



Photos from top: Richard Mohan in preaching mode in 2018; in informal mode, as he tended to be; his coffin resting overnight in his former parish church of the Sacred Heart in Clones; and a tribute from a pilgrim, one of hundreds that appeared on the death notice site rip.ie and in other media in the wake of his unexpected death
Richard Mohan (1944-2023)
Enterprising Prior of Ireland's iconic
place of pilgrimage
Student 1963-70
Note: phrases in red indicate footnote/background links
For the general population of Ireland, Monsignor James Horan, of Knock Shrine and Airport fame, represented a model of priesthood that was different to the norm, combining a deep traditional spirituality and sense of devotion with a very contemporary skill in secular organisation and project management.
It was a model followed most notably by others like Horan’s Maynooth contemporary Fr. James McDyer in Donegal, but also by dozens of other priests whose community involvement, leadership and achievement went unheralded except by their own parishioners, though perhaps not on the same scale.
In the case of Ireland’s longest-established and most famous pilgrimage destination, it was to be expressed in 1990 in the person of a new prior whose appointment would signal a new era in the history of St. Patrick's Purgatory.
He was Richard Mohan, a 46-year-old priest of the Diocese of Clogher, who came to the appointment from a position of acting administrator of the diocesan cathedral.
Dick Mohan was born into a farming family in Altamullaghboy, Coonian (recte Cooneen), in the parish of Aghavea (Brookboro and Coonian), south-east of the road between the Fermanagh towns of Brookeborough and Fivemiletown (the Brookboro parish was united with Aughintaine/Fivemiletown in 1985).
He was one of two boys and three girls born to Theresa (nee McMahon) and Richard Mohan, and was educated at local national schools and at St. Michael's College in Enniskillen, which had opened in the year before he entered under the presidency of Patrick Mulligan, a future bishop of Clogher.
The family had an interesting levitical tradition: a granduncle had been a bishop of Clogher in at the turn of the 20th century, and two cousins were priests.
Following success in his A levels Richard entered Maynooth in 1963 to study for priestly service in his native diocese, graduating with a B.Sc. degree in 1966, and benefitting greatly from the teaching of a Clogher professor, Fr. Gerald McGreevey, a renowned physicist.
Richard Mohan was ordained in St. Joseph's Church, Carrickmacross in 1970 by Bishop Mulligan who had been consecrated some months before in succession to Bishop O'Callaghan.
He undertook post-graduate studies in Catechetics at the Mount Oliver Institute in Dundalk immediately after ordination and on his return to the diocese was appointed to the staff of the diocesan St. Macartan's College in Monaghan, where he served as dean of discipline and taught science subjects and religion.
As he had at Maynooth, Fr. Mohan displayed in his new role the sterling qualities of organisation, communication and empathy that would stay with him throughout his pastoral ministry. He cut a striking figure with his impressive crown of red hair that would also, incidentally, stay with him until the end. His strict approach to discipline was tempered with an unusual recreational interest that he was glad to share with his senior charges:motor rallying.
In 1973 he became the diocesan adviser on religious education in schools, a position he combined with assistance during the summer pilgrimage system to the pastoral staff at Lough Derg. During this time, Bishop Mulligan retired due to ill-health and was succeeded in 1979 by Bishop Joseph Duffy.
In 1985 Fr. Mohan was appointed to the staff of St. Macartan's Cathedral, where he served as curate for five years and acting administrator for one. In 1990 he became the twelfth prior of Lough Derg since the Diocese of Clogher assumed responsibility for the island place of pilgrimage almost two hundred years previously, succeeding Monsignor Gerard McSorley on the latter's appointment as parish priest of Ballybay after ten years in the post.
Fr. Mohan would hold the position, which brought with it the honour and title of Monsignor, for the next twenty-three years, the fourth longest of any previous occupant (longer terms were 33, 29 and 25 years) extending into the episcopate of Bishop Duffy's successor Liam McDaid.
The history of Lough Derg is a fascinating and complex one, extending over eight hundred years. Despite the construction of the impressive basilica on the site in the 1930s, visitor numbers there had fluctuated through the second half of the twentieth century, although in the era of highest emigration during the 1950s more than 30,000 pilgrims visit the island over the traditional ten-week season from June 1.
By the time that Fr. Mohan took over the opening of a new Women’s Hostel in 1988 had given the island a much needed facility for the high percentage of females among the reduced numbers of about 10,000 a year then visiting.
The introduction of one-day retreats in 1992 and school retreats increased this throughput and extended the season into April and September.
With a greater variety of visitors, areas were developed for book and gift sales and plans to update the 'backroom' facilities for catering, laundry and cieaning were put in place (these covered the provision for pastoral staff who lived normal daily lives during the pilgrimage season, as well as domestic staff who resided both on and off-site, and baking operations for the bread which is the only solid sustenance allowed to the typical pilgrim). Fr. Mohan emphasised the importance of setting operational standards on the island by applying for, and securing, the Excellence Ireland Foundation Mark.
2002 saw the installation of a new millenium statue on the lakeshore; entitled Patrick the Pilgrim and sculpted by Ken Thompson, it was unveiled by Brian Keenan.
