Fr Billy Meehan is most at home in his adopted town of Clonmel

For somebody who grew up a few miles from Clonmel in the village of Grange, it was a town Father Billy Meehan was unfamiliar with until he arrived as a priest to serve in the parish of St Mary’s in 1991.
“When we were growing up you would only be in Clonmel a few times a year, that was the way it was then,” said Fr Meehan.
Now after a lifetime of devotion to the priesthood he regards Clonmel as his home.
In the town, Fr Meehan is highly regarded as “one of our own”. He came as a curate to the parish of St Mary’s in 1991, went on to serve in Ss Peter & Paul’s (1994 to 1997) and has been the parish priest in St Mary’s since 2006.
He has a deep affection for the people of Clonmel and a good feel for “what the town is about” with its unique mix of urban and rural characteristics.
“There is a great strength and resilience among the people, there is a great community here,” said Fr Meehan.
Normal life came to an abrupt halt during Covid-19 and one occasion, the marking of Fr Meehan’s Golden Jubilee, went almost unnoticed as a result.
That probably suited Fr Meehan who would not have wanted any fuss. A low key presentation made by the Pastoral Council took place and that was it and Fr Meehan just continued on with his work.
A beautifully crafted silver replica of the dome of St Mary’s presented to him by the pastoral council takes pride of place in his home beside the church.
It is a reminder of the journey he set out on and the decisions he took along the way, decisions he has no regrets about.
“If I was back again I would do the same again, no doubt about it,” said Fr Meehan who embarked on his vocation aware of the strong family tradition in the priesthood.
Three of his late mother’s brothers were priests, two of them serving in the Waterford &Lismore diocese and the other in Leeds and his father’s brother, another Fr Meehan, was a priest in Clonmel’s Ss Peter & Paul’s parish.
He has fond memories of attending school in Grange and the excellent teachers there at the time such as Nancy Heffernan and Paud Shea and he went to boarding school with the Cistercians in Roscrea.
“The school was beside the monastery and while in secondary school I was very much influenced over the years by the monks and they were also teaching in the school,” he said.
Fr Meehan decided to study for the priesthood and was ordained in 1970 before taking up his first appointment in Blackheath in central London.
“I was 27-years-old, I was full of idealism. I wanted to be as good a priest as I could possibly be and I wanted to help as many people as I could and develop my own spiritual life as well,” said Fr Meehan.
Two years later he came back to Waterford and he has served in the diocese ever since.
He will be remembered by people all over the country as the priest who was ahead of his time in the instigation of folk choirs for church ceremonies and the broadcast of folk masses by RTÉ .
That element of his priesthood work brought him into contact with national and global figures in the entertainment world as Fr Meehan used his considerable qualities of persuasion and contacts to bring big names on board for the projects he was hatching.
BRENDAN BOYER
He was able to call on the services of such stars as Brendan Boyer, Val Doonican and Gilbert O’Sullivan and he enjoyed collaborating with them in tandem with choirs he was guiding.
He is the first to admit that he was “tone deaf” but for somebody with no background in music he certainly made a mark at national level being at the vanguard of the new folk mass movement within the church and the promotion of the scene through RTÉ.
YOUNG GENERATION
Through his chaplaincy with the Technical Secondary School in Waterford as part of his service with the Little Sisters he set up the Young Generation folk choir who went on to record their own music and did multiple appearances on RTÉ folk masses which were new at the time.
“It was very exciting. We had about 80 pupils involved and they had some great teachers and we did concerts all over Waterford and beyond. They won a prestigious national talent competition, brought out their own LP and were guests at numerous RTÉ masses broadcast all over the country.
“That was all just starting up at the time and the Young Generation were very much to the forefront of it all. A lot of them went on to have good careers in music after that,” said Fr Meehan.
“Young Generation were the first to do a folk mass on RTÉ and it all took off from there,” said Fr Meehan.
He was moved to Clashmore and immediately set up another choir there, a choir that also went on to do national TV performances during the broadcast of folk choir masses.
Like Young Generation that choir also enjoyed a high national profile and Fr Meehan used all his connections to catapult that group into national stardom as they recorded an album with Brendan Boyer, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Val Doonican and Hal Roche.
“It was great for everybody involved. I knew Brendan, Gilbert , Val and Hal from my years in Waterford and they were all only too willing to do the album with the choir in Clashmore. Pat Power who was an opera singer in Australia was also involved,” said Fr Meehan.
Funds raised from the sale of the album went towards building a new church in Kinsale-beg.
He had the connections within the music industry but he also had connections in RTÉ through his secondary school years he spent in Roscrea .
That obviously opened doors for the Young Generation, the Clasmore choir and the Waterford Diocesean Choir.
His RTÉ connections enabled Fr Meehan to put St Mary’s in the spotlight when the Easter Ceremonies on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter Week 1994 were broadcast live from the parish.
“It would have been a first for Clonmel at the time, RTÉ were here for a week and there was a great buzz around.
“For the first time under the guidance of the late Mary Cummins the Good Friday ceremony involved a dramatisation of the Stations of the Cross which has become a tradition in the church ever since,” said Fr Meehan.
He has given a long and distinguished service to the priesthood.
The parishioners of St Mary’s and the town is all the better that Fr Meehan is very happy to call Clonmel his home.

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