Welcome, Fáilte - Diocese of Cloyne

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

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Welcome

Fáilte, Welcome

to the website for the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland

Bishop William Crean

23 December 2025

CHRISTMAS MESSAGE 2025

My friends,

As 2025 draws to a close the first quarter of the 21st Century has flown by. In the Catholic Church it brings to a close also our celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope during which the beloved Pope Francis bid us farewell. It was a sad yet joyful parting. He had given his all.

Then we were inspired by the gifted new successor of Peter, Pope Leo XIV. The challenges facing the Church worldwide are many, but he seems to face them with a serene confidence anchored by the guiding action of the Holy Spirit.

Pope Leo has already made clear his desire to be an instrument of peace, a bridge builder in the Church and in global affairs.

Here at home, we have witnessed some shocking incidents of domestic violence. It is really a source of concern that so many women and children live in fear. It should not be. Equally worrying is the level of illegal drug use in our community. It has the potential to reek even greater havoc on families and communities unless it is addressed by individual users.

Eucharistic Adoration Cloyne Diocese

Day of Prayer led by Fr. John Keane - Diocesan Director of Eucharistic Adoration

Tuesday 30th December from 10:45am - 5pm, in Shalom Retreat Centre, Charleville (former Convent of Mercy)

Testimony of the power of eucharistic adoration - Mary Lehane, Macroom, prayer and praise, holy Mass, guided eucharistic adoration and eucharistic blessing

Booking is essential please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 083-4405359

Please bring a packed lunch. Tea and coffe will be provided

Day of prayer led by Fr John Keane

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

12 Dec 2025 - 'You're God's temple'

Latest Articles

December 2025
- Christmas Message 2025 from Bishop William Crean
- Eucharistic Adoration - Fr. John Keane 30th December 2025
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 51

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.
First of all, whatever good Read More

Coram Fratribus

Brother Lawrence

In a recent interview, Pope Leo spoke of the importance in his life of Brother Lawrence’s writings on the practice of the presence of God. Brother Lawrence, born as Nicolas Herman in Hériménil in Lorraine in 1614, is known as Read More

Coram Fratribus

O Clavis David When John the Seer, in the Apocalypse, looks up, he is astonished: ‘Lo, in heaven, an open door!’ The beatitude of which David sang is within reach. The question is, will we, will I, accept the invitation to enter? The door that stands between me and God is for me to unlock: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and eat with him, and he with me.’ We do well therefore to ask: What doors in me require unlocking? Where do I refuse grace access? Where can I perceive God’s knock, but ignore it? What prevents the Word from taking flesh in me? Let’s not think the key we need is hyper-sophisticated. The lock is in fact conventional. The latch is our self-will. You can listen to my third Kraków meditation here. And you can listen to the antiphon O Clavis David sung by Dominicans here.

Coram Fratribus

O Radix Iesse The Lord, in Isaiah, shows a supreme disdain for display. Assyria might think itself a towering cedar, yet ‘the Lord of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the great in height will be hewn down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will cut down the thicket of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall’. This is how the image of Jesse’s root is introduced. While the monumental visibility of worldly presumption is reduced to nought, a crucial work of regeneration is going on underground. The future devolvement of salvation history is prepared subterraneously. The root—that is, the manifestation in space and time of God’s promise—has not lost its generative potential. The collective entities of city and forest have been burnt down; what sprouts is a single shoot, a flower of the field, to initiate a new dispensation. You can listen to my second Kraków Advent meditation here. And you can hear the antiphon O Radix Iesse sung by Dominicans here.

Coram Fratribus

O Adonai Earlier this Advent I was privileged to give a Lenten retreat in the Kraków church of the Most Blessed Trinity, home to the city’s Dominican community. You can hear an abbreviated version of my meditation on the antiphon O Adonai here. The first occurrence of the divine name אדוני is in Genesis 15.2. It comes in response to Abram’s expostulation after God had appeared to him and said, ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be exceedingly great!’ Abram was exasperated by the disproportion between this wondrous promise and his reality. No progeny had been given him. Should Eliezer of Damascus then be his heir?! A confession of God’s lordship is not necessarily tantamount to visionary clarity. Abram’s confession led him into the deepest core of the night where, hoping against hope, his faith was ‘counted to him for righteousness’ (15:5). The stars of the night were his pledge. You can hear the antiphon sung by Dominicans here.

