Call for closure of Croagh Patrick

Priest calls for closure of Croagh Patrick


Erosion on holy mountain labelled a ‘tragedy’

Áine Ryan

A retired parish priest, who called for Croagh Patrick to be ‘off-limits’ to extreme sports athletes in a hard-hitting homily about the environment, was greeted with applause by the congregation at Westport’s midday Mass on Sunday.
In his homily, the former longtime Administrator (Adm) of the parish, Father Tony King, argued that the annual Reek Sunday pilgrimage, which attracts some 30,000 pilgrims and climbers over the last weekend of July, should be suspended for three years until a proper conservation plan is devised and implemented for the dramatically eroded 764-metre high mountain.
In recent years, the mountain has become a popular venue for many high-profile extreme-sports races, which brings participants there to practice. It has also been the location for all sorts of colourful, and sometimes bizarre, charity events, including a bra-chain challenge and a dating festival.
Speaking at 12 noon Mass in St Mary’s Church in Westport on Sunday, to a congregation of about 1,000 people, Fr King observed: “Croagh Patrick is our holy mountain. It is a sacred place. The footprints of pilgrim people on that path carry the faith story of generations. The evidence of what is happening on the traditional pilgrim path of this mountain is disturbing. The impact can only be described as devastation due to erosion and neglect. A lot of the damage I am told is due to it being used as a sky track for fitness by super-athletes.
“To look at the Reek from Liscarney, what was once the pilgrim path now appears as a broad dark gash ripping the side out of a beautiful mountain. The tragedy of what is happening is stunning. Future generations will look back in anger and haunt us for the way it is being neglected.”
Fr King urged the congregation ‘not to hand on a tarnished legacy to future generations’. He likened Croagh Patrick to ‘nature’s greatest cathedral of the west’ and said it was ‘a national shrine of faith, culture and tradition’.
“I honestly feel that this holy mountain should be declared ‘off limits’ from above the statue of St Patrick to the summit for the next three years. And, furthermore, that consideration should be given that the national pilgrimage should be suspended for the same period until a proper environmental protection policy with regulations is put in place to protect and conserve this sacred place. As Pope Francis says: ‘People occasionally forgive us but nature never does’,” he continued.
When speaking to The Mayo News yesterday, Fr King added: “It is the responsibility of the people of the parish to support the local authority to conserve this holy mountain.”
Fr King, who ministered in Westport, first as a curate from 1970 to 1980, and as Adm from 1980 to 1993, is now retired and has returned to live in the town.

Environmental responsibility
IN a broader context, Fr King referred in his homily to the story, which has gone viral, about the group of British tourists who ‘were charged with desecrating Mount Kinabalu, the Hindu and Buddhist sacred mountain in Malaysia’.
“They were brought before the courts and got a substantial fine and at least one of them got three days in prison for ‘a public nuisance offence’ in a sacred place,” Fr King said.
The group of young tourists posed naked for photographs on the holy mountain. When Mt Kinabalu was hit by a magnitude 6.0 earthquake last week, killing 18 people, a Government minister said the group had enraged the spirits of the mountain.
Fr King cited the late Cardinal Basil Hume who once said that ‘the mission of the Church is to save the planet’. He remarked that in the coming weeks Pope Francis will publish a letter, which is totally focused on the environment, entitled “Our Care for our Common Home’.
“God is mirrored in his creation. Pope Francis is reminding us that when we exploit nature, people risk destroying it; [he is] telling us that people and their environment – the place around them are inseparable. We must respect the natural energy and the vital impulse within nature to regenerate itself. Our environment is God’s gift to us and how we use it is a shared responsibility to conserve it for the future,” Fr King said.

Reek repair
DESPITE an expert report published three years ago and more warnings since of the dangers on Croagh Patrick, no progress has been made to make its treacherous pathway safer.
Scottish mountaineering expert Bob Aitken dubbed Croagh Patrick ‘the worst-damaged pathway in the UK and Ireland’ at a seminar in Murrisk at the end of 2013. This view was supported by Mayo Mountain Rescue, ahead of last year’s Reek Sunday weekend when a spokesman stressed the urgency of remedial works, particularly along the steep conical area which is covered by loose shale.
The expert report, commissioned by Mountaineering Ireland some years ago and carried out by Elfyn Jones of the British Mountaineering Council, concluded that the mountain, increasingly used by extreme-sports enthusiasts, needed a ‘large-scale intervention’ estimated to cost €1 million.
It is estimated that well in excess of  100,000 people now climb the mountain each year.