still in the same book, ‘Vita autem hominis visio Dei’, that is: ‘[True] life for man is to behold God.’ As long as we stay fixed on our mirror image, we’re moribund, really.

Coram Fratribus

Ash Wednesday Joel 2.12-18: Between vestibule and altar, let the priests weep.
Matthew 6.1-18: Do not do what hypocrites do.
We associate Lent with self-denial. The association is correct. Self-denial is important. We must remember, though, that it is a means to an end. We are expert at making means into ends, and at redirecting them to other purposes. Self-denial can easily become self-serving, even as it is piously dressed up. Perhaps we’ve turned a little pudgy over Christmas, so think: Aha! During Lent I’ll make sure I lose some weight.
There’s nothing wrong about that. The Church gives us Lent so that we can form our formlessness, but let’s be honest: we don’t really fast for the love of God if we primarily have in mind how we’ll look in a bathing-suit this summer.
God calls us to the cleansing and renewal or our heart. That is the end our bodily ascesis should serve. The Gospel warns us against hypocrisy. It’s not about appearing devout or strict or serious. On the contrary, Christ stresses that our observance should be invisible.
Our attention is to be directed towards our Father in heaven. He is in secret and sees in secret. He sees through our costumes and masks, straight into the core of our being.
More than at any other time we need to be reminded of this, we who live in the world where so much is make-believe and where, again and again, what is essential is cast aside, or forgotten, in favour of virtuality, projection, or mere frippery.
‘Let your hearts be broken’, says the Prophet Joel, inviting us to repentance. The notion of ‘repentance’ can, in my experience, be a challenge to people. Perhaps you think, ‘OK, I know I did or said this thing or that, which I shouldn’t have done or said, but I don’t feel repentant.’ Perhaps you hesitate about going to confession, thinking that the feeling must come first? I’d say: what you feel or don’t feel has no importance at all. Repentance is primarily rational. Repentance is about recognising that I have been deceitful, not lived up to an obligation, not given credible Christian witness. Confession provides, first and foremost, an occasion to be absolutely honest before God and with regard to myself. We might say that confession is a school in honest truthfulness. If we are honest, we know we shall be met with forgiving, transforming mercy. It is wonderful! Don’t miss the opportunity. If it’s been a while since you went to confession last, use this Lent to pick up the thread.
Joel speaks, too, about the priests who, between the vestibule and the altar, in the field of tension between the world and God’s presence, weep as they say: ‘Spare your people, Lord!’
To be a priest is to open one’s heart to that which pains others in order to bear this up towards the heart of God. It is to live in a state of resolute vulnerability. An ordained priest lives this mystery with especial intensity, strengthened by the grace of ordination, which he must allow to recharge him constantly, like a divine generator. Remember, though, that by baptism we have all been incorporated into a priestly people. Every Christian existence ought to be defined by growing compassion.
Today, on Ash Wednesday, we may ask: Do I deeply long for all God’s people to be spared? Am I distressed at the thought of others’ loss? Do I pray for others? Do I help and comfort them as best I can?
Or is my religion really a private business, an enterprise of self-improvement, like dieting?
In 1927, as part of a process of conversion, T.S. Eliot wrote a poem to which he gave the title Ash Wednesday. I first read it as a teenager. Some verses from it haunt me at the beginning of each Lent. Eliot summons up a gracious veiled nun. She walks, robed in white and blue, the colour of Mary, in a garden. She symbolises the faithful soul and the Church as such. She is beautiful, dignified, sublime. Then, weighty questions are put to her:
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee?
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.
To follow Jesus into the wilderness in order to watch and pray for forty days; to be signed with ashes in recognition that we are dust, but dust into which God has breathed a living soul: this is to enter into God’s work of redemption. It is to own that each human being’s salvation concerns me personally.
Let us pray that we, this Lent, may be formed in profound compassion for man, man who, right now, is ever more conscious that the world’s garden has become a desert of drouth, and that the withered apple-seed of sin is really, over time, too meagre fare.
God is working the world’s redemption. He bids us work with him, in his name. May we be present and alert when he has need of us. May we embrace with our prayer those for whom he gave his life in love, who are so easily forgotten, who so easily forget. On their behalf we shall live and labour and love.
In the name of Christ! Amen.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Eliot_s-Ash-Wednesday-V.mp3

Coram Fratribus

Leavetaking Throughout the year, the acclamation ‘Alleluia’ structures our worship. Not only do we sing it each day at Mass before the reading of the Gospel; it resounds at the end of the introduction to all the day hours in the Divine Office. Then, on Ash Wednesday, it falls silent, remaining unuttered until the deacon solemnly announces its return at the Easter Vigil. It is an ancient, beautiful custom to take leave of the Alleluia on the threshold of Lent. The eleventh-century hymn Dulce Carmen, resoundingly Englished by John Mason Neale, was composed to accompany the ritual. I have just discovered this even earlier text from the Mozarabic rite that sings of mournful-hopeful leavetaking, summoning up the spirit of Shrove Tuesday: ‘Stay with us today, Alleluia, and tomorrow thou shalt part. When the morning rises, thou shalt go thy way. Alleluia, Alleluia. The mountains and hills shall rejoice, Alleluia, while they await thy glory. Thou goest, Alleluia; may thy way be blessed, until thou shalt return with joy. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia’.

Coram Fratribus

A Good Teacher No one forgets a good teacher. I have been fortunate to have many. None, perhaps, has marked me more than John Sweet. John taught me exegesis throughout my undergraduate years. He opened up to me the Biblical text in all its complexity and beauty. Like John Sentamu, I fondly remember his cold room and warm kettle, his fingerless gloves, his supply of ginger biscuits. But these things just evoke the setting. Sentamu writes: ‘Many of us were taught not only Greek and the New Testament, but also a way of being in the world marked by graciousness, kindness, generosity, courtesy – old-fashioned values all too rare these days.’ John was the epitome of the scholar-priest, stern with regard to truth’s requirements yet concerned to communicate them kindly. Asked how one might best evangelise, he would say: ‘Attend to people.’ He taught and ministered, notes the obituary in The Times, ‘with a spirit of total, selfless dedication’. A noble epitaph.

Today 20th February is a Day of Prayer for Survivors and Victims of Abuse.
This day is not only for victims and survivors, who have been so severely injured, either inside or outside the Church, but also for families and Read More 8 Likes

Posted: 2 days ago

You are invited to Lectio Divina every WEDNESDAY during Lent in Shalom (Charleville Parish) Retreat Centre after 10am Mass
Lectio Divina—Latin for “divine reading”—is an ancient way of praying with the Word of God. This practice invites us to listen deeply Read More 6 Likes

Posted: 4 days ago

Today is Ash Wednesday - the beginning of Lent. February 18th - Day of Prayer and Fasting. 6 Likes

Posted: 4 days ago

Today is Ash Wednesday - the beginning of Lent. February 18th - Day of Prayer and Fasting. 22 Likes

Posted: 4 days ago

Are you a parish leader or a parish volunteer? Check out our new parish resources...

Posted: 5 days ago

Baptised and Sent - Lenten programme in Macroom

Baptised and Sent - Lenten programme in Macroom

Camp Creideamh - Knockadoon 7th - 13th June 2026

Camp Creideamh, Catholic Faith Camps for teenagers, boys and girls, will take place again in Knockadoon (East Cork) over the dates 7th – 13th June. For those who are Post-Primary school age.

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimages 2026

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimages 2026

Bishop Crean meets Pope Leo

Bishop William Crean meets Pope Leo on recent pilgrimage to Rome

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