Archdiocesan Pilgrimage to Ireland Won’t Be the Last

Posted

The view from the Gallarus Oratory on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland’s Atlantic West Coast was magnificent. The weather, as the Irish would say, was simply grand.

“Looking out when the Cardinal and the priests were celebrating Mass you saw this incredible view of the ocean and the Irish green,” recalled Daniel Frascella, director of adult faith formation for the archdiocese. “It was really beautiful, the outside Mass, the beauty of God’s creation. The Cardinal spoke about it in his homily. He said nature is ‘God’s Basilica.’ And for all the reputation of Irish weather, you know, it’s gray and raining most of the time, we had great weather almost the entire trip. On this day in particular the sky was blue and the sun was out. It was great!”

That was just one of the highlights of the nine-day pilgrimage Cardinal Dolan led to Ireland’s National Marian shrine in Knock last month. Some 135 New Yorkers made the pilgrimage with the Cardinal, often joined by other American pilgrims who had traveled to Ireland separately and joined the pilgrimage from time to time. The Cardinal was in Ireland to open Ireland’s national Novena in honor of Our Lady of Knock at a Mass Aug. 14 in the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of Ireland.

The New York pilgrims and the Cardinal traveled around the west coast of Ireland in three buses stopping at, among other places, the Chapel of the Apparition at Knock, the Cliffs of Moher and the Lakes of Killarney. Frascella said one of the most fascinating and spiritually uplifting stops was the island of Lough Derg, believed to have been a sanctuary of St. Patrick himself. The island, reached by boat, is an especially meaningful place of pilgrimage for devout Irish Catholics.

“It’s become this penitential site for pilgrims,” Frascella explained. “What they do is spend three days there and they fast the whole time except for the second day they get a piece of toast and some tea. They spend the whole day praying. They walk around barefoot...The idea is it’s this really kind of quiet place where people make this special pilgrimage. Normally you’re not able to go to the island unless you’re going to do this pilgrimage. But they were able to work out an arrangement where our group was able to go. We also had Mass in a chapel there. And that was something that they’d never done before. So that was a unique experience that I think a lot of people also appreciated.”

Frascella said the Cardinal was almost constantly with the pilgrims, except when he had specific liturgical duties to carry out, often joining them at dinner and riding the buses with them. He said Cardinal Dolan, as a Church historian, brought a special perspective to the pilgrimage, discussing the history of the Church in Ireland and the connection of that history to the Irish Diaspora in the United States and the Catholic Church here.

“He spent a lot of time just talking to people,” said Frascella who added that pilgrims gave the Cardinal slips of paper containing prayer intentions for the Mass at Knock on Aug. 14. He said the pilgrimage was a good balance of fellowship and bonhomie along with intense spirituality and penitence.

The Ireland pilgrimage now serves as an international model, to go along with other pilgrimages within the United States such as last year’s journey to Washington, D.C., Frascella said.

“The Office of Adult Faith Formation is relatively new, a few years,” Frascella told CNY. “And one of the things the Cardinal has said to me is pilgrimages are a way that people can grow in their faith and grow closer to God. So he has asked me to be the point person for organizing them. I know he’s interested in having a diocesan pilgrimage to various holy places in the upcoming years. Whether it will be every year that we do an international pilgrimage or every other year, I can’t say for sure. But definitely the idea of having a diocesan pilgrimage led by the Cardinal…is something we plan on doing.”