'Always Go Easy with People' - The Life and Ministry of Monsignor Pat Lynch

Monsignor Pat Lynch celebrated his golden jubilee in the Star of the Sea Church in Desertegney last month, marking 50 years in a priesthood that took him from St Kieran’s Seminary in Kilkenny, to a high security prison in England and the hallowed halls of the Vatican.
That childhood in the townland of Aughaweel, steeped in faith, family and community, helped form the man and the priest he would become: a committed evangelist with boundless energy who has preached around the world and established communities of like-minded religious and laypeople who shared his passion to bring the word of God to the people.

Read More: See photos from Fr Pat's Golden Jubilee

“I was the wain of the family,” Fr Pat begins with a grin. Born in Aughaweel, near Buncrana, in 1950, the youngest of six children, Pat grew up in a home defined by faith and love. “There were like two families in my family. My sister and three brothers, and then John and me. I was spoiled,” he admits, chuckling. “My older siblings had all emigrated by the time I came along - Scotland mostly and England. Emigration was huge then.”
His parents, Dan Lynch of Sledrin Glen and Bridget Donaghey of Cleenagh - better known by the family nickname ‘Black’ - reared their youngest in what he fondly describes as a “secure home and a strong community.”
“You can’t buy that,” he reflects. “A child is reared not just in a family, but in a community. There was total security - neighbours looking after one another. I always say, it’s easier to rear a child properly than to mend a broken adult.”
As a child, Pat walked three miles to school at St Egney’s where Miss McGeady and Master Stafford where his teachers.
He remembers them fondly, particularly Stafford who he described as having a brilliant mind while allowing that other people had a different perspective on him.
Along the boreens of Aughaweel he learned lessons more profound than anything in the classroom. “There was an elderly couple on our road - Pat and Mary McGrory - and every day after school, my job was to make sure they were alright. I checked their turf, their food, their water.
“What was being taught to me as a child was the importance of looking after people.
“And it wasn’t being done by social services, there were no nursing homes then, instead it was done very naturally in the community.
“And we’ve lost a lot of that.”

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Education wasn’t easily come by in the 1950s, but Pat’s parents made sure he got his chance. From primary school he went onto Carndonagh College in the old Colgan Hall, walking into a class of 32 where every single student went on to pass their Leaving Cert. “Bless my parents,” he says. “We weren’t a wealthy family, but they did everything to educate me.”
His father, a Donegal County Council quarry worker, often came home bloodied from the harsh machinery. His mother, ever resourceful, reared pigs and sold them to pay the fees for Pat’s schooling and bus. “Even as a boy, I could see they were doing that for me.”
In 1968, Pat Lynch followed a path many young Irish men were still taking - into the seminary. He enrolled in St Kieran’s, Kilkenny, and was unprepared for the culture shock that awaited.
“I found it tough initially,” he acknowledged. “In Carn, we had freedom. No uniforms, no study rules. Suddenly, I was wearing a soutane every day, following rigid timetables. I hadn’t been in boarding school and I wasn’t used to that level of regimentation.”
But amidst the challenges, he found solace in soccer. Having played for Buncrana Hearts, Cockhill and the Illies as a teenager, he joined a local team in Kilkenny called EMFA, who would go on to play in the League of Ireland B Division.
The catch? Seminarians weren’t allowed to play competitive sports. “I used to play under different names. The authorities knew - but as long as I didn’t use ‘Patrick Lynch’, they turned a blind eye. That was my outlet and I made a lot of friends.
“Games were usually on a Sunday. So I would make my escape. That’s crazy, you know, going out over a wall to do something like play games. But it’s the way things were.”

