Father Brian D’Arcy will be replaced as Superior of the Graan Monastery in one year.

It is not yet clear where the popular Fermanagh priest will be placed or what duty he will be asked to fulfil within the Passionist Community that he has been a member of for 54 years.

Father Brian had requested time to focus on his media role but will remain as Superior for one more year, overseeing the Graan’s busy calendar which will include a dinner dance, a harvest thanksgiving, Christmas and a Novena of Hope.

“We will continue to do all the things we have been doing and next summer we will pack the bags and see where I am sent. But you don’t think about it until it happens,” commented Father Brian this week.

He will be replaced by Father Charles Cross who was most recently based at Holy Cross Parish, Ardoyne. 

The news comes after the Passionist Province of St. Patrick’s Provincial Chapter which is held every four years and can result in reshuffles across their monasteries in Ireland, Scotland and Paris.

Father Brian, who turned 71 this year and has recently spoke openly about getting treatment for prostate cancer, told The Impartial Reporter that he had “hoped” he would be told he could stay because the Graan “is going so well.” However, he was aware that canon law says there is a limited number of successive four year terms a Passionist priest can do and Father Brian has “well exceeded that limit.”

Before the Provincial Chapter, he had asked for more time to focus on his media roles, which include BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought, BBC Radio Ulster’s Sundays with Brian D’Arcy and a weekly column in the Sunday World, which he has written every Sunday for the past 40 years. He had hoped he could “help people at a more leisurely pace.”

“I’ve spent a lifetime as a Superior and I was looking forward to a quiet life, just focusing on broadcasting because there’s more requests from broadcasting coming in than I can possibly do and it’s terrible having to turn them down when it’s not easy for clerics to get on television,” said Father Brian. “It certainly won’t happen this year because I will be busy working in the Graan but we’ll see what happens after that.”

He is pleased that local people recognise his deep affiliation with the county, even if the decision-makers do not. “I’m a Fermanagh man and if there was a place to settle, this would be it but I’m not sure if that will happen,” he stated.

Asked how he feels about the uncertainty, Father Brain replied: “I don’t feel. What I’ll do is work as hard as possible for the next year and see what happens after that.”

Being at the coalface of local community life and dealing with grief, illness and hardships has taught Father Brian that you cannot predict or plan the future. He said: “One of my theories in life is: Make the best of what you have because you can’t waste the value of today worrying about what you did yesterday or worrying about what you might do next year.”

He has faced personal hardships too, including a censure from the Vatican in 2012 which prompted two years of “hell”, where he did a lot of soul searching and finally decided to remain in the priesthood. The death of his brother Gaby in 2011 was a huge blow. 

“My brother’s death was a low point and the death of so many friends, young and old. It’s always causes a lot of heartbreak. It doesn’t leave you unmoved, far from it,” he said. “There has been a lot of sadness in people’s lives over the years. That has left me with a sense of gratitude for smaller things. You can get by with less when you have dealt with sadness.”

High points from his time in the Graan include his involvement in ecumenical and peace work. When Father Brian returned to the Graan in 2001 after six years in Crossgar, he invited Archdeacon Cecil Pringle from the Church of Ireland Rossorry Parish Church to speak at the 2003 Novena of Hope. The following year, Father Brian was invited to speak at an ecumenical service in Rossorry. Since then, the relationship between the two clerics has strengthened and become an example for others to follow.

Most notably, their work was the impetus between the close working relationship between St. Michael’s Chapel and St. Macartin’s Cathedral in Enniskillen, which culminated in the historic visit of Queen Elizabeth to the two churches in June 2012.

Father Brian remembers working closely with former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds in an attempt to broker peace in Northern Ireland. Looking at the Fermanagh of 2016, he noted: “We are much more a community helping one another than sectarian divides fighting against one another.”

Involvement with the Fermanagh GAA team, the entertainment scene and book writing have been “useful” and “rewarding” outlets for the priest, who concluded: “I’ve got the year which I didn’t think I would get and a lot can happen in a year.”