Mohill transplant recipient helps stage national Service to honour organ donors 

More than 1,200 people from all over Ireland converged in the Midlands town of Mullingar for the Irish Kidney Association 38th Annual Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving on October 14 at the Cathedral of Christ the King. 

For many donor families, the unique Service has become an anniversary to both remember their loved ones and, for transplant recipients, the opportunity to honour and give thanks for the wonderful ‘gift of life’ they have received.

Mullingar Choral Society and Uilleann piper Aoife Nally performed during the special Service. 

Giving thanks to her donor was Cathriona Charles from Mohill, Co Leitrim, a member of the Organising Liturgy Committee for the Service. 

Cathriona is enjoying the successful longevity of the deceased donor kidney transplant she received 33 years ago. She is a national board member of the Irish Kidney Association (IKA) and secretary of the Leitrim IKA branch.

Taking part in symbolic processional and reading roles were courageous families of deceased organ donors, living kidney and liver donors, grateful transplant recipients of heart, lungs, liver, kidney, and pancreas, and a multi-organ transplant recipient mother.  

Lit candles after the Service of Light

Also participating were members of the wider organ donation and transplant community, including medical, surgical, and nursing staff.

Amongst the participants were Dr Catherine Motherway, Clinical Lead, Organ Donation Transplant Ireland (ODTI) and organ donor coordinator Jean O’Reilly (ODTI); Transplant Surgeon Gordon Smyth (Beaumont Hospital); Laura Austin and Andrea Fitzmaurice, transplant coordinators (Beaumont Hospital), and Carmela Malapit, a Filipino dialysis nurse at Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore and wife of a kidney transplant recipient.

The two sisters of Ted Tobin, a young man from Crumlin, Dublin, who made history when he became the first person to undergo a transplant in Ireland, which took place on December 19 1963 (60 years ago), took part in an offertory procession. The deceased’s sister Sylvia O’Donovan, who lives in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, carried a photo of her brother, an accomplished musician, while her sister Jean Keogh, from Enfield, Co Meath, brought one of his prized music books to the altar.

In the opening procession, Army Sergeant Lavinia Connell from Athlone, whose late brother John was an organ donor, carried the cross to the altar, and Leanne Walsh followed her from Tullamore, Co Offaly, whose sister Michelle Kavanagh became an organ donor in 2019.

The Transplant Team Ireland sports team led the symbolic Service of Light ceremony by lighting candles for the congregation to honour donors. Nine-year-old Sam Kinahan and his kidney donor father Ivan from Baldoyle, Dublin, brought the medals they each won at the British Transplant Games this Summer to the altar.

This unique Service was held in the Midlands for the first time since its inception, and it will be the second time only for it to be held outside of Dublin.

This year’s Service saw the return to an in-person gathering, following three consecutive years of a televised virtual event due to COVID-19.

Kairos recorded the Service and will be broadcast on RTÉ One TV and RTÉ Radio One Extra on November 5 at 11am.