St Kevin's Church in Glencree. As well as being fortunate to be living in very beautiful surroundings and even more blessed to have a good community spirit, a stand out characteristic of Enniskerry (Curtlestown, Glencree, Kilmacanogue) Parish, according to Fr John Wall, is a close relationship with “our Church of Ireland sisters and brothers” including celebrating many common liturgies, especially during Holy Week.
“Ecumenism is alive and well. We have a great relationship. We do a lot of joint parish fundraising and have shared liturgies occasionally. Actually, the most recent thing is the Clarion monthly bulletin, which is a joint parishes initiative,” says Fr Wall.
The newspaper provides news from all four Catholic churches and the two Protestant churches as well as a combined community and liturgy diary. A joint parishes committee drawn from both Christian traditions also holds a golf classic once a year in aid of joint parish funds.
Community spirit
Enniskerry parish’s community spirit can be seen from the number of other lay ministries working in the four churches, such as a welcoming committee which greets people at Sunday Mass and helps them find a seat, a property committee which is responsible for maintaining all the churches, an education committee, hospitality committee and a liturgy committee. There are also the Ministers of the Word, Eucharistic Ministers, baptismal teams, choirs, collectors, leaflet distributors, flower arrangers, cleaners, graveyard committee, a Rosary group, Legion of Mary and a Bethany Bereavement group.
Beauty
“We are also known for the beauty of our churches,” Fr Wall says. “Especially St Kevin’s in Glencree which is near the Peace and Reconciliation Centre, which was a barracks at one stage and a detention centre for young people and then after the war it was used as a refugee centre. We also have the only German military cemetery in Ireland and a German choir comes over every year in November for a commemoration.”
There are 134 people buried at the German military cemetery – six prisoners from a POW camp from World War I, 81 soldiers from World War II who were mainly Luftwaffe airmen who had crashed here or navy personnel washed up on Irish soil, 46 civilians from the British SS Arandora Star which was sunk by a German U boat and one spy – Hermann Goetz who parachuted into Ireland in 1940 and for a time lived at Laragh Castle.
“We’re also very happy that Powerscourt was voted the third most beautiful garden in the world by National Geographic. We came behind Kew Gardens in London and Versailles outside Paris,” Fr Wall says. “But we had a distinct advantage from the Creator, we’ve got two mountains here and it’d be very hard for Kew or Versailles to top that!”