Courtney McGrail
An un-named Jesuit priest was the top bidder in a fiercely-contested auction of stained glass church windows made by the renowned Harry Clarke Studios.
The Dublin-based priest paid €31,000 – 10 times the estimate — for a single stained glass panel depicting ‘Saint Francis Xavier preaching in the Orient’.
The priest was also the successful bidder for a large three-panel window of Saint Francis Xavier which made €21,000.
Both windows were made by commission in the 1930s for an unknown church in Co. Kilkenny but were never collected from the studios.
