St Mary’s Church, Quin

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament: Weekly Adoration that takes place on Thursdays in St. Mary’s Church, Quin will cease due to current restrictions. A Holy Hour will take place every Thursday instead from 12noon-1pm. This Holy Hour can be viewed on the Parish Webcam or tuned into on the Parish Radio Link.

Modern Quin covers the old parishes of Quin and Clooney, which have been administered together at least since the late seventeenth century. In 1704 the registered priest for Clooney and Quin was a Fr. Morgan McInerney, who lived at Clooney, probably the location of the only mass house existing in the combined parish. In 1744, a Fr. Roger Moloney, who had ministered in the parish of at least thirty years, was recorded as parish priest, and we know also that throughout the century Franciscan friars living in the vicinity of the old medieval friary acted as parish curates. This trend was to last until 1820 when Fr. John Hogan of Drim, known to history as the last friar of Quin Abbey, died at an advanced age.

Little is known of places of worship in Quin Parish in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, although we do have a reference to the destruction of pews in the parish chapel 1825, probably relating to a socially divisive agrarian issue. The parish church at Quin, dedicated to St Mary, was begun in 1836 in the pastorate of Fr. Patrick Corbett. Construction had barely begun, however, when Fr. Corbett died, leaving the church to be completed the following year by his brother, Daniel, who succeeded him as parish priest. The projected cost before completion, according to Lewis, was about £2,000. The interior decoration was completed in 1856 to a design by JJ McCarthy, the centrepiece of which was an ornate high altar of Caen stone; despite the removal of the altar and radical alteration to the exterior in an unfortunate renovation in 1971 Quin parish church is still an impressive building.