Fr Paddy says 'trust the laity'

When Fr Paddy Ryan leaves Kilcullen at the end of the month, he will, in his own words, be bidding farewell to a community which he says provided him with an 'enriching experience' over the past three years.



But he in turn has enriched Kilcullen, as evidenced by the wide range of people with whom he has interacted both in his pastoral duties and leisure time.

He will be remembered for being open to ideas, for his gentle way of listening, for his work with the elderly, the sick and housebound. And also with the families of the community both old and new, and the young people. In short, Fr Paddy has been a priest for the whole of Kilcullen. His ability to be so reflects a life in the priesthood which was for the most part a challenge.

Kilcullen was the latest stepping stone across Fr Paddy's own river of life, which he spent mostly in East Africa, where he first landed in 1965. He taught for many years in a seminary and then ran a Novitiate at the foot of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania after becoming Novice Master for the new East Africa Province of the Holy Ghost Fathers. This took in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia and Malawi.

In Tanzania alone there were 126 different tribes, each with their own cultures and customs. It was part of the job of the missionary orders to draw these disparate groups together as a community of faith, but without disturbing their individual cultures

"It was a task that required endless patience and understanding of where all these people come from. There were major issues of language, and of customs which were a manifestation of things going on at a much deeper level."

Fr Paddy says that what he and his colleagues learned most from that experience was humility, and that 'we didn't know all the answers'. "I also learned that people who were newly evangelised had an extraordinary insight into faith."

Eventually returning to Ireland, his home country was quite a different place from that which he had departed. "Many good things had happened, compared to the emigration haemorrhage through the 1950s and '60s, devastating for the people who remained behind. The older population suffered particularly from that. There was a tremendous sense of loss."

His posting to Kilcullen three years ago, following a stint in Greenhills Parish subsequent to being Bursar at the Holy Ghost Fathers house in Kimmage, was to a village in the throes of its first, much delayed, growth. Like himself, there were many new people in town. But he found a ready acceptance.

"There is a population here that is extraordinary by any standards," he says. "If you ask people to volunteer for something, they are immediately there. There is tremendous artistic talent. And that so many new people have been made welcome says a lot about the security which the village feels about itself, that it can retain its own identity and yet adapt, incorporate, and welcome the new things that are happening."

Fr Paddy is not going to be replaced, leaving Kilcullen as a one-priest parish with Fr Michael Murphy PP. He believes the church in Ireland has to accept that it is going to be totally different, with a huge amount of lay involvement. "The opportunities are marvellous, if they are grasped. Much work has been done to involve the laity in the message of the church, but now that laity must be empowered.

"In the administration of the parish, the laity must be allowed to take that responsibility completely. There are also many fine lay people who could do a very good job in preparing for the sacraments, if they are given appropriate and training by the church, a training that will help them develop a mature adult faith that they can readily articulate as well as live."

Giving such responsibility to the laity is something Fr Paddy is well familiar with from his decades in Africa. "One of the things I got from my time there was the realisation that circumstances force you to delegate and trust. And what you find at the end is that the people you trust will respond."

Brian Byrne.

This piece was first published on the Kilcullen page of the Kildare Nationalist.