Parish Priest: Fr. Gerry Comiskey Telephone No: 049-9522104 Email: gerrycomiskey@hotmail.com
Sunday Mass: 11:30 a.m.
Religious Goods Shop: Open once monthly, proceeds to church funds. Orders taken by Deirdre Brady or Helen McCabe.
St. Mary’s, Staghall (from Kilmore Diocesan website www.kilmore.ie)
There was a post penal chapel on the opposite side of the road to the present church. Fr. Philip Donegan who replaced Fr. Patrick McCabe in 1843 set about the task of building a new church. He secured a site, soon after his arrival in the parish, from Lord Lanesborough. The site was located in the townland of Kilconny, and the plot he obtained there was sufficiently extensive to serve not only as a site for the church but also as a cemetery for the lower Drumlane area. Up to that time the cemetery around the ruined abbey at Drumlane was the only Catholic burial ground in the parish.
Fr. Donegan probably started work on the building of the church in the year 1844 or 1845. It was an arduous task, which took many years to complete, and it was made doubly arduous because it had to be carried out during one of the most harrowing periods in the history of the Irish people – the Great Famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1849. Even in 1853 the Church had not yet received its final touches.
The new building had the altar placed against the eastern gable, which greatly marred the affect of the interior arrangements of the church.
This defect was remedied relatively quickly. A beautiful chancel of exquisite proportions was built. A chancel arch, rich in moulding and springing lightly and gradually from an architrave of Bath stone, with capitals and corbels tastefully carved into figures of adoring angels, lent a beauty and charm to the interior of the building. The eastern window of the chancel is of stained glass rich in its colouring and varied in its subjects.
The dedication of the chancel took place on 21st August 1870, Bishop Conaty officiated. Staghall Church has served the worshipers since, without major alteration.
To view the Pastoral letter from the Irish Catholic Bishops conference – www.catholiccommunications.ie.
