Order which owns Cork's St Augustine's Church describes its closure as 'akin to a death'

The extension of St Augustines Church under construction on Cork's Washington Street in 1939. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive.

The decision to close one of Cork city centre’s best-known Catholic churches has been described by the head of the religious order which owns the building as “akin to a death”.

Parishioners at St Augustine’s Church, which is located at the corner of Washington St and the Grand Parade, were informed on Saturday afternoon that the church will close permanently later this year.

The church is owned and run by the Augustinian friars, with the consent of the diocese of Cork and Ross.

St Augustine’s was built in 1942 on the site of an earlier chapel dating back to 1872. The adjoining priory was built in 1982.

The church’s closure will bring to an end the order’s presence in Cork, which dates back 755 years to the foundation of Red Abbey in the South Parish.

The ruin of the old medieval belfry tower still stands on the site.

Fr Paddy O’Reilly, Vicar Provincial of the Augustinian Order in Ireland, told the congregation at a vigil Mass in the church on Saturday that the decision to withdraw from Cork had been made with “great pain and sadness”.

St Augustines Church on Cork's Washington Street being by Monsignor J Scannell in 1950. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

Fr O’Reilly said that from the mid-1970s the order had witnessed “a slow but accelerating decline in vocations”.

“In the early ‘70s we would have expected at least 12 novices and three to four ordinations every year,” he said.

“Today we would be lucky to have one novice and most years we have no ordinations. We are also getting older and less able.”

 In 2026, the order in Ireland has only 10 friars who are under 70, and more than half of all of its priests are over 80, he said.

Fr O’Reilly said one of the considerations informing the order in its decision to close its Washington St church was the knowledge that “Cork city centre is well-served by Franciscans, Capuchins, Dominicans, and by an abundance of diocesan churches”.

He said the order empathised with, and shared, the pain and loss felt by Cork’s Catholic community, and said the closure was “as though a member of the family has died”.

St Augustine’s will close permanently after 11.30am Mass on Sunday, July 12.

Saturday afternoon’s Mass was well-attended, and Fr O’Reilly’s announcement was met first with silence from the congregation, and then applause.

A spokesperson for the diocese of Cork and Ross said the future of the church is primarily a matter for the order.

Pope Leo XIV visited the Augustinian church in 2005, when he was Bishop Robert Prevost, prior general of the Order of St Augustine, the global head of the order.

In the late 1950s, a very young Rory Gallagher played in the parish hall at the back of the church.

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