Funeral Of Fr John Doohan
By Fr Donal O’Dea
As I sat in the parish church of Dancalan, Ilog, Negros Occidental, I felt sleepy. A 5.30am flight from Manila to Bacolod and a three-hour drive to be on time had their effect. The fact that the Mass was in Ilonggo, which I didn’t understand, caused my mind to ponder on the occasion and to wander back to the day John Doohan had left The Hand, in Kilmurry Ibrickan parish, Mullagh, County Clare, to go to the seminary to become a Columban missionary. Today, 69 years later, we were celebrating his funeral Mass - two bishops, many priests, religious sisters and brothers and an overflowing congregation. It was a long journey, in time and distance, from Ireland to the Philippines, yet the banner over the church door, with his picture, said in large bold letters, ‘Welcome Home Father John’.
As I sat in the parish church of Dancalan, Ilog, Negros Occidental, I felt sleepy. A 5.30am flight from Manila to Bacolod and a three-hour drive to be on time had their effect. The fact that the Mass was in Ilonggo, which I didn’t understand, caused my mind to ponder on the occasion and to wander back to the day John Doohan had left The Hand, in Kilmurry Ibrickan parish, Mullagh, County Clare, to go to the seminary to become a Columban missionary. Today, 69 years later, we were celebrating his funeral Mass - two bishops, many priests, religious sisters and brothers and an overflowing congregation. It was a long journey, in time and distance, from Ireland to the Philippines, yet the banner over the church door, with his picture, said in large bold letters, ‘Welcome Home Father John’.
‘Christi simus non nostri. Perigrinari pro Christo’, I chanted repeatedly as I walked in the dark on my last day towards Agoo. I had been walking for days and sleeping wherever darkness caught me. During the Spiritual Year, the first year of formation, it has become a tradition for Columban seminarians to go on pilgrimage either from Malolos, Bulacan, to Manaoag, Pangasinan, or from Apalit, Pampanga, to Agoo, La Union. Without money, we ask for food and water from the people we meet on our way. At night we also ask around for a place to sleep. We tell people we are on pilgrimage and don’t disclose that we are seminarians unless they ask who we really are. The pilgrimage has always been optional; each of us decides if we will make it or not. We were the sixth batch to go on the pilgrimage.
‘I might be in a wrong group’, I thought as I was attending Mass. It was kind of different. After the prayers of the faithful, when the people themselves offered individual petitions and then everyone going up to the sanctuary, the priest at the center of the altar and the faithful surrounding it. My dilemma was enlightened when the priest said, ‘for Benedict our Pope, and Matthew our Bishop’. I sighed in relief.