Sir, - Having lived near the Ballinspittle Grotto for 15 years, may I be allowed a comment on recent renewed publicity? The roadside grotto here, like many more throughout the country, was erected in the Marian Year of 1954 as a place of quiet prayer. Quiet prayer, real prayer, communication between a person and God, rarely attracts attention, so normal is such activity. But let a whisper of the paranormal go out and droves of journalists arrive and - whipped up and titillated by "news" fabrication, by articles in the tabloids and endless babble on the chat-shows - the crowds come clogging the roads, among them hordes of curiosity-seekers.
So irresponsible, so exploitative of the weak and the gullible have I found journalists that I have lost all faith in the profession. It has attracted to its ranks some of the appalling types. One day, when I was leading a routine public prayer here, a hack kept a television camera focused a few inches from my eye. He seemed to be making a study of the retina of some new type of zoological specimen. Believe me, stepping into this paranormal is entering dangerous territory and becoming surrounded by some rare and abnormal birds.
I appeal to the good people around me here to be faithful to prayer, to keep any "visions" any of them imagine they may have strictly between themselves and God, to get on with their normal daily lives, to tell the visiting hacks to get off our backs in Ballinspittle - to go back over the bridge and go somewhere else for a change. - Yours, etc.,
Fr Thomas Kelleher, Ballinspittle, Co Cork.