News about Maynooth

Dunboyne House, Maynooth College

Students are starting their studies in colleges all over Ireland right now, many in Maynooth University, others in Maynooth's Pontifical University, others still (very few) in the National Seminary of Maynooth. Yes, the College is unique in having these three constituent parts, i.e. secular university, pontifical university (i.e. offering courses approved by Rome) and seminary for the training of priests for all the Irish dioceses (and some foreign ones too). Now up to the year 2000, Dublin diocese had its own seminary, a fine account of which was published in 1962 all about the centenary celebrations in 1959. It contains a photo taken in 1960 of the college's 109 clerical students (pick out our own John Jacob (second row from front, fourth in from the right) who died on 8th March this year and is buried in Saggart graveyard): 

Fr Richard Sherry, Holy Cross College Clonliffe, 
Dublin: Irish Printers Ltd, 1962, p.188

  

Now for the news about Maynooth. There are 2 students for the Dublin diocese in Maynooth this coming academic year, compared to over 100 in Clonliffe in 1960. That fact must make us all think about and try to understand the great changes that have taken place since those flourishing times for priestly vocations sixty years ago. 

Congratulations to Fr Liam Belton on his Golden Jubilee

Ballinteer and Meadowbrook Parish Newsletter, Sun. 25 May 2025

Fr Liam Belton served in our parish from 1998 to 2004. After eleven years in Greystones, in 2015 he was appointed Parish Priest and Moderator of the Pastoral area of Dundrum, Ballinteer and Meadowbrook.  The photo below was taken at the Jubilee Mass in Ballinteer on the 14th June.

The Irish Catholic, 26 June 2025, p.15

On Sunday 28th June, Fr / Canon Liam celebrated another Mass, this time in St Mary's, Barndarrig, Co. Wicklow, in the parish where he grew up. 

Photo from Facebook page for St Mary's, Barndarrig

Here too, then, let us offer Fr Liam  our thanks and congratulations for all he did among us and among so many before and after us during his fifty years as a priest.

Butterflies on mid-summer's eve

 

Driving through Newcastle yesterday, at the lights after the petrol station I saw someone painting on what I now know as a 'junction box' (for more on this, see here, for such 'street art' in our South Dublin Council area, see here, and you might also like to visit the Irish Butterfly Website here ). As we all have noticed over the past number of years, these boxes as well as electrical ones display some very eye-catching scenes. Isn't it lovely to see colour used creatively at the heart of ordinary life, as we walk or drive hurriedly by, our mind focused on the task in hand?  I parked my car further up and came back to have a word with the artist.  Young Tamara has been living in Newcastle now for four years with her family and is doing the art work she loves for Newcastle Tidy Towns. I took the first photo while she worked, and the second when, returning to Saggart in the evening, I saw the finished product. The butterfly looks like it's taking flight for the lovely flowers in the wildlife garden behind!

It's a red admiral and, coincidence, another has alighted on the front page of the current issue of the Far East, the magazine brought out by the Columban Missionaries we all used read long ago in the 50s / 60s!