A parish priest in Tipperary has spoken out against false reports that the local church in Cullen will remain closed for the summer months.
In recent weeks it was announced that: “Due to the reduced availability of priests, three of the churches in the St Ailbe's area will not have Masses from the weekends of June 14-15 to September 6-7 inclusive.
“The churches affected are St Patrick's Church, Cullen, St Brigid's Church, Templebraden and St Brigid's Church, Dromkeen.
“These closures will certainly inconvenience those without access to transport and may ultimately have an adverse effect on the respective churches.”
Speaking with the Moderator of St Ailbe’s Parish Combination, Fr Bernie Moloney, he confirmed that rumours of the church closing were unfounded.
“The church is open for anybody and everybody to visit, to pray inside, it’s open for baptisms, open for weddings, open for funerals. The only change is the Saturday evening mass in Cullen has been suspended due to holiday time, due to events in the diocese, we just can’t staff it. It’s just that the Saturday evening masses in Cullen won’t be happening for a few weeks, but everything else is as usual,” assured Fr Bernie.
Fr Michael Kennedy who is the parish priest of St Patrick's Church in Cullen, said: “Our churches are still open seven days a week for private prayer, baptisms, funerals and weddings. The only thing that has been dropped has been the weekend mass and that’s just for during the holiday times when we haven’t got priests to staff it.
"It’s only temporary until September. During holiday times, when priests go on holidays and are involved in different things, we have a huge amount going on. We were struggling to keep up all the weekend masses, it was sanctioned by the parish parishional teams and the archbishop, everybody understands the situation.”
The church released a statement recently setting the record straight that the doors will remain open throughout the summer months.
The statement, which was posted in the Lattin/Cullen Parish Newsletter dated the weekend of June 7 and 8, said: “As was announced some weeks ago, the schedule of weekend parish masses will be reduced, beginning next weekend. The regular Mass schedule will resume in the second week of September.
"We will remind you then. The churches affected by this are Cullen, Dromkeen and Templebraden. They will not have weekend masses. We trust that their parishioners will adjust their own Mass going arrangements and be welcomed in the nearby parish churches and that neighbours will help one another to travel. However, please be clear: these churches will be open for the usual hours seven days a week. They will be open for visits and personal prayer, open for baptisms, weddings and for funerals.”
The statement went on to say that “these cut-backs are necessary to enable our priests to assist the Diocesan Lourdes Pilgrimage, the Diocesan Knock Shrine Pilgrimage, The Holy Cross Novena and to take some holiday time.
"In fact last weekend we came very close to having to cancel one or more masses due to illness.”
The statement ended by saying that the priests are aware that parishioners may be disappointed or discommoded but they trust locals will remain faithful to the Mass.