A Derry Feis stalwart - Father Kevin Mullan: An appreciation

Fr Mullan was laid to rest at Dublin Road cemetery in Omagh on Tuesday last following a private Requiem Mass at the home of his sister, Joan.

On Monday evening, there was an interdenominational service at St Patrick’s in Drumquin where his remains had lain in repose in the parochial house prior to removal for a period in the church which he had served with such distinction as well as many others.

Ordained in 1971, one of his first clerical postings was a stint at St Patrick’s, Pennyburn, in Derry. A former student of St Columb’s College, it was in Pennburn that Fr Mullan rekindled his love of the city and became associated at organisational level with Feis Dhoire Cholmcille where, as a boy and young man, he had competed as an Irish dancer.

When news of Fr Mullan’s passing emerged, his lifelong friend and Registrar of Derry Feis, Ursula Clifford, said: “I am heartbroken to hear of Fr Kevin’s death. My own mother Sibeal Sharkey was like a second mother to him when he came to Derry at first and was appointed as feis secretary. He had a particular passion for the Irish dancing at the feis and keeping it going as well as organising all the other disciplines.

“He was perpetually in our house organising the feis. Derry Feis didn’t take place between 1972 and 1974 because of the Troubles. But it really didn’t disappear at all. Thinking about my mother and Fr Kevin, you’d wonder what would have really happened to the feis if it hadn’t been for them organising the Bogside Festival. That was basically to keep people interested even though it wasn’t officially named Feis Dhoire Cholmcille. After he moved to Drumquin, Fr Mullan was as dedicated to the feis as its chairperson as he was when he was secretary.”

Despite his illness, Fr Mullan paid his customary trip to Derry this year during feis week and, as recently as two weeks ago, presided at the Requiem Mass of his friend and former feis treasurer, Noel McCaul, at St Patrick’s, Pennyburn.

In 2022, Fr Mullan was involved in helping to commemorate the centenary of Feis Dhoire Cholmcille and, in a video interview about his thoughts on the feis, he said: “The feis became, really, my whole life when I was here in Derry city. When Bishop Daly asked me to take it on, it was in a lull because of the Troubles and he wanted to revive it. He had just been made bishop, so ‘muggins’ was asked because I did Irish dancing. I never, never regretted giving my time to it. It made what I am – a physical wreck – but very happy.”

The late priest also made a substantial written contribution to a book marking the centenary of the feis in which his ability as a writer, his sharp wit and wonderful sense of fun shone through.

On top of his extensive duties as the leading figure on the committee of Derry Feis, Fr Mullan also had a full-time role as pastoral carer and parish administrator. Always mindful of the need to strive for reconciliation during darker days in the north, one such peace-making act unintentionally embroiled Fr Kevin and a clerical counterpart from the Presbyterian tradition in controversy in the mid 1980s.

By 1984, Fr Mullan was ministering at Christ The King church in Limavady. Opposite the Catholic church was a Presbyterian church then overseen by Rev David Armstrong. When the minister opened his church’s door on Christmas morning, Fr Mullan was standing there. Rev Armstrong invited him in.

It was a visible and simple, but very powerful gesture of peace in incredibly fraught political circumstances. However, the act of reconciliation resulted in death threats being issued against Rev Armstrong and his family. Such was the pressure caused by the fallout that the minister first relocated to England and, then, to Co Cork where he later retrained as a Church of Ireland minister.

Coming through one such incident should have been enough for a single lifetime, but when, on 15 August 1988, a bomb tore through the centre of his hometown of Omagh, Fr Mullan was thrust headlong into coping with the gratuitous loss of 29 people and two unborn children and the decades that followed saw him use his pastoral abilities to deal with the ensuing psychological trauma of the victims' families, many of whom he would have known personally.

Since his death, tributes have also been paid to Fr Mullan on social media. One such tribute came from Michael Hutton, a long-serving stage announcer at Feis Dhoire Cholmcille, who wrote: “We have all lost a true friend. A man who put others’ needs before his own”

John Peoples, a former accompanist at the feis, wrote: “Fr Kevin was a lovely, gentle man and a wonderful caring and spiritual priest.”

Secretary of Feis Dhoire Cholmcille, Aisling Bonner, said: “On behalf of the Committee of Feis Dhoire Cholmcille, I want to express sincere and heartfelt condolences to the family circle, clerical colleagues and countless friends of Fr Kevin on his passing. His dedication to and support for Derry Feis remained undiminished throughout his life. To say that his experience, intelligence, knowledge and wisdom will be missed by us all at the feis is a vast understatement. In many ways he epitomised the feis motto - ‘Do chum glóire dé agus onóra na hÉireann’ which means ‘For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland’.