Great hope for Firhouse Parish for next 50 years

THE parish of Firhouse celebrated its Golden Jubilee with a very special Mass on Sunday, November 16.

The special 50th anniversary Mass for the parish was celebrated at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, led by Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell.

The parish of Firhouse was founded on November 1, 1975, to service the community that was springing up in the area.

While the church building of Our Lady of Mount Carmel wasn’t completed until 1978, Mass was held in the chapel of the Carmelite Convent, which had been established in 1827 and whose sisters had established a school in the area.

Seán Fallon, a parishioner and Minister of the Word, said the whole mass was “very special”.

“It was all raised to a level just by the fact that the archbishop was there and everything then went just so smoothly,” he told The Echo.

“People met each other that hadn’t met for years for one reason or another, people who used to be in the parish and had moved away, people who are retired and would be mostly stay at home, and a few people, who were ill and therefore not able to come to the church so often or at all, but some of them were wheeled in in wheelchairs to be there,” he said.

A number of former priests who had previously served the Firhouse parish were also in attendence, including Fr Tony Finn, Fr Brian Riley and Fr Paddy Madden, and current parish priests Fr Peter Reilly and Fr Mick Cullen were part of the Mass as well.

“It wasn’t just the normal crowd for Mass, the church was quite full which was wonderful,” Seán added.

“Light refreshments” were served in the hall at neighbouring Scoil Treasa for all who had attended the Mass, including Archbishop Farrell who Seán said spent a considerable amount of time mingling with the parishioners.

“He went to the main door of the church at the end of mass and greeted everybody who was leaving, within sight of a plaque on the wall commemorating the nuns, the Carmelite sisters, who were in the parish for 190 years,” Seán said.

“The church is called after them, in a way, because it’s church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, it was all very nice that he was there under the shadow of the sisters.

“Everyone that was there, I think they felt a great lift and a great bit of kind of hope for the future and maybe for the next 50 years of Firhouse Parish,” he said.