Derry's St Columb’s Cathedral to host special exhibition commemorating St Brigid

Derry's St Columb’s Cathedral is to host a special exhibition this summer commemorating the patroness saint of Ireland, St Brigid of Kildare, who died 1,500 years ago this year.

The ‘Festival of Cloaks’ will feature around 40 ceremonial garments, with the four cloaks of St Brigid – representing the four provinces of Ireland – as the centrepiece. These were made by two Irish artists, Lorna McCormack and Michelle Hickey Legge, to mark the sesquimillenial anniversary of the saint’s death.

The items on display will include ecclesiastical garments such as the Armagh Cope of the Church of Ireland in Armagh and Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander’s cape. There will be nurses' cloaks, academic cloaks, ‘Joseph’s coat of many colours’ which was made in Bangor, a cloak from the Order of St John of Jerusalem and Malta, and a palliative care cloak – as the word palliative derives from a Roman word for a cloak, representing the ‘cloak of care’ being wrapped around a patient. There will also be a new cloak representing the city.

If funding permits, creative workshops will be held in the Cathedral’s Chapter House during the last two weeks in June, and a musical programme is also being prepared.

The festival is believed to be the first event of its kind in Northern Ireland. It will be opened by the Bishop of Meath & Kildare, Most Reverend Pat Storey, on Friday 14th June at 7.30pm, and the cloaks will remain on display in St Columb’s Cathedral until Saturday 31st August.

The Cathedral is part of the ‘Coventry Cross of Nails’ network, which reaches out to everyone in love and peace, and people from different nationalities are invited to come to next month’s opening ceremony in national dress.