Belief and hope in the pub of one of Ireland’s last faith healers

Joe Gallagher performs faith healing at his pub in central Ireland – Copyright AFP Pedro Pardo

Peter MURPHY

Joe Gallagher is one of Ireland’s last traditional faith healers, whose pub is visited by believers from across the country hoping for a cure for aches and pains, warts and rashes.

The 77-year-old former monk has even performed an exorcism.

Gallagher, who also runs The Pull Inn in the tiny village of Pollagh in central Ireland, sees himself as part of “a dying breed”.

He is also a seventh son, which in Irish folklore traditionally meant someone likely to have supernatural or healing powers.

“Where do you have seven of a family now, never mind seven sons?” he said, with once common large families now a rarity in Ireland.

“There’s nobody can afford to have seven children, and then it’s just by luck if you have seven sons,” he told AFP.

Belief in faith healers, curing charms and folk medicine is still a way of life for many in Roman Catholic-majority Ireland, if a fading one.

Every Sunday morning Gallagher’s family offer cups of milky tea and biscuits to dozens of visitors who wait nervously in the bar.

“I’m praying for a miracle now, I’m 28 weeks’ pregnant with my first child, but my baby’s heart is in trouble,” said Maryrose, 35, who said she travelled from distant Waterford.

Her 62-year-old mother said it was her “first time visiting a seventh son”.

“I take medicine for high blood pressure, sometimes it works but more times it doesn’t, so please God Joe might have a cure for me too,” she said.

– ‘The cure’ – 

The bespectacled Gallagher joined a Franciscan monastery in the 1960s but left when he was 25 as he was unable to work as a missionary abroad.

“Being a monk helped me with my faith,” he said. “I have a strong belief in God and in prayer, there’s nothing better than prayer,” he said.

In 1971 he bought the pub, whose walls are adorned with photos of regulars and Gaelic football and hurling teams, and the entrance is topped by lucky horseshoes.

A blurry black and white photo shows a row of six brothers with a smiling Gallagher the youngest — and last surviving — in the line. Another brother, Oliver, died in infancy. 

“When I was born the parish priest called to see my mother and said to her, ‘This lad must have the cure, sure, isn’t he the seventh son?’” he said.

To prove whether the infant Joe had “the cure”, a worm was placed in his hand, and promptly died.

“From then on I’ve been doing the cures, long before I ever knew what I was doing, but as I grew up I realised I had this gift, and had to do it,” he said.

Gallagher doesn’t charge for his services but visitors can donate to a children’s hospital if they wish.

Told never to refuse anybody, he was once asked to “do an exorcism” for a Polish man.

“That was frightening, it’s not something I’d be happy to do too often,” he said.

Inside the small living room where he receives visitors, religious items, crucifixes and vials of holy water look down from shelves.

After enquiring about the complaint, Gallagher places his hand on the affected area, rubs ointment and calls for divine help.

“Heal this little baby,” he said, stroking the sole of an infant’s foot as the father held the child.

“It’s only a little touch of rash,” he added soothingly.

– Hectic schedule –

Gallagher asks visitors to pray themselves and return three Sundays in succession, which makes for a hectic schedule.

“Sometimes people might have to come back more if it’s not cleared up, but there’s always an improvement,” he said, adding that he has no intention to retire.

“I get a great feeling if somebody comes back to me and says, ‘That worked, Joe’, so why should I stop?”

For Dubliner Shane Brennan, 62, afflicted with joint pain and wincing with discomfort as he hobbled from the pub, “it’s all about faith”.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe, now it’s fingers crossed and pray to God, sure, what more can a man do?” he said. 

“Faith healers offer something that is more than physical,” Cecily Gilligan, author of a book on Irish traditional cures, told AFP.

“There is a psychological and spiritual dimension as well,” she said.

“Even though huge changes have taken place in Irish society and religious observance has greatly declined, there is still something deep within people and when they need help they can turn to healers and the old cures,” she said.