Columban Fr William Carrigan RIP

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Fr William Carrigan
18 July 1933 - 21 May 2022

The funeral took place today in his native Conahy, County Kilkenny, Ireland, of Fr William Carrigan. He died last Saturday after an illness of only a few weeks.

Father Billy spent 45 years in parish, work in Mindanao, Philippines where he showed an extraordinary love for persons, especially children, with little or nothing in life.

You will find a short obituary of Father Billy on the website of the Columbans in Ireland here.

In his retirement years in Ireland Father Billy served the Filipino community in County Kilkenny and surrounding counties. Many of these attended his wake and his funeral Mass. They also started the traditional Filipino novena for the dead, celebrated in the home of the deceased. At the Our Father in the Mass they surrounded his coffin and sang it in Cebuano Visayan, Amahan Namo.

Amahan Namo (Our Father)

St Colman's Church, Conahy, County Kilkenny
[Photo: National Inventory of Architectural Heritage]

Father Carrigan was buried here this morning.

The Rose of Mooncoin
sung by Johnny McEvoy

Irish people have an extraordinary connection with their native county, of which there are 32, particularly in the context of the Irish sports of Hurling and Gaelic Football. Ironically, the county divisions were made by the English.

County Kilkenny is a place where hurling reigns supreme and Father Billy played it well in his youth. The unofficial anthem of the county is The Rose of Mooncoin, a song sung in Croke Park, Dublin, on the many occasions - far too many for those of us not from Kilkenny! - when that county has won the Liam McCarthy Cup in the All-Ireland Hurling Final. Even though we worked in the same area in Mindanao in the 1970s and early 1980s I don't recall hearing Father Billy sing but I know that as a good Kilkenny man, with a strong sense of his roots in Conahy, a rural area, he knew and loved this song.

Indeed, I believe that it was this sense of rootedness in his own community, knowing who he was, that enabled Fr William Carrigan to enter so deeply into the lives of the people, especially the very poor, he served in Mindanao. 

Rest in peace, Father Billy!

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