Monsignor Jim Cassin A key player in the Church’s education policy in Ireland has been remembered as a reconciler.
Msgr Jim Cassin died after a short illness and his funeral took place last week in the Church of the Assumption, Thomastown, Co. Kildare
Bishop of Ossory Dermot Farrell said that Msgr Cassin – who served for many years as the hierarchy’s key adviser on education – “combined a good intellect with great humility and benevolence, a way with people and good sense of humour.
“He created unity; he was a builder of community around himself, a reconcile.” Dr Farrell said that “Jim, never wanted to offend; indeed, he never wanted to make a decision that would offend anyone”.
Changes
The bishop said that “over the 48 years of Jim’s life as a priest there has been an enormous change in Irish culture that had a significant impact on the role and understanding of the church in Irish society.
“From the time of this ordination to his retirement, the understandings, activities, and pastoral strategies of the past were all being refashioned in the cauldron of the contemporary situation…Jim, who was never isolated or cut off from the ecclesial body or the ambient culture, was very well placed to carry out this particular responsibility as he was deeply embedded in the local and universal church and in the surrounding culture,” Bishop Farrell said.
Remembering a wonderful man and priest – Fr Martin Dempsey