A retired County Limerick parish priest has held his golden jubilee Mass celebration in a hall last weekend because of a ban on saying Mass in the parish church where he ministered for twenty-two years. The ban was imposed on Fr James Holloway by Archbishop Dermot Clifford when he stepped down earlier in the year as PP of Pallasgreen and Templebraden.
It is understood that Fr Holloway, who is 75, had planned to continue working in the parish in a curate capacity after Fr Pat Burns succeeded him, but was stopped from doing so by the archbishop.
He had also agreed to officiate at some weddings to be held in the church.
However, Dr Clifford told him his services would not be needed in his former parish but that he was free to work in any other parish in the Cashel and Emly archdiocese if the resident priest wished him to do so.
One of the organisers of Fr Holloway’s jubilee celebrations, parishioner Áine Commons, said that a lot of people in the area were angry at the ban on him saying Mass in the church and that it was “very sad that a good man of the Church says the Mass to mark his fiftieth year as a priest in a hall and not in the church.”
The Mass in the hall was followed by a presentation from parishioners to Fr Holloway. Ms Commons said that a positive response to an envelope collection for their retirement gift showed “just how highly thought of he is.”
SIC: CIN/IE