Martin O'BrienIreland’s oldest newly-ordained priest tells Martin O Brien about his vocation journey
Celebrating the 10am weekday Mass in the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, Fr Sean McGuigan CC, Ireland’s oldest newly-ordained priest, has all the bearing of a man who has at last attained his destiny.
Well, his earthly destiny.
Looking comfortable both in his own skin and in his new vestments, a visitor not in the know might reasonably suppose he is the parish priest with several decades of clerical service behind him.
He also looks incredibly fit and trim for his years and I wonder why.
After Mass over a cup of tea in the nearby parochial house, his new home of just three months which he shares with the parish priest and another curate, he reflects on a remarkable personal odyssey which has seen him “leave school with nothing at the age of 15”, become a school principal and finally a Catholic priest.
“I always wanted to be a priest from the time I served as an altar boy in my native Desertmartin [Co. Derry] more than 60 years ago,” Fr McGuigan said.
Given his love for his native parish and county,where he lived all his life until he commenced studies at Maynooth in 2008, it is natural that his original preference would have been to serve as a priest in Derry diocese. But that was not to be.
Upper age limit
It is understood that the then bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, had a rule that the upper age limit for entrance to the seminary should be 35. But Fr Sean, 69 last month was almost twice that age when he was ordained by Cardinal Seán Brady for the Archdiocese of Armagh in St Patrick’s church, Keenaught, Desertmartin, in June.
It was in an old, now disused Desertmartin church nearby that Sean McGuigan was an altar boy for seven years from the age of eight.
And it was in St Patrick’s where he was choirmaster and organist for 16 years and sacristan for 23 years before “I finally plucked up the courage and formally applied to be considered as a candidate for the priesthood”.
Bishop Hegarty’s age limit baffled senior Church figures in Derry and it doesn’t apply under his successor Bishop Donal McKeown, who is understood to be open to mature vocations such as Sean’s.
A spokesman for the Irish Bishops’ Conference said: “It is a matter for each individual diocese to set its own policy in this regard.”
If Fr McGuigan was disappointed that he was declined by Derry he is not saying, but he is thrilled that Cardinal Brady accepted him for Armagh and that Bishop Michael Smith also accepted him for Meath.
“I had to actually choose between Armagh and Meath and in the end I chose Armagh so that I could remain closer to my elderly mother. Meath would have meant studying in the Beda in Rome.”
A Cookstown parishioner said: “Derry’s loss is clearly Armagh’s gain.”
Sean McGuigan whose father is deceased and whose mother Mary and all 11 younger siblings attended his ordination, recalls a happy childhood in Desertmartin but one where, in the austere years after World War II, his family had great difficulty in making ends meet. He recalls that they borrowed cans of milk from neighbours.
“I was a kind of breadwinner. To be quite honest with you, I would be gathering spuds and tying corn and not at school half the time. We had to do that, it was an economic necessity.”
Not pursuing any further education from the age of 15, he embarked on a long series of jobs which included serving his time for five years as a shop assistant in a grocery shop in Draperstown starting at 30 shillings (£1.50) a week.
Sean subsequently worked in a brick factory, as a farm labourer and in a supermarket before becoming a senior member of staff in a menswear store.
Then in his late 40s he took the plunge as a trainee teacher in full-time higher education, having armed himself with a string of qualifications from evening classes.
In 1997 at the aged of 52, he graduated with a BA Hons 2.1 degree in education from the University of Ulster.
He taught for periods in Draperstown and Claudy before being appointed principal of Knocknagin primary school, Desertmartin, in 2002, a post he held until he entered Maynooth.
In his early years, he taught himself to play the tin whistle, guitar and organ.
An accomplished Irish dancer, he has won several national titles and was a member of the St Martin’s Desertmartin ceili dancing team under teacher Mrs Patricia McSwiggan that performed twice in Boston in the late 1980.
Looking back, Fr Sean says his earliest memories are of “walking eight miles to and from Mass, arriving always an hour early, attending the sacraments and saying the Rosary at home”.
He still feels indebted to his teachers at Brackalislea primary school for their role in passing on the Faith, and singles out two teachers, Mrs Kelly and Mrs Convery.
His years as an altar server were crucial in his formation and from then on “the feeling of wanting to be a priest never went away”.
Being the eldest member of such a large family, there was an economic imperative of helping his parents provide for them and it was this, he says, that prevented him from pursuing the priesthood at the normal age.
Married
Ten of his 11 siblings married and he would have been expected to follow suit. Although he dated many girls, “I never got into too serious a relationship because the priesthood was always there.”
A keen athlete, he played midfield for Desertmartin GAC, ran for athletics clubs in Ballinascreen, Co. Derry, and Ballybofey, Co. Donegal (winning a national title) and ran many marathons for charity.
The secret of his fitness and spare frame today is that he is running still.
Every morning before seven o’clock, he drives a short distance and then jogs for six miles along the country roads around Cookstown.
He says that his experience as a school principal gave him a breadth of valuable pastoral experience which helped equip him for the priesthood.
Fr Sean found his year of pastoral experience as a deacon in Holy Redeemer parish, Dundalk, particularly rewarding.
“We were ministering to people where they are at, that is what Pope Francis is stressing and that is what I am trying to do here.
“As someone who came from a poor background, I am particularly struck by the Pope’s emphasis on the needy and the marginalised.”
He is “deeply grateful for Cardinal Brady’s kindness and understanding at all times”.
The period since his ordination seems to have been something of a whirlwind.
He singles out for special mention one of the concelebrants of a Mass with Bishop Donal McKeown marking the reopening of another Desertmartin church, St Mary’s, Coolcalm and the dedication of a new altar some weeks ago.
While some would criticise Bishop Hegarty’s ‘35 rule’ – particularly in the context of a nosedive in vocations – there are still legitimate questions to be raised about ordaining a man some years off the normal retirement age.
How does he respond to the question that he may be just too old for the priesthood? Fr Sean smiles and replies: “There is no such thing as a late vocation, a vocation is always there and I intend to give my all to my ministry.”
Questioned about the widespread trend of priests working well into their 80s. he says, health permitting, he would be “very much open to helping out into my mid-eighties”.
Given the warmth of Fr McGuigan’s welcome in Cookstown, it is obvious his parishioners concur with these sentiments.
In a culture where ageism is, thankfully increasingly non-PC and where we are all being advised we will have to work longer and longer, should priests be an exception?