ST. KIERAN'S DAY 2012 - THIRTY YEARS INTO MY EXPERIENCES AS A KIERANSMAN............

Today, my father's sixth anniversary, is also the Feast Day of St. Kieran, the name of the Irish saint for whom the first Catholic secondary school and seminary founded after the abolition of the Penal Laws in Ireland, was named on November 4, 1782.  Within ten years after its establishment St. Kieran's College in Kilkenny, began educating priests not only for Ireland, England, and Scotland, but the United States, and Australia, as well.  Two hundred and thirty years later St. Kieran's College continues the mission of educating children and adults, existing today not as a boarding school, but a secondary day school for boys, and houses a technical vocational school, as well as excels in the Irish game of Hurling; while St, Kieran;s Seminary which closed in 1994, has been succeeded on the campus by the Credim Centre for the Continuing Faith Formation of Adults, and is now an satellite extension N.U.I.M., the National University of Ireland Maynooth.  Thirty years ago I became personally affiliated with St. Kieran's in Kilkenny, when I was recruited and accepted the opportunity to be one American student put in the midst of fifty Irish ecclesiastical students, as I began my seminary formation there in September 1982.  To Fathers Oliver Maher, and Daniel Bollard; in Kilkenny; to Monsignor Edward J. Kavanagh, Fathers William Walsh, Patrick O'Rafferty, Charles Brady, Thomas Delahunty, Thomas Dermody, Daniel Madigan, Vincent Brady, Francis Lawlor, Michael Downey, Patrick Henry,  in the Sacramento Diocese; and all my seminary classmates and all the priestly alumni in the Diocese of Ossory, and throughout the World, as well as the Kieransmen who have gone before, I lift up my heart and mind to God today in fraternity and gratitude for the priestly ministry we have and continue to share as Priests of Jesus Christ, with the common bond of St. Kieran's in Kilkenny as a lasting memory in our lives............St. Kieran of Saghir, Pray For Us,   Fr. Troy