A New Life: One-time accountant and tax inspector, Rev Olive Donohoe outlines to Sylvia Thompson the completeness of her life as an Anglican priest
Throughout her adult life, Olive Donohoe (46) always knew she wanted to be a priest.
As a science student in Trinity College, Dublin in the 1970s, she joined the guild of change-ringers who rang the bells of Christ Church Cathedral, St Patrick's Cathedral and the Augustinian church (John's Lane) in Thomas Street, Dublin.
Soon afterwards she converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism and, although she happily worked as a certified accountant and later a tax inspector through the 1980s, she had a sense that other things were to be.
"Looking back now, I see my other jobs as part of my training for life and although when I became an Anglican, the ordination of women wasn't yet on the agenda, I even considered moving to the US if women were not being ordained in the Church of Ireland [Anglican Church] by the time I was 35," she explains.
Now a Church of Ireland rector based in Mountmellick, Co Laois, she seems completely fulfilled in her role and smiles reflectively as she discusses the circuitous route she followed to arrive there.
"When I left college in 1979, trainee accountants were the only jobs being advertised in the newspapers. It was during the recession and I knew I didn't want to teach so I joined a firm of chartered accountants in Dublin."
From there, she moved to the Sunday Tribune, working in the accounts department during Vincent Browne's tenure as editor.
"Those were a really exciting few years - seeing how a newspaper operates and how reporters work. It was very hard to settle down into another job after that," Rev Donohue says.
However, an earlier application to join the Revenue Commissioners as a trainee inspector of taxes saw her leave accountancy to join the civil service.
During all this time, she was quietly becoming more involved in the Anglican church, attending services at St Anne's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin. Her earlier belonging to the Catholic tradition proved to be no barrier.
"My parents - both of whom were a big influence on me - were deeply spiritual people.
"My father used to say our prayers with us - my brothers and sisters and I - at night. So I feel my move to the Church of Ireland was merely a move sideways.
"It is a reformed Catholic tradition and I just found the familiarity between people and the whole way of being much more appealing," she explains.
Her personal and professional turning point came when the Church of Ireland decided in the late 1980s that women could be ordained as priests.
"I knew then that everything was going to change for me," she says. Soon afterwards, she joined the 'fellowship of vocation', a group in which those who are thinking about becoming priests meet to share prayers and discussions.
This led to a week-long residential interview process in which candidates are chosen for training as Anglican priests. "I was quite sure they wouldn't accept me but they did," she says.
She resigned from her job in the civil service on a Friday and moved in as a live-in student to the Church of Ireland theological college in Dublin on the following Sunday evening.
Following her training there and a master's degree in pastoral leadership at All Hallows College, Drumcondra, Dublin, she spent three years in Bandon, Co Cork, as a curate to Rev Michael Burrows.
"These were three of the best years of my life," she says, smiling widely.
Next came, the search for a parish of her own.
When the vacancy in the Mountmellick group of parishes came up, she was selected for the position and accepted. And there she has remained for the past six years.
"I love rural ministry. It's actually the closeness to the earth and the changing seasons which I find deeply nourishing on a spiritual level.
"My mother died just before I moved to Mountmellick [my father had died 11 years earlier] so for my first year there, I really feel the people ministered to me which made a big difference," she says.
Now apart from taking the weekly services, baptisms, marriages and funerals and her other pastoral duties, Rev Donohoe is, among other things, the honorary treasurer of the Church of Ireland aid agency, The Bishops Appeal, and an active member of the Laois Refugee and Ethnic Minority Support Group.
Financially speaking, she's secure and content. "Money is not an issue for me. For a single person, the stipend is generous," she says.
But, more importantly, Rev Donohoe says her life has a wholeness which makes up for being on call 24 hours a day.
"What I now feel most is that my life is integrated in a way it wasn't before. It's a huge blessing to live your faith in your whole life."