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

Light a candle at St Colman's

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Fáilte, Welcome

to the website for the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland

Bishop William Crean

24 November 2025

Homily for the Feast of St. Colman of Cloyne

24th November 2025

Today we gather to celebrate the feast of St. Colman of Cloyne, one of the remarkable saints who helped weave the fabric of our Christian heritage here in Ireland. His life, marked by conversion, courage, and pastoral zeal, offers us an inspiring example as we strive to live out our faith in 2025 and beyond.

We are also celebrating this year - The Jubilee Year of Hope.

The logo shows four stylized figures, representing all of humanity, coming from the four corners of the earth. They embrace each other to indicate the solidarity and fraternity which should unite all peoples.

The figure at the front is holding onto the cross. It is not only the sign of the faith which this lead figure embraces, but also of hope, which can never be abandoned, because we are always in need of hope, especially in our moments of greatest need.

There are the rough waves under the figures, symbolising the fact that life’s pilgrimage does not always go smoothly in calm waters. Often the circumstances of daily life and events in the wider world require a greater call to hope. As a Diocese and as a church we are in a time of great change and enormous challenges. The waters are not smooth but choppy.

Photo taken in St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh

Bishop William Crean meets Pope Leo on recent pilgrimage to Rome

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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.

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30 Nov 2025 - ‘Intentional Living’

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November 2025
- St. Colman's Cathedral - 24th November 2025 St. Colman's Day
- Homily by V. Rev. Canon Michael Leamy, PP, VF
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

Desert Fathers 49

You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
The reason we have written Read More

Coram Fratribus

Not Worthy

Homily given as part of an Advent recollection at the Dominican church in Kraków following the launch of the Polish version of my book Chastity.
When Jesus went into Capernaum a centurion came up and pleaded with him. ‘Sir,’ he said ‘my Read More

Coram Fratribus

Bread Grows in Winter

I’ve just received in the mail Jennifer Bryson’s translation of Ida Görres’s seminal book Bread Grows in Winter, handsomely published by Ignatius Press. I was honoured to be asked to contribute a preface. Here it is:
I picked up a battered German Read More

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 49 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
The reason we have written this rule is that, by observing it in monasteries, we can show that we have some degree of virtue and the beginnings of monastic life. But for anyone hastening on to the perfection of monastic life, there are the teachings of the holy Fathers, the observance of which will lead him to the very heights of perfection. What page, what passage of the inspired books of the Old and New Testaments is not the truest of guides for human life? What book of the holy Catholic Fathers does not resoundingly summon us along the true way to reach the Creator? […] Are you hastening towards your heavenly home? Then with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners. After that, you can set out for the loftier summits of the teachings and virtues we mentioned above, and under God’s protection you will reach them. Amen.
Throughout this series I have referred to the teaching of St Benedict. The time has come to speak of him specifically. Benedictine monasticism has shaped the West. Not for nothing did Pope St John Paul II in 1980 proclaim St Benedict a patron of Europe. When we think of Benedict’s legacy we may think first of imposing buildings, venerable institutions, Gregorian chant, and thick, learned, leather-bound tomes. St Benedict seems to represents the settled solidity our world today has largely lost. So we may assume that his mindset was different from that of the Desert Fathers whose humble cells were provisional, who set up no schools, who prayed in private, and were more concerned with giving books away than with gathering them in libraries.
Of course, there are distinctions. Benedict was a Roman through and through. He excelled in organisation and expressed himself in lapidary prose. His was a world of forests and broad fertile plains dotted with villas. A desert of sand he could only have imagined. Benedict was by character discreet. His governance was exquisitely balanced. It is hard to fancy him giving the sort of counsel Antony gave when, to teach a man detachment, he sent him out among birds of prey and wild dogs covered in bacon. Let us not, though, make too much of these external features. Inwardly Benedict stood in grateful continuity with those monks who had lived and fought in Egypt. If you have studied the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers in depth, then turn to the Regula and Life of Benedict, you will pick up countless resonances. Should your ear not yet be sufficiently attuned, turn to the index pages of a critical edition of the Rule and you will see the frequency and range of its author’s references.
Let us not forget that monastic life became highly organised in Egypt as well. Already in Antony’s day, colonies were set up so that Athanasius, travelling inland from his see of Alexandria, could note: ‘there were in the mountains monastic dwellings like tents filled with heavenly choirs, singing Psalms, rejoicing in the hope of things to come, working to give alms, having love for each other and being in harmony with one another. To see it was truly to see a land like no other.’
What Antony’s spiritual descendants built was a new civilisation. Athanasius saw it and was glad. St Pachomius, born a generation later, took the task of establishing monasticism further. He brought monks together in fixed, intentional communities. At the command of an angel, Pachomius composed a monastic rule destined to have great influence. St Basil read it and used it in his ordinances. St Jerome translated it into Latin. In these ways it came to nourish St Benedict as well.
By the time Pachomius died in 348, his community had well over a hundred members. It would be wrong, therefore, to entertain the idea, a caricature, that Egyptian monasticism stayed somehow primitively pure, charismatic, and personal while in Europe it was shackled by institutions. To the south as well as to the north of the Mediterranean Basin, wise women and men worked hard to pass on and perpetuate the fire that the likes of Antony, Macarius, and Moses had lighted in many human hearts. Any charism, to last, must eventually find objective expression in a framework of sharable stability. There is no inevitable contradiction between rule and life. The challenge is to maintain the rule infused with life, and to regulate vitality.
The passage cited above is from the last chapter of Benedict’s Rule. Summing up his teaching, it provides a list of Further Reading. Benedict’s project continues that of the earlier Fathers. He distils their insights. What he modestly calls a little rule for beginners is in fact pure essence. Any monk or nun who has read it and sought to put it into practice will testify to this. Even more so will abbots or abbesses who, over time, have taught the rule to their communities, discovering what depths exist under surfaces of seeming simplicity. Benedict, too, incites us to set our sight high, to aim for ‘perfection’ in the sense I developed in the first few episodes. The wisdom of the Desert Fathers is not confined to the past, or to books. It is alive, a generator of good zeal, in countless monasteries now. Their continued flourishing is crucial to the ecosystem of the Church’s life. We may hope that generous, courageous women and men , thirsty for fullness of life, will answer the monastic call still.
St Benedict being clothed in the monastic habit. Fresco from the church of Subiaco.

