Emotional scenes are expected later this month when the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, will recall the struggle by a parish priest to allow the people of the Loop Head peninsula practise their Catholic faith in the 1850s.
Thousands are expected to join Bishop Walsh to retrace the steps of Father Michael Meehan and his congregation in 1852 on a seven-mile procession on the road from Carrigaholt to the foreshore at Kilbaha in west Clare.
At the head of the procession will be the portable church, known as the Ark, which allowed Father Meehan and his congregation celebrate their faith when all efforts at establishing a church building were thwarted by a notorious land agent, Marcus Keane.
According to the present parish priest of Kilbaha and Cross, Father Pat O'Neill, "The people here would have seen Father Meehan's fight as very much a fight for survival. Their backs were against the wall." Pointing out that the pre-Famine population of the Loop Head peninsula was 20,000 in contrast to the 1,200 that live there today, Father O'Neill added: "Today it is still very much a struggle for survival, with our numbers falling all the time. The people have a fight on their hands.
"In a sense, re-enacting the pilgrimage and those difficult times will be good for the people and their morale here".
Bishop Walsh said yesterday that the story of the Ark served "as a reminder of who we are and where we have come from. It is a very human story and it is good that we are celebrating it".
Housed in Kilbaha church today, the Ark was built as a last desperate attempt by Father Meehan at the height of religious conflict on Loop Head in the 1850s to provide a church for the people of the area.
During that time the two Protestant landlords on the peninsula, through their agent, Marcus Keane, offered free education and food to the people in a concerted bid to convert the people to Protestantism, while they were determined that Father Meehan would not build a church for the area.
In 1853 an effort by Father Meehan to celebrate Mass in two adjoining houses failed after Marcus Keane ordered that the houses be demolished.
Without a building, Mass was celebrated in the open. According to Father O'Neill, "This was unsatisfactory, and it was passing Kilkee beach one day in 1853 that Father Meehan got the idea for the Ark after seeing a large bathing box."
The Ark, complete with wheels, was quickly built, and Father Meehan led a procession with it from Carrigaholt and Kilbaha to celebrate Mass on the foreshore.
Father O'Neill says: "It was brought to the foreshore because Marcus Keane or anyone else would have no jurisdiction there." In a letter to the Munster News on April 4th, 1857, Father Meehan describes celebrating mass at the Ark "while a large congregation kneel around me in the puddle, bareheaded under the open air".
Father O'Neill says: "The original Ark is still there. It is unique. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world or in the church. It is something that we value and that we have a great pride in."
He says the Ark is "very much part of the folk memory of the peninsula" and recalls that there was a tradition of people who emigrated taking a chip of wood from the Ark with them.
In 1857 Father Meehan eventually secured a permanent church building after Marcus Keane was told by Father Michael Clune that his employer, Lord Francis Conyngham, "will never win the election in Clare until you get the soup-scald off your face and give Father Meehan a site for a church in Kilbaha".