Kieron Wood: an Obituary and Appreciation

For a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you could not turn on an RTÉ news broadcast on radio or television without seeing Kieron Wood, first as religious affairs correspondent and later as legal correspondent. He cut a distinctive figure with his enunciation of the English language and with his bow tie. He disappeared from the public eye afterwards to practice law and go into print media, eventually as senior assistant editor of The Sunday Business Post. In the same time, he wrote several books on diverse topics which reflected his professional and personal interests.

Kieron Wood was born in London on 15 August 1949, son of Rex and Mollie (née Emblem). His father was Australian and was part of an active Catholic family - Rex's father was a papal knight. However, Rex Wood was not a constant presence in his son's life. Kieron married earIy and found himself as a father of a young family while still a young man himself. He attempted to join the Royal Marines, which did not come to very much. Then he went into journalism. He was very much the old school journalist, meticulous in checking his sources with superb shorthand skills.

As a traditionally minded Catholic in the early 1970s, he formed part of a group which gravitated around a priest of the Brighton and Arundel diocese named Alan Wilders. Many were Irish or had Irish connections. Eventually, Father Wilders moved to Ireland, to found St Patrick's Academy beside the village of Islandeady, Co Mayo, just off the main road beween Castlebar and Westport. Kieron and his family settled in Wicklow and he was employed by RTÉ, the Irish state broadcaster.

In the late 1970s, Kieron became part of a group which brought Archbishop Marcel LeFebvre to Ireland and later arranged for the Society of St Pius X to establish a base here. The other four members predeceased him, but at first they arranged for hotel rooms, then the R & R Music Hall in Rathmines, then a chapel on Crawford Avenue until eventually the former Anglican Church of St John the Evangelist was purchased on Mounttown Road in Dún Laoghaire. He was close to the first resident priest, Father John Emerson who was subsequently a founder member of St Peter's Fraternity. Kieron and his family assisted with the cleaning and decorating of the church.

The indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos happened in 1984 and in 1985, Archbishop Kevin McNamara instituted a first Friday Indult Mass in the chapel of the Sacred Heart Convent in Tivoli Road. The Woods arranged another indult Mass in a convent in Delgany, Co Wicklow on first Fridays. Father Emerson encouraged his people to support this, but he was replaced by Father Daniel Couture who took a different attitude.

Around this time, Kieron became religious affairs correspondent in RTÉ. He was a breath of fresh air as a lot of religious affairs journalist in Ireland at the time where part of an informal club originally put together by Father Austin Flannery OP, famous for the English version of the Second Vatican Council documents and the destruction of St Saviour's Church in Dominick St in Dublin. Kieron was a head and shoulders above all these. The Phoenix Magazine, which is actually a successor of a liberal Catholic journal named The Hibernian, patronised him by saying he couldn't fill the shoes of his predecessor, Kevin O'Kelly. I'll agree - O'Kelly's shoes were far too small - the man was never able to depart from the boiler plate commentary out of the liberal text book.

Kieron was pursuing stories without fear or favour and many of the clergy were aware of his leanings which did not win him many friends. He made a decisive break with the Society of St Pius X in 1988 following the Econe consecrations and consequent excommunications. This is where his role as religious affairs correspondent in RTÉ was almost providential. The traditional Latin Mass in Dublin moved from Tivoli Road to the Daughters of the Cross hospital in Cabinteely, but with no publicity. The relatively new Archbishop of Dublin, Desmond Connell, wanted to instate a new venue for the traditional Mass, especially after Pope John Paul II called for 'wide and generous' application of the 1984 Indult in his apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei Adflicta. Initially, the Poor Clare convent in Harold's Cross was chosen. It was clear that the nuns were having none of it and the designated priest Monsignor John Moloney told people that nothing could be done. At this point Kieron told him he would be waiting with a camera crew at the convent on the Sunday morning to interview the people disappointed with the cancellation. Very shortly afterwards, it was announced that the Church of Ss Michael and John, Wood Quay would be the alternative venue. Kieron ensured there was maximum publicity and eventually, there was a congregation of around 500, where the previous congregation in Cabinteely was rarely more that 25.

Around this time, there was a change in Kieron's career. He got too close to certain stories and two bishops lobbied RTÉ to have him moved out of religious affairs. The two bishops were the then Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh, Dr Éamon Casey and the then Bishop of Ferns, Dr Brendan Comiskey SS.CC. I don't believe I need say any more on this topic. Kieron was naturally disappointed, but it opened a whole new avenue as the first Legal Affairs Correspondent in RTÉ. He also produced an instructional video on how to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass entitled The Most Beautiful Thing This Side of Heaven, which became an international best seller.