Coram Fratribus

Not Worthy Homily given as part of an Advent recollection at the Dominican church in Kraków following the launch of the Polish version of my book Chastity.
When Jesus went into Capernaum a centurion came up and pleaded with him. ‘Sir,’ he said ‘my servant is lying at home paralysed, and in great pain.’ ‘I will come myself and cure him’ said Jesus. The centurion replied, ‘Sir, I am not worthy to have you under my roof; just give the word and my servant will be cured. For I am under authority myself, and have soldiers under me; and I say to one man: Go, and he goes; to another: Come here, and he comes; to my servant: Do this, and he does it.’ When Jesus heard this he was astonished and said to those following him, ‘I tell you solemnly, nowhere in Israel have I found faith like this. And I tell you that many will come from east and west to take their places with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob at the feast in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 8.5-11.
This encounter of our Lord with the centurion is intimate to us. Each day, before Holy Communion, we repeat the officer’s words: ‘Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof!’ The meaning of the words in the Gospel seems self-evident.
Let us note, though, this this humble confession is made in response to Jesus’s benevolence. When the Lord hears of the paralysed servant, he does not hesitate, but says at once: ‘I will come myself’. Unconditional kindness prompts the centurion’s self-reflection. After all, he had not come disinterestedly. He carried a request, expected assistance. He was a military man of might. Jesus’s kindness disarms him.
If at times we find people we deal with lacking in humility, we might well examine ourselves in the light of this scenario. Does humble generosity on my part call it forth in others? Or is harshness I encounter a reflection of my own hard heart?
Jesus does not go to the centurion’s house, but sends him home with the word: ‘Go, be it done for you as you have believed.’ We are told that the servant ‘was healed at that very moment’. A visitation did, then, take place nonetheless. For God is in his word. And a word gone forth from his mouth does not return to him empty (Isa 55.11).
There is another aspect to consider. Jesus enters not under the centurion’s roof, but welcomes the centurion under his. We have heard how Isaiah, in a wonderful prophecy, says that ‘the glory of the Lord will be a canopy and a tent to give shade by day from the heat, refuge and shelter from the storm and the rain.’
God’s glorious mercy manifest in Jesus is for us this canopy. The centurion found respite underneath it, and immense spaciousness. It matters to keep this incident in mind when later in the Gospel we hear Jesus say, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Mt 15.24). By his actions he had already broadened the scope of this mission, inviting us always to interpret what he says in the light of what he does.
So how can we best make our own confession, at this Mass: ‘Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof!’? By recognising the immensity of God’s grace and our own limited graciousness; by acknowledging frankly aspects of our life that need repair; while daring to whisper nonetheless: ‘Yes, there is quite a mess under my roof, but enter anyway’. Then by resolving to get up and move without delay when the Lord summons us under his roof, there to find comfort, nourishment and strength, grace to live by and to share, that others may live. Amen.

