{"id":350451,"date":"2026-03-17T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T08:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/350451\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T08:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T08:30:09","slug":"the-parish-were-grieving-for-the-loss-of-their-beautiful-church-fr-brian-o-fearraigh-on-losing-st-marys-in-donegal-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/350451\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The parish were grieving for the loss of their beautiful church.\u2019 Fr Brian \u00d3 Fearraigh on losing St Mary\u2019s in Donegal last year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">The priest happened to be in the middle of filming a new Irish-language show at the time\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"St Mary's Church in Derrybeg, Co Donegal after the 2025 fire. Photo: Joe Dunne \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/5d1504d5-36d1-47f9-8148-2026397f0035.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">St Mary&#8217;s Church in Derrybeg, Co Donegal after the 2025 fire. Photo: Joe Dunne <\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A remote Donegal parish and its Gaeilgeoir priest became near household names last year when the nation awoke on Easter Monday to learn St Mary\u2019s Church in Derrybeg had burnt to the ground overnight.   <\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Fr Brian \u00d3 Fearraigh had been asleep in the parochial house when he was roused before dawn by a frantic phone call telling him \u201cthe church is on fire\u201d. He looked out the back window to see a raging inferno illuminating the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The priest happened to be in the middle of filming a new Irish-language show at the time St&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6992,6085],"class_list":["post-350451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-people-culture-magazine","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}