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 51 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.
First of all, whatever good work you undertake, ask [God] by insistent prayer to bring it to perfection, that he, already pleased to count us as sons, will not have, at some point, to be grieved by our evil actions. It is our task at all times to obey him, making use of the good things he has placed in us. If we live like this, not only will he not, like some angry father, disinherit his sons; neither will he, like a fearful lord provoked to anger by our evils, give us up to everlasting punishment because we did not wish to follow him to glory. Let us rise up, then, without wasting time, even as Scripture rouses us saying: ‘It is time for us to arise from sleep.’ With our eyes opened to the deifying light and our ears thunderstruck, let us hear how God’s voice is admonishing us with a shout, saying: ‘If today you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts!’.
Benedict left Rome in search of solitude, but was not alone when he set out. With him went his nurse. It is a rather nice aspect of his story. The idealist who forfeited his patrimony yet brought his nanny. She ‘loved him very much’; no doubt, he cared for her. Benedict did not shake off all human ties abruptly. He eased this dear person into the new reality his radical choice would create for her.
The two of them stayed together for a while; but this was provisional. Benedict left her where she would not be bereft, then proceeded into ‘the wilderness’: Subiaco in the Roman campagna. The site is marked by majestic austerity. The river running through it murmurs now as it did in his day. The crags overhanging Subiaco’s steep, wooded, dark slopes provide a sheltering embrace. At the same time they carry just a hint of menace, recalling the metaphorical precipices from which Benedict chose to turn away in Rome. He settled in a low, narrow cave to keep quiet and pray. He left no diary, but we can responsibly infer something of his experience there from the teachings he later dispensed.
The passage above, from the prologue to the Rule, speaks of reorientation. A lost son decides to go home, to learn to see and hear anew. The reference to deifying light, deificum lumen, is important. To grasp what it means, let us consider a parallel construction. The Latin for ‘bread’ is ‘panis’. From it, a verb is derived, ‘panificere’: which means ‘to make bread’. A ‘panificus’ is a baker. Italians still go twice daily to get fresh loaves from the local panificio, it being unthinkable to eat old bread (from midday) at supper. Even as ‘panificere’ denotes production, the bringing about of the object named before the verbal ‘-ficere’, to do with making, ‘deificere’ means to make someone a god, or, in the language of theology, to ‘divinise’ him. The monk is one who wishes to see restored in him the Godlikeness for which his nature is intended.
Having first asked us to keep our eyes open to deifying light, Benedict says something odd. He exhorts us to attend to God’s voice ‘attonitis auribus’, that is, with ears thunderstruck by the rumble of ‘tonitrus’. When the Fathers use uncommon expressions in this way, it is usually deliberate. They expect us, their devout readers, to pick up some reference or other to Sacred Scripture. So where in the Bible do we find a coincidence of deifying light (or ‘glory’), a divine voice, and apparent thunder? The match is the passage in St John’s Gospel which marks the end of Christ’s discourse before the sacred Passover at which, ‘having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end’. Jesus said to the crowd:
Now my heart is troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name!’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing by heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him’. Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up, shall draw all things to myself.’
This is the monastic project in a nutshell. A monk has known God’s way of ‘drawing all things to himself’ as a personal reality. Feeling the twitch upon the thread, he freely followed. His free initiative is crucial, for a man is no automaton. He is unprogrammable, possessed of that liberty to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ that is at once our crown of splendour and a potential path to soul-death. The novice who requests the monastic habit has glimpsed the light, heard the thunder, known the Lord’s call, then said, ‘Here I am!’ If he keeps that response alive, his whole life will come to signify the glory of which Scripture speaks. Rising from sleep to watch before God on behalf of half-dozing mankind tossing and turning in anguish, he casts off darkness and puts on the armour of light.
That light will, if he is faithful, increasingly not just surround him, but enter and suffuse him. Thus the Lord would refashion all of us gloriously. Not to make us other than we are! His will is to help us become what we are in truth, to abandon what is counterfeit and false, and so to stand before God and mankind integral, solid, radiant, and joyful — mature women and men recognisably formed in the light-bestowing image of God. This is what Benedict sought when he put on ‘the habit which belongs to a holy way of life’. His cave at Subiaco was the womb in which he was silently reborn to life in God.

