Liscannor delegation to negotiate with Bishop of Galway

A delegation of six people, representing Liscannor, will meet with Bishop of Galway, Michael Drennan this Thursday evening in an effort to persuade the bishop to allow the local church to be used as a place of repose for the deceased.

Although churches in the Killaloe diocese are available as places of repose, the Bishop of Galway has liturgical objections to the practice in his diocese, of which Liscannor is part.
“It’s causing a lot of hurt and pain that we have to be prolonging the situation and arguing like this,” Liscannor’s Patrick Blake told The Clare Champion.
“We don’t want this role at all. We would rather if the bishop showed a bit of kindness, dignity and humility, so that we can carry on and treat the church in a dignified way like we were doing,” he added.
Mr Blake outlined why Bishop Drennan is objecting to the use of Liscannor Church as part of the funeral ritual, whereby mourners are sympathised with on the evening before the deceased is laid to rest.
“He’s against it from a liturgical point of view, in that he feels the church shouldn’t be used like that. The question we ask as a community is why can a bishop, cardinal and a pope be laid out in a church and why can the Killaloe diocese operate this system?” Patrick Blake queried.
If Thursday night’s meeting doesn’t change Bishop Drennan’s view on the issue, Mr Blake believes that people in Liscannor are very likely to escalate their protest.
“We don’t want to go any further than this and we look forward to the bishop saying ‘yes’ on Thursday night. But if he doesn’t, we will have to go to Plan B and continue this. We are doing things very democratically at the moment and we’ll always continue to do that but if protest is required to sell our message, we will have to do that,” he forecast.
Ennistymon county councillor Martin Conway says that utilising the church as a place of repose, when there is no funeral home available nearby, helps the grieving process.
“It’s a very peaceful, dignified and very spiritual way of reposing a body. People go into the church and sympathise and then go down to the back of the church, light a candle and say a prayer for the deceased,” he explained.
“What really gets to me is this is being stopped by Bishop Martin Drennan, whom I would now call on to show some compassion and some understanding for the people of Liscannor who wish to continue this practice. He now has an opportunity to show some humanity and understanding of why people want to use the house of God,” Councillor Conway suggested.