The president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, paid tribute to one of the great Irish theologians who died in Dublin on 24 February. A former student who became a fellow professor of moral theology at Maynooth remembers a valued mentor and friend

Covid brought added poignancy to the obsequies for Maynooth’s Professor Enda McDonagh on the last weekend in February: so few to say farewell to one whose life touched the lives of so many, whose welcome to all was always generous and warm. And the chants seemed somehow more plaintive, fewer voices and from a distance, along the length of the great College Chapel. It was just over a year since he had left Maynooth, his home since he arrived there as a student in 1948, for the care of the staff of Holy Family Residence in Roebuck Road in Dublin.

Enda McDonagh was born in Bekan, Co. Mayo, on 27 June 1930, the second of three sons of teachers, educated locally and at St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, whence to Maynooth, a student for the presbyterate of Tuam. His first degree was a BSc and in 1951 he began a study of theology which culminated in a doctorate in divinity in 1957. Though encouraged by Professor James McConnell to pursue science, he was directed by his archbishop to the Angelicum in Rome, and it was a time when you went where you were sent. A year later he was appointed to a chair in moral theology and canon law in Maynooth. This meant ­getting another doctorate, and after studies in Rome and Munich he began teaching in Maynooth in 1960. Apart from a couple of sabbaticals and a three-year stint at Notre Dame, Indiana, he taught in Maynooth till his retirement in 1995.