Meet the former garda who found a new role in the Church of Ireland after retirement and divorce
How women are treated in the Catholic Church drove Rev Mike Buchanan (58) from the tradition into which he was born to the Church of Ireland priesthood. It cost him his marriage, but, unexpectedly, it has also brought him a fiancee. There are interesting lives, and then there is Buchanan’s varied and most unusual preparation for Anglican ministry. Next Tuesday, he will be installed as Rector of Tullow parish in south Co Dublin, which includes Carrickmines and Foxrock. “I’ve been around the block a little,” he says. Mike Buchanan grew up in Old Bawn, Tallaght, with a brother and sister. His late father was a wages supervisor at Roadstone, formerly Clondalkin Concrete, while his mother, now in her 80s, remains Catholic, but also proud of him, her rector son. He attended the Christian Brothers in Dolphin’s Barn, which he described as “a great education”. “I loved the Brothers and I was actually asked to become a Brother after my Inter Cert,” he says, but he “politely declined, because I had in mind the priesthood”. Clare councillor quits politics to enter Catholic priesthood “I was talking to the Jesuits at the time – I was always drawn to the Ignatian form of spirituality,” he says. A teacher he found to be particularly impressive there was Br John O’Reilly, who had spent years in South America, including Uruguay. O’Reilly was a teacher at the order’s Stella Maris College in Montevideo, and “of the guys who were involved in that plane crash”. Buchanan is referring to the rugby team from Stella Maris, who with their family and friends were among 45 people involved in the Andes plane crash of October 1972 in which all were killed except 16. The survivors were not found for 72 days. O’Reilly “was very ecumenical for the ’80s and had a great outlook on life, a very measured man, and I talked to him about the priesthood”, says Buchanan. But the Dubliner had a problem with the Catholic Church. “I didn’t like the way women couldn’t be involved. One of my earliest influences, my paternal grandmother; she was fantastic, and I used to go to Knock with the ladies on pilgrimage when I was small,” he says. He recalls those women being “so focused on the Church” and yet they “couldn’t really actively participate in a meaningful way”. “In conscience, I couldn’t make the final step,” he says, abandoning a path towards the Catholic priesthood. Instead, he joined the Garda , which he says “seemed the next attractive proposition – I was drawn to public service”. Over the following 31 years he served across Dublin, including in stations in Kevin Street, Kilmainham, Ballyfermot, Ronanstown and Blanchardstown, as well as in specialist appointments, among them Garda communications. “The guards were always a community-oriented police force, building on relationships, getting to know people,” he adds. Buchanan was promoted to the rank of sergeant in 1999 and spent two years at Garda headquarters in internal affairs, which meant investigating colleagues. He also survived a plane crash. A member of the Garda Flying Club, in 1999 he and an instructor colleague at Weston in Dublin were flying on a blustery summer afternoon when their engine cut out. “It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in,” he says. They landed upside down in a cornfield and, smelling fuel, unstrapped themselves fast and ran. The plane did not go on fire. On arrival back at Weston , a man who ran a flying school there “threw a set of keys at Tom [the instructor] and said: `Take my plane and go and do a circuit – back on the horse.’ So we did. And then we went to the Deadman’s Inn,” he says drily, referring to the well-known west Dublin pub. Buchanan also spent a year serving with the United Nations in Cyprus. Through all the decades – and his adventures – he says he “never lost my faith; I always had a strong faith”, even if he did not “attend church as often as I should”. A significant influence on that faith has been his friendship with Rev Mark Hayden, now Archdeacon of Ossory and Leighlin. ‘We had originally planned to go to Spain, buy a house there and looked into schools and all the rest of it, but something was drawing me back towards the Church’ Mike Buchanan on life before his divorce “Mark and I go back a long way,” he says; both share an interest in military memorabilia. Rev Hayden had been rector in Gorey, Co Wexford, where Buchanan had a house. “I started going to Mark’s services, so when I went to Cyprus – where there’s a lot of British Army presence – services there were Church of England. I got to know the chaplains and attended the services,” he says. He discovered “that Anglicanism was more where I belonged. It was more in line with my theology.” There were also women priests, another factor which helped him realise “that’s where I really belong”, he says. In 2019 he began studying for a BA in Theology at Dublin City University. Around 2020-21, he was also coming up to 30 years of service in the Garda, at which point he could retire. “We had originally planned to go to Spain, buy a house there and looked into schools and all the rest of it, but something was drawing me back towards the Church,” he says. ‘My proposal was to stop Confirmation’: Ireland’s ageing priests under pressure as numbers drop He was “thinking about possible ordination”. Buchanan retired from the Garda on September 6th, 2021 – a Tuesday; the following Friday he began studying for the priesthood at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in Dublin. He and Marti had been married 20 years.* “Marti decided she didn’t want to be part of a Church. That was fine. So we made a decision to go our separate ways, which is unfortunate, but it just wasn’t for her,” he says, saying that the split was not expected. “It was a blow. It was quite sudden. I knew there was a reticence on Marti’s part. She was kind of agnostic, and I respected that. There was no pressure on her to do anything or to be involved, but she just decided it wasn’t her path,” he says. There was “no animosity. It was very amicable”. And the Church had no difficulty with his divorce? “Not at all, no.” As unexpected as the break-up of his marriage had been, so too was what happened some years later: he met his new partner Jill – “quite by accident; literally by accident”, he says. “I was in for coffee one day in Ranelagh, one of the Butlers coffee shops – it’s on a corner. I was about to walk in the door when Jill walked around the corner and, basically, into me.” They “just got chatting in the queue and now are engaged”. From Kildare, Jill works in tourism. Buchanan says she is “Church of Ireland born and bred, as it happens”. “Her family are very involved in the Church,” he says. She has been “incredibly supportive, which is wonderful, because I didn’t realise how much support you really need in ministry”. In Tullow, Buchanan will be a first-time rector. “From the very beginning, I’ve had a strong sense that’s where I should be. It wasn’t where I envisaged ministry in the beginning because I was very much on the liberation theology, social side of things, and thought, I might be veered more towards city-centre ministry,” he says. “But actually, as it happens, Tullow is an incredible fit. There’s a lot of community work going on there with a lot of potential,” he adds. “There’s a good social ethos in Anglicanism; there always has been.” * This story was edited on October 12th