In pictures: Bishop Niall Coll greeted by home parishioners in St Johnston

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The Bishop-elect of Raphoe, Niall Coll, celebrated Mass in his hometown of St Johnston on Sunday and delivered a message of hope to parishioners.

Bishop Coll, currently the Bishop of Ossory, was appointed as the new Bishop of Raphoe by Pope Leo XIV last month and he is due to be formally installed on January 25.

As he prepares to lead the See of Raphoe, Bishop Coll returned home on Sunday, where he was greeted by his townsfolk in the east Donegal village. It was his first Mass in Donegal since news of his appointment as the Bishop of Raphoe.

“Hope is fragile these days, and often in the shortest of times,” Bishop Coll said in his Homily at St Baithin’s Church.

“We live in a world marked by war and violence, by the struggle of being innocent, by anxiety about the future, about housing, about the economy, about where things are headed. Many people, especially the young, struggle to find meaning or direction in life.”

Bishop Coll noted the messages from the Prophet Isiah’s book, spoken to people who are “tired, displaced, worn down, and discouraged. Isaiah is saying to them, do not lose heart. God has not abandoned us”.

On Sunday, was back at the altar before which he was baptised in 1963 and in the Church where he was an altar server in his youth.

Bishop Coll, a son of Kathleen and the late Willie Coll from the Hillhead in St Johnston, told the congregation: “It is staying faithful, where change is slow and outcomes are unclear. 

“And that brings us to something important: Christian hope is not about running away. Not about wishing we were somewhere else, or that life was easier. Or that this present moment would just pass. Hope is about living fully where we are.

“Trusting that this moment, not self-imagined future, is where God is at work. There is only one place where life happens. Now.

The past is over. The future has not yet arrived. Hope is not meaning for life to begin later. Hope cares to live attentively in the present moment. And we are not good at that. We are often elsewhere.”

Mass was concelebrated by Taughboyne parish priest Fr Philip Kemmy; Monsignor Dan Carr, Pastor Emeritus St Johnston; St Johnston-born priests Fr Oliver McCrossan and Fr Joseph Gillespie, Assisting in the Mass was Eamonn Russell, a native of Kilmacrennan who is studying for the priesthood and recently met with Pope Leo along with members of the Pontifical Irish College. 

Bishop Coll, who was ordained to the priesthood in July, 1988 and elevated to Bishophood in January, 2023, was presented with a statue of the Baby Jesus. Sunday marked the Third Sunday of Advent, or Gaudete Sunday, where people traditionally bring Baby Jesus figurines to be blessed. 

Bishop Coll told how he could feel the constant support and prayers from his neighbours and friends in the Taughboyne parish. 

It was a day tinged with some poignancy as Sunday’s Mass also honoured the second anniversary of his father’s death in 2023.

“Every time come back and look at the pews, I think of the people no longer with us,” he said, adding that he remembers often the former PP of Taughboyne Dr Daniel Cunnea in his prayers.

He touched on his father’s philosophy during his Homily. 

He said:  “My father once said that hope is the certainty that something has means, regardless of how you turn about it. That is deeply Christian.

“Our hope is not based on circumstances improving, but on God's promise of holding firm…God is at work, even when it doesn't look dramatic.”

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Parishioners were urged to remember that the present moment matters and that we should “stay with our lives as they are…Not pushing them away. Not rushing toward something else. But trusting that God is faithfully at work, often slowly, beneath the stressors.

“My father, I would say, was always very comfortable in his own skin. He lived that way. 

“Like seed in the soil, something is growing. Even where you cannot get seeded. That, my dear friends, is where hope begins.”