*Canon Brendan O’Donoghue. Photograph: Joe Buckley
LONG-SERVING SHANNON priest, Canon Brendan O’Donoghue was laid to his eternal rest over the weekend.
Born on August 10th 1931 in Dublin, Brendan and his family moved to Ballacolla in Co. Laois in 1936 where he received his First Holy Communion and Confirmation.
He attended St. Flannan’s College in Ennis from 1944 to 1949. From 1949 to 1956 he attended seminary at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He was ordained on the 17th of June 1956.
His first appointment was to the temporary mission in the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, serving in Oughterard and Salthill. In 1959, he joined the emigrant apostolate in Britain and was recalled in January 1961 to the teaching staff of St. Flannan’s College. In July 1962 he returned to the emigrant chaplaincy in Birmingham. In April 1966 he was appointed as a curate in Ennis. He became administrator of Ennis parish in July 1984.
In 1988 he was appointed Parish Priest of Shannon. He retired as parish priest in 2002 but continued to minister as A.P. in the Tradaree Pastoral Area. He served as director of the diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes, and was made a Canon of the Basilica of Lourdes in 2010. He served as a priest of the diocese of Killaloe for 68 years.
Wolfe Tones GAA club provided a guard of honour for Canon O’Donoghue’s funeral mass which took place on Monday afternoon in Mary Immaculate Church in Shannon, this was followed by burial in Illaunmanagh Cemetery.
Canon O’Donoghue is susrvived by his sister, Maureen Hoolan Dunkerrin, brother Jim O’Donoghue Pittsburgh USA, sisters-in-law, Margaret and Patricia, nephews/nieces , grand nieces, grand nephews, relatives, family, friends and parishioners of Shannon, Ennis and other places associated with Canon Brendan.
A spokesperson for St Caimin’s Community School in Shannon said there was “many memories” of Canon O’Donoghue and the secondary school. “Canon Brendan was present at the Confirmation ceremony of every Shannon pupil who has graduated from St. Caimin’s over the past forty years. Our School Community gives thanks as we quietly recall Canon Brendan’s Service, of prayer and outreach, to the peoples he worked, prayed and reflected with, and the many families and schools he visited so frequently”.
