REALITY BITES DIAMOND JUBILEE OF ST GERARD’S, BELFAST BELFAST
HAPPY SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY
On December 9, the Redemptorist Church of St Gerard on the Antrim Road, Belfast, will celebrate its diamond jubilee. In 1951 a Victorian villa, Ben Eaden, came on the market when its owner, Major William Adeley, died. Originally part of the Belfast Castle estate, it was situated on a superb woodland site of thirty-three acres on the side of Cave Hill, overlooking Belfast Lough. The Redemptorists were anxious to acquire a site in this part of the city to build a retreat house as a replacement for Mount St Clement’s in Ardglass Co Down. This was the first Redemptorist retreat house in Ireland. In the few years since its inception in 1947, it had proved phenomenally successful, but the old castle was in need of repairs and
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St Gerard's Church, Belfast
REALITY NOVEMBER 2016
a site closer to the city was needed. In the political and social world of Belfast in the 1950s, any attempt by a religious order to acquire property usually met with stiff opposition. With the help of a local solicitor, the property was purchased for £14,000. The Adeley family left for England on September 29, 1951, and the Redemptorists moved in the same day. The largest ground floor room of the former mansion was fitted up as a temporary chapel, and it was canonically erected in September 1953 as a Redemptorist community under the patronage of St Gerard. The site, on a steep hillside, was not ideal for building, and concrete piles had to be sunk, some as deep as forty feet. The church of St
Gerard was dedicated on December 9, 1956. The architect was J. J. Brennan of Belfast. The upper Antrim Road was a comfortable middle-class area with few Catholics, but by the 1960s, the Catholic population was growing. In 1969, the Redemptorists agreed to take parochial responsibility for a new area carved out from the existing parishes. It was the first time the Irish Redemptorists had taken responsibility for running a parish. The first parish priest was Fr Thomas McKinley, with Fr Patrick McGowan as curate. The present parish priest is Fr Gerry Cassidy and Fr Pat McLaughlin is curate. A retreat house was eventually built on the upper part of the site in 1960. It was closed in 2007.