Immersive Christmas Light and Sound Experience at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral

Posted on November 3, 2026 by mediaccr

St Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork will host a new immersive Christmas experience, The Promise, from 9th to 19th December 2026, combining projection-mapped imagery, surround sound and storytelling to explore the history of Cork and the themes of Christmas.

Commissioned by the Cathedral and created specifically for its interior, the twenty-minute production will use moving images projected onto the building’s pillars, arches and decorative surfaces, accompanied by an original soundtrack.

The story begins with St Fin Barre’s journey along the River Lee from Gougane Barra and the establishment of a monastery on the site where the Cathedral now stands. It then moves into the Christmas story, exploring themes of hope, joy and the promises passed from one generation to the next. The Cathedral’s well-known Goldie Angel will also feature in the projections.

The Promise has been developed by Tim and Catherine Mountain from the UK-based Evenlode Productions and Evenlode Films.

An important part of the project is the involvement of the Cathedral’s own community. The soundtrack features contributions from two members of the Cathedral Choir, with singing by Lay Vicar Choral Lucy Keeffe O’Mahony and poetry by young writer and Cathedral Chorister Sophia La Rocque. Members of the Cathedral and parish community have also contributed spoken-word recordings, narration and background sound effects.

Orla O’Byrne, Artist and Curator of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, explained the thinking behind the project:

St Fin Barre’s Cathedral is the birthplace of Cork and we wanted to create something really special for the city right here. The architecture is so evocative and imaginative already, and The Promise will allow people to experience the cathedral in a completely new way.

At its heart, though, it is a Christmas story. It’s about that feeling of anticipation in the days before Christmas, but also something bigger: hope, joy and the promises we make to each other and pass from one generation to the next.

Orla O’Byrne, Curator of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral

Christmas Concerts 2026

As part of the programme, two Christmas concerts will take place on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th December, featuring the Cathedral Choir performing alongside a specially adapted, hour-long version of the projections.

The concerts will be the choir’s principal fundraising events of the year, with proceeds supporting its ongoing musical activities and work throughout the year.

Tickets and Visiting Information

The Promise will run each evening from 9th to 19th December, between 5pm and 10pm, with timed, ticketed admission throughout the evening.

Tickets for the twenty-minute experience are priced at €12 for adults, €6 for children over six and €25 for a family of four, plus booking fees.

The event is expected to introduce a substantial number of new visitors to St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, while offering regular visitors an opportunity to experience the building and its history in a different setting.

The Cathedral hopes that The Promise will become a welcome addition to Cork’s Christmas calendar, bringing together local history, the Christmas message and the contributions of members of its community.

Further information and tickets are available at events.stfinbarres.ie/promise.

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Enthronement of Bishop Andrew Orr as Bishop of Ross in St Fachtna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery

Posted on October 21, 2026 by mediaccr

The Right Revd Andrew Orr was formally installed and enthroned as Bishop of Ross on Sunday, 18 October 2026, during a service of Holy Communion at St Fachtna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery.

The service, which began at 3.30 p.m., marked the third and final enthronement of Bishop Andrew in the United Dioceses of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, following his enthronements in Cork on 4 October and Cloyne on 14 October.

Bishop Andrew was joined by family and friends, clergy and Diocesan Lay Readers, and parishioners from across the Diocese. Among the ecumenical guests were Roy Brooks, representing the Methodist Church, Fr Tom Hayes, representing the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and Ross, the Most Revd Fintan Gavin, and Fr Martin O’Driscoll from Rosscarbery. Senator Noel O’Donovan was also in attendance as a civic representative.

The ceremony of enthronement began at the entrance to St Fachtna’s Cathedral, where Bishop Andrew knocked on the West Door three times and asked to be admitted. The Dean of Ross, the Very Revd Cliff Jeffers, the Chapter of St Fachtna’s Cathedral, and all attending clergy and Lay Readers proceeded to the West Door to receive the new Bishop, and following the reading of the mandate by the Diocesan Registrar, John C Jermyn, Bishop Andrew was welcomed into the Cathedral by the Dean of Ross.

In his sermon, Bishop Andrew reflected on the symbolism of open and closed doors, drawing on the readings for St Luke’s Day and the tradition of the Bishop knocking three times at the Cathedral door to be admitted. He spoke about the importance of resilience when faced with challenges and the need for patience and prayer in recognising unexpected opportunities for ministry. Reflecting on Jesus sending his followers out to share the Gospel, Bishop Andrew emphasised the importance of hospitality, listening and being willing to receive from others. He concluded by describing his role as one of working alongside clergy and parishioners to discern where God might be calling the Church and what new doors might be opening for its future. You can read the following sermon here.

