Historical reopening of ancient abbey doorway in Mayo
By Tom Gillespie
IN August 1938 a historic religious ceremony took place in Ballyhaunis when, for the first time since penal days, the ancient doorway of the Augustinians’ 14th century Abbey Church of St. Mary was opened to admit the faithful.
This doorway and a few windows of the same period were practically all that was left of the old foundation following its destruction at the time of the Protestant Reformation and its burning about 100 years later by the Cromwellian soldiers.
Though the building remained a roofless shell for the following 200 years, yet the friars never deserted it, and several members of the community suffered martyrdom for the faith on the roadsides of Connaught.
The Connaught Telegraph of September 3, 1938, reported that the opening ceremony by the Provincial of the Augustinian Order, Very Rev. T. Cooney, O.S.A., marked the completion of the rebuilding scheme which had restored the abbey to something of the glories it had when it was built 600 years ago (in 1938) under the patronage of the chief of the Costello clan.
To make the opening of the doorway possible it was necessary to remove the high altar to the east end of the church from the position blocking the western doorway in which it had been placed following the roofing of the church about 100 years ago.
The altar now stands where it stood from the beginning, and from Sunday the congregation will enter under the same Gothic doorway by which their forefathers entered for so many centuries.
At the Solemn High Mass which followed the opening ceremony, Rev. C. O’Driscoll, O.S.A., in a sermon, said people in Ireland seemed to take ruins as being something normal. The ruins of the religious houses in Ireland were marks of the plague which had swept over the country in olden days.
A ruin had a certain sentimental beauty, but they ought to put such sentimentality aside.
“We must pray for the day,” he said, “when the ruins shall have vanished and when the churches built by Catholic hands and now in the hands of heretics shall be restored to us. We must rejoice when even one old abbey comes back to its former glory.”
The rebuilt church was a sign of the Catholicism that animated the people. Had it not been for the alms-giving, the church could not have been restored. Had it not been for the alms-giving of their forefathers there would be no church and no friars in Ballyhaunis. There would only be the desolation of heresy, as there was in many lands in Europe today (1938).
Dealing with the history of the abbey, he said that the site was bestowed on the monks by the Chief of the Costellos, who gave them his patronage and his protection.
That happened in 1348 - almost 150 years before Columbus discovered America.
The monks had 200 years of peace in which to consolidate their possessions. During that time the abbey was a place of prayer and learning. The town of Ballyhaunis grew up around it.
When danger threatened the people of the town, the abbey was for them a place of sanctuary. When sickness came they found at the abbey medical skill which healed their sickness. There was unity between the monks and the people.
Then over Europe came the rumblings of revolt against God and the Church. The rumblings reached Ireland and the hand of the spoiler was laid on God's peace.
The abbey was levelled and the monks hunted to hide in the valleys and in the mountain caves. But they were always encouraged to carry on because they had the support of the people.
They rebuilt the abbey in 1641, not quite 100 years after its first destruction, but in 1648 the spoiler came again and it was burned down. Thereafter there were always friars there, but they had not a roof over their heads under which they might offer the sacrifice of the Mass.
Speaking of the martyrs of Ballyhaunis, he said their numbers included the venerable Fulgentius Jordan, who was hanged outside the abbey, and whose bodily lay somewhere in the precincts of the church; another Prior of Ballyhaunis who in 1645, while flying from the Battle of Sligo, was hanged near Ballysodare, side-by-side with the Prior of Dromore; Friar Thomas Tully, who was shot near Dromore in 1720; and Friars Gibbons and Prendergast, who were shot in Connemara in 1802.
He felt sure that as the congregation came into the restored church the bodies of the multitudes burned outside the church must have stirred. The whole building was throbbing with life and rejoicing, and with a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
Most Rev. R.A. Cooney, O.S.A., Provincial, presided at the Solemn High Mass which followed his sermon.
Rev. L. Carr, O.S.A., Ballyhaunis, was celebrant; Very Rev. S. Roche, O.S.A., Prof, Orlagh House, Rathfarnham, deacon; Rev. T. Burke, C.C., Ballyhaunis, sub-deacon.
The following also assisted at the opening ceremony: Very Rev. M. Connolly, O.S.A., Prior, Drogheda; Very Rev. E.A. Mansfield, O.S.A., Prior, Ballyhaunis.