Pilgrimage to the grave of Little Nellie of Holy God

To conclude our pilgrimage to Cork City we made a unique and precious pilgrimage to the grave of Little Nellie of Holy God.  This heroic young soul should be know to all but may not yet be known to you.  If you don't know of her, you can find accounts of her life here, here and here.

Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J., visited her grave in 1911.  His account can be found here.

Little Nellie should be better known, better loved, better honoured.  Her memory, like her earthly remains, seems to suffer the same fate as Holy God abandoned in the tabernacle.

Pilgrimage in honour of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy

The members and friends of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy's Catholic Heritage Association made a pilgrimage again this year to the Cathedral of Ss. Mary and Anne in Cork City for a Traditional Latin Mass. The report of the Mass last year can be found here. Several accounts of the life of Blessed Thaddeus can be found here, here and here. One of the insights we received from the sermon at today's Mass was the idea that Blessed Thaddeus, like St. Thomas Becket, was converted by the graces of the Episcopal office from a worldling who co-operated in the use of ecclesiastical authority for worldly conflicts, to one whose sanctity adorned his Episcopal state. Blessed Thaddeus died in the odour of Sanctity in the year 1492 and was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 26th August, 1895.

The Cathedral of Ss. Mary and Anne is a stunning amalgam of early gothic revival architecture, its elegant traceries carry more than a hint of strawberry hill, and an austere modern gothic sanctuary extension. Details of the history and architecture of the Cathedral can be found here, here and here.

Cork Rosary Churches 5 (Mayfield)

The final of the Rosary of Churches was completed in that fateful year 1962, only 9 years after the building campaign was announced. It was the Church of Our Lady Crowned at Mayfield. Surely it was a crowning achievement of the Bishop and the people of Cork.

The Parish website gives a detailed history of the building. What is interesting to me is the that the shape of the sanctuary echoes the truest 'modernist' Church in the city at Turner's Cross.




Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!
First published on the St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog in October, 2010.

Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy Pilgrimage 2015

Cork Rosary Churches 4 (Dennehy's Cross)

The fourth of the Cork Rosary Churches was completed in 1960 and dedicated to the Descent of the Holy Ghost it is sometimes also known as the Church of the Holy Spirit, Dennehy's Cross. It was the seventh new Church in Cork, of a total of eleven, designed by J.R. Boyd Barrett and the third of the four Rosary Churches built to his design. It is to the west of the Church of the Assumption, Ballyphehane, and to the south of the Church of the Ascension, Gurranabraher.

To my eye, it is the best of the Rosary Churches and certainly the most conventional. Compared with Boyd Barrett's first Cork Church at Turner's Cross it represents a great retreat from modernism. In materials and basic elements it is very like the Franciscan Church in Liberty Street completed in 1955, just two years before construction of the Church of the Descent of the Holy Ghost began, except for neo-baroque elements that the single central dome is more articulated and the facade is faced in stone while the body of the Church is completed in brick.








The Parish's website states the following: "Our church is situated at the junction of two very busy thoroughfares, Model Farm Road and Wilton Road in the western suburbs of Cork city. Built as one of a rosary of churches on the edge of the city, as it was at that time, it is dedicated to the Holy Spirit.

Built on an old quarry and some adjoining pasture land, the site was blessed by the Bishop of Cork, Dr. Cornelius Lucey in November 1956 and four years later the site had been transformed: a large brick and limestone church with its distinctive dome rising 140 feet [42.67m], designed by J.R.Boyd Barrett and built by Pat Shea & Co., now dominated by the surrounding area.

The Church of Descent of the Holy Spirit, with a seating capacity for 1,100, was blessed and opened on Sunday, 25th September 1960, the feast of St. Finbarr, patron saint of the diocese, by Dr. Lucey

The dedication of the Church of the Holy Spirit, the first in Ireland, was highlighted by the magnificent Pentecost altar mosaic, which was designed and executed by the Italian artist Romeo Battistella, who was attached to International Mosaics of Roscommon.

The church is neo-classical in style with a plan of a Latin cross with nave and transepts, 193 feet [58.83m] long and 98 feet [29.87m] wide. A large bronze lantern stands on top of the copper-sheeted dome, surmounted by a 24-foot [7.32m] high cross. The design is reputed to have been influenced by the churches Dr. Lucey had seen during his visit to the Eucharistic Congress in Spain.

