Tomorrow the liturgical year reaches its climax when the Resurrection is celebrated in churches and cathedrals throughout the country.
There will be an early start to Easter Day for the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Robin Eames, who will be the celebrant at the annual Dawn Holy Communion at the Argory, Co Armagh. The service begins at 6 a.m. and later in the morning the Primate will preach in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Walton Empey, will preach in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, where trumpets and timpani will join the cathedral choir and organists at the Easter morning Eucharist.
The Bishop of Tuam, Dr Richard Henderson, will be in Galway, where he will preside, confirm and preach in St Nicholas's Collegiate Church.
In St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Dr Maurice Stewart will preach his last Easter sermon as Dean, and in the evening the cathedral choir will sing the Easter music from Handel's Messiah.
The Eucharist for Easter Day will be broadcast from St Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork, where the celebrant will be the Rev Edwin Hunter and the preacher the Dean of Cork, Dr Michael Jackson.
On Thursday evening in Castletownshend, Co Cork, there will be an illustrated talk at Warren's Boathouse on The Sinking of the Lusitania. The speaker will be the historian and author, Patrick O'Sullivan, and the proceeds will go to the St Barrahane's roof restoration fund.
The name of Canon J.B. Leslie is still well known in historical and genealogical circles, for despite his death in 1952 his legacy of research into the lives and careers of the clergy of the Church of Ireland endures. Leslie, who was Rector of Kilsaran, Castlebellingham, from 1899 to 1951, devoted his life to the compilation of what he called "biographical succession lists" of clergy. These took the form of chronological lists of parish and cathedral clergy for each diocese, appended to which were personal and professional details about each of the clergy: their antecedents, education, career, families and descendants.
At the time of his death, Leslie had published nine volumes of succession lists, but much of his research remained unpublished in the RCB Library, and even that which had been printed was, in time, in need of updating. In recent years the revision of his work on the clergy of Connor has been published, as has an updated version of the succession lists for the dioceses of Down and Dromore, and these have proved to be invaluable resources for the research community.
Now another volume in this series has appeared. Clergy of Derry and Raphoe is a reprint of Leslie's long out-of-print succession lists of Derry and Raphoe, to which has been added new information to bring the successions up to date. Canon Fred Fawcett, recently retired Rector of Camusjuxta-Mourne (Derry), and Canon David Crooks, Rector of Taughboyne (Raphoe), have been responsible for the new clerical information and for providing photographs and pen-portraits of all the churches.
This volume, like those for Connor and Down and Dromore, has been printed by the Dundalgan Press (W. Tempest) in Dundalk, the firm which printed Leslie's first succession list, that for Armagh, in 1911. Clergy of Derry and Raphoe is published by the Ulster Historical Foundation at £40 and may be obtained direct from the UHF at Balmoral Buildings, 12 College Square East, Belfast BT1 6DD, or through bookshops.