Coram Fratribus

Canta et ambula St Augustine’s sensitivity to music is well documented. In the Confessions he says how struck he was by the singing in the cathedral of Milan: ‘How I wept, deeply moved by your hymns, songs, and the voices that echoed through your Church!’ Better than anyone he has made sense of the jubilus in chant, ‘a certain sound of joy without words, the expression of a mind poured forth in joy’, joy that is ineffable, yet singable. Today, on the last day of the Church’s year, the Divine Office gives us another wonderful text on singing. Augustine speaks here of the kind of singing apt to keep our courage up as we pilgrimage towards hope in a world that often appears like a vale of tears. His words have great poignancy. They resound credibly still as the counsel of a father, a friend: ‘Always go onward in goodness, right faith, good habits. Sing, and walk onwards.’ Thus we shall be preserved from discouragement and pusillanimity.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Canta-et-ambula-1.m4a

Coram Fratribus

Tolkien’s Creation Asked by The Tablet to contribute to its annual Books of the Year supplement, I was happy to recommend a volume that has accompanied me for much of the autumn as I’ve been reading it in small chunks at breakfast: ‘What happens when a classical philologist turns his mind to the study of one of modern literature’s most audacious, best-loved enterprises? Read Giuseppe Pezzini’s Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation to find out. The book is at once an overview of Tolkien’s work and an essay in literary theory. It is elegantly composed. And it’s fun. It will tell you at last what Queen Berúthiel’s cats are all about.’ Professor Pezzini’s book is eye-opening and ear-opening. He invites readers to listen again to the noise Frodo heard ‘in the distance. He knew that it was not leaves, but the sounds of the Sea far-off; a sound he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams. A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea.’

Coram Fratribus

Bread Grows in Winter I’ve just received in the mail Jennifer Bryson’s translation of Ida Görres’s seminal book Bread Grows in Winter, handsomely published by Ignatius Press. I was honoured to be asked to contribute a preface. Here it is:
I picked up a battered German copy of Ida Görres’s Bread Grows in Winter from a junk shop years ago. This book, first published in 1970, has been a source of inspiration to me. During my first few years of episcopacy I often took it with me on journeys, as a travel companion. Trying to work out how to exercise the ministry, I found in Görres a sure guide unfailingly summoning me to focus on essentials.
Ida Görres was a woman of acute intelligence, able to fathom in herself great tensions. Her bicultural background kept her from simplifying questions of identity, cultural or ecclesiastical. When the Second Vatican Council began, she followed it enthusiastically. She remained committed to the Council’s teaching, but was increasingly appalled by the crassness with which it was instrumentalised, here and there, as an excuse for mere deconstruction. She saw spiritual and intellectual treasures being thrown overboard as the bark of the Church made its way through choppy waters. This made her grieve both on her own behalf and on that of others.
Of course, she had read enough Church history to know that such losses are never final. There will always be pearl-divers ready to descend to the bottom of the sea to fetch treasures up again, patiently removing strings of algae as they rejoice in sharing their finds. But why go to such trouble when a peaceful handing-on (in Latin, a traditio) in view of present mission and future growth remains an option?
It would be a mistake to present Ida Görres as just an antiquarian. Her concern was theological. She insisted, as had the Council Fathers in their constitution Lumen Gentium, that the Church must be understood as a sacramental, personal reality. Görres regretted the eclipse of theology in much that was said about the Church, and done to her in consequence, in the heady years of the late 60s, with the West caught up in a cultural revolution that unfolded, often enough, as a targeted assault on institutions. The Church, she kept repeating, can neither be rightly understood nor truly loved by one who regards her in institutional terms while failing to recognise her as ‘the strangest creation of God, so unique in kind, so large, so contradictory, so colourful that no single person can take stock of her and figure her out, and certainly no outsider can ever take her all in, let alone understand her and judge her’.
For much too long, the theology of Ida Görres has been a minority interest passed on among initiates who recognise each other, as it were, by way of secret handshakes or knowing looks. I rejoice that these boundaries are bursting. The publication of Görres’s work in English is a major event full of promise for the Church’s mission, at once ancient and ever new, ‘to carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit’.

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Homily by V. Rev. Canon Michael Leamy, PP, VF

Homily for the Feast of St. Colman of Cloyne

24th November 2025

St. Colman's Cathedral - 24th November 2025 St. Colman's Day

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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