Fr Martin McNamara has been reunited with his beloved Stations of the Cross. Six of the stations, which were painted by Irish artist Evie Hone, were stolen from Kiltullagh Church in June 2013, and Fr Martin was devastated.

“They took the three from this wall here and the three corresponding ones from this wall here” Fr Martin explains on Irish Country Living’s visit.

“I go into town every Saturday, and obviously those people were watching my movements. They came on a Saturday, when the church was open and at the time when I was away. When I returned around five o’clock, I came into the church and discovered that the stations were gone. I nearly passed out.

ADVERTISEMENT

“There wasn’t a fingerprint or a footprint on the seats or even a speck of dust. They were taken so professionally, if you like – left no clues whatsoever. Nothing.”

A valuable haul

The paintings had been in the church since 1946 and were commissioned by a local family, the Blakes. The robbers clearly knew their art. Fr McNamara estimates that during the peak of the Celtic Tiger the paintings were worth approximately €1m. Detectives surmise the thieves must have been disturbed, explaining why they didn’t take all 14 stations.

The stations were very well known. Fr McNamara recalls bus loads of people coming from Germany over the years just to look at them. Their significance lay in the fact they were the only stations famous painter and stained-glass artist Evie Hone ever did.

Fr Martin McNamara took to the airwaves to alert the nation to the theft. An interview with Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio One was just one of his many appearances.

He feared the paintings would be taken out of the country and sold more easily abroad. But we can only assume Fr Martin’s efforts made it very difficult for the thieves to sell the paintings, because three years later he got them back.

ditched in offaly

“Some people say that’s a miracle,” says Fr Martin. “They were gone almost three years.”

It was 12 April 2016, and Fr Martin returned home from a meeting in Loughrea to find the local superintendent standing outside his house. “I said: ‘What’s wrong now?’ And then I saw she was all smiles and she told me: ‘They have been found’.”

The paintings were recovered from a ditch in Edenderry, Co Offaly, after gardaí received a tip-off.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Fr Martin.

He announced the good news at mass on Sunday. His congregation was delighted, and he says: “So many of them came to me afterwards and congratulated me, as if I had found them.”

Had he given up hope? “I said: ‘Well, it might take 10 to 20 years.’ And then the worry I had was whether they had been damaged.”

But when Fr Martin got the paintings back there wasn’t a scratch on them.

“They took such care of them. They had them taken out of the frames, but wrapped individually,” explains the priest.

Since the robbery, CCTV has been installed in the church, and the paintings have been fastened securely to the wall.

“This is the first Easter that we have them back,” smiles the priest.

Does Fr Martin have any favourite stations? “Both of them over there are ones that I like. And the one here in the corner, where Simon is helping the Lord to carry the cross. I do the stations every day, and when I come to that I say: ‘Lord, give me the grace to help people along the way – to carry their cross.’”

Fr Martin’s other favourite is where Jesus meets his mother: “That had to be a very sad time for a mother, meeting her son in that state,” he says.

to the fields

GAA is a passion of Father Martin’s (he was a selector for the Galway minor hurling team for six years), but his other passion is farming. He is from a farm in Flagmount in east Clare and he keeps 10 cattle of mixed breeds – including Charolais, Limousin and Friesian – on about 10 acres of land attached to the church.

“I just got five in yesterday and I had five in before that,” says Fr Martin, “and now I have to look after them until October.”

The youngest animal is just under 12 months, and he sells them at about a year and a half. He’ll sell them in Loughrea Mart in October. He was a founding member of the mart in Loughrea, and he visits it regularly.

He says he always had a love for farming growing up. “When I was on holidays from secondary school or the seminary, I loved helping out my dad – saving hay and cutting turf.”

Father Martin also collects old farm machinery which is on display at the side of the church and has been painted colourfully by local FÁS workers. He has a swarth turner, a seeder, a plough and the wheels of a cart with a pulper in the middle.

Easter is all about the resurrection and it’s fair to say the parish of Kiltullagh has gone through a resurrection of its own with these paintings.

“Easter is one of the principal celebrations of the Catholic resurrection,” says Fr Martin. “As the bible says: some day if Christ doesn’t rise then we’re all in a bad place. Now we have new life, the resurrection is new life to us all … and the assurance of a life we’re after. And that means everything.

“People go through terrible struggles in life. If there was nothing at the end of it, what would life be like?” CL