Biography
Date of Birth:
3rd February 1934
Date of Ordination:
22nd June 1958
Appointments
1958 – 1959: CC, Clane
1959 – 1969: Teaching Staff, Knockbeg
1969 – 1987: CC, Portlaoise
1987 – 1992: PP, Daingean. Appointed Vicar General in 1988.
1992 – 2000: PP, Portlaoise
2000 – 2026: PE CC, Killeigh
Funeral Arrangements:
Sunday, the 2nd day of August – Monsignor Tom will repose at Saint Joseph’s Church, Ballinagar, (R35 W728) from 3 pm with prayers at 7.30 pm.
Monday, the 3rd day of August – Monsignor Tom’s Requiem Mass will be celebrated in Saint Patrick’s Church, Killeigh (R35 H343) at 12 pm.
Following the Mass, Monsignor Tom will be laid to rest in Saint Mary’s Graveyard, Raheen (R35 K096).
Monsignor Tom’s Requiem Mass can be viewed on the following link: https://mcn.live/Camera/st-patricks-church-killeigh
May Monsignor Tom rest in peace.
Bishop Denis’ Homily at Msgr. Tom Coonan’s Requiem: St. Patrick’s Church, Killeigh 03.08.26
In ‘The Green and Red of Mayo’ The Saw Doctors sing:
“Oh take me to Clare Island
The home of Granuaile
It’s waters harbour fishes
From the herring to the whale”
For as good as fifty years Tom Coonan has been covering summer supply on Clare Island nestled in Clew Bay. It may be Mayo for Sam, Kerry for Butter, but Tom was for Clare Island!
Tom was born in Graiguenamanagh and never forgot those Kilkenny roots. He was ordained by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid out of Maynooth on June 22nd, 1958 with 48 classmates, including the late Ned Whelan. It was the same year that Noel Dunphy was ordained from the Pontifical Irish College, Rome. Bishop Tom Keogh earlier that same month ordained 21 priests, mostly for the foreign missions from Carlow College, St. Patrick’s while Bishop Patrick Cleary, Bishop of Nancheng in China ordained 9 priests in St. Patrick’s, Kiltegan. A very different world and time then to 2026.
Tom Coonan was acutely aware that the world he was ordained into, and the one he continued to generously minister in, up until a couple of months ago, were different places. Tom was a voracious reader in his day, keeping up to speed with the latest theological discourse and thinking. He liked poetry. One that fell out of his breviary yesterday afternoon was titled ‘The Undertaker’ by Kildare poet John MacKenna:
“Each time I pass the undertaker’s store
I swear I see him wink and gently smile.
Behind him, through a widely open door,
a vast array of coffins to beguile,
like invitations issued year on year
to parties that are bound to end in tears”
Tom’s breviary was well worn and well used. Sometimes passing through Geashill, I would see him walking out the road from his home, praying the office as he walked, at one with the Creator God.
I purposefully chose the Road to Emmaus story for today’s Requiem. The first Book of Kings shows David passing on the baton to his son Solomon. Our psalmist reassures us that the Lord never leaves us, the Shepherd never abandons his sheep. St. Paul gives the preacher, the homilist, clear instructions. Tom is well remembered for his homilies, as attested to in the many tributes on rip.ie. He was there for families when loved ones were sick; he was there for couples as they welcomed new life in baptism; he was there for the younger children receiving their First Holy Communion and the older confirmandi.
Returning to that account of the Supper at Emmaus. The two disciples were heading away from Jerusalem, their faces downcast, their dreams shattered. Jesus came and walked by their side. And he invites them to tell their story. He empathised with them in their disillusionment; he gently probed, maybe even chastised, before sitting with them around the supper table. And as they recognise him, He is gone; but they too are then fired up and return the journey they had just travelled, to breathe new life into their dispirited colleagues. I never left a conversation with Msgr. Tom without in some way feeling challenged, but always the better for it.
Tom loved the schools. Recently a younger teacher at a diocesan in-service spoke of how the school valued the visit of the local priest, that priest was Tom Coonan. What he did in the four schools in Killeigh was shaped by his life in Clane, in Daingean, in Portlaoise and of course life as the History and Geography teacher in Knockbeg.
In the 1980’s the diocese gathered in the Ard Rí Hotel, it stood then proudly perched on the hill, overlooking the River Suir on the way into Waterford city. No longer an operating hotel as it was closed following a fire in 2005. The diocesan gathering was a momentous event in the time of Bishop Larry Ryan, and became a reference point for those of us coming afterwards and the work it stimulated and the conversations it began, have continued with greater intensity in more recent years. Tom Coonan had a key role in organising this event.
He was great with the sick and housebound and as the years passed those calls lasted longer, as those being attended were no longer parishioners, they had become friends. His outreach to Uganda is well recognised. How fitting it was that Fr. Tom Smith, a priest on mission in Uganda, should have been the one to anoint Tom, two days before his passing. His ministry to the sick is well noted in his many visits to Tullamore Hospital, to Nursing Homes and in the setting up of that health-care facility in Uganda.
In the days of the Covid pandemic and lockdown, Tom continued to reach out to parishioners by celebrating Mass on FaceBook from his Oratory in Geashill. He was then in his late 80’s. And when his sight began to fail in more recent times, he would learn the readings for the following weekend off by heart, print them in large font, because Tom Coonan knew a parish and its people are built around the Eucharist. And it’s in the Eucharist, like at Emmaus, we recognise “him at the breaking of bread”[1].
His party piece in his day was ‘The Rose of Mooncoin’, a little different from the Saw Doctors fayre. The song is over for Msgr. Tom, but the melody lingers on. May he rest in peace. Amen.
[1] Lk.24:35