The day Ferbane’s Monsignor Pat met Pope Benedict XVI!

After Pope Benedict XVI was laid to rest in the Vatican crypt recently, a Ferbane-born priest recalled when he met the late Pontiff in 2010 during the Papal Visit to the UK for the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Monsignor Pat Browne, who was born on Main Street in Ferbane and served for 43 years in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, was tasked with the very important duty of co-ordinating the West Midlands leg of the papal visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the UK in 2010.

The now-retired Monsignor met and shook hands with the pontiff after a special open-air Mass in Cofton Park, South Birmingham on Sunday, September 19, 2010 at which renowned Catholic theologian and scholar, Cardinal John Henry Newman, was beatified.

“Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who is now the Archbishop of Westminster, introduced me to Pope Benedict XVI after the Mass and we had a few moments together, and that is a very special memory for me, especially now that he has passed to his eternal reward” said Monsignor Browne.

The papal visit in 2010 was only the second such visit by a reigning pontiff to the UK after the visit of Pope John Paul II over a quarter of a century earlier.

“It was a very significant visit and I was appointed as the co-ordinator of the visit by the pontiff to the West Midlands, so it was a great honour for me personally, and also a great honour for the Archdiocese of Birmingham to have him celebrate a special Mass for the beatification of Cardinal Newman,” recalled Monsignor Browne.

Following the beatification Mass, the late Pope travelled by ‘popemobile’ through the streets of Birmingham to the Birmingham Oratory in Edgbaston which was founded by Cardinal Newman in 1848 and met with members of the Oratorians. He also visited the room where the Cardinal had written many of his theological works.

Having met Pope John Paul II in Rome on two separate occasions, Ferbane’s Monsignor Pat Browne said the four-day visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and the UK in 2010 was one of the highlights of his many years serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

Monsignor Browne trained for the priesthood in St Kieran’s College in Kilkenny and left for Birmingham directly after his ordination in 1974. He was only a few months serving in his new diocese when the Birmingham bombing took place on November 21, 1974, killing 21 people in terrorist attacks on two pubs.

“I attended the funerals of a number of victims and it goes without saying that it was a very tough time to be Irish in the UK,” he recalls. Birmingham had “a very big and a very vibrant” Irish population with Comhaltas groups, GAA and many other organisations operating in the city. “After the bombings everything changed and for the next 12 months or more the Irish had to keep their heads down and the atmosphere was understandably hostile,” says the retired priest.

Relations between the Irish population in Birmingham and the English improved over the years and Monsignor Browne says he “very much enjoyed” serving in the Archdiocese of his adopted home for over four decades up to his retirement in 2017.

Now that he has returned to his native Ferbane, Monsignor Browne has been kept busy filling in for priests in neighbouring parishes, and even travels as far away as Galway to perform parish duties. He has four siblings living locally, his brother Willie lives in the Browne family home on Main Street in Ferbane while another brother, Richard, lives in Drumraney, outside Athlone.

His two sisters, Alice (Brazil) and Rose Ann (Verney) live near Doon and Birr.