'Larger-than-life' Fr Kevin McNamara and Fr Con Cronin brought laughter to the Masses

The Catholic Church, under severe pressure due to a shortage of priests, was dealt a further blow last year when it lost two of its best-loved and larger-than-life characters, Fr Kevin McNamara and Fr Con Cronin. Neil Michael reflects on the careers of two men who brought laughter to the masses.

Fr Kevin McNamara outside a local parish church during Lent in 2015. Picture: Eamonn Keogh

Fr Kevin McNamara and Fr Con Cronin were no ‘ordinary’ priests. Described as "larger-than-life" characters by all who knew them, they eschewed the normal conventions of the Catholic Church. 

Flossing on the altar, conducting drive-in Masses, holding confessions in the pub. Their sudden deaths last year dealt another blow to a Church already struggling to man its dioceses.

More than 21% of Ireland's entire population of parish priests and brothers — both serving and retired — have died in just three years. In addition, the church has an ageing clergy waiting to retire, or beyond retirement age, and few ordinations to replenish its ranks.

The Association of Catholic Priests says parishes are going to have to be amalgamated, churches closed, and fewer Masses held. There are also claims in some quarters that some existing clergy are "out of touch" and contributing to a decline in Mass attendance.

Fr Kevin and Fr Con, in contrast, were held in the highest regard by all who knew them, resonating with a younger ‘audience’. Hence the outpouring of grief at their deaths.

In the RTÉ documentary The Confessors, which aired last October, Fr Kevin is seen enjoying a pint with his parishioners in a North Kerry pub. He jokingly predicts what will happen after he dies in banter with customers at Enright’s in Moyvane. One of the jibes is about the length of Fr Kevin’s Masses.

“Listen, you’ll get the short mass eventually and eventually you'll get no mass,” he quips.

One of the drinkers replies: “Ara, sure, we'll just say it ourselves, so.” Fr Kevin laughs as he tells them: “It's only when I'm gone, you'll be weeping here. And someday you'll be having your pint and you’ll say about me ‘You know, I could miss him’.” Little did people realise at the time how prescient his words would be. 

Just over a month after the programme aired, Fr Kevin was dead. He went into hospital in December for a routine procedure and died a few days later. Thousands of people who had met him over the years were shocked by his sudden death and tributes poured in from across the country and beyond.

The sports-mad 66-year-old was born in the West Clare village of Cooraclare, and ordained in 1981 as a Missionaries of the Sacred Heart priest. He served first in Liverpool, then in Kirby, before he returned to Ireland as parish priest of the Sacred Heart Parish on Cork’s Western Road from 1993-1999. 

Fr Kevin McNamara in The Confessors just over a month before he died.

It was during this time that he wrote a weekly column for The Evening Echo, and later for The Muskerry Leader community paper in Ballincollig. He then moved to Kerry where he was based in a number of dioceses, moving to Glenflesk in 2021.

While serving in Cork city, his twice-yearly nine-day long devotional prayer novenas attracted so many people – more than 1,200 used to attend – he had to lay on fish and chip vans to keep the people fed.

And he wasn’t shy of publicity. During Lent in 2015, he seized on the Fifty Shades of Grey frenzy and erected a huge sign outside his church with the words: 'Whatever about the 50 shades – remember the 40 days!'

Fr Kevin said he was “a great believer in the public pulpit” and he wanted to remind people Lent was a time of renewal and joy. But he wasn’t shy about criticising the Church. 

In The Confessors, he spoke openly about how the Church has been very hurtful to women and the upset he felt at the flood of revelations of child sexual abuse perpetrated by the clergy.

Undeterred by the arrival of Covid, he showed his ingenuity by celebrating drive-in Masses in Moyvane during the various lockdowns, making sure his parishioners were not left completely isolated.

The sudden death of Fr Kevin in December was the second blow suffered by the Church in Munster last year. The first was the tragic death of Kiltegan Father, Con Cronin, in August, who was struck by a bus in Monkstown, Co Cork. 

