Corpus Christi

This amateur film by Father Jack Delany shows members of the inner city parish participating in the annual Corpus Christi procession, a Roman Catholic ritual celebrating the Eucharist.

Traditionally all Catholic parishioners attended. In Father Delany’s film we see children in their first holy communion and other religious attire.

Father Jack Delany (1906-1980) was ordained in 1930 at the age of 24 and served as a parish priest in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. He served mainly around Seán McDermott Street (then Gloucester Street), Rutland Street and Gardiner Street. His films offer a fascinating glimpse of life at the time in inner-city Dublin and include scenes of trips with parishioners, tenement life, school children at play, religious processions, and residents of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Convent (which housed a Magdalene Laundry).

To see more of The Father Delany Collection, click here.

With kind permission of Irene Devitt.