Staging post for Croagh Patrick pilgrims

A staging post for the tens of thousands of Roman Catholic pilgrims who each year climb Ireland’s holy mountain - Co Mayo’s 2,510-feet Croagh Patrick - was opened for business at the foot of the peak today.

A lot of the climbers, as many as 25,000, and many in their bare feet, flock to Croagh Patrick, overlooking the West of Ireland’s Clew Bay, on the final Sunday in each July to mark the occasion in the year 441 when St Patrick spent 40 days and nights fasting there and praying for the people of the country.

For hundreds of years mass has been celebrated regularly at a tiny oratory on the summit of the mountain, but the new facility is very much a result of the 21st century.

Known as the Murrisk Memorial Millennium Peace Park, it has been designated at the centrepiece of the Christian celebration of the Millennium in Ireland.

It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people climb Croagh Patrick on an annual basis, and the park has constructed with the elderly and those with disabilities in mind.

The park has been built with the aid of a IR£250,000 award from Ireland’s National Millennium Committee and was declared open by Millennium Minister Seamus Brennan after blessing by church representatives.

Mr Brennan said Croagh Patrick was one of the world’s best-known sites of Christian pilgrimage and ‘‘an appropriate place for this sensitive development’’.