Bordeaux wedding gives Fr Hennessy a taste of home
Notre Dame Church in Bordeaux is known for its striking Baroque architecture and intricate interior detail. It was the picturesque setting chosen by TV chef Adrian Martin, from Bawnboy in Cavan, to marry his fiancée, Maria, in an intimate ceremony.
Presiding over the ceremony was a Castlepollard native Fr John Hennessy: “I’ve done a few weddings there for people who have come from Ireland,” he said of his involvement in the Bordeaux nuptials.
The 88-year-old priest has been living in France for quite a while: “I have spent 60 years in France and I’ve been a parish priest for 45 years,” Fr John told the Examiner.
How he ended up in mainland Europe is a story in itself: “It’s dead simple. The Lord said go and I went,” the priest said.
The headline is simple, but the story is more complex: “I live in a place called the Lot-et-Garonne. The Lot is a river and the Garonne is a river. In France, the counties are named after rivers and mountains and other natural resources.
“In this particular area, which is in the middle of the valley of the Garonne, an agricultural region, there was a big drop in population in 1920. The families of farmers listened to an English philosopher who was called Malthus. In the 18th century he said if you don’t stop having children, there’s going to be overpopulation and we’re going to die of starvation.
“Of course, it was a fallacious philosophy and he was completely wrong. But some people believed him. That was part of it,” the cleric said.
So from an opening chapter of an English philosopher and population decline in rural France the story unfolds: “Another part was that back then they kept the farm for the son. They had one son and the farm would go to him. When the war came along, followed by the Spanish flu, all the sons died, the area became deserted. It was a farming area where there was nobody to look after the land.
“The government sent to Brittany and to the north of France and east of France, looking for people to come. But it didn’t work very well. A lot of people did come, but not enough.
“They opened a bureau in Trieste, in Italy, and 25,000 Italians arrived in this particular area, this county, the Lot-et-Garonne, between 1920 and 1950. So, in 1934, the bishop said to himself, I have all these Italian Catholics, but I have no priests. So, he sent to Ireland and to Holland for young men to come to France.
“Around 16 or 17 young Irish men and 24 Dutch turned up. They were trained as priests and they were ordained just before the war. That was the influx to the diocese of Agen in 1939 of about 40 priests,” Fr John recalled.
Those pioneers established a pathway to France: “That was a special operation. They’ve all gone their way, they’ve all gone to the reward at this stage. There were just two of us left, two retired Irish priests in that particular diocese.”
The six decades Fr John has spent in southwestern France have not dimmed his Irish accent.
He continues to return home with a degree of regularity: “I come back to Ireland every six months, and maybe more, because France is still a foreign country. You’re nearly closer to Ireland in Los Angeles than you are in France, when you consider the language barrier and the cultural barrier. It’s a completely different country.”
Even at 88 years of age Fr John continues to fulfil priestly obligations: “The sizes of the parish vary. The last one was 15,000. Waiting for retirement, I had another parish which was about 10,000. But a lot of parishes and churches have been regrouped. In the last place I was in, there were 24 churches.
“And a lot of these churches were built in the Middle Ages, and the population has diminished. They were only used for funerals and special occasions. There was a priest near Paris who had 74 churches in his parish, but it’s not the churches that count, it’s the people that count. The last place I was in, there were about 8,000 people. You cater for everybody.”
The Martin wedding was a joyous occasion. At the ceremony Fr John played a song on his guitar: “I worked a lot with children and adolescents.
“When I was a child, I could sing before I could talk. I learned the guitar at 23, and it’s a great bit of support. It brightens up everybody for Baptisms, weddings, and Mass as well. Mass has to be a place where people are happy, and happy to express themselves.”
Even after six decades in France, Fr John has retained his connections with home: “I have distant relations in Coombe, in Castletown. My grandfather had a business in Castlepollard, back in the ‘20s. Joe, my uncle, ran the place until about 1968. When he died, it was sold to McCormick’s.”
The Martin wedding was another link back to home and one Fr John was delighted to preside over.
After the wedding in the Notre Dame Church the reception took place in the Grand Hotel, also known as the Intercontinental Hotel, and 90 people travelled from Ireland and abroad. Dining took place in the Margery’s Suite for food by Gordon Ramsay’s two-Michelin-star restaurant called the Le Pressoir d’Argent.