Early on in his tenure Fr. Mohan was able to start work on the installation of a Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the small St. Mary’s building, which he would then restore to its original 1860s form in 2003. In 2004 he oversaw the development of a Pilgrim Path along the lakeshore (this path became very relevant in the Covid period when it could host outdoor walks that did not breach social distancing regulations).
In 2005 a new retreat facility named Davog House was solemnly opened by Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio and the extended range of sacred spaces allowed the first ecumenical day of prayer to be organised in 2007, and the first family day retreat in 2008. A half-hour daily session exploring alternative forms of prayer was introduced for pilgrims on the 2nd day of their Three Day Pilgrimage, facilitated by clerical students.
One of the interesting aspects of the relatively isolated island was the manner in which it attracted people from overseas. One of the most notable was Fr Ragheed Ganni, a former engineer from Iraq who studied for the priesthood in Rome and stayed at the Irish College during his time there, including two years of post-graduate study for his doctorate.
He was a highly regarded member of season staff at Lough Derg from 1996 to 2003 (he returned to Iraq in the same year and was appointed to a parish in Mosul. There, at the age of thirty-five, he was assassinated in 2007, along with three sub-deacons, as he left his church; he is now a candidate for beatification).
Some of this attraction of Lough Derg to foreign visitors was based on the historic appeal of the island to international pilgrims, as was commemorated in 1997 when a group from Catalonia retraced the steps of their fourteenth-century countryman Ramon de Perellos, and in 2003 when the Hungarian Special Olympics team visited to remember the pilgrimages of George of Grissaphan (1353) and Laurence Rathold de Paszo (1411).
For many years the sacristan in the basilica was a Russian named Vladimir Belov and in 2003 he returned to Lough Derg with fourteen companions as part of a tour funded by donations of island pilgrims.
Meanwhile Fr. Mohan was travelling in the opposite direction with his attendance at events such as the Fifth European Conference of Priors/Recteurs of Shrines & Pilgrimages in Lourdes on the theme Shrines & Pilgrimages: Paths of Peace and Spaces of Mercy in 2007; a Conference in Krakow, Poland in 2008 on the theme Reflections on Renewing a Shrine’ – The Place, the Story, the Welcome, the Prayers, the Liturgy; and the World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Pilgrimages and Shrines, organised by the Archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela, Spain in 2010 on the theme ‘So he went to stay with them’
In 2012 on the occasion of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress, in Dublin, Mass was celebrated in St Patrick’s Basilica by the Papal Legate, Cardinal Marc Ouellet. Before the Mass, Cardinal Ouellet and his delegation met with a group of survivors of child abuse which included representatives of institutional and clerical abuse, men and women, from different parts of the island of Ireland, North and South. A Healing Stone, unveiled at the opening of the congress in Dublin, was placed permanently at Lough Derg following the event
In the following year Fr. Mohan's tenure at Lough Derg ended when Bishop McDaid appointed him to the position of Parish Priest of Clones, in succession to Fr. Larry Duffy. Bishop McDaid paid tribute to his work at the island in a ceremony to mark his departure.
Fr. Duffy, who had been appointed Vicar General and moved on to be parish priest of Carrickmacross, and who had spent his entire priesthood in pastoral positions, succeeded Bishop McDaid when the latter retired through ill-health in 2018.
At about that time Fr. Mohan was elected President of Clogher Historical Society, launching Bishop Duffy’s book St. Tiarnach of Clones on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the bishop’s priestly ordination, and presiding at a lecture on one of his native area’s most controversial figures, Bishop Patrick Neison Lynch, the Confederate-era head of the U.S. diocese of Charleston in South Carolina (John Joseph Lynch, a Vincentian and the first Archbishop of Toronto, was also born in the area).
In 2020 he retired from senior parish duties at the age of seventy-six, and assumed pastoral responsibility for the Aghadrumsee area of Clones parish, combining it during Covid with the restoration of an unkempt garden at a small property he had acquired in Glenfarne in Co. Leitrim.
He had presided at a funeral in Clones on the day before his sudden illness which occurred at Aghadrumsee on New Year’s Eve. He died in hospital in Enniskillen on New Year’s Day.
At his funeral in his former parish church of the Sacred Heart in Clones, and in the presence of Bishop Emeritus McDaid and Archbishop-elect Noel Treanor, Bishop Laurence Duffy said that Fr. Dick ‘had served all the hours God gave him.’
And he continued: ’Who am I going to bring to Christ as a result of my encounter with him? This is something that also lies at the heart of the mission of Lough Derg and the mission of the church in the wider world. This was the mission that was entrusted to Father Dick, one he carried out faithfully until the end.’
Fr. Richard Mohan was buried in the cemetery attached to St. Joseph’s Church in his native Coonian, not far from the Mohan family home. A sister, Eileen, who was a teacher in Ballygawley and had settled with her family in Coonian, died in 2018 and he was survived by his brother Pat, who carries on the Mohan farming tradition, and by his sisters Mary (Birmingham) and Anna (Glasgow) and their families.
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