Paul Keenan
Fr Bryan Shortall OFM Cap shares his path to priesthood with Paul Keenan
They say the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. What they don’t say is that it may not be the most useful or beneficial way.
As proof of this, go ask Fr Bryan Shortall.
Today resident in one of Ireland’s oldest parishes, that of St Michan’s in Halston Street, Dublin, he has become that which he recognises now was his calling from youth, but one which has come after 29 years of service with that most famed of congregations, the Capuchin community in nearby Church Street.
It should be stated from the outset that this was quite by design, rather than a latter-day Damascene conversion.
“Looking back, I recall as a young schoolboy saying the Hail Mary for my family, and there was always the knowledge that I would like to be a priest,” Bryan reflects today. “But it was after my Intermediate Cert exams in 1985 that I first started thinking concretely of a vocation. And I started thinking of what it would be like to be a Capuchin.”
Decision
The path to that particular decision, he explains, was one from a family (he is the eldest of seven children) with strong links to grandparents who lived on Dublin’s Northside. Travelling to visit them regularly from the south of the city brought the Shortalls past the Capuchin Church in Church Street, a site his father would routinely point out to the children.
“Later,” he continues, “members of the order would pay visits to the boys at Synge Street where I was a pupil.
“I was spellbound by the friars. The habit, the white cord and the sandals. To me it was all the most amazing thing.”
Bryan opted to maintain contact with the Capuchins through the remaining years in school, and ultimately entered the congregation in 1987, professing his final vows in 1994.
Priesthood was still the goal, of course, but one that lay now along an altogether different route from those young men entering Maynooth or the diocesan seminary at Clonliffe.
“I had to learn what it was to be a brother in the Franciscan family,” he says, adding, “I’m still learning every day.”
Part of that learning was facing challenges to his faith and his personal intentions, in the latter case through challenges posed directly by his provincial.
“This was not a negative thing,” he is quick to point out. “I was asked ‘what if you were to remain as a friar?’. I accepted that if that was truly my calling then so be it, but the calling deep down was still the priesthood.
“But we don’t grow unless we are challenged. And we are all challenged in one way or another.”
The day of ordination would at last come in 1997, building on the years of congregational life and ministry bestowed by the Capuchins. Indeed, Fr Bryan was to remain at the Church Street community for another few years, keeping him in place for the centenary commemorations of the 1916 Rising, an event in which the Capuchins of Church Street played no small part.
“I was really blessed to be part of the centenary,” he says, relating how the history of the five Capuchins of 1916 was brought to life for him as a successor to the example shown by them.
“The friars had just gone through a long Lent,” he relates, “and they were looking forward to a period of rest when the Rising erupted.”
What followed, as a lesson in history to everyone else, was for Bryan and his fellow Capuchins in modern Dublin a living expression of what the congregation stands for. “St Francis of Assisi wanted his followers to be peacemakers,” he says, “to understand that their priority is ministry and pastoral care, no matter what happens. We’ve inherited that.”
Legacy
That legacy is what Fr Bryan has now carried with him during his transfer as parish priest to the nearby St Michan’s parish in Halston Street.
“A whole new series of challenges,” he reveals of his place in a parish with no less than 1,000 years of Christian history, a parish school already 250 years old, and an upcoming bi-centenary of the parish church.
Bryan remains undaunted by all, finding silver linings in his previously unknown familial connections to the parish in his great-grandmother, Mary Boylan, who married the church clerk in the late 1800s in St Michan’s.
“It’s a lovely dimension,” he says. “I’m a son of the parish.”
As to the future, Bryan quotes The Shawshank Redemption in stating that “the world has got itself in a big hurry”, but, as a child of the ‘80s who witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Northern Ireland peace process – as well as the highs of Euro ’88 and Italia ’90 – he remains buoyant and completely unfazed by what may yet come.
“The future is bright,” he insists, believing firmly that “Christ is journeying towards us with a heart that is merciful”.
“Please God,” he adds, “that we might pay attention to Pope Francis’ message that if we carry out one act of mercy each day, the world will be a better place.”
Fr Bryan Shortall is the author of Tired of all the Bad News, available now from Columba Press.