Golden jubilee celebrations for local priest

This Sunday is set to be a day of celebration in Tubberclair as popular cleric Fr Seamus Mulvany marks five decades in the priesthood.

The Golden Jubilee event kicks off on Sunday afternoon with a meal in Glasson Golf and Country Club, where the Meath native will be joined by close family, friends and fellow clerics prior to a special Mass of Thanksgiving in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Tubberclair at 6pm for parishioners and the wider community. That will be followed by a finger buffet in Glasson Golf and Country Club.

A native of Wilkinstown in Co Meath, Fr Seamus Mulvany was educated in St Finian’s College, Mullingar and Maynooth prior to his ordination back in 1965. He later spent a short time in Tullamore before joining the Irish Chaplaincy in London.

In 1969, he returned to the Meath diocese and was appointed a curate in Beauparc, later moving to Kentstown in Meath in 1976. In 1985, he was relocated to Ashbourne and it was from there that he was appointed Parish Priest in Tubberclair in 1993, where he has remained for the intervening 20 plus years.

Over that time, Fr Mulvany has overseen the development of the church and parish activities in Tubberclair where he is known very much as a can do person, approachable and pleasant. In his early years in the parish, he built walls around the church and spent much time improving the appearance of the building and its surroundings.

Nature is his passion and that has come to fruition in his time in the parish where he has created a beautiful Garden of Remembrance, a short distance away from the church, planting hundreds of trees and creating a sunken garden which is so popular with bridal parties and groups for photographs during the summer.

A very spiritual man, Fr Mulvany is noted for his attention to the sick, regularly calling to their homes and visiting locals in hospital and praying with them. He also visits pilgrimage sites like Medjugorje regularly.

A big football supporter, it is appropriate that his Golden Jubilee celebrations fall on the day Westmeath take on his home county, Meath, in Croke Park. He previously trained teams in Kentstown and is very passionate about football. These days, he classes himself as a  Westmeath supporter, however, parishioners say Sunday’s clash is sure to test that allegiance and in some ways he cannot lose whatever the result.