Irish bishop asks Gibson to save St Mel's [CN-USA]

[Catholic_Press]

Irish Bishop Colm O’Reilly is asking movie star Mel Gibson for help in restoring St Mel’s cathedral in the actor’s ancestral home town after it was destroyed in a Christmas Day fire.

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[NPC]

Irish Bishop Colm O’Reilly is asking movie star Mel Gibson for help in restoring St Mel’s cathedral in the actor’s ancestral home town after it was destroyed in a Christmas Day fire.

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This is slightly inaccurate judging from what I’ve been reading in the Irish press - that is to say that I don’t think that it was Bishop O’Reilly himself who initiated calls for Mr Gibson to help out… There were whispers around Longford town that he might be in a position to help given the family connection to Longford and his being named after St Mel (& the cathedral!). The bishop was then questioned about rumours that Mr Gibson might give some financial assistance - Bishop O’Reilly, as can be seen in the article, basically said that he wouldn’t turn down any offer of help from the star (or anybody else for that matter).

The bill for restoration seems to be increasing every day - firstly 10 million euro; now in excess of 20 million. However, I personally think that people will be very generous - I gave what I could, which wasn’t very much in the scale of things, but the “ordinary” people coming together and giving what they can will ensure that the necessary work is done. Indeed, most of our cathedrals in Ireland were funded by people across the country putting what they could into the kitty. Their building was also aided in no small part by the vast Irish communities in Britain and the United States - I hope they’ll get behind St Mel’s this time too!

Following the link from this article to the cathedral website, www.longfordparish.com/newsupdates.htm, I read the beautiful news that yesterday (Thursday) one of the priests was allowed to go into the ruined building to retrieve the Blessed Sacrament:

The Garda Forensic team continue their work at St. Mel’s Cathedral. Yesterday they allowed one of the priests to go to the tabernacle to retrieve the Blessed Sacrament. Accompanied by a Garda and men from Hegarty Demolition the tabernacle was opened by key, showed itself to have suffered only mild smoke damage inside, and a number of ciboria with consecrated hosts were removed – a Corpus Christi procession of a different kind saw them being brought from the Cathedral to the nearby presbytery. This is a source of consolation for all of us in the parish.

-Miraculous that the contents of the tabernacle survived, given the state of the rest of the interior. Hearing of the reverence given to the Blessed Sacrament has made me very happy!