Diocese of Ferns

Visitation of Eucharistic Congress Bell

The Eucharistic Congress bell completed its visitation of the diocese of Ferns with a brief sojourn in Annacurra, Co. Wicklow, the most northern parish of the diocese. The bell arrived on Sunday afternoon 29 January 2012 at 2 pm to be welcomed by a representative group of parishioners, who assisted at the prayer service and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which followed. Accompanying the bell were Fr. Jim Fegan of Wexford and Ms Colette Furlong and members of the organising committee of the Eucharistic Congress.

The bell departed Annacurra after 9 am Mass on Monday morning 30 January, the feast, as it happened, of St. Aidan, patron saint of Ferns. The congregation at the Mass were joined later by the children and teachers of the local school, each of whom had the opportunity to ring the Congress bell.

Before its departure from the parish the bell was brought to the home of Mrs Elizabeth Carey of Clone, now in her 97th year, and herself a participant, along with her father Tom and brother Jim, at the Dublin Eucharistic Congress of 1932. Fr Jim Fegan asked Mrs Carey, what particular memories she retained of the occasion. She remembered the kneeling on the grass, and the huge crowds of people. They had travelled to Dublin by train from Woodenbridge. All the trains were packed with people. When asked how they got from Westland Row station to the Phoenix Park she replied “We walked”! And where was her mother? “She had to stay at home and mind the rest of the children, we were a family of eleven.”

Mrs Carey was keen to mention that her father had also brought her and her brother to Dublin for the Catholic Emancipation centenary celebration three years earlier, in 1929.