Diocese that spans four counties loses half of clergy to cocooning amid Covid-19 pandemic

File photo of Bishop Willie Walsh.

Around half of the clergy in a Catholic diocese spanning four counties are cocooning as a result of new Government restrictions aimed at combating the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fr Brendan Quinlivan said today 34 of the 70 priests in the Diocese of Killaloe are over the age of 70 and and are cocooning in line with new Government measures aimed to minimising the spread of the Coronavirus.

Diocesan spokesman, Fr Quinlivan said that a number of those priests are fully retired and a few are in nursing home care.

The diocese stretches from Loop Head on the Atlantic coast in west Clare to Kinnity in Co. Offaly and takes in parts of Co. Tipperary and Co. Limerick.

One of those cocooning at his Ennis home is former Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh who said today that cocooning for formerly busy priests aged over 70 across the country is "traumatic" for them.

Now fully retired from priestly duties, Dr Walsh said: “For some priests over 70 who were still working, I would expect it is traumatic when you would find yourself almost not needed anymore.

“The world hasn’t stopped because we don’t have public masses and it is a reminder to us and a humbling experience for us that we don’t seem to be needed and the world is churning on without us being very busy.”

Fr Quinlivan stated that there is "great sadness" amongst priests that they have been compelled to close the doors on churches to parishioners and suspend public masses across the diocese.

He said: “The instruction came in on Saturday afternoon to go and shut the church and it really broke my heart to lock the church. All the previous two weeks when I went over to it, there were candles lighting in it, there was a steam of visitors in and out.

“Closing the doors of the church really, really broke my heart and it goes against everything of having an oasis of place for people to go where they might find some bit of calm."

“It is a terrible, terrible thing and so hard for people who find going to the Church so important.”

Fr Quinlivan added that morale amongst those priests cocooned “is quite good”.

He said: “The clergy by and large are solitary people by nature but the restriction on priests on the visitation on the sick and housebound - that would do a lot of harm to the clergy as they would really be torn by this incredible sense of duty they have and the responsibility to act in line with public health authorities."

That would be very difficult - their sense of duty and obligation but also their sense of responsibility - as far as anything that would be affecting their morale - that would be affecting it.

Fr Quinlivan stated that he has been broadcasting masses daily on Facebook Live.

He said that before the virus outbreak, he would have maybe 30 people in the church at a weekday mass and the number of views on his daily mass on Facebook Live would be 80 to 90.

He said: “It is about reminding the people we are still there.”

Last week, Fr Quinlivan stated that he celebrated three funerals last week “and they were very, very difficult”.

He said: “The sense of people sitting apart in the church and sitting apart at the funeral masses is really anathema to Irish people to celebrate a funeral like that.

“The three people in question were incredibly social people and they were involved in organisations in the parish. They would have played cards with neighbours and it would really have been the antithesis of the life they lived to have that experience for the family.”

Dr Walsh said that the cocooning is an opportunity for priests to reflect on what priesthood is about in modern times “and to reflect on our priorities again”.

He stated: “Some of us got the impression that we should be busy all the time and I’m not sure that is the function of a priest and I think the function of a priest ideally is reflecting Christian witness.”

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