In an act of heroism, Fr Cronin pushed a friend to safety as the bus swerved out of control. The 53-year-old bus driver Mark Wills, a father of two, also lost his life during the freak accident. Mourners at Fr Con’s funeral were told “he died as he lived – trying to help others".

Also featured in The Confessors, Fr Con was so widely known and loved that an appeal for memorial benches in his honour in Cork Harbour and West Cork where he was born and raised quickly clocked up €24,000. At the time of his death, the 72-year-old was serving in Passage West after decades working as a missionary in Nigeria.

Before he started studying for the priesthood in 1970 at the age of 22 he worked behind the bar of a family-owned pub in his native Ballylickey, near Bantry, and later in Dublin. He was ordained in 1979.

(Left to right) Fr Con Cronin, Kenrick O'Sullivan, Foreman Vision Contracting, Fr Sean O'Sullivan and Paul Carpenter, Cook Architects Cork, at Ringaskiddy Village Church, where the historic Oratory was undergoing a rebuild in 2014. Picture: Jim Coughlan

After 25 years spent in the Diocese of Minna in Nigeria, he served in Castlerea in Co Roscommon, before spending eight years travelling around the country promoting the work of the St Patrick's Missionary Society in Ireland. He then started work in the Harbour Parishes, including Passage West.

Like Fr Kevin, he was a larger-than-life character, with a wide circle of friends from across the country. He too was no stranger to publicity. His spontaneous attempt to copy the Floss dance craze moves in 2019 on the altar during a Communion Mass went viral.

His sudden death led to tributes from all ages all and from across the globe. Maker of The Confessors, Alex Fegan, was one of those who was deeply impressed by the two men, and has fond memories of them.

Married to a Kerry native, the acclaimed Dublin-based filmmaker had planned to be back in Kerry and Cork over Christmas and had arranged to go for a drink with Fr Kevin and Fr Con. He kept in touch with them after the filming stopped and was shocked by their deaths.

“The two priests I had arranged to meet for a drink both passed away within days of me arranging to meet with them,” he recalls.

“Fr Con drank in a pub in Passage West that he called Dub's and I said ‘I'll come to Passage West and I'll join you for a pint’ and then he passed away not long after that.

“And then the same with Fr Kevin.

“I got on very well with them. They were one-of-a-kind, both of them. They both said Mass to people outside [churches] during Covid-19. They both met people where they were at."

Fr Kevin McNamara was no stranger to publicity. Picture: Eamonn Keogh

Fr Kevin, says Fegan, would have heard people's confession in the pub, because Jesus would have met someone in a pub.

And they were both kind of irreverent. They both spoke what was on their mind, they didn't just tell people what they wanted to hear.” 

But while both men were jovial and good-humoured, there were also darker sides they kept hidden from public view. One of the things Fr Kevin spoke to Alex Fegan about was his loneliness.

“He actually rang me up just as he was moved to Glenflesk and he spoke about being very lonely there,” he said.

“When he was serving in the north Kerry parish of Moyvane he was able to walk up the road to Enright's bar. But he wasn't able to do that in Glenflesk and I just think he was very honest about just how lonely he was at that time.

“That said, he also made a great point, which is that – in his words – you have to bloom where you're planted. He didn't sulk for long, he got back up onto his feet.” 

He was known to have been helping a number of women – who he dubbed "Prodigal Daughters" – who had survived mother and baby homes. And he felt they had been let down not just by society, but by the Church. 

Fr Kevin had been a close friend of Jackie Healy-Rae, who died in 2014. His son Danny recalled one of the last times he spoke to Fr Kevin. It was in Con Spillane’s Bar in Headford, near Killarney, just a few days before he went into hospital.

“Unlike a lot of priests I have known over the years, he wanted to live and work in the community.” Fr Kevin had his own grievances with the Church.

He said in the documentary: “If you're working with McDonald's or you're working with whatever company you're working with, sometimes the company might give you that little bit of affirmation.

In a church context, you don't get that affirmation from the hierarchy. You don't get anything.

“Every time I was called either before a superior or a bishop, it was always for correction. It was never a sense of ‘you're doing well’. And that would have saddened me over the years.” 

