It has been Dan Troy’s home for over 20 years, and not even a terrifying pandemic was going to drive him back across the globe.

In 1988, Dan graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from UCC and got work on sites in Sligo and Galway where he spent three years getting to know the business. But something wouldn’t leave him alone. He enjoyed the engineering, but it wasn’t reaching the mysterious internal source from which human fulfilment can be divined.

“I grew up in Newtownshandrum, outside Charleville,” he says. “And after college I really enjoyed working on the sites, it was outdoors, similar to being on the farm at home. But I still felt something stirring, calling me to a missionary life.

I would always have been a person of faith, always gone to Mass. I grew up in a family where the Far East was read so I joined the Columbans and I’ve never regretted it.

The Far East was, and is, the magazine produced by the order which details the work it does, mainly in eastern Asia.

His calling came at a time when vocations were falling off a cliff edge. Ireland was changing rapidly, the Catholic church entering a new, humbling, phase. How did those around him react when he broke the news?

“I always remember leaving the site in Galway and preparing to tell the workmen in particular whom I’d worked with for eight or nine months that I was heading off to be a priest. I expected they would almost laugh at me but to their great credit the encouragement was first class and that positive experience from an early stage encouraged me to keep going.” 

So it was that, he was dispatched to China soon after he completed his studies in Maynooth. The Columbans have a long history in the far east, stretching back to 1920. The order’s official title remains The Maynooth Mission To China.

After beginning to spread 'The Word' in that country, they panned out and included Korea, Japan, and the Phillipines as well. This was in the days when the primary focus of the missions was to convert others to the faith.

Catholicism was present in Asia, but largely confined to pockets, particularly in rural areas. In some parts there was a tradition of the religion going back 250 years and it was into this milieu that the Columbans arrived.

Political upheaval hit the mission from the late 1940s on. First there was the ascent to power of the Communist party in China under Mao Tse Tung, while over in Korea, the communist north invaded the south in 1950. In both jurisdictions, the new faith was the state and there was no place for religion. Western religious groups like the Columbans who either remained or couldn’t get out, faced harsh treatment or death. 

That was the fate of Irish missionaries at a time when they literally died or suffered gravely for their religion. The Columbans eventually left China in 1954. 

“There was a long tradition here,” Dan Troy says of Wuhan. “Two of the main churches in the city are 200 years old. 

When the political changes came about the churches survived and were used for warehousing or factories. Then in the late 1970s under the new regime there was religious freedom again so they renovated the churches and opened them up. People who had not been coming to church, to mass, came out of the woodwork.

So, had the church been effectively operating underground for thirty years or so? Dan Troy prefers to cast it more neutrally. 

“Everything went quiet, that might be a better way of putting it,” he says. “I met people who lived through those changes so it was the local church that kept it going. It wouldn’t be unusual for a family to say they were the fifth or seventh generation of Catholics. They are very much in a minority but would have a community of their own.” 

Today, the role of priests like Dan Troy is very different from that of their forebears, playing support rather than leading. 

“In general, westerners like us have a very quiet presence in Wuhan," he says. “There would be about 3,000 Catholics in the city and you also have a fair international presence in the universities, of which there are 55 in Wuhan. So I would know some international students through the church from places like Africa and India.” 

When the pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Dan Troy could have opted to head back to Ireland, but he never really considered it. 

“The option was there to come home but I didn’t feel the need to leave. The British and French brought their people home but the lockdown was so tight I felt confident I wouldn’t catch the virus. Each morning I went out for a walk at 5.30am, it was so early there was nobody around and then back to the apartment and in there until the same time the following day. 

"We had eleven weeks of a lockdown but I didn’t feel lonely. I received a lot of help from the mission group.” 

 He finally got back to his roots for a visit in recent weeks, but Wuhan has gone in on him. While he will do what his order requires of him, he has no desire to leave. 

“I feel quite happy there,” he says, of his life in China, the kind of life that was known to families of missionaries around the country in a bygone age but which is one less ordinary today.

• Fr Dan Troy is this week’s guest on the Mick Clifford Podcast.