The history of Holy Cross is a record of achievement: an achievement in which we rejoice and for which we give sincere thanks to God, as the Giver of all Good.

As a story, it is interesting; interesting to look back to the beginning, to recapture the plans and dreams of the first Community and congregation, to grasp their aspirations and the atmosphere in which their work began, to follow their development down the years, and to trace how the Ardoyne of today has grown from the seed that was sown in August 1868.

That the pioneers were men of faith and courage there can be no doubt. At the opening of the first little church, on 10 January 1869, His Lordship, the Most Rev. Dr. Dorrian, said that it was but ‘an earnest of what would be hereafter done, when a more beautiful and architectural edifice took its place.’  His Lordship was expressing an unquestioning confidence of that first little Community. Conditions were difficult and there wants were many. They were starting Religious Life in a broken-down cottage bought with borrowed money. But, confident in the Goodness of God, they had no hesitancy. The future would be all right.

And the future WAS all right. Rector exceeded Rector; the Community changed with the changing years; but the work and the growth went on. First a Church; then Schools; then a Monastery; then the Church of today – a Church that is ‘considered by many to be the most beautiful Catholic Church in Ireland.’[1]

However, there was a time when there were no Passionists in – or should we say on – Ardoyne, the height of which tops and crowns the Crumlin Road. In 2002, we celebrated the Centenary of the building of the Church, and it is hard to believe as one looks at its mass of solid towers that it was not always there.

The plain truth is that, when the first Fathers arrived, Ardoyne was nothing more than a few tumbledown cottages standing forlornly upon three-quarters of an acre of scraggy grassland. In one of these there lived a grumpy cowherd who refused to budge. They had no home. Literally, they had not whereon to lay their heads, and the Dairy of the Retreat preserves this note for posterity. ‘It may, perhaps interest somebody to know that the first week we spent in Belfast, Fr Raphael never slept in the same bed and Br. Luke was like a fish out of water.' There are other things besides which are interesting and which give the story of those first days a touch of true adventure.

Ardoyne via Portaferry

The New Retreat At Holy Cross