Mark Rode (born 1965) is a distinguished figurative sculptor, whose work can be seen in several Irish counties, especially in County Mayo. His speciality is creating a perfectly modelled figure in bronze, with empathy, subtlety, and a desire to connect with viewers. After studying art, anatomy, proportion, and bronze-casting in his native Australia, he moved to Europe in 1998, and gained experience in England, France, Italy, and Germany before settling in Ireland with his Irish wife, Jacinta Guinan. They eventually took up residence in Killasser, Swinford, County Mayo where his business is located.

  One of his early Irish figures was the Brother Walfrid sculpture in Ballymote, County Sligo. It was unveiled on October 24, 2004, to honour Andrew Kerins (1840-1915), a native of Cartron Phibbs, Ballymote, who emigrated to Glasgow and later joined the Marist order, taking the name Brother Walfrid. He became the founder of Glasgow Celtic Football Club on November 6, 1888, which became the most successful sporting institution of the Irish diaspora, winning the European Cup in 1967. Mark’s other early public work include the Mayo County Crest, Castlebar (2005), Leaping Salmon, Foxford (2005), as well as Man Reading Newspaper and Man with Suitcase, Kiltimagh (2006), both with artist Sally McKenna, the Jim McPadden Memorial in Leitrim (2006) In co-operation with Tim Morris, Mark Rode was the sculptor of a woman and child from the 1950s entitled Strength of a Woman, donated to Swinford in 2007 to remember the women who looked after their homes and families while their men worked in England.

  One of his best known Irish public sculptures is the Champions in Tralee, County Kerry. Four metres in height, it depicts four footballers jumping for a ball, and was commissioned by Kerry County Council to celebrate the county’s long and proud tradition in Gaelic footballa Over a tonne of bronze was used in this spectacular sculpture, which was unveiled in Tralee on May 14, 2007. He did the Tour de France Memorial in Enniscorthy, County Wexford (2008), and the All-Ireland hurler in Birr, County Offaly, in 2009. The bronze statues and ship bow in the Addergoole Titanic Memorial Park in Lahardaun, County Mayo, are the work of Mark Rode. The park was opened on April 12, 2012, to remember the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912, with twelve local people on board, eleven of whom perished. Mark did the Marish Brother in Athlone in 2012.

  Mark’s sculpture of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, who played the roles of Sean Thornton and the feisty Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man film in 1951, was unveiled in Cong, County Mayo in October 2013. He did the Thomas McDonagh Sculpture in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary (2016), one of the seven leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising, who was born there. In 2018, Mark’s sculptures of President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama were unveiled at the Barack Obama Plaza, a popular service station at Moneygall, County Offaly, at junction 23 on the M7 Dublin to Limerick Motorway. Moneygall was the ancestral home of a maternal great-great-great grandfather of the forty-fourth President of the United States, who visited the village in 2011.

  Mark’s most recent work was a sculpture of Grace Kelly (1929-1982), who won an Oscar for her role The Country Girl in 1954 and a year later married Prince Rainier of Monaco, was unveiled in Newport, County Mayo, in 2023. Her paternal grandfather, John Kelly, came from near Newport. In January 2024, his sculpture of Grace O’Malley, was also unveiled in Newport. She was the pirate queen along the wild Atlantic coast of Connacht during the second half of the sixteenth-century, and lived for some time in Rockfleet Castle, near Newport. In addition to his public sculptures, Mark Rode has exhibited his work in galleries in Australia, England and several venues around Ireland. His sculptures are held in many public and private collections in Ireland, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century British-born missionary bishop, who is chiefly credited with the conversion of the then pagan Irish to Christianity. Several holy people in early Christian Ireland who devoted their lives to spreading the faith and founding churches were often described as saints (it was many centuries later before the formal church process of canonization was introduced). Nevertheless, Patrick is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, and other churches. Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, the date on which he is believed to have died (but the year in uncertain), is celebrated by Irish people at home and around the world in honour of Ireland’s patron saint. It is believed that the first St Patrick’s day parade was held in Boston in 1779, now a big feature of the day everywhere, with the biggest every year in New York City. It is now customary for the Irish taoiseach to visit Washington DC on St Patrick’s Day and present a bowl of shamrock to the President of the United States. March 17 became a Catholic Church holiday in Ireland in the seventeenth century, and a public holiday in 1900.

Christianity was introduced to Ireland at the start of the fifth century, if not earlier, and Pope Celestine appointed Palladius as first bishop to the Irish Christians, but it is Saint Patrick who is credited with the spread of Christianity in Ireland. According to his own writings, he came from an ecclesiastical family in Britain and that his father was named Calpurnius, a deacon in the church. After capture by Irish raiders at the age of sixteen, Patrick was sold into captivity herding sheep on the slopes of Slemish mountain in County Antrim. There, he spent many hours in prayer, which was critical to his spiritual development. After six years, he escaped and returned home. He later said that in a dream he heard ‘the voices of the Irish’ asking him to return. After ordination at Auxerre in France he was appointed as bishop of the Irish and returned to Ireland. His early years in Ireland as a missionary bishop were in the north and, according to various accounts written in the seventh century, as first bishop he made Armagh the capital of his Irish church (to this day it is the capital of both Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland in the country, with both cathedrals there named in his honour). He appears to have spent some time in County Mayo in the west of Ireland, including, according to legend, forty days and nights on the summit of Croagh Patrick, fasting and praying for the people of Ireland. Other Patrician sites recorded for the county include Aghagower near Westport, Ballintober, Kilmoremoy, near Ballina, and various parts of north Mayo as far west as Ballycastle.

