Lifetime commitment to Lourdes honoured

A specially designed cross, believed to be made in Jerusalem, was presented to a retired Parteen parish priest last week to recognise his great devotion to the annual Lourdes pilgrimage.
Lourdes pilgrimage director, Fr Donal McNamara from the Limerick Diocese, gave Fr Liam Kelly the cross to mark his 54th consecutive visit.
The former Limerick senior hurler also got a religious artefact from a youth group in Parteen to mark the 50th anniversary of his ordination.
His commitment to visiting Lourdes stretches back to his clerical studies where he quickly fostered a love for looking after people with disabilities.
He never lost this desire and even managed to maintain his faithful pilgrimage a month after he was “left for dead” as a result of a vicious knife attack, when two people broke into the parochial house on May 24, 1998.
The then Bishop of Limerick was very anxious that Fr Kelly could go to Lourdes, even though it was only four weeks after his traumatic ordeal. Fr Kelly relented and in a twist of fate, found himself being looked after as an invalid, having spent years performing this task for others.
The attack left him with some horrific physical injuries. Two youths broke into his house in Parteen in the middle of the night demanding money. During the four-hour ordeal, the youths stabbed him nine times in total, four times in the front of his body and five times in the back before they fled in his new car.
“Only for my hurley which I used to defend myself, I could have been killed. The phones in the house were either cut dead or taken so I had to crawl on my hands and knees down the road to the parish clerk who called an ambulance.
“I was told in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Limerick I would only have survived about another ten minutes. I have recovered well from the attack,” he recalled.
The reaction to the attack was phenomenal and he received 2,500 cards and messages from people all over the country.
Fr Kelly received numerous presentations from people in parishes were he served at a recent function in the Castletroy Park Hotel, Limerick, after mass in Monaleen Church.
Having spent 11 years in Parteen, Meelick and Coonagh the 75-year-old cleric now provides cover for priests in Westbury, Parteen and Cratloe.
The Ahane native hurled with Limerick in the fifties and won a Munster championship medal in 1955 when Mick Mackey’s ‘young greyhounds’ defeated a highly fancied Clare side, which had accounted for Cork and Tipperary on route to the decider.
He came to Parteen two days after Clare completed a memorable senior and minor double All-Ireland hurling triumph in 1997.
“It was marvellous, they drove around the village in cars, they hooted their horns for my benefit having played for Limerick. I was so thrilled about it. Wayne Kennedy from Parteen played at corner-back on the minor hurling team,” he said.
On June 19, 1960, Liam was ordained a priest for the Limerick Diocese, which includes Cratloe, Meelick, Parteen and Westbury.
He was sent to a coal-mining district in Maesteq in the Cardiff Diocese and spent four years there administering to parishioners.
On his return, he spent two years in Newcastle West and 16 years in Limerick City in St Joseph’s before he was moved to the Holy Rosary Parish on the Ennis Road. His first rural parish was Croagh Kilfinny in West Limerick and he was then moved to Tournafulla on November 21, 1990 where he spent seven years.
He certainly made his mark in Parteen where he introduced the Diocesan Listening Process and helped to set up the Parish Pastoral Council.
He served on the board of management of both Meelick and Parteen National Schools and was very supportive of the two GAA clubs.