THE DEATH has taken place of Dom Mark Tierney of Glenstal Abbey, Co Limerick.
Born in Dublin in 1925, he was educated at the Catholic University School on Leeson Street.
He joined the Benedictines at Glenstal in 1945 where he also taught. He studied for a master's in history at UCD. He also studied theology and was an acknowledged expert on liturgy. His book The Council and the Masswas published in 1965.
But he is probably best known for his books on Irish history, which included The Birth of Modern Ireland(1969), written with Dr Margaret MacCurtain; Modern Ireland 1850-1950(1972); Croke of Cashel: the Life of Archbishop Thomas William Croke (1976); Murroe and Boher: the History of an Irish Country Parish(1966); and his Glenstal Abbey: a Historical Guide(1990).
But if history was a preoccupation so too was an interest in the cause of Blessed Columba Marmion, of whom he wrote Dom Columba Marmion: a Biographyin 1994. Another edition of this was published under the title Blessed Columba Marmion: a short biography in 2000to coincide with the beatification of Columba Marmion that year.
Fr Tierney was vice-postulator for the cause of Blessed Columba Marmion who, like himself, was a Dubliner and a Benedictine.
On September 3rd, 2000, Columba Marmion was beatified by Pope John Paul II alongside Pope John XXIII and Pope Pius IX. In attendance at the beatification ceremony was Pat Bitzan, from St Cloud, Minnesota, the woman believed to have been “miraculously” cured from cancer in 1966 thanks to the intervention of Dom Columba Marmion.
Born in Dublin of an Irish father and Belgian mother in April 1858, Dom Columba studied at Belvedere College and Holy Cross seminary in Clonliffe, as well as serving as a curate in Dundrum, before deciding to become a Benedictine monk. It meant moving to Belgium as there were no Benedictine monasteries in Ireland at the time. He spent most of his adult life in Belgium, dying at the monastery of Maredsous there in 1923.