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| St. Brendan the Navigator
| St Brendan's Well
| The Parish of Coolock
| The Penal Era |
| Nineteenth Century Revival
| Sr Catherine McAuley
| Parish History from 1860 to 1960 |
| St. Brendan's Parish 1960's to the 1990's
| 1990's to the present |
| Present Clergy in the parish
| The Marist Fathers |
St. Brendan the Navigator
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| A 1746 woodcut of St. Brendan and the monks fishing on their voyage |
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The parish of Coolock is dedicated to St. Brendan of Clonfert, who ranks alongside
Patrick, Brigid and Colm Cille among the chief figures of the early Irish Church. Born
in County Kerry in 484, much of his Iife was spent working in the Dingle Peninsula,
where his memory is commemorated by Mount Brandon. Although he founded the
monastery at Clonfert in Galway, his fame is based largely on the story of his voyage
across the Atlantic Ocean.
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| An icon of St. Brendan holding the church and his boat |
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The Brendan Voyage is a fascinating story of how the seventy-year-old Brendan and
seventeen monks set out across the ocean in their fragile curragh in the search of the
promised Iand of the Saints'. The abbot and his crew had no idea where they were
headed, but were confident that God would direct them. The account of this seven-year
journey mixes legend, history and myth, including the story of how the monks
celebrated Mass on the back of a whale. Many see the Voyage as an allegory of the
Christian quest for Paradise, but others argue that St. Brendan could possibly have
made to America nine hundred years before Columbus.
Certainly his descriptions match the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Newfoundland, while in 1977 the explorer Tim Severin's Atlantic crossing in the replica St. Brendan proved that such a journey was physicaIIy possible.
Next: St. Brendan's Well >>>
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