Children and teachers in a north Cork school have organised a petition to retain their popular school chaplain. They are opposed to the planned transfer to Aghada of Fr Brendan Mallon by acting Bishop of Cloyne Dermot Clifford after thirteen years in Mallow where his duties include acting as chaplain to Davis College.
Three hundred children and thirty teachers signed the petition to seeking to have the bishop reconsider the transfer.
The school’s principal, Mr Denis Mullen, said that the issue highlighted the shortage of priests in the Cloyne diocese, which Archbishop Clifford has been managing since the resignation of Bishop John Magee.
One of the sixth-year students, Kieran Brennan, said that the priest had a “positive influence on people’s lives and got some people interested in religion who otherwise would not.”
Fr Mallon was instrumental in interesting young people in becoming members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association.
Diocese spokesman Fr Jim Killeen said the chaplaincy position at Davis College was never meant to be permanent.
He said Davis College would now be in the same position as other VEC schools in the diocese which do not have their own chaplain due to lack of funding.
Fr Killeen said that ten years was the normal stint for a priest of the diocese to stay in one location and Fr Mallon had been there longer than that.
“Although we are not at crisis point yet, we have a declining number of priests; twelve years ago, we had enough priests bit now we are facing a real challenge,” he said.
SIC: CIN/IE