IRELAND’S YOUNGEST abbot, Dom Richard Purcell (33), received the abbatial blessing from Bishop of Killaloe Most Rev Willie Walsh during Mass at the Mount St Joseph Abbey Cistercian monastery near Roscrea, Co Tipperary, at the weekend.
Fr Purcell, originally from Rathgar in Dublin, was elected on June 16th by the community at Mount St Joseph and the abbots of daughter houses in Scotland, Australia and Kildare to succeed Dom Kevin Daly, who had been abbot there since 2003.
As the constitution of the Cistercian congregation states that a monk must be 35 to be eligible for such an office, and as Fr Richard was technically ineligible for election on grounds of both age and years of profession, it was necessary for him to secure a two-thirds majority for his election.
It is a requirement of Canon Law that a monk be professed for seven years before he can be elected abbot. Fr Richard was short of the required years by three months. After his election in June, proceedings were suspended while necessary dispensations were sought from Rome. On June 17th, Cardinal Rode, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, issued a dispensation concerning Fr Purcell’s shortfall in years of profession.
He did so to Dom Eamon Fitzgerald, Cistercian abbot general in Rome, who then dispensed with the minimum age requirement and confirmed Dom Richard as the eighth Abbot of Mount St Joseph Abbey. He will hold office for six years. The new abbot entered Mount St Joseph Abbey in 1997, having completed a degree in music and French at UCD.
In 2002, he read theology at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, and, on return to Mount St Joseph in 2004, he was appointed abbey bursar. In 2005, he was ordained a priest and, in 2007, he was appointed prior at the monastery while continuing as bursar.
There are 22 monks at Mount St Joseph, two of them in formation.
The monastery was founded in 1878 by monks from Mount Melleray in Co Waterford. In 1905, they established the Cistercian College, a Catholic boarding school for boys, in the Abbey grounds.
Past pupils include Taoiseach Brian Cowen, former Labour Party leader Dick Spring, former minister for foreign affairs David Andrews, and former editor of The Irish Times Conor Brady.