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The Stated Annual Meeting 2026

Supreme Council

9 October 2026

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Trim Castle seen across the River Boyne on a bright autumn day: the tall square keep and the curtain wall stand above the far bank, with trees in autumn colour along the water and a blue sky with white clouds.

Trim Castle and the River Boyne, Trim, Co. Meath. Photograph: William Murphy, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

From Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October 2026 the Knights of St. Columbanus hold their Stated Annual Meeting at Trim, Co. Meath. Delegates come from councils across Ireland, north and south, to settle the business of the Order for the year ahead. The Supreme Knight, Brother John Murphy, presides.

Why Trim

The meeting is hosted by the Brothers of Area 11, the largest Area in the Order, which runs from Abbeyleix to Drogheda and takes in Tullamore, Mullingar, Trim, Kells and Navan. The Order last met in the Area at Mullingar in 2017.

It is ground rich in the history of the Irish Church: the Hill of Slane and the Hill of Tara, Monasterboice, Clonard, and St Oliver Plunkett at Drogheda. In 2025 Area 11 marked the four hundredth anniversary of St Oliver Plunkett's birth, and took a large part in the centenary of Venerable Matt Talbot in the same year.

An aerial view of the Hill of Slane: the ruined church and its tower inside a walled graveyard of old headstones, with the ruins of the friary beyond, set in green fields.
The Hill of Slane, a few miles from Trim.

Three days, three Masses

The meeting opens on the Friday with the Mass of the Holy Spirit. The Saturday begins with Mass for the Brothers of the Order who have died during the year, their names read out by their councils. It closes on Sunday morning in St Patrick's Church, Trim, with the Most Reverend Tom Deenihan, Bishop of Meath, as main celebrant.

St Patrick's Church, Trim: a grey stone Gothic Revival church with a tall spire, seen across a lawn between trees.
St Patrick's Church, Trim, where the meeting closes on the Sunday.

Between them come three working sessions: the reports of the Supreme Officers, the motions the councils have sent forward, and the presentation to the Brothers who have completed fifty years in the Order. Every third year the Supreme Council also elects the Supreme Executive that will lead it, and this is that year.

The Order

The Order of the Knights of St. Columbanus was founded in Belfast in 1915 by Canon James K. O'Neill. It is an order of Catholic laymen, with sixty-eight councils in all thirty-two counties, and its motto is Instaurare Omnia in Christo: to restore all things in Christ.

The Stated Annual Meeting is where the councils' year is accounted for and the year ahead is settled. A report of this year's meeting will be published here once it has risen.

Photographs from Wikimedia Commons: Trim Castle by William Murphy, CC BY-SA 2.0; the Hill of Slane by Raemond Carolan, CC BY-SA 4.0; St Patrick's Church by Laurel Lodged, CC BY-SA 3.0.

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