A powerful calling
The Interview Denise Horan
denisehoran@mayonews.ie
FIFTY years down and not a single regret. Not a solitary lonely night. Not a hint of doubt about his calling.
Tommy Shannon was born for the role of priest, and, while he cannot pin-point exactly when his decision to take this path was made, he can readily identify the influences. And none was greater than Fr James Kelly, the 75-year-old (upon arrival) parish priest of Glenamaddy whose failing sight brought the ten-year-old son of the local garda into his absolute trust.
The nomadic life of a garda in the early days of the Irish state had led the Shannons on a circuit of Leinster towns and villages before Glenamaddy in County Galway finally became the family’s permanent home in 1938. As was to happen many times in his life thereafter, the ‘ball hopped well’ for Tommy Shannon on his way back from a toilet break in the local primary school one day.
“I met a man who said ‘would you ever ask the master to send someone up to serve Mass’ and he [the master] said ‘go up yourself’. That started two years of serving Mass for this parish priest [Fr Kelly] who never got up before eleven o’clock, which means I never got to school before 12!
“His sight began to fail with the result that he needed somebody to read the papers to him, so he would hold me on after school and I would call out the headlines to him and, depending on the headlines, he would say ‘continue’ or ‘read that for me please’,” recalls the now Monsignor Shannon.
As the bond grew deeper, the boy’s duties grew in number, including writing letters on the priest’s behalf to the then Minister for Supplies, Seán Lemass, among others.
The impression made on the young Tommy Shannon was a lasting one.
“This was my closest friend in a way, whose life I shared every day. He trusted me so much. I remember one day he asked me to take a relic and place it to his aching and weakening eyes. He had so much trust that he asked me to do that.”
Coming from this background, he was ‘very much on the priests’ side’ during his formative years in what was a mercilessly difficult place for many boys – St Jarlath’s College, Tuam. Though not blessed with immense footballing talent (‘but I was a trier’), his excellence at singing was quickly noted and from his first year he played a role in the college’s annual opera, a tradition that had only begun the year before his arrival in 1945. By the time he reached fifth year, his talent was rewarded with a leading role in ‘The Pirates of Penzance’.
By the end of his fourth year, he had made up his mind he was going to give Maynooth a try.
Twelve from his class in Jarlath’s sat the Concursus exam for entry to Maynooth. Five passed. Of that quintet, only he and Liam Durkan were ordained seven years later.
Though he had worked hard to get there, and it was unquestionably where he wanted to be, the Maynooth seminary regime was a tough one. Tommy Shannon ‘survived because I was interested enough’, but it was not a place that suited all comers. It was an institution where, in spite of its many positives, ‘fear reigned and fear governed lives’, he recalls.
“The one thing I did not like about Maynooth was the way it tried to reduce everyone to a common denominator. Initiative or talent was, in a way, suppressed or crushed, for fear it might give you notions and raise you above the parapet. The safest thing to be was an ordinary guy with no pretensions of any kind. And I know guys who suffered because of that and part of the reason in the past that parish priests, especially in rural Ireland, showed no initiative, was because they weren’t allowed or encouraged [when they were in Maynooth]. We all paid a price.”
In spite of this climate of fear and suppression, Tommy Shannon’s musical talents were recognised and nurtured quietly by one of the professors in Maynooth, Fr Cathal O’Callaghan, who for four years gave him voice production lessons twice weekly in his free time. It was this same man who was, unwittingly, responsible for Tommy Shannon’s first ministry, in Castlebar, a post that was to last for 14 glorious years. Fr O’Callaghan recommended to the archbishop that he be allowed to do a degree in music in UCD, but the archbishop needed a curate who could continue the great choir tradition in Castlebar. He looked no further than the freshly-ordained and musically-gifted Fr Shannon.
He took charge of the male choir of 40 boys and 20 men in Mayo’s county town, and ‘did it with relish’, but it was through the establishment of a sodality there, from which evolved a monthly letter to the members, that the young Fr Shannon really made his mark in Castlebar between 1964 and 1971.
“What began as a small little letter became a longer newsy letter. I’d say it was the mobile phone of the sixties, a text message to every lad [there were up to 300] from once he left sixth class to once he reached his twentieth birthday.”