Kieron did not have the opportunity to go to university when he was younger, so in 1991, he began studying law in the Honorable Society of the King's Inns in Dublin. Here his journalistic skills stood to him because it is often important to get the text of the law lecturers almost verbatim. Kieron took it down in shorthand and typed it up immediately afterward. Many students paid to purchase these notes.

I began attending the traditional Latin Mass on a regular basis in summer 1992 at St Paul's, Arran Quay and I began studying in the King's Inns that Autumn, so I had two points of contact with Kieron Wood. I think I was introduced to him in the Inns, but he already knew my face from Mass. I got to know his family by sight, or at least I thought I did as I regularly saw a young woman late that year with Maria or one of their daughters, but she was not a relative. She was a German student au pair named Sabine Zick to whom I am now married.

Kieron did his level best to publicise the traditional Latin Mass at every opportunity, but at this time in his life, there was an underlying issue. The marriage between himself and Maria took place when they were both extremely young and was fraught with problems. In Spring 1993, he went on television with his family and another group of worshippers from St Paul's, Arran Quay. The folllowing week, the column by the late Terry Keane (or her ghost writer) on the back page of The Sunday Independent gave a very smutty take on issues between the couple, with special reference to Kieron's attachment to the traditional Latin Mass. I was aware of these problems. I heard things in the King's Inns which I did not repeat in Arran Quay. I noticed Kieron never received communion at the time. So Kieron and Maria separated. In time, the marriage was dissolved through a church annulment and civil divorce. Someone very indiscreetly passed me information on the ground for annulment on which I will comment only that if accurate, the marriage was indeed void. But I will say one thing. Where I have observed marital breakdown, normally one spouse, sometimes both, suffer thereafter. With Kieron and Maria both appear to have benefited from being apart, which suggests to me that the Church was right in concluding they were never married. So, for this reason, I think the Irish state foolish never to have looked at the possibility of promoting the idea of civil nullity decree rather than going down the avenue of divorce.

Kieron became an expert on Family law and divorce in particular. He graduated with first class honours as a barrister-at-law in 1995 and he published books on Divorce in Ireland: The Options, The Issues, The Law, A Guide to the Court of Appeal, The Kilkenny Incest Case, The High Court: A User's Guide, Family Breakdown: A Legal Guide, Contempt of Parliament and in a more religious direction, The Latter Day Saints which describes a scandal which nearly torpedoed Mormonism. Much later he penned a biography of Kay Summersby entitled Ike's Irish Lover. This period of Kieron's life was unsettled and I was a close witness to this. I suppose this was how I demonstrated that I was his friend. I remember sharing his company after Mass in 1998 which Father William Richardson (not to be confused with the bishop who has that name the other way round) celebrated in St Audoen's in High St after returning to Ireland following ordination in the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter. Archbishop Connell was present. Kieron showed up with a camera crew (and there were about 600 people in the church). The Hon Mr Justice Peter Kelly was adamant the event was not newsworthy. Eventually, Father Richardson said he didn't want the event televised. Kieron and I sensed this was a missed opportunity.

Towards the end of the decade, Kieron settled down somewhat (I have seen this with others in similar circumstances too - not just men) and established a relationship with Catherine and began a second family. He still wasn't receiving the sacraments.

When we founded the Latin Mass Society of Ireland in 1999, Kieron was present. We lamented that the predecessor organisation Ecclesia Dei Ireland had not got anywhere in ten years. Kieron mentioned that despite the problems, there were positives, in particular the network of contacts we had built up. He was heartening to listen to. The problem with Ecclesia Dei Ireland was that one officer tried to build it up as an opposition in residence in St Paul's and later St Audoen's in Dublin and killed any initiative by others. As a result, the traditional movement in Ireland was focused on Dublin. Insofar as I have made a contribution, it was laying a network enabling the development of Mass centres outside Dublin, particularly in Ireland's other cities and larger towns.

