Father Richard Gibbons grew up not far from the famous Knock Shrine as a child, but his journey as a priest has taken him from County Mayo to Rome to Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. 

As rector of Ireland’s Knock Shrine, Father Gibbons oversees one of Catholicism’s most enigmatic apparition sites, where the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, an altar, and an image of the Lamb of God appeared silently to 15 witnesses in August 1879. What sets Knock apart from other Marian apparitions, he explains, is its profound complexity. 

“It’s a silent apparition, and it’s a very complex apparition,” Father Gibbons told The Good Newsroom in an interview on September 21. He was visiting the archdiocese at the invitation of Cardinal Timothy Dolan to concelebrate and give the homily at the Mass of dedication for St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s new entryway mural, which features the apparition. “As I always say to people who wonder whether it happened at all, you just couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s too complex. If you want to perpetrate a fraud, you just keep it to Our Lady. That’s it. They don’t start adding in altars and the lambs and all sorts of things into it because the story wouldn’t hold up.” 

The priest’s own path to Knock began in Newbridge, near Westport in County Mayo, where like countless Irish families, the Gibbons’ household, made annual pilgrimages to the shrine. His personal connection to the site runs deep, rooted in childhood memories that many Irish Catholics share. 

“Nearly every family in the country went to Knock once a year. You kind of hopped in the car with everybody,” he recalled. “I remember when we were young in the ’70s, I was five or six or whatever. There were no real facilities there. You ate out of the trunk of the car and took your chances with the weather.” The area now features greater tourist infrastructure and its own airport.  

Father Gibbons originally set out to study law at college in Galway, but felt called to the priesthood. After six years of study in Rome and ordination to the priesthood, he returned to work in his home diocese before being assigned to Knock in 2003, where he has served ever since, becoming rector in 2012. 

At the shrine, he has witnessed the transformative power of what he calls the “engine room” of Knock, the Sacrament of Reconciliation. With 16 chaplains stationed at the shrine, confession has become central to the site’s spiritual mission. 

“We have a huge ministry in terms of confessions. I call it our engine room. That’s the engine room of the shrine. That’s where all the work happens,” Father Gibbons explained. “They do a fantastic job in terms of just making people feel relaxed and welcome and just let the Lord do His work through that.” 

The connection between Knock and New York has been strengthened through a remarkable story involving one of the original witnesses to the 1879 apparition. John Curry, who was just five years old when he witnessed the apparition, later immigrated to New York, where his story took a poignant turn.

“He was buried on Long Island; he died in 1943. The family couldn’t go over. He was a penniless man when he died. The Little Sisters of the Poor took him in here in New York,” Father Gibbons recounted. “But we found the grave then. We located it. I wanted to put a headstone on the grave, and I mentioned it to Cardinal Dolan. He said we’ll do something better. We’ll disinter and bring him to New York.” Curry was reburied at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2017.  

Cardinal Dolan has long felt a close connection to the Knock Shrine, one that provided the initial inspiration for what became artist Adam Cvijanovic’s mural that now adorns the entrance to St. Patrick’s and depicts the apparition, along with the immigration story of New York, and its first responders.  

Father Gibbons praised the mural’s presentation of the apparition. “It’s a beautiful depiction of it. At Knock, it’s all one, but here it’s separated up between the lamb and the altar and the three figures. But it unites the whole thing because you’re dealing with a large area. You’re dealing with an entrance area. So what he’s done, I’m very proud of it, very happy with it.”

Watch Father Gibbons’ homily from the Mass of dedication for the new mural here.