This article is from page 4 of the 2013-09-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
CLARE could soon be celebrating a once in a thousand year religious occasion as the process has begun to make Liscannor man Thomas Cusack a saint.
The Korean Church has applied to the Holy See to begin the process which could one day lead to the Columban priest being beatified.
If he is successful, Fr Cusack would become Ireland’s fourth saint of the past thousand years; joining Cellach of Armagh, Saint Oliver Plunkett and Charles of Mount Argus.
Fr Cusack was killed by communist forced in Korean in 1950 and the Korean Church are seeking his beatification as a martyr.
The Liscannor man’s 15 years in Korea were marked by intense bravery and hardship. He refused to flee the county during the Japanese invasion in World War II and as a result spend a number of years in a brutal prisoner of war camp.
He again refused to leave the country when the Korean War erupted and was captured in 1950 by communist troops as they retreated north of the border following a battle on July 24, 1950.
Fr Cusack, along with a number of other Catholic priests, were martyred in “the massacre at Taejon Prison” with took place on September 24, 1950.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the Columban in Korea in 1933, the Korean Church has put forward a number of priests martyred during the Korean War for sainthood.
According to Fr Malachy Smyth, who has recently completed a documentary on the Columban Fathers in Korea, Fr Cusack would most likely have been more concerned with the work on the ground than any future accolades.
“The Korean Church has started the process and we will have to wait and see what happens from here. I’m not too sure how long this will take but it could be a large number of years,” he said.
“We [the Columbans] are not the sort who look for sainthood. We are much more interested in the work amongst the grass roots.”
Father Cusack was born in Ballycotton in Liscannor on October 23, 1910. He was educated in Ballycotton National School before going on to St Mary’s College in Galway.
He entered the Columbans in 1928 and was ordained in 1934. The following year he was sent to Korea and at the time of his death he was serving in Columban mission in Mokpo.
At present Ireland boasts a total of 166 saints. The vast majority of these saints were lived during the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries for which Ireland was known as the Island of Saints and Scholars.