Kieron provided me with an angle into the media. I had a few pieces published in The Sunday Business Post, at least one of which achieved temporary notoriety. I appeared on the Vincent Browne Show with him on RTÉ radia, when we debated Father Seán Cassin OFM (a very nice man) and Anne Looney. We had agreed a good cop, bad cop approach and Kieron was more than happy to be 'bad cop' and at one point Kieron looked at Father Cassin and said 'That is is heresy', when Father Cassin described transubstantiation as a subjective rather than objective occurence. A fried of mine emailed me to say either I had softened or 'Kieron Wood is a mad barking fascist of the extreme right'.

Kieron and Catherine were building up a family and in 2008, they got married in St Kevin's Church, Harrington St with Father Gerard Deighan as celebrant. Catherine specifically asked if I would serve the Mass, which I did. It was the only time I served the Extraordinary Form Mass in Harrington St. I recalled I had once served an ordinary form Funeral Mass there in 1985, when the mother of one of the boys in my class in Synge St died tragically. But this was Kieron and Catherine's day. From this day on, Kieron received the sacraments again.

I did keep in touch with Kieron after, but I was usually attending Masses outside Dublin from 2009. From 2012, he was very supportive of my taking on the role of editor of The Brandsma Review.

I think it hurt Kieron that he was deprived of the opportunity to be a full time religious affairs correspondent. He was very successful as a legal journalist and lawyer, but his passion was religious affairs. I think it is a pity that in the traditional Mass situation, he didn't take on a more international role. I also recall the late Mgr Cremin fulminating that Kieron Wood should have been left in religious affairs.

In 2019, Kieron announced through an article in the Irish Indepent that he had Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a very rare, degenerative brain disease, which killed Dudley Moore, Bob Hoskins, Nigel Dempster and Peter Sarstedt (Where do you go to my lovely?). He could no longer type or text. I had very little contact with him and he went into nursing care soon after.

Kieron died yesterday 25 February 2023. He was predeceased by his son Dominic. He is survived by his wife Catherine, children Tabita, Laura, Sarah, Timothy, Riain, Grace, Molly, Billy and Teddy, and fourteen grandchildren with a wider circle of family and friends. Traditional Catholic Ireland has lost a constant and powerful advocate.

Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam requiescant in pace. Amen.

Enter Michael Davies...

 My first meeting with Michael Davies was the first time I did the Paris-Chartres walk.  This was in 1995.  I went with the Baden-Württemberg chapter, but I spent time with the British and American chapters too, and did my best to connect with people.  There was no Irish chapter at this stage, but there were a group of Irish people with the British chapter - this was organised by the Brandsma Review.  Michael Davies was walking with the American chapter organised The Remnant newspaper.

So the fact he was going to address the Ecclesia Dei Ireland AGM was something to look forward too.  He gave a talk about the Prayer Book revolt in Cornwall in the reign of Edward VI.  This was an interesting talk in itself but it was the rest of the meeting which exposed the weakness of Ecclesia Dei Ireland.  I am going to do a further post of the issue of Requiem Masses, especially in the Archdiocese of Dublin, but at this point, I will just describe the proceedings of the EDI meeting.  A number of people had received permission in writing to have the traditional Mass for their funerals.  This sparked a lively discussion.  At some point in the deliberations, somebody raised the question of traditional Extreme Unction.

The trouble about all this was first of all, it made a statement about the age and priorities of the group.  I have no idea how Michael Davies reacted to it.  Secondly, a lot of the petitioning was personalised.  There was no place here for developing strategies or tactics to get the traditional Mass to places it was.  The SSPX made its presence felt and I saw a couple more or less monopolise him after Mass the following day.

In the course of the meeting, the AGM voted to affiliate with the FIUV, of which Michael was then the president.  I thought this was curious.  Three years before this was voted down.  Two years before, the vote wasn't put because the society voted not to amend its constitution to exclude clergy from governing positions.  This year, that issue wasn't addressed and remained unaddressed.  But Michael was never very interested in legal niceties.  EDI applied for membership of the FIUV.

Michael Davies came to Ireland with a dual purpose.  EDI only made up one part of this.  The other was the proposal to re-order Carlow Cathedral.  Most older Irish churches, let alone cathedrals, suffered some vandalism in the name of the Second Vatican Council, but this topic would require a blog in its own right to cover the problem.  Carlow Cathedral was one of the few Irish cathedrals which was unscathed and the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Laurence Ryan, was determined he was not going to allow this distinction continue.  

The resistance group in Carlow were more determined and most of them had petitioned for the traditional Mass shortly before.  Michael certainly encouraged them and they got straight to work.  There would be a few more years of campaigning which ended up in a High Court action.  But that is all ahead of us.

