A meeting as a follow-up to World Youth Day with an open-air mass will be held on Sunday 18 September at the ancient monastic site of Clonmacnoise. The initiative forms part of the traditional pilgrimage along the ancient road built some 1500 years ago, leading from Esker Riada to Clonmacnoise. The mass will be celebrated by the bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Colm O’Reilly, together with the bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Jim Moriarty. “We await the arrival of many new faces said Bishop O’Reilly . This year we extended the invitation to the Irish youth who recently returned from the meeting with Benedict XVI at WYD in order to share the experience at Cologne”. The bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise has never forgotten the words of John Paul II, spoken on 30 September 1979, when he participated in the pilgrimage himself: “I will never forget this place said the Pope -; the ruins of the monastery and of the churches speak of the life that thrived here years ago. They are ruins that represent the mission of the Irish Church begun by St. Patrick”.