Bishop Andrew was led to the episcopal throne by the Very Revd Cliff Jeffers, the Revd Canon Alan Marley and the Revd Canon Paul Willoughby. After having made the required declarations, Bishop Andrew was then taken by the hand by the Dean and led to the cathedra, where Dean Jeffers formally installed and enthroned him in the Bishopric of Ross.

Bishop Andrew was consecrated Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 30 September 2026, by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson. His enthronement in Rosscarbery brought to a close the three services of installation and enthronement in the cathedral churches of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, marking the formal beginning of his episcopal ministry in each of the three bishoprics of the United Dioceses.

Photos: Andy Gibson

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Sermon preached by Bishop Andrew for Ross Enthronement

Posted on October 20, 2026 by mediaccr

Sermon preached on the Occasion of Bishop Andrew’s Installation and Enthronement in the Bishopric of Ross

in the Cathedral Church of Saint Fachtna, Rosscarbery by

The Right Reverend Andrew Orr, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross

18 October 2026

Bishop Andrew Orr delivers his sermon. Picture: Andy Gibson.

I am conscious that some of you have been to all three enthronements, many of you were at the Diocesan Synod last week, and quite a few of you were at Prize Day in Bandon Grammar School last Friday. So there are people here who have now heard me speak five times in two weeks, which is more than enough penance for anyone. Except for those of you who are also coming to the Diocesan National Schools’ Service on Thursday… I promise, after that you’ll get a break.

Perhaps the most dramatic part of the installation or enthronement is the part that comes near the beginning where the new Bishop knocks three times on the doors before they are opened.  It is of course symbolic, but out of interest I did google to see if anyone had ever been refused. I couldn’t find any instances of it; certainly not in Rosscarbery where everyone is always very friendly and famous for their hospitality!

Interestingly, today’s readings, prescribed for St Luke’s Day, do speak to us of closed doors, at least in a symbolic sense.

First, we hear of Paul and his companions, who, in some unspecified way, find doors shut to them in Asia (modern day Turkey) and then in Bithynia. It’s not clear what this means, a vision perhaps, or the word of someone they meet on the way.  And so, thanks to Paul’s dream, they set sail for the area of Macedonia, and the city of Philippi.

Macedonia wasn’t Paul’s choice, it clearly wasn’t Luke’s plan either (notice how the narrative changes from they to we), but Macedonia was given to them. And so the gospel arrives for the first time in Europe.  The beginning of Western Christianity. Something new happens unexpectedly and Luke is there is to facilitate it, and record the unexpected, which is a pattern with him.

There’s a long tradition that, as well as being a doctor, Luke was also a painter. In St Brigid’s Church, Castleknock, where I ministered for almost ten years, there is a Harry Clarke window of St Luke, and at the base, there is a little vignette in glass where he is there at the easel, painting the Blessed Virgin Mary.

One of the functions of art is to confront us with the unexpected—to make us think anew about what we have always taken for granted. Most modern art tries to this—to shock us out of old conventional ways of thinking. Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep mightn’t be art, but it does stop us in our tracks. Luke’s gospel confronts its readers with a Jesus who is constantly doing the unexpected: praising the Gentiles for their faith, forgiving those who nail him to the cross and talking to women—all deeply shocking to the people of his day and all designed to make people stop and think about what they believed about God. He tells the three great stories of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son, altering the hearers perception of God and asking them to think again.

I know it’s a cliché to say that where one door closes, another opens, but it is true that in all ministry, we can come across times where things don’t seem to work, nothing goes right and everything and everybody seems against us. That is where we need the gift of resilience to get up again and carry on again. I spoke briefly on Friday in Bandon about the importance of not blaming yourself when things don’t work the first time, and of learning to forgive yourself. We need, too, the gift of patience in prayer to listen to the voice of the Spirit, who might be calling us to do and try something different. Not every door opens as easily as the one in Rosscarbery.

Second, the gospel reading for today from Luke Chapter 10, has Jesus’ instructions to those who go ahead of him. He sends them without purse, bag or sandals. They are deliberately unprovisioned, deliberately dependent on the welcome of strangers. He tells them: whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house.” Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide. Cure the sick, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

The labourers are not equipped with resources: it is simply their presence. They are going everywhere, trying to do everything, simply to find the open door, the welcome. They eat what is set before them, heal the sick, and demonstrate in word and deed that the Kingdom of God has come near. Our ministry to one another ought to be like that. The besetting sin of clergy and indeed bishops is business. We all too often try to do everything and be everything to everyone. The demands on our time and energy are limitless. We constantly fall into the trap of having to be in charge and having to be the dispensers of grace and goodness, when sometimes what we need to do is to step through the open door and be ministered to; to eat both literally and metaphorically what is put in front of us.

