Thérèse O’Donoghue Personal Profile
Fr Gerry and his dog Missy called to Therese O’Donoghue, the Parish Secretary in Booterstown one afternoon in July 2019.
“I thought that I knew everything that goes on in the parish,” says Thérèse before that moment. He was holding an official looking envelope and informed her she was to be awarded the Benemerenti Medal.
After 20 years of working in the parish, Thérèse got her award of thanks for her service to the Catholic Church on December 29, 2019 at the 11am Mass on the Feast of the Holy Family.
“The Mass was very special and Fr Gerry presented it to me but Msgr Conway was on the altar as well, he’s our retired parish priest, our Pastor Emeritus, and it’s he who would have asked me would I like to work here in the first place years ago .”
Thérèse studied French and History in university and went on to work for Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP), a French bank in Dublin. She says that her training there was very helpful for what she is doing now, being secretary, she often has to use her background in finance.
She was already involved in parish life before she took up her current position. Since Thérèse started there have been a lot of changes to Catholicism in Ireland and in particular in her parish: “When I started then there were three priests, so my job was changed a lot because there’s only one active priest now.”
Thérèse says she is more like a parish manager than a secretary and a lot of work goes into managing the many voluntary groups that work in Booterstown. She manages bookings, making rosters, bank payments and preparing for ceremonies to name a few tasks.
“No two days are the same, you get different inquiries every day.”
Thérèse says while there are still plenty of baptisms and funerals, she has noticed that there are less weddings than there were when she started.
When Thérèse was younger her family all went to Mass in her then parish of Merrion Road in Our Lady Queen of Peace church: “My parents would have instilled Christian values in us and I just think as a family our faith is always important to us,” she says there was less of an opportunity to be involved in the parish when she was younger and it wasn’t until the 80’s that laity really began to play a big role.
“The laity were encouraged as the number of Priests had diminished. This really is the hour of the laity,” she says, explaining that priests at the minute want to help with the coronavirus but many of them fall into the vulnerable health category.
“My faith has always meant a lot to me and actually now that talking about the award retrospectively, I can actually see how important our Faith is to us and particularly the ministry of web cam now,” she says. Fr Gerry has been broadcasting mass at 10am every day and the morning of the interview he prayed in particular for a parishioner who used to organise the cleaning of the church over the web cam, she was turning 90.
Thérèse says under normal circumstances they have tea on a Thursday anyways and they would have had cake that day and made a ‘big fuss’.
“Things like that give a great sense of community,” she says. This sense of community and belonging is something she feels is very important, “it’s a parish with a lovely atmosphere and people do remark on that sense of community and I think it’s because the church is small”.
Thérèse says the church web cam has been important in helping people feel less isolated and more connected with the Church.
Her own children, despite two being abroad, still keep up to date on the parish through Facebook, she says: “They had very happy memories of being involved as altar servers and in the children’s choir.”
She says it is strange that the parish is so quiet at the minute. “There are two primary schools in the parish, and we don’t realise how much light a school brings.”
Usually at this time she would be busy with preparing for Confirmation and for penance and First Communions.
The renovated parish centre is something Thérèse also feels gives a sense of community to Booterstown parish. “It’s great for the community to have somewhere to meet, we have the Thursday morning teas, coffees where people come in after Mass, we have a knitting and stitching group, a Men’s shed has just started to meet, there are classes in pilates, yoga, stretch chair exercises for seniors,” she says.
She says older people love to see young people coming to Mass but it can be difficult to get them engaged. She feels when encouraging them that often young children remember their grandparents going to Mass or saying the Rosary “they understand the concept and the importance of faith. Even to have that example, they remember it later on. It’s kind of like putting down good roots and even if they might not practice it necessarily, they appreciate it.”
Thérèse was ‘humbled’ and ‘overwhelmed’ to receive the Benemerenti Award, “I felt privileged. I love my job, I love my work I could also say that while I’m working and I’m an employee you couldn’t do this job you couldn’t run a parish without all the volunteers.”
There are 30 volunteer groups in the parish and Thérèse says she couldn’t do it without them.