A Tree for Fr. Joe

 

A Maynooth College alumnus is uniquely honoured for

a major contribution to contemporary evangelisation

 

If they think of anything, those who hurry past the decorative foliage that enhances the lawns around Stoyte House probably spare a thought for Silken Thomas, the rebellious tenth Earl of Kildare. He is famously remembered for having played his harp, while still barely out of his teens, under the ancient oak near the college gates, in the face of a brutal future that involved his murder of the controversial and loyalist Archbishop of Dublin, and the mass execution in1534 of his five uncles and himself when he was just twenty four.

But just a short distance away is another tree, its commemorative plaque now missing, that signals the honour of being remembered in a meaningful and permanent way on the Maynooth campus, an honour virtually unknown in the case of an alumnus - and in this case, an alumnus whose career was formed by another Archbishop of Dublin, some four centuries later.

In 2019 a casual enquiry to the college archivist, and a little digging (if you’ll pardon the pun) by the grounds staff revealed an unexpected memorial to a notable cleric, who might have a claim to being among the most influential evangelisers to have been produced by the national seminary.

He was Fr. Joseph Dunn (1932-96), a priest of the Dublin Archdiocese, who studied at Maynooth from 1951 to 1955 and went on to have a distinguished career as a member of the Radharc documentary team, director of communications programs and author on issues within the Catholic Church (for a fuller profile of Fr. Dunn, click here )

Fr. Dunn died on July 16 1996, just as the Radharc series ended on RTE. Shortly afterwards his friend and classmate Fr. Enda McDonagh of the college staff wrote to his family, putting forward the idea of a commemorative planting. The idea took root, so to speak, and a delegation of relatives led by Fr. Dunn’s brother Peter attended the planting of a sapling of the genus cornus controversa variegata to the left of the Stoyte House entrance.

That sapling is now a fully formed tree, taking a shape that has earned it the popular appellation “the wedding cake tree.” Fr. Joe would be amused.