THE BISHOP of Killaloe is to make his final ordination of his time as bishop this weekend. In Shannon on Saturday, Dr Willie Walsh will ordain Fergal O'Neill (36) in his home town.
The ordination will be Dr Walsh's last before he steps down as bishop in 2010 and the first ordination he has carried out on a priest for the diocese in five years.
"The numbers of priests being ordained is small, so Saturday will be a source of joy for us and hopefully Fergal's ordination will give inspiration to other people to look seriously at that prospect," Dr Walsh said yesterday.
Dr Walsh's previous ordination of a priest for the Killaloe diocese was in 2003 and at that time, he believed that it was his last. However, Mr O'Neill - a carpenter by trade - was able to bypass the standard six-year training programme to become a priest as he served eight years as a Redemptorist, but never took his final vows.
The diocese has had no new entrants to the seminary in the past two years, but there are currently two in third year with Ger Fitzgerald from Castleconnell, Co Limerick, studying at St Patrick's College in Maynooth and Gerard Jones from O'Brien's Bridge, Co Clare, studying at the Irish Pontifical College in Rome.
Dr Walsh said at the moment, there was no shortage of priests in the Killaloe diocese. However, he conceded that the age profile of priests "is tending to be very much in the upper age group".
"Looking down the road, we need younger people coming into priesthood. Soon, we are talking about a third of priests between 65 and 75 and half of the priests being over 60. If you project down the line 10 to 15 years, it will mean tighter numbers."
In the diocesan clergy appointments for 2008, Dr Walsh asked four priests who had reached the retirement age of 75 to remain as the priest in residence and will continue to perform Baptism, Penance, the Eucharist, marriages and funeral rites.
The parishes affected - Carrigaholt, Coolmee, Doonbeg and Cooraclare - are all based in west Clare.
The diocese's priests serve 114,000 parishioners in 58 parishes across the diocese. Saturday's ordination is to take place in the Church of Mary Immaculate at 1.30pm
