Special mass to mark the end of Christian Brother presence at Cork's North Mon
The Cathedral of St. Mary & St. Anne (North Cathedral), Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.
A SPECIAL Mass to acknowledge the ending of the Christian Brothers’ permanent presence at the North Monastery will be celebrated by the Most Reverend Fintan Gavin, the bishop of Cork and Ross, at the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne at 11.30am on Monday.
The ceremony is being organised by the North Monastery Past Pupils Union to celebrate the contribution of the Christian Brothers to education in Cork from the period of 1811 to 2020.
Retired Christian Brothers will join with representatives of schools and community leaders at the Mass, which will also be attended by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Deirdre Forde.
The North Monastery was founded on 9 November, 1811, when Christian Brothers Jerome O’ Connor and John Baptist Leonard were given charge of a school at Chapel Lane, on the northside of the City.
Some 17 students are recorded as having attended school on that first day the Christian Brothers provided education in Cork.
In 1814, a fourteen acre site was donated nearby by a wealthty Catholic businessman, Sir George Gould Bart, and there grew the North Monastery Campus which has survived across the centuries to provide education to thousands of Cork people.
On that campus and across the centuries, a community of Christian Brothers have lived and worked in fulfilling their vocations as educators, and following from the foundation of the North Monastery, other Christian Brothers’ monasteries were established in the city and beyond.
The Brothers would go on and educate the communities that they served, forever shaping and empowering those communities in the spirit of their founder, the Blessed Edmund Rice. The contribution of the Christian Brothers to education in Cork could be considered immeasurable.
In May 2020, during Covid-19 Public Health restrictions, the last Christian Brother left the residential house at Fair Hill, Cork, ending the long and distinguished presence of the Christian Brothers on the North Monastery Campus.
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