A novena to mark 150 years of the Redemptorist Order in Limerick city has been attended by over 100,000 people. Beginning on June 13th in the Church of Mount St Alphonsus, it ended on Saturday night.
Huge numbers have also attended recent Redemptorist retreats in Galway and at Clonard monastery in Belfast.
Father Séamus Enright, rector at Mount St Alphonsus, said yesterday the Limerick attendance had been made up of "two kinds of people, the regular churchgoers and a fairly solid core who would have a fairly tenuous connection with church practice".
He felt part of the appeal of the retreats, particularly to the latter category, was "good liturgy and preaching, and a lot of involvement" by the people, who helped put their own shape on things.
There was also "a festive atmosphere, a sense of belonging and an opportunity to take time out and reflect on what is important in life. People like writing their own prayers and listening to some of these being read out at the novena. A lot of hard work goes into planning the novena, and we work hard at promoting it," he said.
For the first time this year in Limerick poster sites were used to inform people of the novena.
The four preachers, Father Johnny Doherty, Father Gerry O'Connor, Father Michael Murtagh, and Ms Henrietta O'Meara, co-ordinator of youth ministry in Scala, the Redemptorist Community in Cork, took nine characters from the gospels and linked them to contemporary life using drama, mime and music. Women and lay people in general had taken a central role, Father Enright said.
He agreed that there was generally "a very high level of dissatisfaction" with the way liturgy was conducted in the Irish church, not least when this was compared to the quality of liturgy in the US.
"I often feel liturgical renewal never took root in Ireland," he said. He felt it was possibly easier for those conducting retreats to prepare and present good liturgy. They moved from place and weren't in the same parish all year. But, he noted, "those who work at it manage it".
He thanked the people of Limerick "for their commitment, support and friendship over the past 150 years" and all who had assisted with the novena. The Redemptorists in Ireland have 13 young men in training, five of whom assisted at the novena.