Clonard Monastery is a Catholic church located off the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and home to a community of the Redemptorists religious order. [1]
Clonard Monastery is a Catholic church located off the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and home to a community of the Redemptorists religious order. [1]
In late 19th century Belfast, the Catholic population grew to such an extent that the provision of pastoral support to the working class was practically impossible for members of the diocesan clergy. The Bishop of Down and Connor Henry Henry invited the Redemptorists religious order to come to Belfast in 1896.
Initially the Redemptorists built a small tin church in the grounds of Clonard House in 1897. In 1890 a monastery or community residence was opened in these grounds in the early French Gothic style. Eventually in 1911 the Church of the Holy Redeemer opened in the grounds of the community residence replacing the tin church. [2]
In 2008 the church went through a £3 million pound 4 year restoration project. The work was completed in 2012. [3]
Over the years the Clonard community has promoted a range of initiatives in religious devotion.
One of the earliest was the establishment of confraternities for men and women which occurred in 1897 and which were, at the time, an innovative combination of religious services and instruction and proved extremely popular. [4] However, due to declining numbers the women's confraternity ceased to function in 2019 and the following years the men's confraternity closed. [5] [6]
According to a book on the history of the community two further devotional developments took place at Clonard "the first was the inauguration of a 'perpetual' novena in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. The second, was the 'Mission to non-Catholics', made possible in part by the easing of sectarian tension produced by the shared danger of war." [7]
The Clonard community continues to hold the annual Novena in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour attracting an accumulated number of over 100,000 pilgrims, Catholic and Protestant, from across Ireland. [8] [9]
Clonard sits on the frontline of the troubles which erupted in Belfast in August 1969, located as it is, at an Interface area between the mainly Catholic Falls Road district and the mainly Protestant Shankill Road district. At the rear of the monastery was located Bombay Street and Cupar Street which led on to the Shankill Road.
On 14 August 1969, loyalists from the Shankill Road launched a series of attacks on the houses owned by Catholics in those streets. The residents were forced to flee and many of the houses were burnt to the ground including the whole of Bombay Street. [10]
The priests from Clonard were actively involved from the outset in attempting to safeguard the local residents.
Two of Northern Ireland's most significant clergy who worked for peace, Frs. Alec Reid and Gerry Reynolds, lived here. [11] [12]
In 1981 members of the Redemptorist community at Clonard established links with Fitzroy Presbyterian Church near Queen's University, Belfast in the south of the city and the monastery became a centre for peacemaking and reconciliation. [13] Secret conversations between John Hume and Gerry Adams were held in rooms in the complex while wider, interfaith conversations helped contribute to the 1994 IRA ceasefire.
Clonard is also used as a music venue for many festivals in the city, most notably but not exclusively Féile an Phobail.
Belfast West is a parliamentary constituency (seat) in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. The current MP is Paul Maskey of Sinn Féin.
The Shankill Road is one of the main roads leading through West Belfast, in Northern Ireland. It runs through the working-class, predominantly loyalist, area known as the Shankill.
The Falls Road is the main road through West Belfast, Northern Ireland, running from Divis Street in Belfast City Centre to Andersonstown in the suburbs. The name has been synonymous for at least a century and a half with the Catholic community in the city. The road is usually referred to as the Falls Road, rather than as Falls Road. It is known in Irish as the Bóthar na bhFál and as the Faas Raa in Ulster-Scots.
The Redemptorists officially named the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, abbreviated CSsR, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right for men. It was founded by Alphonsus Liguori at Scala, Italy, for the purpose of labouring among the neglected country people around Naples. It is dedicated to missionary work and they minister in more than 100 countries. Members of the congregation are Catholic priests and consecrated religious brothers.
Our Mother of Perpetual Succour is a title of the Mary, mother of Jesus in Catholicism associated with a 15th-century Byzantine icon and a reputed Marian apparition. The image has been enshrined in the Church of San Matteo in Via Merulana since 27 March 1499, and is today permanently enshrined in the Church of Saint Alphonsus of Liguori in Rome, where the novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help is prayed weekly.
A novena is an ancient tradition of devotional praying in Christianity, consisting of private or public prayers repeated for nine successive days or weeks. The nine days between the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost, when the disciples gathered in the upper room and devoted themselves to prayer, is often considered to be the first novena.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a Roman Catholic minor basilica and Marian shrine in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York. The shrine is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Mother of Perpetual Succour.
The Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, commonly known as the Transalpine Redemptorists or The Sons, are a religious institute of the Catholic Church canonically erected in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Aberdeen and based on Papa Stronsay in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, as well as in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. They were formed in 1988 as a traditionalist offshoot of the Redemptorists, following a monastic rule based on that of Alphonsus Liguori, and was later formally erected as a religious institute in 2012.
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Thomas Joseph Williams, more commonly known as Tom Williams, was a volunteer in C Company, 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade in the Irish Republican Army from the Bombay Street area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was hanged in the Crumlin Road Gaol for his involvement in the killing of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officer, Patrick Murphy during the Northern Campaign.
Alexander Reid was an Irish Catholic priest noted for his facilitator role in the Northern Ireland peace process, a role BBC journalist Peter Taylor subsequently described as "absolutely critical" to its success.
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Robert William Bates was a Northern Irish loyalist. He was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the infamous Shankill Butchers gang, led by Lenny Murphy.
The Battle of St Matthew's or Battle of Short Strand was a gun battle that took place on the night of 27–28 June 1970 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was fought between the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Ulster loyalists in the area around St Matthew's Roman Catholic church. This lies at the edge of the Short Strand, a Catholic enclave in a mainly-Protestant part of the city. Violence had erupted there, and in other parts of Belfast, following marches by the Orange Order. The battle lasted about five hours and ended at dawn when loyalists withdrew. The British Army and police were deployed nearby but did not intervene. Three people were killed and at least 26 wounded in the fighting, while another three were killed in north Belfast.
St Gerard's Church and Monastery collectively form one of Wellington's most distinctive and iconic landmarks. Located on Mount Victoria in Wellington, both buildings are classified as "Category I" historic places by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. They are built on the site of a sixteen-roomed house and property owned by James Edward Fitzgerald who some claim to be New Zealand's first Prime Minister. In April 2021, the owners of the buildings, the International Catholic Programme of Evangelisation (ICPE), announced that the church would close at the end of the following month due to safety concerns. The buildings were sold to on 27 March 2023. the purchaser was a recently formed company, St Gerard's Limited.
The Springfield Road is a residential area and road traffic thoroughfare adjacent to the Falls Road in west Belfast. The local population is predominantly Irish nationalist and republican. Along parts of the road are several interface area with the neighbouring Ulster loyalist areas of the Greater Shankill. The Springfield Road includes the Ballymurphy and New Barnsley districts and is overlooked by Black Mountain and Divis.
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Francis Desmond Wilson (1925–2019) was an Irish Catholic priest and church dissident who in the course of the Northern Ireland Troubles embraced ideas and practice associated, internationally, with liberation theology. Active in working-class and Irish nationalist West Belfast, he defended the right of communities failed by the state to create “alternative education, alternative welfare, alternative theatre, broadcasting, theological and political discussion, public inquiries and much else”. More controversially, he did not condemn paramilitary groups when they presented themselves, in his words, as “alternative police and alternative armies”.
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