TWENTY FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PAPAL VISIT OF 1979

When it was decided that Clonmacnois should be the venue for a National Silver Jubilee event, the main consideration which led to this choice was the Holy Father's own fascination with this place.  In 1979 after his return to Rome following his Irish visit, it was Clonmacnois which he singled out for special mention.  This is what he said on that occasion: 

"I will never forget that place, in which we stopped for a short time, in the early morning hours, on Sunday the 30^th. of September: Clonmacnois.  The ruins of the monastery and of the churches speak of the life that once pulsated there …  it is difficult to look on these ruins merely as a monument of the past:  whole generations of Europe owe to them the light of the Gospel and the structural framework of their culture.  Those ruins are still charged with a great mission.  They still constitute a challenge …  here is Ireland:  at the heart of the perennial mission of the Church, which St. Patrick started".

Twenty-five years after the Holy Father's visit to Ireland our cities, towns and villages have grown with new buildings springing up everywhere.  Ireland has become home to people from many nations.  In some ways the country has changed more than most of the countries of Europe. However, the ruined buildings in Clonmacnois are as they were.  It should be our hope that they will remind us that our faith, like these ancient walls, will continue to survive as the world changes around us. 

+ COLM O'REILLY,
    Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois.

At about a mile from Clonmacnoise we ascended these hills and saw the ivied round towers on an eminence below us, but the Shannon was still concealed, and neither the towers nor the scenery assumed a striking character till, on descending through these hills, we found ourselves suddenly among the ruins on the bank of the great river. Here, indeed, we looked at each other with expressions of excited astonishment, and involuntarily exclaimed, "This is worth having travelled for."

Let the reader picture to himself a gentle eminence on the margin of a noble river, on which, amongst majestic stone crosses and a multitude of ancient grave-stones, are placed two lofty round towers and the ruins of seven or eight churches, presenting almost every variety of ancient Christian architecture. A few lofty ash trees, that seem of equal antiquity and sanctity, wave there nearly leafless branches among the silent ruins above the dead. To the right an elevated causeway carries the eye along the river to the ruins of an ancient nunnery, and on the left still remain the ruins of an old castle, once the palace of the bishops, not standing, but rather tumbled about in huge masses on the summit of a lofty mound or rath, surrounded by a ditch or fosse, which once received the waters from the mighty stream, now no longer necessary. The background is everywhere in perfect harmony with the nearer objects of this picture; the chain of bare hills on either side, now sere and wild, but once rich with woodland beauty, shut out the inhabited country we so lately left, and the eye and mind are free to wander with the majestic river in all its graceful windings in an unhabited and uninhabitable desert, till it is lost in the obscurity of distance! Loneliness and silence, save the sounds of the elements, have here an almost undisturbed reign. Sometimes, indeed, the attention is drawn by the scream of the wild-fowl, which inhabit this solitary region, or the shot of the lonely sportsman. At other times we could hear the measured time of the oar, or rather paddle, of a solitary boat, long before the little speck in the water became visible; and the melancholy song of the shepherd or the milk-girl, might sometimes be heard in the boggy flat, although the singer was too remote to be visible.  (George Petrie, 1845)

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