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 April 2026

Easter Message
April 2026
from Bishop William Crean, Cloyne

“From darkness into light”

My friends,

Our spiritual journey through Holy Week leads us to think about Jesus’ last days. His experience in the face of betrayal, deceit, a show trial and torture to the point of execution, manifests the darkness and evil that so many innocent people today are subject to. In those last days Jesus on the other hand washed the feet of the apostles as an example of service and care. In the midst of his agony, he experienced the compassion of the women of Jerusalem and Veronica wiped the sweat and blood from his disfigured face.

The joy of Easter comes from knowing that darkness, evil, hate, even death do not have the last word. That’s our hope, our joy and our peace. Jesus’ sacrifice reveals God’s love for the world and for us today as so many innocents suffer the affliction of war.

Easter 2026

Three additional dates added for Child Safeguarding Training in the Diocese of Cloyne

Monday 13th April 7pm - 8:30pm - Midleton Pastoral Centre

Wednesday 15th April 7pm - 8:30pm - Scoil Naomh Padraig, Mill Rd, Kanturk

Thursday 16th April 7pm - 8:30pm - Macroom Parish Centre

Booking is essential, please contact Rosarie O'Riordan This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Safeguarding

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

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

Search

Latest Homily

1 Apr 2026 - Joyful Fidelity

Latest Articles

April 2026
- Easter Message 2026 from Bishop William Crean
March 2026
- Child Safeguarding Training
- Fatima Pilgrimage 2026 - Carrigtwohill Parish
February 2026
- Baptised and Sent - Lenten programme in Macroom
- 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

Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12.1-14: You shall eat it with sandals on your feet.
1 Corinthians 11.23-26: Do this in memory of me.
John 13.1-15: He poured water and began to wash the disciples feet.
Two powerful images mark this evening’s readings. First that of Read More

Coram Fratribus

Chrism Mass

Isaiah 61.1-9: The Lord God has anointed me.
Apocalypse 1.5-8: He has made of us a priestly people.
Luke 4.16-21: Today this scripture has been fulfilled.
The New Testament’s proclamation of the mystery of Jesus builds on the Old Testament. The Evangelists — Read More

Coram Fratribus

Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50.4-7: The Lord has opened my ear.
Philippians 2.6-11: Put on the mind of Christ.
Matthew 26.14-66: ‘Crucify him!’
The liturgy for Holy Week is like a play in which we are at once spectators and actors. We follow Jesus day by Read More

