KILDARE VOICES SING OUT OVER THE SEINE …
Kildare voices sing out over the Seine …
[This ‘Looking Back’ article by Liam Kenny originally appeared in The Leinster Leader of 5 March 2013]
One of the great landmarks of Christianity in Europe will echo to the soaring sounds of the Kildare & Leighlin diocesan choir over St Patrick’s weekend. The celebrated cathedral of Notre Dame on an island in the Seine in the heart of old Paris will be the venue for a St Patrick’s celebration with a strong Kildare & Leighlin participation.
Fr Sean Maher, chaplain to the Irish community in Paris (and well known to Newbridge parishioners where he served from 1996 to 2001), will be joined by the diocesan choir conducted by Fr Liam Lawton, acclaimed composer and gifted communicator. The choir in turn will be part of a pilgrim group led by Monsignor Brendan Byrne, Administrator of the diocese.
The Kildare & Leighlin choir will sing in Notre Dame on the Saturday of St Patrick’s weekend in a liturgy which will include prayers and hymns in the Irish language representing most likely the first time that the cadences of Gaelic have resounded among the soaring vaults of the great cathedral.
On St Patrick’s Day the Kildare & Leighlin pilgrims will navigate the storied streets of the Latin quarter in Paris to the atmospheric College des Irelandais where Mass will be celebrated in St Patrick’s chapel, an oasis of tranquillity and an outpost of Irishness in the busy and cosmpolitant city Among the distinguished visitors to the College chapel over the generations have been figures as diverse as Daniel O’Connell who achieved Catholic emancipation in the 1820s and, in a later era, a Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla who was to become Pope John Paul II.
But perhaps the most distinguished visitor in modern times came to the Irish College just last month when President Michael D. Higgins was welcomed by Fr Maher who introduced the President and his wife to the chapel and its sacred art. The President was reported to have responded with genuine delight to the knowledge that an Irish spiritual presence is maintained in Paris as it has been since Irish monks first preached in the Seine valley over a thousand years ago.
The Irish College has gone through many transformations since it was established in the late 1700s. It succeeded an earlier Irish collegial presence but continued to fulfil the need of training Irish priests at a time when the Catholic church was banned in Ireland under British rule. Irish colleges flourished in — and became part of — the European Christian tradition in places such as Salamanca in Spain, Louvain in Belgium and, not least, in Paris. In time too the Paris college became a rallying point for Irish expatriates of all kinds – adventurers, scholars and soldier following in the path of the “Wild Geese”.
In a wider Parisien context the names of rebels with Kildare connections loom large. Wolfe Tone of Bodenstown fame spent years in the city negotiating French reinforcements for the 1798 rebellion. In a later era John Devoy, the Fenian born near Kill, Co. Kildare, spent months in the French capital attempting to rally support for his revolutionary endeavours.
However the College has had a stronger connection – if little known –with the Kildare & Leighlin diocese through its core mission as a place of training and study for Irish priests. Archives record how Fr James Lynch, who was rector of the Irish College in Paris from 1858 to 1866 was ordained Bishop in the College and three years later appointed co-adjutor or assistant Bishop of Kildare & Leighlin. In 1889 he became full bishop until his death in 1896 having served a remarkable 27 years as a leader in the diocese. Among the high points of his time in Kildare & Leighlin was the introduction of the Sisters of Mercy to Rathangan in 1875 and his dedication of the Church of St Patrick and St Brigid in Clane in 1884.
Educated at Clongowes College where he was one of the first pupils of the Jesuit foundation he later studied in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. As a young priest he saw at first hand the ravages of famine and the turbulence of rebellion in Ireland, an experience which at least in its latter component prepared him for his role as rector of the Irish College in Paris where church activity and property was often in contest with French doctrines of the separation of church and State.
An example of such controversy surfaced long after his death in the Kildare newspapers in 1907 when the Kildare Observer reported that the Naas Rural District Council had passed a resolution protesting against the interference of the French government with the “interests and property of the Irish College in Paris.”
Fortunately all such controversies are long past and the Irish College today has been transformed into an Irish Cultural Centre where Parisiens can come to learn something of Ireland and which accommodates Irish students and artists studying in Paris. And no doubt the pilgrims from Kildare & Leighlin will leave their own impressions on this outpost of Irish culture and prayer in the heart of one of the world’s great centres of art and learning.
Acknowledgement: Ms Bernie Deasy of the Delaney Archive, Carlow College helped with great enthusiasm in sourcing material for this reflection on Irish-French connections.
In memoriam: Michael Sheeran, past editor of this paper who died last month, nurtured and encouraged this column when it attempted to fill the void left by the passing of Dr Con Costello who had written a weekly history article for a remarkable twenty-five years. It was perhaps fitting that Michael, a true son of Kildare, should mentor this writer towards the first publication of the new local history series in the issue datelined for the 1st of February, St Brigid’s Day, 2007. May he rest in peace amid the gentle hills of Carbury. Series no: 321
The celebrated cathedral of Notre Dame on an island in the Seine in the heart of old Paris will be the venue for a St Patrick’s celebration with a strong Kildare & Leighlin participation [by Liam Kenny].
