Mick Clifford: The Columban priest from Cork who found his home in Wuhan

Wuhan has been Dan Troy’s home for over 20 years, and not even a terrifying pandemic was going to drive him back across the globe. Picture: Larry Cummins

Wuhan is a long way from Newtownshandrum, but Dan Troy feels perfectly at home there. Administering to spiritual and pastoral needs of Chinese Catholics is a long way from working as a site engineer on construction projects in the west of Ireland, but Dan has been there too, done that.

Today he is a Columban father, living in a city of 12m, which by Chinese standards is a second-tier conurbation. Wuhan barely registered on this side of the world before it was saddled with notoriety as the place where the covid virus originated.