A Day in the Life - Niall Coll, Bishop of Ossory - Kilkenny Live

Niall Coll, the new Bishop of Ossory, hails from Letterkenny, Co Donegal. He was ordained a priest on July 3, 1988, and bishop on January 22, 2023. A man who has spent most of his ministry in the world of education. He also spent most of his life teaching and helping young people in the North and South of Ireland as well as in Rome. 

After secondary school, a young Niall Coll began studying in Maynooth College. He spent six years there, studying an Arts degree first, before taking on a Theology degree. Then he studied in Rome, completed a H Dip in Trinity College and returned to Rome for a Doctorate. Fr Coll returned home to lecture in Carlow College before returning to Donegal.

After three years, he found himself out of the diocese again teaching student teachers, both primary and post primary, and post-graduates in St Mary’s University College, Belfast, for 19 years.

Fr Coll’s own Bishop then asked him to come home to Donegal and become the Parish Priest of Ballintra for a year and then Donegal Town for a year and a half. He was in that position for a year and a half before it was requested of him to become the new Bishop of Ossory. 

Here is a glimpse into his ministerial world…

Can you give us a sense of how you felt the day of your ordination as Bishop of Ossory in St. Mary's Cathedral?
It was the warmest day in a good while, the temperature reached ten degrees. Coming from Donegal that gets more than its fair share of rain, I have been enjoying the good weather since arriving in Kilkenny!

It was a lovely day, with so many of my family, friends and colleagues who travelled to Kilkenny. My father, who is 92, took part in the ceremony. My mother's a bit younger, she is 84. For ourselves and for the wider family, it was magnificent that we had a happy occasion to gather for.

The liturgy was splendid, as well as the Choir and musicians. There was also a great involvement of students and young people from schools throughout the diocese. It was much noted as I got so much feedback – the choirs of the Diocese who came together really gave a great account of themselves. 

My favourite part of the whole liturgy was the dressing of the altar it was carried out by a family and their children and with them also a young girl with Down Syndrome. The Young girl took her time to be sure to get it right, and nobody rushed her. It was a lovely touch to the ceremony.

Normally with the ordination of a bishop there are a lot of things to be done, with a lot of symbols like the crosier, the ring, and the mitre. During all of that, the MC Fr Roderick Whearty just kept a nice, pleasant flow. 

Ordination as Bishop of Ossory in St. Mary's Cathedral

What was your reaction when you were contacted to become Bishop? The Pope signs the document that appoints you as Bishop, so you don’t actually meet him. He has a representative in Dublin called the papal nuncio who lives in the Nunciature or the Vatican Embassy to Ireland. 

When I asked to come to Dublin to the Nunciature, the Charge d’Affaires, Monsignor Julien Kabore met me. After reminiscing about our college days in the Gregorian University in Rome, he just leaned forward to open a folder in front of me and simply said ‘Pope Francis has appointed you as Bishop of Ossory’. 

Monsignor Julien Kabore, the Charge d’Affaires, was very kind in how he broke the news and firm in his resolve that I accept the appointment.

The appointment of bishops is a bit like the appointment of judges - we don't apply, and you don't know that you are appointed. We made a commitment at our ordination to the priesthood to be of service and the Monsignor pointed this out to me.

I tried to persuade him that there were many other people that knew the area and culture better. However, they now favour sending bishops and moving people around the countries where they bring fresh eyes to situations. 

You didn’t go directly into the priesthood after secondary school, so when did you get your calling? The year I was doing my leaving cert, I sort of came to the decision that I felt this call to be a priest. But I didn't think going to Maynooth after school was necessarily going to be a priest. I was going to test my vocation. 

Becoming a priest wasn't as unusual then as it is now. The school that I went to Saint Eunan's College in Letterkenny, every year, four or five men went on for the priesthood. 

It was in 1981 and shortly after Pope John Paul II visit to Ireland that I made my decision. Historians tell us that there was an increase in vocations shortly after that visit, but I don't regard myself as being swayed by that. That was the epoch in which I entered the seminary.

You have worked with a lot of younger people throughout your years in education. How do you feel about the younger generation being less involved in the church these days? Well, I’ve spent over 25 years teaching both at secondary level and third level. So I've had a lot of experience working with young people. And yes, it's true to say that there has been a decline in mass attendance and not just by the young.

I was very involved in the training of primary and secondary school teachers in my job for 19 years in Belfast. Religious studies were a big thing in the North in both our primary and secondary level and were examined at GCSE. 

Religious Studies is also very popular with people who want to do medicine, law, or pharmacy because they are taught how to think philosophically and ethically. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t a tradition of this form of religious studies in the Republic. I think one of the problems we face in the Republic is that people can be educated in almost every other aspect of life, but they have very little religious knowledge. I think it's one of the priorities for the church as we look to the future, that there has to be a deeper theological education. 

The Greeks told us that the human person is made up of body, mind and soul and in our modern society, parents want the best for their children and want to form the mind with education and the body with good nutrition and sport, but there’s another dimension - the soul and spiritual part of life. 

You can ignore the spiritual or you can treat it with contempt, but you will not eradicate it. The soul, the spiritual, is an integral part of the human person. 

At the moment, we are living in a society where many people denigrate the spirit or overlook it, or parents don't even talk to the children about God or teach them to pray. 

The Ireland of the past was very conservatively Catholic, and the pendulum has swung away with a lot of people who have very little faith, even the language of God is foreign to them.

Do you think it will remain this way?

I have more confidence in human nature, and as time goes on, people will ask questions. For example, you were saying earlier about your own children and how difficult it is to raise teenager’s aka Generation Z who are digital natives, who haven’t known a day in their life when the iPhone or iPad wasn’t there. 

That technology brings wonderful opportunities, but it also brings other problems. They can get information easily, but you need to have wisdom, to be able to engage with it and to sort it out and sift it.

I think young people today are deluged with information and it's affecting their mental health, but they still need wisdom. And I suppose in a sense this is where parents and grandparents come in.

In our day, it was taken for granted that our grandparents would teach us skills – baking, embroidery, fishing, sport etc. In the present moment, young people’s imaginations are completely fixated on information technology and unfortunately the parents and grandparents are limited in what they can teach them on this, in fact it’s the other way around they are teaching us!

It's lopsided, so it's hard for this generation to get wisdom. 

Can the church help? 

I think we can. First, by just naming and putting language on the situation. History hasn’t ended, there will be a critique of what passes as normal, and change will continue. 

I like to think that there'll be a revaluation in the future, that people will see that whilst technology brings so many opportunities, it's also problematic. 

Kids are not brought up to cope with being bored or to just have silence. They are overstimulated and they need downtime. For some of us, we learnt that in the pandemic, we rediscovered quality time with family and friends. There's learning there and hope.