Not in a vacuum: Some background

 I could work on a book about the background to the development of the Latin Mass movement in Ireland.  But at some point background information becomes an obstacle rather than an aid.

However, there was a particular trigger which had a lot of influence on the development of the traditional movement operating within Irish Church structures.  Rather there were two triggers, but both happened in 1992.

The first wall Irish Catholicism hit was the X-Case in February 1992.  In September 1983, the Eighth Amendment was enshrined in the Irish Constitution, guaranteeing the right to life of the unborn child.  Around 1992, a 14-year old rape victim's family approached Gardaí and asked could they take DNA samples from the unborn child, which they intended to have aborted, from Britain to assist in the case for the prosecution of the alleged rapist (who was subsequently convicted).  The Attorney General sought to an injunction to prevent the girl from travelling to Britain for an abortion and the High Court granted this.  Amid many protests, the Supreme Court upheld the girl's appeal as the Constitution gave due regard to the equal right to life of the mother and the girl had threatened suicide.  This brought the issue of the eighth amendment under the radar.

In May 1992, the Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh, Mgr Éamon Casey resigned following revelations he fathered a child with a US divorcee eighteen years previously.  Casey was a high profile prelate in Ireland and very much seen as a progressive, especially due to his activism in regard to US foreign policy in Latin America.  But his resignation came as a shock, however minor it was in comparison to scandals yet to unfold.

The twin crises released a strain of energy across Ireland which could have been channeled into something powerful, but leadership wasn't there.  However, I personally became more focused on the faith and its position in Ireland at the time.  One publication that emerged came from Mullingar and it was entitled The Democrat.  It was a weekly newspaper which was traditionally Catholic and nationalist.  At the time, The Irish Catholic was very weak, with a very soft focus editor Brigid Anne Ryan.  The newspaper felt the competition.  Within months, it adopted the name The Irish Democrat, but it slowly ran out of steam. 

In June that year, another publication emerged.  This was The Brandsma Review.  Through the 1980s, there was a small circulation magazine called The Ballintrillick Review which was based in Ballintrillick, Co Sligo and was edited by an New Yorker named Doris Manly who died around 1991.  The Brandsma Review took up where The Ballintrillick Review left off.  But there was one important difference.  The Brandsma's editor Nick Lowry was active in the LMSI/EDI.  The masthead of the Brandsma was Pro Vita, Pro Ecclesia Dei et Pro Hibernia which of course means for life, for the Church of God and for Ireland, but Ecclesia Dei was to refer to Pope John Paul's apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei Adflicta.  This magazine was to be very important to the pro-life and pro-traditional Mass cause which was placed under the patronage of the Dutch Carmelite martyr Blessed Titus Brandsma.  Blessed Titus had a connection with Ireland too, as he studied English in Dublin's Whitefriars St and in Kinsale in the early 1930s.  My association with the magazine began in January 1993 and in 2012, I became editor.  

The principal role of The Brandsma Review was to be a reference point for traditionally minded Catholics in Ireland.  It still is, though perhaps not to the extent it could be. I have to say I was always grateful to have it in the heat of the fight.

Stonewalled petitions - sample

 I don't why I put myself forward for committee membership of Ecclesia Dei Ireland.  I believe it was in the year 1993-94, but it could easily have been the following year.  But I think I am right because I recall being off the committee two years before being re-elected (I didn't stand; and I don't think it would have looked very good for the society to have had its youngest committee member standing down at the AGM Michael Davies addressed in 1995.  My reasons for stepping down was because I believed that I was wasting my time on the committee.  But that is jumping ahead in the narrative.

In the course of the year, I attended monthly meetings which could be long and drawn out with very little substantive business conducted.  I do remember two dioceses discussed.  Cork and Ross had a particular significance as the EDI secretary Nuala Ramsay was a native of Cork.  Bishop Murphy, as I have said, is alleged to have said a traditional Latin Mass would only take place in Cork over his dead body (I'm told then Archbishop Connell's reaction was to say "That can be arranged").  Eventually a compromise was reached in Cork by the SMA priest Father Thomas Higgins saying Mass daily in the SMA house in Blackrock in the early hours of the morning, but it did mean that it was possible to attend Mass in Cork.

