Courtney McGrailKilmainham Gaol is a “sacred space”, Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said, declaring the prison sanctified by the men and women who were executed there after the 1916 Rising.
Speaking at a Mass in the prison chapel, Dr Martin said rather than being formally consecrated as a sacred space, the prison was sacred “because of the extraordinary faith which was shown here at a moment when all else seemed to be dominated by brutality”.
Recalling how the faith of the Rising’s executed leaders varied “from the mystical poetry of Plunket to the doubting faith of Connolly who found his peace with God right here in this chapel”, he thanked those who had restored the prison despite financial challenges and sometimes lack of interest.
“This building is a monument to the spiritual strength and the faith of the men and women who lived and died for an ideal which Irish men and women and children should be able to achieve,” he said.