Coram Fratribus

Maundy Thursday Exodus 12.1-14: You shall eat it with sandals on your feet.
1 Corinthians 11.23-26: Do this in memory of me.
John 13.1-15: He poured water and began to wash the disciples feet.
Two powerful images mark this evening’s readings. First that of the first Paschal meal. The Israelites stand on the threshold of freedom. At last they can break their chains and set out for home. At this point, the’ve lived in Egypt for 430 years (Ex 12.40). That’s a long time. If we think back 430 years, we end up in 1596. That year Christian IV was crowned as king of Denmark-Norway, ‘The Twin Kingdom’. He was to reign for 60 years. We remember Christian from cities he founded or rebuilt, like Christiania, today’s Oslo. But how many of us have clear notions of what life was like here at that time? To found a future vision on what was 430 years ago is risky. Slavery in Egypt had been bad, but at least stood for something known. Departure spelt emigration into something altogether unknown.
We imagine the tension and fear in which people were wrapped as the first paschal lamb was slaughtered. It happened as they awaited ‘a loud cry […] such as has never been or will ever be again’ (Ex 11.6). The cry resounded throughout Egypt as the firstborn, that same night, perished. The blood of the lamb preserved Israel’s children, but the cry will have pierced their very bones. It makes sense that the lamb was to be eaten quickly. ‘This is the Lord’s Pasch’, the people were told: the meal represented leave-taking and transition. The first Paschal supper was not an atmospheric gathering around a nicely laid, candlelit table. It was wolfed down as people stood with belts around their waists, staffs in their hands, sandals on their feet, ready to set off into uncertainty.
The second image given us provides notable contrast. Jesus’s Paschal meal with the Twelve takes place orderedly. The disciples are sent out in advance to make things ready in an upper room equipped with benches and cushions. The Evangelists point out that Jesus had foreseen the practical aspects of the supper (cf. Mk 14.14ff.). Jerusalem is in a state of effervescence. There are pilgrims everywhere: the population was multiplied at Easter. Judas roams around after his deals with the higher clergy; the high priests are busy drumming together ‘a large crowd with swords and clubs’ (Mt 26.47) to lay hands on Jesus in a public campaign. In his vicinity, however, peace reigns. That is remarkable.
The Paschal meal is taken in stages. Jesus and his disciples will, like us this evening, have recalled the paradigmatic first Easter in Egypt. Then they eat and drink. The have a rich conversation. At the end they sing. The set ritual is enriched and transformed by two new actions which Jesus introduces: the Last Supper and the washing of the feet. Both are inexhaustibly meaningful. Both have been the object of learned, devout reflection for almost 2,000 years.
Permit me to hone in on a detail that may seem banal, but which is really, I think, essential. Whereas the Pasch in Egypt spells departure, Jesus’s Pasch in Jerusalem stands for home-coming. The Israelites went into the desert to seek a God many had forgotten, whose Name they’d only recently learned, thanks to the vision Moses had had at the Burning Bush. Jesus, whose name, entrusted to Mary, means ‘God saves’, has over time explained to the disciples, his table companions: ‘I am Truth and Life; you need look no further; just remain with me.’
In the Eucharist he institutes a mystic Presence where God can always, until the end of time, be found. In the washing of the feet he expresses the self-outpouring love that characterises God. ‘What I have done to you’, he says, ‘you must do to each other.’ Man’s best longing is not about being boss. It is by serving others that we learn to live lovingly, transcending ourselves, stretched towards a higher goal, unlimited by self-centred ambition, opened to an eternal horizon.
At the first Paschal meal people were told to keep shoes on. Jesus bids us take them off. In the Biblical universe, people take their shoes off when they stand on holy ground, like Moses at Horeb, where God told him: ‘I am the One who is here’ (Ex 3.14). They takes their shoes off, too, on coming home or arriving at a friend’s home as valued, expected guests. When the Magdalene brought her jar of alabaster into the Pharisee’s house and the host would shoo her away, Jesus said: ‘I came into your house, and you gave me no water for my feet’ (Lk 7.44). The Pharisee had offered him no abiding. The woman who was a public sinner did.
Today, on Maundy Thursday, the Lord says to us all: ‘My dear, take your shoes off at last. Your restless wandering is ended. You’re home. Remain with me; I’ll live in you.’ In the Eucharist we find stability that sustains even when the stars fall form heaven, false prophets abound, and vultures gather over corpses (cf. Mt 24). That’s worth remembering in these uncertain times. In Bread and Wine, while our feet are washed and we hear the sweet words, ‘Welcome home!’, we meet the transformative strength that peacefully overcomes the world. Amen.

Coram Fratribus

Philanthropy It’s about time the Netherlands Bach Society was awarded an international prize for services rendered to mankind. What they have produced – and made available for free – these past few years is astonishing, truly an enterprise of philanthropy. I have watched and listened to Jos van Veldhoven’s production of the St John Passion with keen attention. It touches perfection, not just for its musical excellence, but for its dramatic intelligence. Raphael Höhn is a compelling evangelist. He really knows how to tell a story. And I am not sure I’ve ever heard Ach, mein Sinn, the lament following Peter’s betrayal, sung with greater intensity than that displayed here by Gwilym Bowen. By deliberate casting, almost all performers are under 35, which serves not merely to energise the performance but to make it topical. Because we’re so used, now, to thinking Christianity old and the Church tired, we risk forgetting how young most of the drama’s protagonists were. This performance has helped me to rethink many things and to experience essentials afresh.

