BREAKING: Shock in Kilkenny as Bishop Niall Coll to return to native Donegal

Bishop Niall Coll will return to Donegal as the new Bishop of Raphoe.

Bishop Coll was appointed to the role by Pope Leo XIV and the announcement was confirmed at St Eunan’s Cathedral in Letterkenny this morning by Diocesan Administrator Monsignor Kevin Gillespie while Bishop Philip Boyce, Bishop Emeritus of Raphoe, was also in attendance.

A son of Kathleen and the late Willie Coll from Hillhead in St Johnston, the 62-year-old will now lead The See Of Raphoe.

Since the departure of Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ to the Down and Connor Diocese in 2024, the Raphoe Diocese has been without a Bishop and there had been rumours of a possible amalgamation with a neighbouring Diocese.

However, today’s announcement quells that possibility for the time being.

At morning Mass, which preceded the announcement, Monsignor Gillespie asked for prayers for the “new shepherd to lead our Diocese”.

He said the clergy of the Diocese had prayed for the new appointment and added: “We ask Him now to grant him the gift of Holy wisdom and that he may be a friend to God and a prophet.”

Monsignor Gillespie asked the congregation to pray that the Diocese would “flourish” under the new Bishop.

In 2022, Fr Niall Coll learned of his elevation to Bishophood and the appointment as Bishop of Ossory in a visit by the Apostolic Nunciature, Monsignor Julien Kabore, Charge d'Affaires.

He was ordained a Bishop by the Archbishop Dermot Farrell in Kilkenny on January 22, 2023.

In his young days, he was an altar server at St Baithin's Church in St Johnston for 'Doctor Cunnea' (V Rev Daniel G Cunnea, the then PP of St Johnston) and had a maternal uncle, Fr Sammy Holmes, who was a priest.

Niall was in sixth class and serving at Mass at a time when another St Johnston native, Oliver McCrossan, was ordained and soon moved to the Philippines with the St Columban Missionary.

“I was excited about the fact that he was going to the Philippines,” he recalled in an interview with Donegal Live in 2024. “It seemed so far away and exotic.”

St Johnston in Donegal - Bishop Coll's home - has never been far from either his heart or his mind.

“I have a great love of a sense of east Donegal,” he told sister publication Donegal Live two years ago

This will be a real homecoming of sorts for Bishop Coll given his connection and history to St Eunan’s Cathedral.

In July 1988, after seven years studying in Maynooth, he was one of five candidates for the Sacrament of Holy Orders at St Eunan's Cathedral and ordained by the then Bishop Seamus Hegarty.

Fr Joseph O'Donnell, who grew up only a couple of hundred yards away on St Johnston's Main Street, was ordained on the same day. Sadly, Fr Joseph passed away following an illness in 2019 (Fr Coll succeeded his townsman as parish priest of Drumholm in 2019 after 18 years teaching at St Mary's University in Belfast).

The young Niall Coll was a student at St Eunan’s College, wher ehe later returned as a teacher.

A skilled theologian, he has served at third level in both St Patrick’s College, Carlow and St Mary’s University College, Belfast, while he taught also in Pobalscoil na Rosann. As a young priest he served as a curate in Dungloe and he was the Parish Priest of Tawnawilly having previously served as the Parish Priest of Drumholm before moving to Kilkenny.

In 1992 he was sent to Rome to study for a Doctorate in Theology at the Gregorian University and inn 1995, he was awarded a Doctoral Degree for a thesis in Christology which was later published as Christ in Eternity and Time: Contemporary Anglican Perspectives.

Thereafter, following his return from Rome, he was appointed as a lecturer in Systematic Theology in Saint Patrick’s College, Carlow. 

Bishop Niall is editor (with Father Paschal Scallon CM) of A Church with a Future: Challenges to Irish Catholicism Today (Dublin: Columba Press, 2005), and also of Ireland and Vatican II: Essays Theological, Pastoral and Educational (Dublin: Columba Press, 2015).  

He was, for many years, editor of Le Chéile: A Catholic Schools Ethos Journal, published by Saint Mary’s University College, which sought to promote the values and work of Catholic education locally.  He is a member of the Irish Inter-Church Committee.