‘The parish is the foundation for the faith’

New Bishop calls for peace in Northern Ireland

When Michael Router stood before the congregation at St Eugene’s Cathedral as the newly installed Bishop of Derry last month, he spoke clearly, not of certainty but of humility.

“I want to be a true shepherd, given all my failings and limitations as a human being, and to do the very best I can for the diocese,” he later told The Anglo-Celt, invoking the image of the Good Shepherd shared by Pope Leo XIV in his First Speech from the Central Loggia of St Peter’s Basilica. “I am already very thankful to the people of Derry for their warm welcome and for everything they have done for me so far.”

For a bishop beginning yet another new chapter on otherwise unfamiliar ground, it was an acknowledgment both of the responsibility of the office he has assumed and the limits of the man occupying it.

The Virginia-native arrived in Derry after seven years as Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh, and now, as he begins this new ministry, Bishop Router (61) finds himself once again navigating a place where faith, identity and history are closely entwined.

That much was made glaringly apparent this week in Portadown, where the dispute over an Orange Order parade down Garvaghy Road came to national attention.

On Monday, Order members remained at Drumcree Church, steadfastly refusing to leave until they are allowed to walk through the predominantly nationalist area.

The confrontation revived memories of the 1990s, when the march was one of the defining flashpoints of the conflict north of the border.

For Bishop Router, Portadown, nor Garvaghy Road, are abstract places on a political landscape. During his years as Auxiliary Bishop in Armagh, he celebrated Mass at St John the Baptist’s, less than a mile from Drumcree Church, on several occasions, as well as Confirmations and funerals.

“I found the community there to be lovely,” he says, keenly aware of how quickly “old wounds” can reopen.

“I found it difficult to understand the decision by the Parades Commission to allow the parade to take place again,” he said. “I thought it was unnecessary and that it was reopening old wounds when there was really no need to do so.”

Bishop Router, who previously wrote a Reflections piece for the Celt, hopes the latest confrontation will not reignite divisions. He has encountered people on both sides of the perceived divide, and is confident that there exists broad desire not to return to past troubles.

“I believe we can all find a way to live together peacefully,” he told the Celt. “In both Armagh and Derry, I find there’s a real sense that what happened in the past should not be repeated. We should not go back there again.”

It is a perspective shaped partly by Bishop Router’s own background.

He grew up in a family and community where the parish was core to daily life. He spent almost three decades ministering in Cavan, rarely more than a 30-minute drive from home. Moving first to Armagh took him far from that base, and into communities that, while reasonably close, still felt remarkably different.

In Armagh, he encountered the geography of Northern Ireland gradually, and how the diocese spilled into neighbouring Louth.

He learned its towns and parishes, loyalties and sensitivities. Then came COVID-19, only months after his appointment, restricting travel and personal contact that might otherwise have helped him settle better.

“COVID forced me to get to know more people, even if it was only over the phone or online,” he said.

Now, in Derry, he is beginning that process of acquainting himself all over again.

The Derry diocese stretches from the city itself and wider county to north Tyrone and across into Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula. They are all distinct communities, each with their own individual character too.

Despite his newness, Bishop Router has already been struck by the warmth of the welcome he has received.

“People have been remarkably good to me,” he said. “They have made me feel very much at home.”

AGEING CLERGY

But his new diocese, like much of the Catholic Church in Ireland, faces a more persistent challenge than tensions cuttently brewing in Portadown, with fewer priests and an ageing clergy to consider.

Though Armagh, with its Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary in Dundalk, and Derry, with several new ordinations in recent years are far from crisis point, Bishop Router is acutely aware of how other church leaders have grappled to deal with the issue ahead of time.

The response has not simply been to look for more priests, and Bishop Router equally believes the future of parish life will come to depend increasingly on the role of lay people taking responsibility for faith development in their communities.

“We may have fewer priests in the future, but that doesn’t mean parish life should be any less vibrant,” he said, pointing to catechesis, youth work, sacramental preparation, administration and pilgrimages, areas where lay people are already beginning to make a difference.

“The parish is really the foundation for faith,” he reflects. “It is where most people learn their faith, where they develop a great loyalty and where they find their identity.”

He credits his own formation locally, at home and at school, as central to the path he chose.

Among those in attendance at Bishop Router’s installation, aside from members from his own family (parents Tony and Nora, and sisters Breda Murphy and Martina Keville), were Cardinal Sean Brady (Laragh), Archbishop of Tuam Francis Duffy (Templeport), Bishop Emeritus Leo O’Reilly (Kill). They too were joined by current Bishop of Kilmore, Martin Hayes, and Bishop of Clogher, Larry Duffy.

“It is a fair representation for a relatively small county,” Bishop Router says of the Cavan representation within the upper echelons of the church here in Ireland.

“I think it is testament to the faith in Cavan. That faith is very much alive there, and Cavan was a seedbed for vocations over the years, with priests and religious sisters who stayed and worked in the diocese, but also many who went abroad on mission and worked in dioceses in America, England, Africa and elsewhere,” he adds.

“I think that says something about the strength of the faith that was in Cavan - and still is,” he concluded.