Coram Fratribus

Brother Lawrence In a recent interview, Pope Leo spoke of the importance in his life of Brother Lawrence’s writings on the practice of the presence of God. Brother Lawrence, born as Nicolas Herman in Hériménil in Lorraine in 1614, is known as the devout Carmelite lay-brother who sought and found God through manual labour. He was a soldier in early life and knew the horrors of the Thirty Years War. He was held captive by German forces, who thought him a spy; later he was wounded by Swedish soldiers. Brother Lawrence, then, was a man who knew a thing or two about life. Below is a conversation conducted with Edgar Beltrán of The Pillar about his work. You can find the interview online here.
What is meant by the phrase “the presence of God”?
The quintessential epiphany of God to Moses at the burning bush revealed a name which signifies “I Am Present.” The ineffable Divine Name is more than a metaphysical statement; it assures Israel in exile that the Lord is with them. In Isaiah, which provides many of our Advent texts and refrains, the fulfilment of God’s redemptive promise is indicated in the image of Emmanuel, which means “God-with-us.”
After his holy resurrection, Jesus who, during his public ministry had taught his disciples to abide with him, in him, assured them: “Behold I am with you always.” The presence of God, then, is a motif that runs through Scripture. It makes sense. If God is truly the Origin of all there is and Master of the universe, he will be omnipresent to it, the founding Reality in which “we live and move and have our being.”
God’s presence is something we can take for granted. We are the absent ones! Brother Lawrence teaches us to return from our own estrangement, to seek communion with God, to learn to be reverently alert to him who is in us and about us.
What concrete advice does Brother Lawrence offer to “practice” the presence of God? What advice would you give?
We do well to practice attentiveness; to nurture silence when we can; to avoid getting stuck in self-centered mental patterns, constantly rehearsing our plans, wounds, and cravings, projecting our lives into some hypothetical, virtual future instead of living in the present.
To learn to pray is to learn to opt for what is real. At the human, natural level I think it’s good advice to spend some time each day doing nothing, simply being still and alert: this is more difficult than it sounds, given the distractions that surround us on all sides, claiming us. Wouldn’t it be good to affirm our personal freedom in their regard?
At the spiritual level I’d advise reading Scripture daily. Not too much — if we make too ambitious plans the chances are we shall not realize them; but a chunk substantial enough to nurture us and to assist an encounter with God who is present, not least, in his Word. Of course it is important to frequent the sacraments, Confession and the Eucharist above all; and to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, a Sacrament of Presence.
What do you think this book says about Pope Leo’s own way of leading the Church?
It is heartening to have a pope who puts the search for God first, and exhorts us to do the same.
How should people approach this book? Is it better to read it in one sitting or use it as a book to inspire us in prayer?
Given its variegated origin, proposing a reflection matured over a lifetime, it makes sense to give it time. Brother Lawrence writes simply and briefly, but let’s beware of mistaking his texts for casual blog posts to be raced through.
In a way, Brother Lawrence seems to be a precursor of an increasingly common idea in contemporary Catholic spirituality, which is that of ordinary holiness, namely, that we can sanctify every circumstance in life. What does Brother Lawrence say about this?
It is really an ancient idea, and a true one. Brother Lawrence is a credible mouthpiece. Much is often made about the fact that he worked in the kitchen, and made of it a place of prayer. This is admirable, but not new. The great Saint Teresa, a Doctor of the Church, told her sisters in her “Book of the Foundations”: “God walks among pots and pans.”
The book mentions many times the fact that we can do “little things for the love of God.” Is Brother Lawrence a precursor to St. Thérèse’s “little way”?
Again, I’d say that both are part of a continuous tradition they were graced to express in characteristic ways. Most of our lives are made up of “little things.” The challenge is to make them great by infusing them with love, even making them into acts of worship.
A Romanian Orthodox monk of the last century, cited in Nicholas Stebbing’s precious book “Bearers of The Spirit,” said something I think of often. The remark occurs in a reflection on obedience. In a monastic setting, “obedience” refers to things decreed by the rule or my superiors, but it basically means stuff I have to do, which I haven’t spontaneously chosen, so can equally well refer to making the kids’ breakfast or turning up to work on time.
Now, on this subject the monk said: “Obedience without prayer is servitude; obedience with prayer becomes liturgy.” That’s what it is all about. It is what both Brother Lawrence and Saint Thérèse teach: the art of making every aspect of existence an act of worship by consciously, trustfully living it before the face of God, in his presence, for love of him.
Back in the day, the book was accused of encouraging Quietism, seeking to achieve sanctity through an inactive mind and will. Do you think this is a fair assessment?
No. A key aspect of Brother Lawrence’s teaching is his emphasis on praxis, on translating ideals into concrete living. In general, Quietism (rather like Jansenism) is a term bandied about too easily. It refers to a subtly disordered trend in theology. To understand it, we must have clear notions and a deep knowledge of an intellectual context marked by rhetoric and — it has to be said — rather acrimonious Church politics.
The key to understanding Brother Lawrence is given in something he declared at the end of his life, when subject to great pain: “Come what may, I will, for the entire rest of my life, do everything for love of God.”
How can Brother Lawrence’s writings advise those with wandering minds during prayer?
If our mind wanders in prayer, the first thing to do is to ask: what paths have I opened? It is an illusion to think I can spend 95% of my waking hours in a state of frenzy — running after people, doing chores, scrolling on the phone — then dive into contemplative ecstasy the moment I set aside seven minutes to pray. We prepare our time of prayer by the way we live the rest of the time. That’s where to start the inner work of sorting, tidying, stilling.
The book consistently calls readers to place themselves in the hands of God, but it is not always clear how to achieve this. How specifically would you advise readers of the book to practice abandonment in God as suggested by Br. Lawrence?
By determinedly trusting in God’s providence; by doing what we have to do peacefully; by not allowing into our hearts thoughts of murmuring and anger; by being conscious that we are called to bring Christ into the world by credible testimony. That testimony needs to find expression in what we happen to be doing right now.

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Christmas Message 2025
My friends,
As 2025 draws to a close the first quarter of the 21st Century has flown by. In the Catholic Church it brings to a close also our celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope during which the Read More 20 Likes

Posted: 8 hours ago