The Kildare and Leighlin diocese was a lot more engaged, and at one point a delegation from Carlow joined us at the committee meeting.  There were two petitions advancing in the diocese - one in Carlow and the other in Newbridge.  I saw what was going on in Carlow.  I was aware that the Newbridge petition was driven by a teenager (Thomas Murphy), but I knew little more about it.  Carlow had a group of people who were apparently serious.  There was a certain back and forth with the bishop, who at the time was Laurence Ryan.  

I think there were dynamics in place in the diocese which militated against any entertainment of a petition.  One was the presence of the National Liturgy Centre in St Patrick's College, Carlow.  I am not sure to what degree St Patrick's College was functioning as a seminary at the time (in these few years St Patrick's in Carlow, St Kieran's in Kilkenny, St Peter's in Wexford and St John's in Waterford would all close their doors), but the college was the source of every liturgical, or rather non-liturgical nonsense visited on Ireland's parishes at the time.  I have also heard allegations about the bishop's lack of faith but as I never knew him personally, I can't comment.

The petitioners in Carlow submitted a petition to which the bishop responded that he did not believe he could ask a priest to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass and he asked the petitioners if they could find any.  The petitioners soon found two diocesan priests and two religious willing to say the Mass and gave the bishop the names.  The response was that one of the religious was outside the diocese and the bishop said "I don't know of him" and the other religious was in the diocese "but he may not be always in the diocese".  Of the two diocesan priests, he said that he contacted both of them and that they did not wish to say the Mass, one expressing surprise that he was even nominated.

The petitioners contacted both priests.  The bishop contacted the first priest and upbraided him aggressively for having anything to do with the petitioners and left him in no doubt that no permission would be forthcoming.  That priest contacted his colleague and warned him, so the other priest greeted the bishop with a denial (not a direct lie, but an effort to distance himself from the petition), but the bishop gave out to him anyway.  The petitioners knew where they stood.

The efforts to get a traditional Mass in the diocese took a back seat in Carlow as the issue of re-ordering the cathedral came up the following year.  Newbridge had its own problems.  The bishop would not apply for an auxilliary as he was worried the Pope would impose a conservative on him and was no longer up to doing all the confirmations.  He chose Newbridge as the pilot parish to have the priest confirming the children.  This generated a storm in its own right and the bishop/clergy did not distinguish themselves in their efforts at communication with the flock.

The first item on the agenda..

 I think it was Brendan Behan who said the first item on the agenda of any Irish organisation was the split.  Traditional Catholics are notoriously fractious the world over.  I know there was controversy on the LMSI/EDI committee at a very early stage, but the first major problem to arise was around the character of Father Pádraig Ó Fithchill.

Even before any question was raised, the fact that the society was headed by a priest caused an immediate problem.  The international federation of lay Catholics seeking the traditional Mass and sacraments, Federatio Internationalis Una Voce was precisely that, a lay organisation.  I suspect no one in Ireland was aware of how much of a problem this was.  In the late 1980s, the most active organisation in the federation was Una Voce Canada.  UV Canada was eventually expelled from the Federation, when its president, Jim Scheer was ordained to the permanent diaconate.  However, Fr Pádraig Ó Fithchill was a priest.  Most people suggested he was an Augustinian (he told me he was an Augustinian tertiary, associated with the Order's Canadian province and also that he did novitiate in Clare Priory in England.  Clare Priory was only used as a novitiate for two years, but it was plausible that he was there given his age.) 

However, he was a priest of the Birmingham Archdiocese.  It's interesting that many people suspended the normal question about a priest using the Irish version of his name: what's his name in English?  I have to say I only guessed when someone put the question to me in a very loaded manner.  His name was Patrick Fell.  You can read about his conviction and time in prison in the link.  I have to say I have strong reasons to believe that this was another miscarriage of justice and I don't believe he was O.C. of a Provisional IRA active service unit.  That's beside the point.  Much later I was faced with a situation I was desperately looking for priests to offer the EF Mass and I knew Father Ó Fithchill was happy to do so, but I also knew to use him would cause me more trouble.  The matter of the organisation's affiliation with the FIUV did not hinge on Father Ó Fithchill's priesthood alone: the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales were well aware of Father Ó Fithchill's background.  For that reason, they were very wary of having any connexion with the new Irish body.  