Coram Fratribus

Chrism Mass Isaiah 61.1-9: The Lord God has anointed me.
Apocalypse 1.5-8: He has made of us a priestly people.
Luke 4.16-21: Today this scripture has been fulfilled.
The New Testament’s proclamation of the mystery of Jesus builds on the Old Testament. The Evangelists — not to mention Paul — consistently wish to show that the promises God gave through patriarchs and prophets are accomplished in the Son of Mary. This gives rise to the rich resonances we find, for example, in the motif of Emmanuel (recalling the promise to King Ahaz), in the Holy Family’s journey to Egypt (recalling the drama of the exodus), in the donkey of Palm Sunday (recalling the prophecy of Zechariah). Only by going deep into the Old Testament can we really appreciate the beauty, fascination, and depth of the New. In the second century, in Rome, a theologian called Marcion argued that Christians have no use for the Old Testament: ‘No’, he said, ‘the Gospel is enough!’ Rightly he was declared a heretic. The Gospel can’t be understood without the Hebrew Bible, which Christians must learn to know, revere, and love.
The language and imagery of Jesus are soaked in Old Testament culture.
Yet it is rare to hear him, as today, point towards a specific passage and say: ‘Today this word has been fulfilled’. The word in question, proclaimed by Isaiah, is clearly an important one: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, the Lord God has anointed me.’ What does it mean when Jesus says he is anointed?
In Israel, anointing was associated with three exalted offices.
When the people, following instructions given on Sinai, had made ready all the equipment they needed for the cult, Aaron and his sons were, out in the wilderness, anointed as priests. ‘You shall sanctify them’, God told Moses (Ex 30.30). To be sanctified is to be set apart for a divine purpose. A priest is no longer his own. His whole being is consecrated to serve the reconciliation of the people and the glory of God. He is to become one with the sacrifice he raises up.
When Israel, settled in Canaan, sought a stable political structure, their first king was anointed. Samuel poured oil over Saul’s head and said: ‘Has not the Lord anointed you prince over his inheritance, Israel?’ (1 Sam 10.1). These words are carefully chosen. Israel is God’s inheritance. Saul is anointed as the Lord’s lieutenant, not as an omnipotent monarch. When Saul forgets this and starts getting bolshy, he is deposed. To be anointed king, biblically speaking, is not to be loaded with privilege; it is to receive immense responsibility for others.
Still later, prophets are anointed. Elijah is told: ‘You shall anoint Elisha to be prophet in your place’ (1 Kings 19.16). People often think a prophet is one who predicts the future. This may be one spect of his ministry, true enough; but it is not primary. A biblical prophet is anointed to see and speak clearly, enabled to interpret the present moment in the light of God’s eternal truth. His task is to teach people what is truly going on here and now. If occasionally he is given a glimpse of the future, it is to show others where they are bound.
So when Jesus says: ‘The Lord God has anointed me’, he implicitly declares himself Priest, King, Prophet. He has come as the bearer of healing, freedom, and justice. He inaugurates ‘a year of grace’. In its context ‘guilt’ is not a purely calculable thing. He bids us create a society based on fraternity, not on cynical transactions.
Baptism incorporates us into Christ’s Body. It makes every single Christian priest, king, and prophet (Lumen Gentium 31). All of us are called to serve as an instrument of reconciliation, to watch over the Lord’s inheritance, to be clear-sighted witnesses to justice and truth. The oil of gladness has been poured out upon us. It makes our lives vibrate with exultancy.
At the same time a Christian is acquainted with grief. At Lauds this morning the liturgy put into our mouths these words: ‘My soul is sorrowful unto death’. By this cry, uttered in Gethsemani (Mt 26.38), Christ grieved over the fact that the world did not want to receive the grace he had come to confer. God tells the world: ‘Choose life!’ The world retorts: ‘Death!’ Indeed, as we are reminded during these solemn days, the world even tries to put God himself to death.
This tension between joy and pain pierces the priest’s heart in a special way. At ordination the priest’s existence is sealed with the sign of the cross. He is a man set apart to serve God’s purpose in the world. Once for all he has declared that God may make use of him, until death, exactly as he pleases. He has accepted the tremendous task of acting in the person of Christ (Lumen Gentium 10). This is especially evident when, at the altar, he offers up the sacrifice of reconciliation, Christ’s Body and Blood. But the altar is to configure his person, too.
During this Chrism Mass, we who without merit of our own have, in the name of Jesus and by his power, been ordained to serve the sanctification of God’s people, restate our wish to be conformed to Christ through self-denial. We renew our promise of fidelity. We reconsecrate ourselves to grace and truth so that Jesus, the Head and Chief Shepherd of the Church, may act and make himself visible in our poverty. This we do gladly, amazed that God chooses to make use of us, filling our days with praise. From experience we can testify that God makes the weak strong. We testify that God can fill a human life entirely, making its darkness bright, imbuing its trials with peace. The Lord is faithful. If we, too, stay faithful, we have nothing to fear, even face to face with the threats of our time. For let us not forget: our time, too, our strange, menacing time, can become a year of grace.
In Christ’s name!
Amen.
A priest’s hands are anointed during the rite of ordination.

