Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ to leave Raphoe Diocese for Down and Connor

Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ will leave his post as the Bishop of Raphoe.

It has been confirmed that Bishop McGuckian has been appointed by Pope Francis as the new Bishop of the Diocese of Down and Connor. 

Bishop McGuckian was publicly announced as Bishop of Down and Connor at Mass on Friday morning at Saint Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast by chief celebrant Bishop Donal McKeown, Bishop of Derry and Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Down and Connor.

He will succeed Archbishop Noel Treanor, who was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union in 2022.

In June 2017, Bishop McGuckian was appointed as the Bishop of Raphoe and he was ordained on August 6, 2017.

“I would not be telling the whole truth if I did not say that it will be a terrible wrench for me to leave the priests and people of Raphoe,” Bishop McGuckian said.

“ I have been very privileged to serve among many people deeply committed to the faith; they show it in their daily lives, in the ways they look after one another in community and it was a bittersweet source of pride to me that Donegal uniquely had a pro-life majority in the abortion referendum some years ago. 

“Donegal people took me into their hearts and have inspired me and I will miss them greatly.”

In 1972, he joined the Jesuit novitiate in Clontarf in Dublin having studied a year of First Arts in Queen’s University, Belfast, where he studied Irish and Scholastic Philosophy.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1984 and worked in County Kildare before spending time in India and the Philippines.

From 1992-2003, Father Alan served as appointed as Director of the Jesuit Communication Centre in Dublin and from 2012-2017 he worked  closely with the Diocese of Down and Connor in the ‘Living Church’ project.

He said: “My roots are entirely in the Diocese of Down and Connor. Father Gerry Park baptised me and Father Vincent McKinley gave me my first Holy Communion in Cloughmills.  Bishop Philbin confirmed me in Dunloy. 

“This is where I come from and I am humbled and privileged that, after all my wanderings, the bishop of Rome has chosen to send me home.”

Bishop McKeown welcomed the arrival of Bishop McGuckian to ‘his native soil’.

He said: “He is no stranger.  He is now coming back to his native soil – the diocese where he was born and went to school and the diocesan family where he served as part of the Jesuit community in Belfast for 12 years.”