Saint Patrick is said to have baptised thousands, ordained many priests, and became the chief evangelizer of the natives, bringing Ireland within the See of Rome and part of universal Christendom. Saint Patrick is associated with the shamrock, because it is said that he used a three-leafed shamrock to explain the concept of The Holy Trinity (three persons in one God, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit). The shamrock became an Irish symbol. He also lit a paschal fire on the hill of Slane in County Meath in defiance of the local high king. The legend that he drove all the snakes from Ireland is a fallacy, as there were never snakes in the country.

St Patrick wrote two concise documents in Latin, his autobiographical Confessio and his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. These were the earliest writings to be penned in Ireland, and they are preserved in manuscripts that are kept in Continental libraries, although an abbreviated version of the Confessio is found in the Book of Armagh, an early ninth-century manuscript, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. A text written in the late seventh century by Bishop Tírechán, from Tirawley in north Mayo, suggested that the area west of Killala was the location of Silva Vocluti, ‘the wood of Fochluth beside the western sea’ mentioned by Patrick in his Confessio.

  It is believed that St Patrick died at Saul, in County Down, and that he was buried nearby in the grounds of Down Cathedral at Downpatrick.

Peadar (Peter) O’Dowd, who died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 82, will be remembered as a lecturer, a newspaper columnist, a great Galway historian, and a prolific author. Born in Bohermore, Galway City, on June 29, 1941, Peadar was the eldest of four children. His formal education started at St Brendan’s Primary School in Woodquay, Galway, where he developed a life-long interest in nature, especially birds, trees, and shrubs. After his secondary education as a day pupil in St Mary’s College from 1954 to 1959, he attended University College Galway, graduating in 1962, and with a Higher Diploma in Education the following year. His first teaching post was in Abbeyknockmoy Vocational School in County Galway before going to Glenamaddy for eight happy years until the end of 1972. In January 1973, he was appointed as a lecturer in business studies, and later in heritage studies, in the newly established Regional Technical College in Galway, giving outstanding service until his retirement on August 31, 2006. There, Peadar gravitated towards the Archaeological, Historical, and Folklore Society, which organised an annual programme of lectures and outings. Peadar became hooked on all aspects of heritage, and in effect developed a parallel career in that field.

  Peadar became a gifted communicator with the ability to convey his wide knowledge of Galway’s heritage with clarity, precision, and language, always stating that he was writing for the general reader and not the specialist. His books include Galway City Waterways: A Walking Guide (1985), Old and New Galway (1985), Vanishing Galway (1987), Galway: Heart of the West (1991), Touring Galway: A Guide to County Galway (1993), Down by the Claddagh (1993), The Great Famine and the West (1996), Galway on the Bay (2002, with Derek Biddulph and Dick Byrne), In From the West-the McDonagh Dynasty (2002), Galway in Old Photographs (2003), A History of County Galway (2004), Galway Lawn Tennis Club (2005), Christmas Tales of Galway (2006), More Tales of Galway (2007), Final Tales of Galway (2008), Tracing Your Galway Ancestors (2011), The Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora: An Illustrated History (2011), St Mary’s College Galway Centenary 1912-2012 (2012), and editing his last book in 2018, Glenamaddy Boyouragh: Our People-Our Heritage.

  He became a weekly columnist with the Connacht Sentinel from 1992 until November 2014, and thereafter with the Connacht and Galway City Tribune to his last article on December 29, 2023. He also contributed articles to various publications like Galway Life, Galway Now, Galway Roots, Ireland’s Own, New Horizon, and the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.

  Peadar gave numerous public lectures on various aspects of Galway’s heritage, conducted innumerable tours, broadcast on radio and television, as well as serving for 13 years as secretary of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society and five as president. He was also a member of the Old Galway Society, the Royal Society of Antiquaries, and a director of Galway Civic Trust. One of the people Peadar impressed during a walking tour of Galway was the wife of Richard Daley, Mayor of Chicago. This led to her nominating Peadar and his wife, Mary, to be invited to Chicago as the Irish representatives for a big celebration on December 31, 1999 to inaugurate the new millennium with two representatives from every country in the world. One of the Rehab Galway People of the Year in 2003, he received a mayoral award in 2007, an honorary MA degree from the National University Galway in 2011, and was honoured by Galway City Council for their huge contribution to local heritage in 2013. Galway has lost a great champion.