Sheep’s Head parish to stream Christmas Day Mass globally

Christmas Day worshippers in a tiny church at the tip of a remote West Cork peninsula will this year be joined by more than 1,000 emigrants from all over the world.

There will only be about 250 people in the congregation at the Our Lady Star of the Sea church in Kilcrohane, in the parish of Muintir Bháire on Christmas morning. But their ranks will be swelled by large crowds expected to log on remotely from all over the world, once the Mass goes out live on Youtube from about 11.30am.

Viewers from as far away as Tasmania in Australia, Singapore, the United States, Britain, Belgium, France and all over Ireland are expected to join in the candle-lit ceremony taking place in what is believed to be one of Ireland’s most remote churches, built in the 1890s on the remote Sheep’s Head peninsula.