But at the AGM of Ecclesia Dei Ireland in 1994, a proposal was made to change the constitution to enable the body affiliate with the FIUV.  Though this was not personalised, the motion was voted down.  For some attendants, the matter was simple.  In many parts of Ireland at that stage, priests played an active role in community life even outside pastoral life.  For example, it was not unusual to find a parish priest chairing the local Gaelic Athletic Association club in many rural parishes.  So many people found it perplexing that a priest could or should be excluded from an executive role in a specifically religious body like the LMSI/EDI.  One speaker said very clearly that if the FIUV had a problem with EDI being chaired by a priest, then the problem lay with them.  So the motion was defeated.

In the event, Father Ó Fithchill resigned as Honorary President of the society, a role he was given when he resigned as chairman two years earlier.

Kerry: First stumbling block

 The Irish bishops attended an Ad Limina meeting in 1992 where the late Pope St John Paul II principally instructed them on their duty regarding abortion as there was some perception of weakness in the wake of the X Case.  In the course of the meeting, the bishops called on several dicasteries, including the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.  The President of the Commission was Antonio Cardinal Innocenti.  Bishop Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin of Kerry called on the Commission and came away of the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that the Commission would leave arrangements in his diocese up to him without intervention.  In 1993, he received petitions for a regular traditional Mass from Cahirciveen, Killarney and Tralee.  He answered negatively, citing the conversation he had with Cardinal Innocenti.  I am sure the cardinal was delighted with that, especially as the letter addressed to one of the lead petitioners, Mrs Hannah McCarthy in Cahirciveen was featured in the US Latin Mass Magazine, with a commentary by Roger McCaffrey.  

One result of the refusal was the coming of the Society of St Pius X into the Kerry diocese, where they have had Masses at various locations since then.  Renewed petitions to Mgr Ó Súilleabháin, who died in 1994, and his successor Dr William Murphy, got nowhere until after Summorum Pontificum, but that was still a decade and a half away.

I can't say with any certainty that Bishop Ó Súilleabháin's relation of his conversation with the cardinal had any influence over subsequent events.  But what I can say is that after this Kerry petition failed, nothing positive emerged in Ireland between Bishop Ó Súilleabháin's refusal of the Kerry petitions in 1993 and the granting of permission for Mass in Bruckless in Co Donegal in 1999.  There is a strong temptation to conclude post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Hitting the wall

1992 was a very trying time to be a Catholic in Ireland.  In February, the X-Case broke which brought about the possibility of legalised abortion.  In May, Bishop Éamonn Casey resigned as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh due to the now well-known scandal.  In July, the Brandsma Review was launched.

One of the initiatives of the Latin Mass Society of Ireland was to write to every Irish bishop asking if permission for the traditional Mass was forthcoming.  Ironically, Bishop Éamonn Casey was the only one who gave a favourable reply.  Most bishops did not acknowledge the correspondence.  Two who did were Bishop Michael Harty of Killaloe and Bishop Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin of Kerry.  Both had questions about the title "Latin Mass Society of Ireland", which they believed to be misleading as there was the possibility of the Latin Mass in the New Order, what we would now call the Ordinary Form. 

One could have asked their Lordships where these were.  St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin has one every Sunday at 11 am.  St Brigid's in Belfast had one at 8.30 am on Sunday mornings - I am not sure what the status of this is now.  There was also a Sunday OF Latin Mass in Dublin's Haddington Road, which has since been discontinued.  I am told that a priest of the Elphin diocese said the OF Latin Mass in St Mary's Cathedral in Sligo, but this was already a thing of the past at this time (Bishop Conway told the petitioners if it was just a Latin Mass they wanted, there would be no problem).

In this, Ireland is very exceptional.  The OF Latin Mass is more common in other areas.  Westminister Cathedral, for example, has one on a daily basis.  There are several venues in Vienna where one can attend an OF Latin Mass every Sunday.  The absence of Latin in Ireland is probably a relic of the hyper ultra montanism practiced in Ireland until that time.

The reaction that the LMSI made was to change their name, choosing Ecclesia Dei Ireland which reflected Pope John Paul's apostolic letter.  This is well and good, but most people would need this explained to him.  Another possibility, Una Voce Ireland, was ruled out as the Irish people remember Mussolini's dictum "Uno Duce, una voce".  Well, actually they don't; they were just reminded of it by the then recent Taoiseach's press advisor PJ Mara during one of the heaves against Charles Haughey when he was in office. 

Charles Haughey, Taoiseach 1979-81; 82; 87-92

Senator PJ Mara

'

So the LMSI opted for Ecclesia Dei Ireland.  Meanwhile, reports suggested that there were no new permissions being granted and there was immense curiosity as to why.