It was his ability to type that led to Tommy Shannon’s next appointment, as secretary to the late Archbishop Joseph Cunnane of Tuam. Though apprehensive at first about the enormity of the task, he carried out the role diligently for 13 years, while also working in a pastoral role with the students in his alma mater, St Jarlath’s. There he began the tradition of involving a different class in the liturgy at the fortnightly Mass he took charge of, a continuation of the great work he had started with the young people of Castlebar and which he was later to continue with the youth of Ballinrobe.
Among the highlights of his time as secretary to the Archbishop was the visit of Pope John Paul II to Knock in 1979. With Monsignor James Horan, then Parish Priest of Knock, busy with media and other duties, Fr Shannon took charge of organisational matters on the ground for the historic event.
With Archbishop Cunnane nearing retirement age, in 1984 he elected to appoint his faithful secretary to a new role, rather than leave it in the hands of his successor. The position he chose was that of Parish Priest of Ballinrobe. Twenty-three years, hundreds of baptisms, weddings and funerals – not to mention innumerable renderings of his signature tune ‘Delaney’s Donkey’ – later, he remains one of the town’s greatest driving forces and its unofficial first citizen.
But he has clearly loved being in Ballinrobe as much as it has loved having him.
While he reminisces about many great moments in Ballinrobe – including the live broadcast on RTÉ of the station Mass from Anthony McCormack’s house in Cloongowla in 1987, the celebration in 2004 of the 150th anniversary of the confirmation by Archbishop MacHale at the old church on the Castlebar Road and his own lead role in Ballinrobe Musical Society’s 1990 production of ‘The Mikado’ – it is the restoration of St Mary’s Church’s famed Harry Clarke windows that stands out above all.
“I knew about Ballinrobe’s musical tradition before I came, I knew about its racecourse, its fishing and its lakes, but what I did not know about was the Harry Clarke windows. They were beyond anything I had ever seen.”
They were certainly beautiful, but they were buckling and in danger of cracking – so the priest with a reputation for getting things done ensured they were attended to. The cost at the time – 1988–89 – was £26,000 (with an additional £26,000 needed for the remaining windows in the church) and that sum was raised in the parish, ensuring the eight windows were safeguarded.
His fascination with the Harry Clarke windows led him to purchase a full set of original drawings of the Ballinrobe windows (complete with handwritten notes), and this in turn allowed him to oversee (with Richard Higgins) the production of ‘an authoritative’ booklet on the windows for the celebration of the Clarke centenary, which was attended by Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich (late Archbishop of Armagh) on St Patrick’s Day 1989.
Four years later, his ambitious plans to restore the entire church were revealed to the community, and the people responded generously once more in meeting the £420,000 cost of the work, which involved the raising of the altar, the reconfiguration of the aisles, the fitting of a new roof and the erection of a specially-commissioned batik as a colourful backdrop to the altar.
Perhaps the greatest legacy of all his ministries, however, is the time he devoted to young people. He remarks that had he not been a priest, he would love to have been a teacher. But in his role in the schools of the parishes in which he worked he did more for the young than many teachers – simply by taking time to get to know them, encourage them and listen to them.
“I always encouraged young people because I had my talents nurtured and I saw what it did for me. God has given you your special talents and he has given me my special talents. I am going to be a more contented person if I develop those talents and they enrich my life,” he says.
Life is slowing down a little for the larger-than-life 74-year-old, but he will never fall into the throes of idleness. His curate, Fr Michael Gormally, has taken over the First Communion duties in the parish, but he still visits the schools every fortnight and officiates at weddings and funerals, as well as continuing his daily and weekend Mass duties.
Right now he is busying himself with his jubilee celebrations. The first of the celebratory events takes place this Saturday evening at the house of his cousin in The Curragh, Co Kildare. Up to 80 people will attend, including his sisters Mary, Bridie and Aileen, from Australia, Namibia and South Africa, respectively, and his brother, Micheál, from Peru. A week later, as many more will travel to the church in Lackagh (where his parents were married) and later on to Claregalway for part two of the family celebrations (the jubilee of his sister, Mary’s marriage, which was the first he performed, will also be celebrated on this occasion). Then, on Monday evening, July 2, it is Ballinrobe’s turn to fete its esteemed parish priest, who was appointed a monsignor in 1995. And the community will do it in style.
His ministry work may only have taken him to three parishes, but the footprint he has left on each has been enormous. Forty years on, they still talk of him fondly in Castlebar.