Coram Fratribus

Palm Sunday Isaiah 50.4-7: The Lord has opened my ear.
Philippians 2.6-11: Put on the mind of Christ.
Matthew 26.14-66: ‘Crucify him!’
The liturgy for Holy Week is like a play in which we are at once spectators and actors. We follow Jesus day by day, then hour by hour, through the last lap of his earthly life, from he enters Jerusalem surrounded by Hosannas until he is raised up on the Cross, where cosmic silence precedes the cry: ‘It is accomplished!’
Nothing binds us together more as Church than celebrating these days together. Here, in the mystery of Christ’s Pasch, we find the basis for authentic synodality. To walk with Jesus is to say ‘Yes!’ to his Via Dolorosa in order, through the cross and death, to reach freedom and fullness of life.
The Church draws us into the drama of the Passion by simple but effective means. Today’s Mass starts with rejoicing. Forty days have passed since Ash Wednesday. In a way, we’re at the journey’s end. Arrival after a good stretch of solid walking is a joyful business. Any mountaineer knows that.
The chaos that results each year in our atrium when the acolytes pass palm branches round gives a taste of the heady, busy atmosphere in which Jesus made his entry on a donkey — a donkey! — into Jerusalem accompanied by the crowd’s eloquent gestures. One spread his coat on the road. Another waved greenery. All sang. All moved concertedly forward around the mounted, riding One.
It is … fun to take part, like this, when something unusual happens. It is fun to be near the centre of things. With great sincerity, then, we now sing what people sang back then: ‘Honour, praise! You are the king of glory! Hosanna!’
In this way the liturgy touches a vital aspect of our faith: that of enthusiasm. It is right that we, followers of Christ, should let ourselves go a bit now and then, becoming once again like children, yielding to the need unselfconsciously to celebrate something great as part of an enveloping, confident troop. Palm Sunday testifies to unity and to a common goal. We believe in that goal’s triumph!
The Church, like a wise Mother, lets us rejoice a while on these terms. Then she lets us consider our enthusiasm from a distance, in retrospect. That is how liturgical space works. Within it, we’re thrown backwards and forwards between past, present, and future, learning what it is like to see life in the light of eternity.
At first sight, it may seem weird that we should be confronted today with the story of the Passion. Doesn’t it break the chronological sequence? The really awful things, after all, only happen on Good Friday. Could we not be allowed, just today, to be merry in the intoxication of hosannas?
This is where we must remember the theatrical aspect of our celebration.
When we go to the theatre to see The Wild Duck, we know how the piece ends. From the moment the curtain rises, we envisage poor Hedvig lying on the attic floor with Grandfather’s smoking pistol in her hand.
To watch classical theatre is different from watching a new Netflix series. What interests us is not what will happen in the end — we know that; what interests us is to see how tension builds, how the tragedy takes shape. A brilliant author, helped by a good director, can portray Fate by putting before our eyes fatal choices made by the dramatis personae along the way, often unwittingly.
The Passion of Palm Sunday puts the spotlight on us who make up the ‘crowd’ around Jesus. As long as he rides majestic and promising, we gather round him, shout Hoorah, and are glad to designate him king. But when he is accused, reviled, humiliated? Then there is no ‘crowd’ any more, only a gang of individuals showing their teeth. The voices that a while ago sang, ‘Blessed be he!’, now cry, ‘Crucify!’. People turn into a pack of wolves; and one wolf is quite happy to eat another once they have howled together for a while.
This tendency is deep in us. The first fruit of original sin was fratricide. Only by striking Abel down, Cain thought, could he become somebody. Scripture, and history, show us repeatedly how occasions to step on another, some designated object of disdain, can turn into corporate madness, be the object guilty of misdemeanours or not.
Here in our country, where we like to think of ourselves as paragons of peaceful order, we have seen some primitive expressions of these dynamics in the way our crown princess has recently been dragged through the mud. That people in high public office are answerable for choices they have made which redound on the nation is a matter of course. But if the nation, thereby, turns into a huddle of snarling dogs, it puts itself in a doubtful light.
I mention this precise example to make a spiritual point: the weather-cock-like shiftiness that leads to Jesus’s crucifixion, turning truth-seeking into blood-thirst, is alive in my heart, perhaps in yours also.
What do we do about it?
In the Saint Matthew Passion, Bach intersperses a chorale when the Twelve, at the Last Supper, after hearing Jesus’s words, ‘One of you will betray me’, ask: ‘Is it me?’ The text of the chorale exclaims, on behalf of us all, quite as in the chorus of an ancient Greek tragedy: ‘It is I! I should do penance!’.
Yes, I am the traitor. I have all it takes. But I don’t want to betray anymore. I want to pay what I owe, be renewed, learn what it is to be faithful.
Holy Week makes an eternal drama almost insufferably concrete.
We must decide afresh: which side am I really on? That of blessing or that of a curse, that of pardon or that of condemnation, that of life or that of death?
‘Abide with me’, says Jesus: ‘Watch with me’. Yes, that’s what we must do.
Lord Jesus, surrender us not to our weakness! Let our part in your chalice reform our life, and the world’s.
Amen.
German fifteenth-century relief, now in the The Metropolitan Museum.

