Offaly faith healer garners international media attention
A local faith healer has made international headlines in a host of publications such as the New York Times, BNN Breaking and Times Malta after featuring in two documentary films.
Proprietor of The Pull Inn in Offaly, Joe Gallagher is a seventh son and has been curing people of various ailments since his childhood. He was featured in 'My Cure & Me' which was selected to be screened at DOC NYC, the largest documentary film festival in America along with a new documentary produced by the New York Times.
Joe's daughter Joy said that he has been “hugely surprised” by all the international coverage he has received and that it came at the “right time” as he fell before Christmas, breaking bones in his back. Thankfully, Joe was treated in St Vincent's Hospital and is doing well and back performing cures at the weekly cure session he holds in a private room off The Pull Inn every Sunday.
Joy said: “He was a little surprised when I showed him all the articles, he just said 'oh good God.' He doesn't get too excited about anything in life.” She added that Joe felt it was a pity that this didn't happen 30 yearS ago when he was young and fit. “He'll never stop curing, he's doing it all his life. He will continue to his dying day,” she said.
Joy remarked that God gave her dad that job in life and that Joe says he 'didn't get the gift to take a gift.'
Joe has seen an increase in the numbers of people seeking cures since all of the national and international coverage his faith healing has garnered with huge crowds attending his weekly cure sessions. Joy stated: “He takes nothing for it, we make them all tea, coffee, buns. They're travelling far distances coming from Donegal, Leitrim, Carlow, Dublin, Kilkenny, Mayo, all over the country. They have about two hours of a wait but it's their own choice, he doesn't take a dime.”
“They ring the local shop and garda station to get his mobile number, some of them even ring the GAA.” Joy said that the cure session is a “long day” for Joe but that he loves meeting people.
At around six or seven years of age, Joe knew how to make the sign of the cross and to say a prayer on the affected area of the person's body but said he didn't like curing people then as he didn't understand it.
Joe explained to the Offaly Independent previously: “It's something I've been doing since I was a baby. My parents used to take my hand and do it when I didn't know I was doing it."
“I would be called in when I would be out playing. That time ringworm was the big thing. As I got older I realised what it was all about.”
Joe also has very strong faith and was a Franciscan monk in his youth up until the age of 25, based at monasteries in Clara and Galway from 1960 to 1971 when he left the Brothers and opened the pub in Pullough. He said that he “enjoyed every day” with the Brothers and that they were “lovely people.” Joe also performed cures for people while in the monastery.
Joe moved to Pullough in 1971 and people started calling to his home for cures. He stated: “It just got bigger and bigger because people found out with word of mouth. There was no advertising whatsoever.”