Thanksgiving Mass to salute contribution of Marist Brothers

The contribution of the Marist Brothers to Athlone over more than 130 years is set to be recognised at a Mass of Thanksgiving later this month to mark the recent departure of the last remaining brothers from their home in Champagnat House on Gleeson Street, Athlone.

Fr Shay Casey, who will officiate in St Mary's Church on Sunday, February 26, at 2.30pm, said the brothers arrived post-famine to offer education to lift people out of poverty and made a “huge impact” on the town, setting up their first school in 1884.

Indeed, a report in the Freeman's Journal in 1885 noted with “satisfaction” the progress the Marist schools had made in a “comparatively short time” in Athlone. Initially, the order founded a national school for boys and then a secondary school, the Marist College, which continues to thrive today.

“The Marist College is flourishing, it's a fine school and that's their legacy. It's a huge legacy,” Fr Casey remarked on Tuesday. “On one level it is sad, but on another, they have left their mark on the history of Athlone,” he added in relation to their lasting contribution to the area.

In 2000, the Marist Boys Primary School on Grace Park Road amalgamated with the Bower Girls Primary School in Lower Retreat and Fairgreen National School to form the present-day St Mary's School.

The final two Marist brothers left the order's home, Champagnat House in Gleeson Street and St Mary's Square, last August and it is now home to international students attending the TUS campus in Athlone since September, Fr Casey, the TUS chaplain, told the Westmeath Independent.

Based in Athlone for over 40 years, Fr Shay has a great fondness for the Marist Order, explaining that he lived with them for six years in the early 1980s after his house went on fire and Brother Sebastian offered him a place in their home. Prior to becoming chaplain in the college in 1985, Fr Casey was chaplain to the Bower and the Marist secondary schools for eight years, joking that “I was nearly a Marist myself”.

He mentioned people like Brother Hubert, Brother Gerard, Brother Philip and Brother Sebastian and many others who were deeply involved in education and different areas of the community over many years, and who contributed hugely to the town.

Although he said it is sad the Marist brothers are no longer in Athlone, their legacy in the area is very strong over more than 130 years, just as it is for the Bower Nuns and the Franciscans who also departed in recent times.

“You can just imagine the 1880s and the poverty (when the Marist Order arrived), you were not even a generation away the famine. They come into the town and set up a school. It took some courage,” commented Fr Casey, who maintained that a lot of people had a chance of education who would not otherwise but for the Marist, and progressed to good positions in life as a result. “However, time moves on and that's the way it is. We're now waiting for the shoots of the new era,” he concluded.