Fr Eamonn McCarthy Personal Profile
With Ireland having entered a second period of full restriction, making an effort to communicate is more important than ever, and Fr Eamonn McCarthy finds himself at the forefront of those efforts through his work with Radio Maria.
The Dublin-based priest is well-known on Irish airwaves, helming Radio Maria’s mission in Ireland with an able team at his side. Speaking to The Irish Catholic, he revealed that not only was his radio career no clear-cut thing, but his priestly vocation too.
“I was a late start. My brother was ordained ahead of me. My brother is younger than me, but senior to me by ordination, so that would have been an influence. Now, I graduated in ‘85 with a civil engineering degree in the middle of a recession and emigrated to London and spent seven years over there and another six years studying to become a chartered quantity surveyor, so I have a whole bunch of qualifications.”
Legion of Mary
For Fr Eamonn, for many years, life in the world was mingled with service in the Legion of Mary:
“Well, all I would tell the kids at school when I was teaching as a priest afterwards was, ‘I made my first million…That’s obviously not true, but, yeah, I just lived the life of a single guy in London City and made some great friends over there and really progressed in terms of a career. Really, I would say the seed of the vocation started there because I was very involved in the Legion of Mary in London. I had been involved here at home before leaving and just picked up the pieces.”
The thread that would lead to his current settings was laid here, Fr Eamonn being “steeped and absolutely immersed in the mind and life of Frank Duff and the work of the Legion.”
Priesthood
His work with the Legion compelled him on to take a chance on the priesthood, “on the rebound from my brother’s ordination”, Fr Eamonn says. He embarked on the path to priesthood on little more than a wing and a prayer.
“I said, ‘Look, if this thing doesn’t work out, I’ll fall back on the career and the job that I’d left,’ you know? It was that loose. There was no conviction, you know, that I was going to come out the other side,” he tells.
Seminary
He made his way through seminary without difficulty, however, and had his choice of vocation and his future direction confirmed by a member of the congregation following his first Mass.
“At my first Mass, and probably where the media seed was sown, there was a lady in the congregation who worked for RTÉ, who came up for the first blessing after Mass and she said, ‘Do you know, Fr Eamonn, you’ve a great voice for the radio. Would you consider it?’ And I looked at her and scratched my head and thought, ‘Well look, I’ve left one career behind and now you’re telling me this,’” he laughs.
“I met her recently to thank her because she sowed a seed in that statement. Just gave me a bit of confidence to approach media questions when the time came, you know, not to be afraid of these things.”
Radio
And come the questions did. Encouraged by these words, Fr Eamonn took to voicing his opinions in letters to newspapers, which led to his first radio opportunity.
“A key moment was 2010, this is 10 years ago now, when the HPV vaccine debate was just beginning and I had written a letter to the paper in frustration because the school that I was chaplain in were just not listening to the dangers of this thing and the immorality of it anyway for the girls in the secondary school. So, I went to the paper and that, kind of, put my head above the parapet and immediately got a phonecall from Newstalk and RTÉ. And just, I was a bit afraid of it, and what came out of that was interesting – I got a series of programmes, lunchtime slots, on Newstalk,” he recalls.
From here, he trekked through a number of stations and shows, before being approached by a member of Radio Maria in 2011. It is here that he feels he’s found the platform from which to do God’s, through Mary’s, work.
Asked about the spirituality guiding the station, he responds, “It’s a no-brainer because it’s a Marian radio station. The maternity of Our Blessed Lady, her maternal approach to souls, and so I’m steeped in that with the Legion of Mary because part of my story is that I spent three years from 2003 to 2006 full-time in Dublin, working out of the Morning Star Hostel on Frank Duff’s cause for canonisation, because my vocation had come through the Legion.”
Impact
He emphasises the impact the Legion of Mary has had on his own life, and those he’s known throughout the years, with six of the men, himself included, from his Legion group in London being ordained to the priesthood within 12 months of each other. He’s in no doubt that that’s where God planted the seed of priesthood.
“My vocation came through the Legion of Mary and all the work that I’d been doing with them.”
Satisfied that the work he did in the Legion is continued in another form at Radio Maria, he’s pleased that they’ve gone from strength to strength during the lockdown.
“This year has seen the radio go from three staff to eight staff. We’re just inundated with phone calls, texts, emails, just communication of all sorts. If anything, things have grown exponentially in that we’re able to involve a lot more listeners. We have priests who are more available to participate on the radio,” he shares.
“People aren’t chasing their tails like they used to be, and now they have time to tune into the things of God.”