Clogher has contributed greatly to the missionary movement of the present century, and especially to the two national societies; the Society of St Columban (SSC) and St Patrick’s Missionary Society (SPS). Among the first priests to join the Columbans was Fr Cornelius Tierney, curate in Magh Ene at the time. He was subsequently martyred in China. Thomas McGovern of Belleek was among the first group of students to join the Society in 1920. He was followed by five further students from Clogher the following year and by many others in the succeeding years. The founders of the Society have paid warm tribute to Dr James McCaffrey, professor in Maynooth and a Clogher priest, for his encouragement and support in their early years.

Monsignor O’Callaghan played a big part in establishing the Medical Missionaries of Mary when he was parish priest in Drogheda. It is no surprise that he encouraged the St Louis Sisters, when he came to Monaghan, to turn to the African Mission, which has been so fruitful an apostolate. The Mercy Sisters of Enniskillen have a flourishing mission in Florida.

A number of our priests, some still happily with us, worked alongside the very first priests of St Patrick’s Society as pioneers of the Nigerian Mission. But our missionary commitment and involvement did not begin in this century with the Columbans, whose patron is said to have studied at Cleenish monastic school. The list of bishops and priests, natives of Clogher, who spent their lives in the service of the Church in North America would fill a book. At the top of the list would be John Hughes, Archbishop of New York, a native of Truagh and his Vicar General, William Starrs, a native of Dromore. To name a few out of the hundreds that follow there was a James Duffy a native of Aughnamullen, it seems, who ended his days as pastor in Nova Scotia. He had a brother Peter who was pastor in Kilmore and Drumsnat.

There were the two Montague brother priests from Dromore parish, who ministered in the West Indies. In the early years of the nineteenth century Fr Philip Connolly was a pioneer in establishing the Church in Australia and Tasmania. In India we had a Fr McCarron and another of the name in Scotland in the last century.

Some of the most talented entered religious congregations. Two Gunns joined the Marists: one of them became bishop of Nachez in the U.S.A. A number of MacVicars also joined the Marists. Father John McElroy joined the Jesuits in the U.S. Fathers Charles McKenna and Michael Martin as priests also joined. Father Bernard McCaffrey was one of the group of monks of Mount Melleray that founded New Melleray Abbey in the U.S.A. around the 1840s. He was a native of Clones.

This is merely a sketch of the diocesan involvement in the missions. Much more could be said. One can only mention the lay contribution, the generosity and loyalty to the faith of the thousands of young people who left Ireland in search of a better life and built up the parishes and dioceses and religious houses wherever they settled.

There is not a parish in the diocese, or hardly a family, that has nor been affected by the missionary effort. Our involvement as a diocese has recently become explicit and formal by the sending of two of our priests on mission to Kitui in Kenya.

What we have outlined is the Church in this diocese of Clogher as an organisation of clergy and people with parishes, chapels, schools and religious houses; changing with the times but always carrying the unchanging mission of Christ to teach, to reconcile, to sanctify in his name. ‘We believe in…. the holy, Catholic Church’.