One of my roles as Bishop is to think with you. Not just to be an administrator, although administration matters, but to help us all together see where God might be calling us, what he is saying to the churches, and what doors he might be opening for us. The harvest is still plentiful and the labourers are still few, but the Kingdom of God still calls us to travel on.

Bishop Andrew Orr delivers his sermon. Picture: Andy Gibson.
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Enthronement of Bishop Andrew Orr as Bishop of Cloyne at St Colman’s Cathedral, Cloyne

Posted on October 17, 2026 by mediaccr

The Right Revd Andrew Orr was formally installed and enthroned as Bishop of Cloyne on Wednesday, 14 October 2026, during a Service of Choral Evensong at Saint Colman’s Cathedral, Cloyne.

The service started at 7.30p.m. with a procession of two choirs, Diocesan Lay Readers, Diocesan and Visiting Clergy, Ecumenical Guests and the Cathedral Chapter. Also in attendance were parishioners from the Cathedral and parishes throughout Cork, Cloyne and Ross, together with representatives of civic and church life, including Fr Brendan Mallon and Fr Patrick Linehan, and Councillors Cathal Rasmussen and Peter O’Donoghue.

The ceremony of enthronement began with the Cathedral Chapter, clergy, and students of Midleton College processing to the West Door of the Cathedral, where Bishop Andrew knocked three times and asked to be admitted. The students welcomed Bishop Andrew, and after the reading of the mandate by the Diocesan Registrar, John C Jermyn, the Prebendary of Brigown, the Revd Canon Daniel Nuzum, admitted Bishop Andrew to the Cathedral.

The music for Evensong was sung by the Clerks Choral and Midleton College Choir under the direction of Dr Ian Sexton and included Sir Alfred Herbert Brewer’s Evening Service in D and the anthem O Thou Sweetest Source by Charles Wood. The organist for the service was Colin Nichols.

Following Evensong, Bishop Andrew preached on the history of Cloyne and the importance of reconciliation in Christian faith and ministry. Drawing on the Cross of Cloyne, which combines Irish and Viking artistic traditions, and an ancient cross discovered near Ballycotton featuring an Arabic inscription, he explored how different cultures and faith traditions can meet and enrich one another. He emphasised that Christian faith calls us not only to remain firm in our own beliefs but also to recognise and honour what is good in others. Returning to Christ’s death on the cross as the ultimate act of reconciliation, Bishop Andrew reminded the congregation that all Christian ministry, whether episcopal, ordained or lay, is rooted in the calling to bring reconciliation between God and humanity and among people themselves. The full sermon can be read here.

The formal enthronement followed. Bishop Andrew was led to the episcopal throne by the Prebendary of Brigown, the Revd Canon Daniel Nuzum, and the Prebendary of Donoghmore, the Revd Canon Denis MacCarthy. Having made the required declarations with his hand upon the Gospel, Bishop Andrew was taken by the hand by Canon Nuzum and led to the cathedra where he was formally installed and enthroned in the Bishopric of Cloyne.

After the service, Bishop Andrew consecrated the new Altar in the Longfield Chapel, and the parishioners of Cloyne Union hosted everyone for tea and refreshments.

Bishop Andrew was consecrated Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 30 September by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson. His enthronements in Cork and Cloyne were the first two of three such services in the United Dioceses. He will be enthroned as Bishop of Ross in St Fachtna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery, on Sunday, 18 October at 3.30 p.m.

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Sermon preached by Bishop Andrew for Cloyne Enthronement

Posted on October 16, 2026 by mediaccr

Sermon preached on the Occasion of Bishop Andrew’s Installation and Enthronement in the Bishopric of Cloyne

in the Cathedral Church of Saint Colman, Cloyne by

The Right Reverend Andrew Orr, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross

14 October 2026

I’m a great believer that preachers should by and large preach on the lectionary. Grappling with the readings set for the day is good discipline and means we don’t just pick our favourite bits of scripture. But sometimes it is tricky, as is the case with the readings set for this evening. I could work with the first reading on the importance of Wisdom. But the second reading in which Jesus is betrayed by one of his closest friends seems unfortunate (to put it mildly) for the start of a new episcopal ministry. “One of you will betray me”. But there are resonances in that passage, as Jesus prepares for his death on the cross the following day, that I want to pick up on, later.

