Neal Carlin

Here is the bio Fr Neal had written prior to his death on 6th August 2021. Before he died Fr Neal managed to get all his books in digital form and available on Amazon Kindle. Our efforts at promoting these books is hampered by our lack of marketing skills and available time and man / woman power. We will struggle on thank you for reading this far.

Hello My name is Fr.Neal Carlin. Ordained in 1964 I spent my early priesthood in Scotland before returning home to minister in Derry City at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. I spent a sabbatical year visiting the major emerging Christian communities and houses of prayer in the United States. The Pecos Community, New Mexico, with its emphasis on inner healing and forgiveness was a major spiritual experience and its influence is seen throughout all my books. I felt the Holy Spirit guiding me into the ministry of peace and reconciliation and went on to found in Derry City, Northern Ireland, Columba House, a centre for prayer, healing and reconciliation.

This led to the creation of the Columba Community in 1980, (which many regard as a model for the renewal of the Irish Church) and then to the development of St. Anthony’s Retreat Centre, White Oaks Rehabilitation Centre, The Iosas Visitors’ Centre and Celtic Prayer Garden (and its accompanying literature) and in the same campus The Sanctuary Centre with five live-in apartments and a small conference centre available for hire; all just across the border in Co.Donegal. I celebrated my fiftieth anniversay in the priesthood on 31st May 2014 and have continued ministering in all those centres till the present day.

During those years I felt the need to record these events and published four books Freedom to Captives in 1983, Favourite Celtic Saints A Simple Book of Prayers, 2010, ’They That Wait Upon the Lord’ in 2014 and The Eagle Tiger and Covid 2020.

Nowadays, due to illness and Covid combined I am confined to home. I decided to write a book entitled The Eagle The Tiger And Covid (subtitle Imaging God Re-Calling Ireland whose cover is a dramatic graphic depicting of an Eagle as The Transcendent God, The Tiger as The Celtic Economy and The Covid Sign)

All four books are now available on Amazon Kindle and I have no doubt they will prove useful in any future study of the Christian Church in Ireland and will help in any further revitalisation of the Catholic Church in Ireland especially in the feffort to promote a truly synodal church.

For the record all proceeds from The Eagle Tiger and Covid will presently go to aid the children of Yemen though Medicene sans Frontiers.