Fr Michael McCarthy
Please pray for the family and friends of Fr Michael McCarthy, Parish Priest of St Joseph the Worker at Sherburn-in-Elmet and the Immaculate Conception at Scarthingwell, who died at St Gemma’s Hospice in Leeds on the evening of 10th July 2018.
Fr Michael was a poet as well as a priest. He wrote several books of poetry, including a collection of poems called “The Healing Station” arising out of a period he spent as Writer-in-Residence at a Dublin hospital. Bishop Marcus Stock described it as giving a “profound expression to the experiences of dementia patients and their carers through poetic narrative”. His last volume of poems is due to be published in October.
We are so grateful that Fr Michael gave his time to help the work of “Growing Old Grace-fully”, leading events for us and reading excerpts from his poetry. He helped ensure the voices of people faced with ailments of later life – strokes, heart attacks, onset of dementia – never lost their humanity or their humour.
Except from ‘The Good Tears’, The Healing Station
‘I’ve cried across the broken bones, and the blessings of my life
these last two weeks,’ he says with another burst of full-on tears.
I tell him how St Ignatius Loyola believed that the clearest sign
of gratitude is uncontrollable crying. ‘Good tears,’ he calls them.
‘Like Heaney’s turf cutters. Going down for the good tears.’
Fr Michael’s Obituary is on our Diocesan website . His body is being received at Scarthingwell on Wednesday 18th July at 7pm and there is a Funeral Mass at Sherburn on Thursday at 11am. His Requiem Mass will be at the Church of the Holy Family, Caheragh, West Cork on Monday, 23rd July at 1.30pm.