We are here tonight in Cloyne, a small but now rapidly growing town, as it becomes part of the wider Cork City commuter belt, which is partly why we all got stuck in traffic on the way here.

As you come into Cloyne, you can’t help but notice the round tower, which dominates the town, dating from the 10th century and a tangible reminder of this site being originally a monastery, founded of course by St Colman in 560AD. There is some debate about the purpose of round towers, perhaps they originally served as bell towers, or as places of storage as we all learnt at school, where the monks could hide during raids by the Vikings. Whatever the truth, there is documentary evidence of Cloyne being raided by the Norsemen in 822, 824 and 885. So this was the kind of place that had every reason to be fearful of the future and fearful of those from abroad.

Which brings me to the Cross of Cloyne, which you will see reproduced on the front cover of your service booklet and which I chose as the design for my pectoral cross, which the parishes of the diocese very kindly gave to me.

The cross was found in the grounds of this Cathedral in the 1870s and is now in the National Museum of Ireland. It depicts four figures of Christ on its four arms and was probably attached to the cover of a Bible or gospel book. The style of the four figures enables us to date it to around 1100CE.

Around the legs are coiled and twisting serpents, familiar to us as distinctively Irish, from the book of Kells and many other manuscripts. But the figures are elongated and dressed in a kind of long kilt, distinctively Viking. It is a product of the coming together of two cultures, one native, one from abroad to create something distinctive and beautiful and of course distinctively Christian, symbolic of the power of the cross to heal and reconcile. The Vikings who after the raids on Cloyne settled in Ireland— in Dublin, in Waterford, in Cork, at Hlyfmandi on the Lee—married Irish Christians, learned the language, raised their children in the church, and buried their dead with Christian symbols.

So the cross at Cloyne, in the end, is a cross of reconciliation. It was forged in a world that had known real, bloody enmity between its peoples. Just a few generations after they had at been at war, frightened and fearful, the two cultures had assimilated in the power of the gospel.

Further, there was a second cross found in this area of East Cork, just a few kilometres from here, in a bog near Ballycotton. It is now, like many other treasures from across the world, in the British Museum. It dates from about the 9th century, and again the style is distinctively Irish. But what makes it especially intriguing is that the centre is an oval of black glass, and inscribed in the black glass are two words in early Arabic. Sha[‘a] [a]llah (or ‘bismillah’?) or Tubna Ilallah. “What God wills” or “we have repented to God”.

We can speculate on how such an object might have ended up in Ballycotton, perhaps a trader from Europe or the Middle East who presumably dropped it by accident. But what do we make of such a hybrid piece—Irish and Arabic? Was it Christian and Islamic? Many Arabic speaking Christians use the name Allah for God. Was it someone secretly practising Islam in a Christian world, or vice versa? Or someone hedging their bets? Or was the glass set at the heart of the cross without the craftsman knowing anything about the inscription?

Tonight, I would like to see it as a symbol. Two faiths, meeting in one small object, at the point where the cross and the stone touch. It is a thing of astonishing beauty, and it poses a question to every one of us: can we hold firm in our own faith, and still honour the faith of another?

What does this say to us? The Christians of ninth and tenth century Ireland lived this out in ways we still barely credit. They were robbed and murdered by pagans, and they converted the newcomers not by the sword but by the sheer attractiveness of their faith: its learning, its hospitality, its holiness. Viking and Irish, Christian metalwork and Muslim glass, all meet in this part of East Cork. It reminds that the cross of Christ is at its heart is a symbol of reconciliation.  The crosses of Cloyne and Ballycotton tell us that the Church can suffer terribly at the hands of another people and still choose reconciliation. They tell us that faith is strongest, not weakest, when it can honour what is true and good in another tradition—that the craftsman did not lose his Christianity by setting a Muslim inscription at the centre of his cross; he proclaimed something deeper: that the God he worshipped is God over all peoples.

St. Paul writes “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and committing to us the ministry of reconciliation”. (2 Corinthians 5: 19) We gather tonight not primarily to show the Bishop to his seat, but as of first importance to worship the Christ who died for us to reconcile us to God and to each other.

All Ministry, episcopal, priestly, diaconal or of every baptised person marked with the cross, flows from that and is shaped by that task: to proclaim in word and action the ministry of reconciliation. The two crosses of East Cork are tangible parables in metalwork of the message of reconciliation that Christ has committed to each one of us.

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