My grandmother Agnes Hennessy’s first cousin Fr Dermot Kavanagh sadly passed away on 8th January 2021, at the great age of 90. Fr Dermot as we always knew him was from Ballybeg, just outside the Co. Wicklow village of Rathnew, where his parents Thomas Kavanagh and Elizabeth Kinsella had a farm. Fr Dermot was away serving as a priest in California when I was growing up but I knew his sister May who visited my grandmother often and his brother John, who I would see at Rathnew Gaelic football matches, quite well. Fr Dermot was a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit and was famous locally for serving as a priest in Nigeria during the Biafran civil war in the 1960s where he was captured and imprisoned for a time by the Nigerian authorities. During his imprisonment he served mass with a chalice given to him upon his ordination by his parents and he apparently also saved the diocesan archives before he was captured by hiding them safely. In an immense humanitarian gesture Fr Dermot saved a large group of Biafran child refugees from the war torn region, bringing them all to live in a caravan on his siblings farm, an episode in his life still fondly remembered today in the Rathnew, Glenealy and Wicklow Town areas.
After his time spent as a priest in Africa Fr Dermot’s career took him to the USA where he spent most of his time in California. Highly regarded in his work there he often visited Ireland and Rathnew where he would pay us grandchildren a whole pound to score twenty goals against the door of our grandparents’ shed, probably because he wanted to speak in peace to granny for a few minutes. During the last few years of his life Fr Dermot returned to live at the family place in Rathnew where he was highly regarded by the villagers for the time he always had available for them when needed. Sadly Fr Dermot took ill with cancer during the last few years of his life and eventually he moved to the Knockrobin Care Home where he passed away earlier this year.
A capable, kind and family orientated man, Fr Dermot Kavanagh will be sadly missed by all who had the privilege to know him.