A Latin Mass in Monasterevin

On Saturday 25th June more than forty people attended a Latin Mass which took place took place in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Monasterevin on the borders of Counties Kildare and Laois. This was the first time in almost fifty years Mass in the Gregorian Rite had been celebrated in this church. The Mass was offered for the repose of the soul of H.E. Fra' Fredrik Crichton-Stuart, the recently deceased former President of the International Federation "Una Voce" of which this organisation is a member.

The church was designed by William Hague and completed in 1880. The altar rails were originally made for the Church of Saint Stefano, Venice. They were then sold to Stephen Ram of Ramsfort, Gorey, Co. Wexford, who brought them to Ireland and placed them on his terrace. The family were slowly converted, one by one, to the Catholic Faith through the prayers of the nuns of the local Convent. Some notable conversions in County Wexford was the story of those conversions of the Rams of Ramsfort and the Cliffes of Bellvue, written by Father Francis Kirk, of the Oblates of St. Charles, who had been the Anglican Minister of Gorey and the first convert of the nuns' prayers. They were moved to the church in the 1870s.

Saint Evin, from whom the town derives its name, featured in an earlier post on this blog.