Pat’s academic journey continued in earnest. He studied theology at Maynooth, philosophy at King’s College London, and eventually earned a PhD in ethics in Hull and Leeds. Influenced by Russian thinkers like Berdyaev, he developed a lasting interest in the concept of freedom - and how one’s inner life could remain free, even when physically constrained.
This idea would be tested early in his priesthood in England.
In 1975, barely a month after his ordination, Fr Pat was sent to Gartree High Security Prison in Leicestershire – a ‘Grade A’ facility housing some of the most serious offenders, including prisoners from both sides of the conflict in the North.
“I was a green gasún from the hills,” he says wryly. “I’d never been in a prison in my life.”
He was handed a set of keys and sent in, no training, no preparation for ministering in prison, just raw humanity. “On my first Christmas Eve, every penitent I heard in confession had committed at least one murder.
“You grow up very quickly.”
His father hadn't wanted his youngest son to become a priest, but when Pat told him he was answering the call he simply hugged him and said something that has always stayed with him, and rang in his ears that night. “Always go easy with people,” his father counselled. “God can look after His own principles - people can’t.”
In the years that followed, Fr Pat served as chaplain at a young offenders’ prison in Staffordshire and taught in a secondary school. It was a time when new penal policies like ‘short, sharp shock’ were being tested. He found the approach harsh, ineffective, and alienating for young inmates who would be sullenly marched into mass line by line on Sundays, and marched back out afterwards
“These kids didn’t know the basics of faith. I asked the governor if I could run a six-week program to teach them how to bless themselves. That was the aim - just to reach that one small connection.”
He connected with them through football. He showed them pictures of players blessing themselves and asked, “Why do they do that?”
One small question became a doorway to dialogue, and slowly, some learned to pray for the first time in their lives.
In the 1980s, Fr Pat read Evangelii Nuntiandi, a papal document on evangelization. It struck a chord. “It said the Church must go out to people - not wait for them to come. And I looked around and didn’t see anyone doing that.”
That led to the formation of the Sion Community in England. It was a unique blend of priests, nuns and laypeople ministering together through parish missions, door-to-door visitation, and school outreach.
In 1999, he returned to Ireland to found the Céilí Community, based in Kilbeggan. It now numbers around 50 members and continues to carry out dynamic, relational ministry across the country.
“When you knock on someone’s door, you’re on their turf,” he says. “People don’t throw eggs at you. They talk. They listen. Some say they’re not into it, and that’s fine. But they engage.”
Fr Pat’s ministry has taken him across continents: preaching in Asia, the US, and even the red-light district of Paris.
“Someone once asked me to preach on a soapbox in Pigalle. I thought nobody was listening. But the next day at Charles de Gaulle Airport, a woman waved at me and said: ‘Tell me more about the God you believe in.’”
In Muslim-majority countries like Singapore and Malaysia, he witnessed faith flourishing under restriction. “You can’t preach freely there, but you can within licensed premises. One church I worked with had ten storeys and 10,000 attendees.
“In Asia, if you’re out with a collar on you out in the street they’ll stop you and ask about faith. They’ll enquire about God.
“Singapore is very wealthy, yet people are flocking to the church. There aren't enough priests to baptise all the adults who want to become Catholics.
“So don’t tell me that wealth destroys faith.”

Monsignor Pat Lynch pictured with members of his extended family at his Golden Jubilee

In recognition of his work, Fr Pat was named a Chaplain to Pope John Paul II. A title akin to a governmental role within the Vatican’s Dicastery (Department) of Evangelization and Mission.
He met Pope John Paul II several times.
“John Paul was a philosopher, a man who had lived under communism and knew its grip. He once took a homeless man into the Vatican and fed him. That was the human side of the Church.”
He met John Paul’s successors, Benedict and Francis. The former he described as a fantastic theologian, the latter as a fantastic pastor.
But it’s Pope Paul VI (1963-78) and his call for evangelising who made the biggest impression on Pat.
“Of all the popes, Pope Paul was probably the most farseeing guy that I’ve read of or knew. He was able to read the signs of the times in the late 1960s and early 70s and he was able to see the way things were going, particularly Western culture.
“He was starting to say that the Church needed to refocus again on bringing the gospel out to the people, but not just by priests, but by nuns, brothers and laypeople working together.”

After a lifetime of airports, prisons, lectures and pulpits, Fr Pat is returning home. His family are well known in the construction trade and they built a home for him near his native Aughaweel.
“I’ve lived my life on the move. But I’ve never stopped being grounded here, with my family and my neighbours. Every day, I go across to my brother John’s house and say Mass in our paternal home.”
Pat’s retirement will officially begin when he turns 75 in August, but he’s still planning on doing ‘wee bits and pieces’.
He’ll still help out with the Céilí Community, and he’s excited to live by a simpler, freer rhythm.
“I’m looking forward to doing things I never had time to do - visiting people, sitting down for tea and a chat. My life was ruled by a diary. Now I’ll have time.”
Fr Pat has seen seismic shifts in both Irish society and the Catholic Church, but he remains, above all else, a man of hope.
“I think there’s great hope for the future, and I think there’s great hope built on people. I realise that there are many difficulties.
“We now have a society that believes but doesn’t belong and is disconnected from the church.
“I think we in the church need to find a way of reconnecting, particularly with the youth.
“And I don’t have all the answers to that.
“I could give examples of what has happened in other countries and how they’re dealing with the situation. Europe is at the centre of this so-called ‘crisis’, but I don’t see it as a crisis, I see it as an opportunity.
“I’m full of optimism because there are still a massive amount of young people who are good. They are as good as we were. They’ve got a great social conscience and they’re good to people.
“But maybe we’re not tapping into it as much as we should. And we need to find ways of doing that. There’s new opportunities and the new opportunities will not be met by old ways.”
He believes that God is still deeply present in modern lives, that it’s just a question of listening.
“I’ve walked the streets of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Belfast - and I’ve learned everything by listening to people. If you touch that God-centred place in someone, not condemn them - they’ll respond. Because deep down, people are good.”

Read more: Star of the Sea Church at Desertegney - a little piece of heaven

From the shores of Lough Swilly to the streets of Singapore and back again, Fr Pat Lynch’s journey has spanned the globe and spanned eras of change, challenge, and compassion.
He finishes with a smile.
“I’ve had a great life. A great priesthood. I’ve seen the world. And I’ve always come home. That’s what keeps you grounded.”
And if you ask him what sustained him all those years?
He pauses, then remembers his late father’s words.
“Go easy with people. God can look after His own principles - people can’t.”