Earlier this month, Freemasons marked the milestone by donating £100,000 to Northern Ireland charities including Nexus NI, cancer charities and others.
Appointed as the new Grand Master in June, Richard Ensor (68), from Dublin, said it can be frustrating that these contributions can still be overshadowed by a suspicious attitude towards masons.
He also spoke of how the organisation became a sanctuary for security force members during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the effect of a Vatican ban on Catholics joining, and whether more women should be members.
Dating back to the Middle Ages, Freemasonry developed out of guilds of stonemasons who developed arcane signs and rituals to protect their trade secrets.
In Ireland, the official anniversary is marked as June 26, 1775, when the first ever Grand Master was installed in Dublin — Richard Parsons, the 1st Earl of Rosse, who was also a founding member of the high-society Hellfire Club.
With early members typically holding meetings in nearby taverns, emigration from Ireland also helped spread freemasonry around the world.
Joining himself 40 years ago, Mr Ensor said the organisation is about friendship, fundraising and respect for others.
“There’s nothing in masonry that’s of a sinister nature whatsoever. You often read on the internet that we’re a funny group of fellas, but we’re not,” he said.
“We’re normal human beings trying to respect people and help others.”
Now offering public tours of Freemasons’ Hall on Dublin’s Molesworth Street, he said his main goal as the new Grand Master is to grow the membership.
“We’re certainly more open than we’ve ever been, even if we don’t like to brag about what we done,” he said.
“But when you look at the £100,000 we donated in Northern Ireland this month, that is a good story.”
He said the traditions of secret handshakes, passing ‘the three degrees’, and ‘being on the level’ remain “vital” parts of the experience.
“The level — it means you run your life on the level and try and be a decent person. That’s the meaning.
“Whether that’s in work or family level, most of our ceremonies are symbolic, but all to improve one’s own outlook on life.
“But that’s only the beginning of your journey; most people who join are in it for life and become completely besotted by it.”
On perceptions that masons help to rig job interviews, he said: “Being a mason, you do promise that you will help another mason if you can, provided it doesn’t hurt you in any way.
“So if you have two people coming for a job and they were both equally skilled and one was a mason, you would kind of opt for the mason if you could.
“So we do try to look after ourselves a little bit.”
He continued: “If you take Northern Ireland, back then (during the Troubles) a lot of our members where from the police force or from the prison service.
“The reason was they felt safe going to a lodge meeting and having a drink or a bite to eat, and it felt very secure.
“It was a safe haven for them to go to. Regrettably so many of them were killed during the Troubles, but all of their children and their widows would have been supported by the Freemasons of Ireland.”
With the Vatican banning Catholics from joining in 2023, he said: “It really hasn’t affected things in any great way; tell someone not to do something and they’ll go and do it.
“We have more and more members who are Catholic joining freemasonry than ever before.
“The reason the church made this edict was they saw masonry as a threat. But we’re not a threat, we’re not a church or religious movement — just a group of guys getting together, having a bit of fun and raising some money.
“It certainly doesn’t affect our membership in any way.”
With female lodges becoming more common in the UK, Mr Ensor said hasn’t seen a demand in Ireland, but would accept such a change.
“The world has changed a lot and if there was a demand we would embrace it most definitely.”