Susan Gately
Every day until Referendum day a group of lay people and clergy are climbing Croagh Patrick and spending 24 hours in prayer at the summit before the Blessed Sacrament for the preservation of the Eighth Amendment.
Tuam’s Archbishop Michael Neary and Westport parish priest, Fr Charlie McDonnell gave their blessing to the venture which began on April 17. “We are following in St Patrick’s Footsteps,” said Dubliner Damien Richardson, one of the originators of the idea.
Over 30 lay people and five priests have taken part in the Perpetual Adoration rota so far, according to the organisers. Most days there has been Mass at the summit. “All we want to do is give people hope,” said Mr Richardson.
Summit
The idea was the brainchild of three men – Damien Richardson, John Carlin and Tim Jackson – as they came away from a recent Loveboth rally in Dun Laoghaire. “We were thinking ‘Can we do more for the Eighth Amendment?’” Mr Richardson told The Irish Catholic. “And we said, ‘Like St Patrick, let’s pray for 40 days and nights at the summit of Croagh Patrick’.”
Realising it would be too difficult for any one person, they came up with the idea of a rota. Since then each day people have met in the car park at the base of Croagh Patrick around noon and climbed the reek together. Arriving at the summit around 3pm, they take over the prayer rota for 24 hours while others return down the mountain.
On average five to six people have slept in the chapel on the summit of the holy mountain each night. “A lady was up last week who was 72,” John Carlin said.
“During the day you’d be blown away but at night time it’s absolutely freezing,” he continued. “There’s no light, no electricity, there’s nothing.
“It is primitive. It takes us right back 1,500 years, to when Christianity was established here – to St Patrick.”
Anyone wishing to commit to a 24-hour shift in the 40 days and nights Perpetual Adoration on Croagh Patrick should contact John at 086-8389989.