The sanctuary mosaic depicts the events of Pentecost, Acts.2: 1-4"

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!
First published on the St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog in October, 2010.

Cork Rosary Churches 3 (Farranree)

In 1958 the third of the Rosary of Churches on the outskirts of Cork City was built. It was the Church of the Resurrection, on what was then known as Spangle Hill and has now become Farranree. It is another of the 'hilltop' Rosary Churches, like Mayfield to the east and Gurranabraher to the south. Not the most elegant sight to my eye but it is notable all the same. As you stand on Patrick's Bridge and look to the west and the north it crowns the heights overlooking the city. A festival of flowers marked the golden jubilee a couple of years ago.






Fitzgerald Smith and Company, the Cork based architects on the project designed what was described as a basilica plan freely interpreted with an upward thrust intended to be symbolic of the Ressurection culminating in a 'fleche' or thin rooftop spire. At the blessing of the Church Bishop Lucey asked, is it too much to hope that as Christ's Ressurection began his glorious and triumphant reign after Calvary, so many this new Church of the Ressurection may begin for Cork an new era in which emigration and poverty and lack of housing and neglect of God's Commandments will be no more, in which religion and family life, trade, industry and the arts will flourish, in which he that sitteth on the throne can say of Cork: "Behold I have made thee and they people new according to My own Heart"?

The consacration was performed by the great Cardinal Cushing of Boston, whose connection with the Diocese of Cork and Ross, especially in connection with the Rosary Churches, is the stuff of legend.

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!
First published on the St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog in October, 2010.

Cork Rosary Churches 2 (Ballyphehane)

The first of the Rosary Churches to be completed was the Church of the Ascension, Gurranabraher, in 1955. The second was completed the following year, the Church of the Assumption, Ballyphehane.

While Gurranabrahar is visibly to the north of the city, Ballyphehane is one of the most successful of the mid-twentieth century planned suburbs to the south of the city and is the 'airport parish'. The names of the streets, after the leaders of Irish independence, reflect the era of the suburb's creation. Thus, for example, the Church of the Assumption is on Pearse Road.

The architect, J.R. Boyd Barrett, a dubliner, began his extensive Cork practice with the amazingly modernist Church of Christ the King, Turner's Cross, in 1931, a little to the east of Ballyphehane. Dr. Coholan, Bishop Lucey's predecessor, had a radical streak despite his arch-conservative reputation. As with his earlier 'Rosary' commission at Gurranabraher, Boyd Barrett was commissioned to design both Church and Parochial houses. He also designed the nearby school. Compared with his earlier work in Turner's Cross and Gurranabrahar, the Church at Ballyphehane is restrained and even conventional basilican form, but in the modern idiom.

For Kildare and Leighlin readers, they may see a similarity of the style with Boyd Barrett's only Church in that Diocese, at Daingean, Co. Offaly (1960). He was also responsible for the extension to the Church in Mountmellick, Co. Laois (1965), and for alterations in Stradbally and Vicarstown, Co. Laois (both 1963).



Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!
First published on the St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog in October, 2010.

Cork Rosary Churches 1 (Gurranabraher)

I have previously said that Bishop Cornelius Lucey became Bishop of Cork on August 24 1952. By May 29 1953 he announced to a monster meeting in the City Hall that the City needed five new churches around its edge and that each would cost at lease IR£80,000. They were to become known as the Rosary Churches, each dedicated to one of the Glorious Mysteries.

Top of the first list of subscriptions in the July 1953 first issue of the Diocesan Magazine The Fold, another initiative of Bishop Lucey and the first such publication in the Country, was the Munster and Leinster Bank, having given IR£2,500. By the time that the last of the five was completed, the central fund had received IR£209,562 6s 4d and IR£1,300 13s 9d was left over.

When you consider the straightened circumstances of the people of Ireland, and especially the people of Cork, during this time, it is easy to see that these Churches, following initial joy, were carried through by hardship and sacrifice, leading to the glories we see today, truly deserve the title of the Rosary Churches.



A mere two years after the first announcement, the first of the churches to be completed was the Church of the Ascension, Gurranabraher, a well-known landmark in the city, situated majestically above the city.

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!
First published on the St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog in October, 2010.