A History Of Loneliness

In 2001, Father Odran Yates visits his sister, Hannah, for a dinner she does not remember inviting him to. Hannah, whose husband Kristian died the previous year, shows signs of cognitive decline, confusing the past and present and referring to Kristian as if he were still alive. Her younger son, Jonas, a quiet sixteen-year-old, gives Odran a copy of a short story he has published. As Odran leaves, Jonas expresses concern for his mother’s mental state, but Odran dismisses it. Later that night, Odran stops at a grotto in Inchicore and witnesses a young priest in a state of extreme anguish, beating his head while an older woman, likely his mother, weeps nearby. The scene fills Odran with a sense of foreboding.

The narrative moves to 2006. Odran, who has been a teacher and chaplain at Terenure College for twenty-seven years, is summoned to see Archbishop Jim Cordington. Fearing the meeting is about his disgraced former colleague, Father Miles Donlan, who was recently imprisoned for child abuse, Odran is instead told he is being transferred to a parish. The Archbishop informs him he will be replacing his old seminary friend, Tom Cardle, who supposedly recommended him for the post. Odran recalls meeting the deeply unhappy Tom on their first day at Clonliffe College seminary in 1972. The Archbishop cryptically mentions that the altar boys in Tom’s parish nicknamed him “Satan” and promises the move is temporary, until a “delicate” matter is cleared up. After the meeting, Odran learns that Hannah has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.

A flashback to 1964 details Odran’s childhood with his parents, Gloria and William, his sister Hannah, and his younger brother, Cathal. His father, a failed actor, becomes bitter and depressed after a disastrous performance in an Abbey Theatre play leads to his being banned from the stage. During a family holiday in Wexford, following a severe argument with Gloria, William asks nine-year-old Odran to go swimming. Odran refuses, so William takes four-year-old Cathal instead. At Curracloe Beach, William drowns Cathal before killing himself. In the aftermath, Gloria becomes intensely religious and, after a supposed epiphany, declares that Odran has a vocation to be a priest, a path sealed years later when an incident with a neighborhood girl prompts the intervention of the parish priest.

In 1980, the newly ordained Odran travels to Galway to visit Tom Cardle. In a pub, Tom, dressed in civilian clothes, expresses bitterness about his career and recounts an angry confrontation with a young couple during a marriage class in his first parish in Leitrim. Odran learns Tom was moved from Leitrim after only a year, but Tom refuses to explain why. A flashback to 1972 shows sixteen-year-old Odran becoming infatuated with a neighbor, Katherine Summers. When his mother finds them kissing in his bedroom, she calls the parish priest, Father Haughton. The priest’s subsequent conversation with Odran is sexually invasive and disturbing.

By 2010, Odran is still in his parish assignment. He counsels a parishioner, Ann Sullivan, whose son, Evan, has a boyfriend. Odran supports Evan, advising Ann to accept her son. The pervasive distrust of the clergy is highlighted when Odran must wait for a non-priest adult to supervise the weekly altar boy meeting, filling him with shame. A flashback to 1973 details the regimented life at Clonliffe College. Tom’s unhappiness culminates in a classroom outburst where he obscenely challenges a priest on clerical celibacy. He runs away for a week but is returned by his father, visibly beaten and emotionally broken.

In 2011, Odran has lunch with Jonas, now a successful author. Jonas reveals that a former Terenure student was abused by Father Donlan and is now in prison for robbery. He also informs Odran that his other nephew, Aidan, lives in Norway and wants no contact with him. Later, Odran tries to help a lost boy in a department store but is mistaken for an abductor, assaulted, and arrested. He is humiliated at the Garda station before being released without charge.

The narrative returns to 1978, when Odran is sent to Rome for his final year of study. He is assigned as a personal attendant to Pope Paul VI. He develops an obsessive infatuation with a woman at a local café and begins stalking her. After Pope Paul VI dies, Cardinal Albino Luciani is elected Pope John Paul I. One night, Odran breaks into the woman’s apartment, where she and her lover discover and humiliate him. Devastated, Odran abandons his post at the Vatican and wanders Rome all night. He returns the next morning to discover that Pope John Paul I has died. He is instructed to lie about his absence and is soon dismissed from his role by the new Pope, John Paul II.

During a visit to Tom in Wexford in 1990, Odran witnesses a troubled boy, Brian Kilduff, slashing Tom’s tires. The incident triggers a memory of seeing a large bruise on Tom’s shoulder at the seminary years earlier, shortly after another student had made an allegation of assault, filling Odran with a guilt he suppresses.

In 1994, Odran’s mother dies of a stroke. Tom Cardle travels from his parish in Tralee to co-celebrate the funeral mass. At the wake, Odran’s eight-year-old nephew, Aidan, is a charismatic and joyful boy. Tom takes a special interest in Aidan and, having been drinking, accepts an invitation to stay the night in the spare room next to Aidan’s. Odran leaves the wake seeing Tom with a hand on Aidan’s shoulder, noting that this was the last time he saw that happy version of his nephew.

In 2007, after taking Hannah to a long-term care facility, Odran demands to be returned to Terenure. Archbishop Cordington refuses and reveals the truth: the church has a massive file on Tom Cardle, documenting decades of abuse allegations. He was moved from parish to parish as part of a cover-up, and a criminal investigation is now imminent.

In 2008, Odran attends the first day of Tom’s trial, where he is confronted by Brian Kilduff’s mother, who informs him that Brian committed suicide as a boy. After a trial lasting nearly three weeks, Tom is found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In 2012, Odran travels to Norway to confront Aidan. In an emotional meeting, Aidan confirms that Tom abused him on the night of his grandmother’s funeral, which caused his abrupt personality change from a happy child to an angry young man. They begin a fragile reconciliation. The following year, Odran uses veiled blackmail about the cover-up to force the new archbishop to allow him to return to Terenure. After Hannah dies, Odran picks Tom up from prison on his release day. In a final, bitter confrontation, Tom blames his abusive father and the church for his actions but also accuses Odran of being complicit through his lifelong “Grand Silence,” insisting Odran suspected the truth for years but chose to ignore it. Shattered, Odran goes to the Inchicore grotto and lies on the ground, finally accepting his own guilt and realizing he can no longer hide from the world or his role in its history of loneliness.