Cornelius Lucey

Cornelius "Con" Lucey (1902–82) was a Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and Ross.

Youth and education

Cornelius Lucey was born into a farming family at Carrigrohane, near Cork City. He studied at St Finbarr's College, Farranferris, the diocesan college. He graduated from St Patrick's College, Maynooth with BC and BCL, and obtained MAs at Innsbruck University in 1927–29 and then University College Dublin.

Career

Lucey was ordained a priest in 1927. He held the Chair of Philosophy and Political Theory at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, from 1929 to 1950. He was one of the founders of Christus Rex, a priest's society devoted to social issues, on which he was a prominent commentator. In 1951 he was appointed bishop of the diocese of Cork, from 1958 united to the Diocese of Ross. He founded the St. Anne's Adoption Society in 1954. His outspoken sermons, often given at confirmations, made him something of a thorn in the side of the establishment. His views on matters of faith and morals were conservative, and he was involved in a controversy in the 1960s, when he withdrew the diocesan faculties of Father James Good, a lecturer at University College, Cork, for publicly dissenting from the teaching of Pope Paul VI. He started the Cork diocesan mission to Peru, and many priests from Cork ministered there from 1961.

Lucey retired as bishop in 1980, in the early stages of leukemia. He went to the Turkana District in Kenya to work as an ordinary curate with Good, who had gone there some years earlier. Good later described the last two years of the Bishop's life and his reaction to Turkana customs:^[1]

The parish priest of Lorogumu was an advanced liturgist and (among other things) had introduced general Absolution along with an entrance rite to Sunday Mass in hich six ladies clad (or unclad) à la Turkana custom danced to the altar before the priest. I panicked but Bishop Lucey got his way and was duly installed as curate in Lorogumu, under Fr Tony Barrett, a Kiltegan priest who was expert in Turkana language and custom. It was a perfect combination: one might describe it as a perfect marriage of minds and of mutual admiration. At a later date I asked Bishop Lucey how he liked the Lorogumu liturgy and he replied 'very beautiful'.

Death and legacy

After nearly two years in Kenya he became seriously ill. He was flown back to Cork in September 1982 and died within days.

In 1985, as part of the Cork 800 festival, a site between Grand Parade and South Main Street was developed into an urban park named "Bishop Lucey Park".^[2]

References

1. ^ James Good" Setting the Record Straight", Irish Catholic, 7 August 2008
2. ^ "Bishop Lucey Park". Cork Past and Present. Cork City Libraries. http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/places/grandparade/bishopluceypark/. Retrieved 17 March 2011. 

Persondata
Name	Lucey, Cornelius
Alternative names	Lucey, Con
Short description	Bishop of Cork and Ross
Date of birth	1902
Place of birth	Cork
Date of death	1982
Place of death	Cork