Staff reporter
Irish priests have welcomed Pope Francis’ decision to celebrate a Mass for modern martyrs while wearing the stole of a martyred former student of the Irish College in Rome.
“I think it’s very significant,” Fr Gerard Magee, chaplain at Queen’s University Belfast, said of the Pope’s decision to wear Fr Ragheed Ganni’s stole at the Mass celebrated last weekend in Rome’s Basilica of St Bartholomew. The Iraqi Fr Ganni, who was murdered in Mosul in 2007, lived in the Irish College between 1996 and 2003, and spent successive summers working at the Lough Derg pilgrimage centre.
“Obviously there’s a sense of communion with those who are persecuted for continuing to witness openly and courageously to their Faith,” Fr Magee, who worked with Fr Ganni at Lough Derg said to The Irish Catholic about the Pope’s decision, noting how “Ragheed had been very committed in his ministry [in Iraq], completely centred on the Catholic Christian community, and grouping that community around the Eucharist and the Catholic life in his country.”
Fr Dick Mohan, parish priest of Clones, Co. Monaghan, who was Prior at Lough Derg when Fr Ganni worked there, said Fr Ganni’s commitment to people through the Eucharist was the reason he had been killed, adding, “I’m very happy to hear that Francis is aware of Ragheed, because many people think that he is without doubt a modern martyr, a saint.”
