WEST JORDAN — A mass in honor of St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint, will be celebrated in Utah on Mar. 18 – the day after St. Patrick’s Day – at Saint Joseph the Worker Catholic Church by three priests from County Tipperary, Ireland, who were ordained for the Diocese of Salt Lake City in the 1960s. Music for the Mass and for a dinner following will be performed by a group of Irish musicians hailing from the parishes of Upperchurch and Thurles in County Tipperary. Thurles was home to Saint Patrick’s College, once one of the largest Catholic seminaries in Ireland, which supplied generations of priests to Utah. Among the last in the long line of Utah priests raised in Thurles and Upperchurch are current Utah priests Father Patrick Carley, Father Jim Semple and Monsignor Matthew Wixted. Msgr. Wixted, who is serving as Grand Marshal for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade (presented by the Hibernian Society of Utah Mar. 17 at the Gateway Center), was born in Upperchurch, where his parents ran the one-room schoolhouse. Fr. Carley and Fr. Semple were raised in Thurles. The group of young traditional musicians visiting Utah this month honed their craft at an Upperchurch farmhouse pub known as Jim O the Mills, one of the last remaining traditional shabeens in Ireland. Pub owner and expert fiddler "Jim O the Mills" Ryan will accompany the young musicians. Mass is at 5 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, 7405 S. Redwood Road. A corned beef-and-cabbage dinner and traditional music session will follow in the parish hall. Tickets, which are $10 for a regular meal, $7 for seniors and children under 12 and $5 for a hot dog meal, will be sold at the door.
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