Ruadhán Jones
A detail of a 16th Century painting by Baldassarre Peruzzi depicting Mary holding the child Jesus alongside St Brigid of Ireland is seen in the Church of St Mary of Peace in Rome. Photo: CNS/Justin McLellan Relics of St Brigid are to return to her native Co. Kildare for the first time in centuries to mark the 1,500th anniversary of her death.
The relics will return to Kildare on Sunday, January 28, starting with a procession from the Solas Bhride Centre run by the Brigidine Sisters to St Brigid’s Parish Church in Kildare Town.
Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Denis Nulty will celebrate Mass at 11am to welcome the return of the relics for the first time in almost a thousand years.
“It is very exciting,” said Brigidine Sr Rita Minehan, whose order takes inspiration from St Brigid, one of Ireland’s three patron saints.
“What I think is really good about it, it’s not just the sisters, the people want it,” she told The Irish Catholic.
“Bring Brigid home,” was the rallying cry she said. “Now she’s coming home.”
The relics have taken a long, winding route around Europe before returning for the 1,500th anniversary of her death in 524.
St Brigid’s remains were initially buried in the monastic church she founded in Co. Kildare. However, fears of Viking raids and other violence prompted them to be moved.
They were housed in a secret location alongside St Patrick and St Columba in Downpatrick in the 9th Century, only to be lost for hundreds of years.
They were rediscovered in the 12th Century, but then destroyed almost 400 years later by Lord Leonard Grey, an appointee of King Henry VIII.
According to legend three Irish knights took a bone fragment of St Brigid’s head to the small town of Lumiar in Portugal.
A part of the relics were returned to the Brigidine community in Tullow in the 1930s, but haven’t been seen publicly since then – nor have they returned to Co. Kildare until now, thanks to the hard work of David Mongey, Chairman of Kildare tourism board, said Sr Rita Minehan.