Coram Fratribus

Tordis Ørjasæter In her last book, published in 2024, Tordis Ørjasæter noted a childhood remembrance her husband Jo had shared from his native Gudbrandsdalen. Once, when he went to visit ‘one of the aunts on the farm, who lay dying, she bade him farewell with the words: ‘Welcome to my funeral!” What a beautiful and touching thing that even death can be an occasion to show hospitality. Yesterday, on her ninety-ninth birthday, Tordis died. It is natural, then, to evoke this motif. She was a wonderfully hospitable, generous woman. I met her first on a veranda in Assisi long ago. It was a gift to be offered her friendship, which was easy to cultivate. Quite as a matter of course we could, each time we met, pick up the thread from our last conversation. A real scholar, she had her wits about her till the end. If one needed to trace a reference in Undset, one got an immediate answer, always given with the joy of passing on knowledge that is precious and dear. The fact that her fine biography of Sigrid Undset has not been translated into English is one of life’s mysteries. Tordis was curious about eternity. Now she sees. May her memory be eternal!

Today is , a Celebration of the Lord’s Passion. ‘Christ gives his life, he is “lifted up�....

Today is #Good #Friday, a Celebration of the Lord’s Passion. ‘Christ gives his life, he is “lifted up” on the Cross, but willingly’. #HolyWeek2026 ✝️ 1 Likes

Posted: 4 hours ago

Easter Message
April 2026
from Bishop William Crean, Cloyne.
“From darkness into light”
My friends,
Our spiritual journey through Holy Week leads us to think about Jesus’ last days. His experience in the face of betrayal, deceit, a show trial and torture to Read More 9 Likes

Posted: 4 hours ago

#HolyThursday, Christ redeemed us all and gave perfect glory to God principally through His Paschal mystery: dying He destroyed our death and rising He restored our life. #HolyWeek2026 ✝ 1 Likes

Posted: 17 hours ago

Please join us in St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh tonight Wednesday at 7.30pm for our Diocesan Chrism Mass or online https://cobhcathedralparish.ie/mass-streaming/ 9 Likes

Posted: Yesterday

Joint Holy Week and Easter 2026 message by Archbishops of Archbishop Eamon Martin and Archbisho....

Joint Holy Week and Easter 2026 message by Archbishops of #Armagh Archbishop Eamon Martin and Archbishop John McDowell: ‘Peace be with you’
To read more click ⬇️
catholicbishops.ie/2026/03/29/joi… 2 Likes

Posted: 4 days ago

Easter Message 2026 from Bishop William Crean

Easter Message April 2026from Bishop William Crean, Cloyne

Child Safeguarding Training

Three additional dates added for Child Safeguarding Training in the Diocese of Cloyne

Fatima Pilgrimage 2026 - Carrigtwohill Parish

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

Baptised and Sent - Lenten programme in Macroom

Baptised and Sent - Lenten programme in Macroom

Search

Latest Homily

Latest Articles

Easter Message
April 2026
from Bishop William Crean, Cloyne