Search Results for 'priest'

Galway will host European royalty on Tuesday August 21, when His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Imre de Habsbourg-Lorraine of Austria, will participate in a ceremony at Galway Cathedral honouring his great-grandfather, Blessed Karl of Austria, who, as Karl I, was the last Habsburg Emperor.

We have a facility of huge potential for Galway City and County which is now lying idle. After many years of hard work it cost ca €3.3m to build and was ultimately completed in 1987. It was recently bought by the City/County Councils for €1.1m and is now termed by them as a site. We could never afford to put such a facility in place again and it would be an act of gross blindness and irresponsibility to let it disappear.

The Great Famine of 1845 - 49 hit Achill Island particularly hard. Given the poor quality of its soil there was little or no alternative to the potato crop which failed throughout those years. Once the severity of the calamity became apparent, and that help from the government was begrudging and insufficient, there was a sensible coming together of Protestant and Catholic clergy to try to calm and feed the people.

Even though it was in the furthermost parish of Archbishop MacHale’s large Tuam archdiocese, once he realised the permanency and the extent of the Protestant settlement on Achill Island (built and directed by the fervent Rev Edward Nangle in the 1830s),* the archbishop was consumed with fury. He waged a belated but rather terrifying campaign to have it scorned and ignored by the island’s 6,000 residents.

On the eve of the Great Famine there was a terrible scandal in Kinvara, Co Galway. William Burke, who had served as a Catholic priest for 13 years, announced to his congregation that he was leaving the church and becoming Protestant. The people were so angry that about 2,000 pursued his carriage and hurled abuse at him. Two other clergymen and police protection were required to keep him safe.

St Nicholas’s Collegiate church has seen many changes in the city over the hundreds of years it has stood guard over the street, but is about to experience a new one with the announcement this week that its new rector will be the first female to hold the post.

Week V

BRIAN FRIEL'S masterpiece, Dancing At Lughnasa, is one of the greatest and best loved Irish plays, and this month at the Town Hall, Blue Teapot presents a uniquely authentic production, featuring Jennifer Cox, an actor with an intellectual disability, as Rose; exactly as she was written and a milestone first for Irish theatre.

Week II

On December 7 1922, Pádraic Ó Máille TD and his friend Sean Hales TD of Cork, walked out of a hotel on Ormonde Quay, by Dublin’s river Liffy. They just had lunch, and were on their way back to the Dáil in Leinster House, a short drive away. Ó Máille, Galway city and Connemara’s first TD, had been appointed Leas Ceann Comhairle (deputy speaker ).