I was 16 and had just sat the Leaving Cert at Farranferris College, Cork, when I decided that I was going to be a priest. The formidable Bishop of Cork, the late Cornelius Lucey, had fallen out with the powers that be in Maynooth and he was sending students from his diocese abroad — some to Rome, others to Spain. He dispatched me to Spain, to Seminario de San José in the provincial town of Palacio in Castile.
The youngest of eight from a west Cork farming family outside Ballinspittle, I was being catapulted into a world of wonder in 1973. My introduction to Spain was taking the slow train from Madrid to Palacio. I was in warm Irish clothes, almost passing out in the baking heat. We stopped at every station and all sorts of characters were coming on and getting off. An old woman was travelling with a rooster, his eyes covered with a cap; men wore flat black berets, women were in long dresses and shawls, widows dressed in black for life.
It was General Franco’s Spain, the church ruled and priests wore ordinary suits and were paid salaries by the state. Bishop Lucey had warned me not to get involved with any organisations or political movements with Franco still alive. It was still a raw society under his dictatorship and that made me a little apprehensive about going out there.
I vividly remember his death in 1975 because we were hauled out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the seminary church to pray for him through his dying hours.
It was as though there were two Catholic churches in Spain: on one side those of liberation theology who had a modern approach to the priesthood — the “worker priests” — and on the other Opus Dei in their cassocks and pointy hats who had their own churches and were ultra-strict and conservative. I was in the liberal one, thankfully, learning a broad palette of philosophy, history and the liturgy.
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One of the customs that surprised me most was el abrazo (the hug). It was almost the equivalent of being assaulted. Men were kissing men and that was alien to me as Ireland was not at all expressive in those days.
Seminarians and priests drank wine with lunch and dinner. To my undeveloped palate that wine tasted of vinegar. The college had its own vineyard and we would be packed into a wobbly old Citroën to go to the farm, pick the grapes in baskets, take off our shoes and socks and stamp up and down on them in the traditional way.
The seminary’s students were so kind and generous. Someone always brought me home with them at weekends rather than leave me alone in the college. I remember being taken to a little village with a student whose widowed mother did all the cooking on a little fire, like the open fires of Ireland long ago, producing delicious food out of old black pans.
Our choral master, Don Leoncio, introduced me to all the great composers. I was one of the tenors in the choir. One evening the guy who was meant to sing the solo — it was a Basque folk song we were doing — didn’t turn up. I think he was sick. The choral master turned to me and said: “You come out and sing solo.” I didn’t have time to be terrified or even nervous and this was my first public performance at a concert singing solo.
After returning to Ireland I went on to Maynooth and was ordained at the age of 22, a few years younger than the canonical age, requiring a dispensation from Rome. The next year I served as deacon for John Paul II’s Phoenix Park mass and read the gospel in front of a congregation of 1.25 million people — one of the great hurrahs of Irish Catholicism. It was surreal to be at the centre of that, looking out at that huge sea of people. Afterwards the Pope said: “It’s the first time I’ve had a real deacon.” Normally in Rome the cardinals act as deacons.
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In 1987 I left the priesthood. Looking back, there was an inevitability about that and I’ve never regretted the decision. I often look back on those wonderful two years in Spain, discovering a whole new culture of music, paintings, new tastes, the warmth of the Spanish, their passion for life, the vibrancy of colours and their glorious climate. That experience certainly helped me later in my career as a romantic singer and entertainer.
Finbar Wright will give a solo concert at the Cork Opera House on February 12 and 13, 2022. See www.corkoperahouse.ie