Fr Con’s nephew Colm Cronin also spoke about the sense of isolation his uncle experienced. He said: “He missed someone to come home to at night to say ‘You know what kind of a day I had’. 

Fr Con Cronin - 'He missed someone to come home to at night to say "You know what kind of a day I had".'

"It was lonely: the fact that he'd go home to an empty house, and maybe a glass of whiskey or something like that to go through the day back in your head again. But he would do it on his own.” 

At his uncle’s funeral, Colm said he was approached by a Presbyterian priest, who told him how he first met Fr Con.

“He was at some function about 18 months ago, and he came across Con,” he recalled. “Apparently, the first thing he heard was this big, deep voice saying ‘I hate you’. He didn't turn around at first but then he heard it again: ‘I hate you’.

“So he turned around, and there was Con dressed as a priest, with the dog collar. And he says that Con started talking to him, but started by pointing his finger at him again, repeating ‘I hate you’.

Your man was like, God, this isn't a great first meeting with this guy. But then Con explained himself and he said look, he said, ‘you know you can go home to your wife and family tonight. I go home to an empty bed’.

“So it did get to him."

Marcia D'Alton, who Fr Con used to ask for help on behalf of some of his parishioners, also spoke about how lonely he was before he died.

“He did interviews with people on the Passage West Facebook page during lockdown,” said the Passage West-based Cork county councillor.

“And to be fair, I think it was initiated not just for people but also for Con because he was so lonely. It just gave him an opportunity to interview what were typically ordinary people in the town.” 

She added: “I sensed that while he appeared outwardly confident, he might not have been quite so confident inside.” Asked what his loss means to the people he served, Colm replied without hesitation: “He was like a magnet when he would go to a crowd. It wasn't really to do with religion, as such, it was to get to the people first.

Fr Con Cronin with the Liam McCarthy Cup in 2005. Fr Con believed the role of the Church was to make life more human. Picture: Des Barry

“People, young and old, have told me since he died that he got them back interested in the Church. He had a kind of an unorthodox way of saying Masses where he could sit down in the congregation while someone else read.

“I think the people loved that and I think they, they tuned into it. Mass attendances had a lot more younger people, who came because he made them feel more comfortable."

There appears to have been two formative factors in Fr Con’s early life. The house where he grew up in West Cork was a sociable one with a lot of people coming and going regularly.

But tragically, his father died when he was quite young. When he was 14, his mother suffered a stroke, and he left school to look after her.

Fr Sean O’Sullivan, who served with Fr Con in Cork’s harbour parishes, said he nursed his mother until she died. He was encouraged to join the priesthood by a nun he knew, according to Fr Sean.

“But the difficulty presented itself: he had no Leaving Cert because he'd obviously quit school to look after his mother.” To overcome this difficulty, he left the cosy familiarity of West Cork for Scotland in 1970, to go to St Patrick’s College, Buchlyvie, Scotland.

At the launch of 'Shreds & Patches' in 2010 by Paddy MacMonagle was the author with Fr Kevin McNamara, a larger-than-life character, with a wide circle of friends from across the country. Picture: Eamonn Keogh

It was here he got the equivalent of an O-Level, and ultimately the qualifications he needed to begin his studies for the missionary priesthood with St Patrick’s Missionary Society. But while Fr Con then devoted so much of his time to the Church, he appears to have missed somewhere to call home.

Colm said: “A lot of the time he lived out of a suitcase because he travelled a lot. It was only when he came to Passage West did he really find a home, and because he knew he wasn't going to be moved for a good while.” 

Fr Sean added: "Fr Con believed the role of the Church was to make life more human.

“He really, really believed that. That was kind of where he came from. This wasn't about rules. It wasn't about structures or institutions – it was, for him, all about people and life and joy and dignity.” 

While he hadn't known them long, Alex Fegan quickly got the measure of them in the short amount of time they worked together.

“At one point, I asked Fr Kevin if he knew Fr Con. And he didn't, or at least not that I knew of. But I could tell that he could see a kindred spirit in Fr Con.”