Cemetery Sunday, Omeath

What to Expect

Carlingford and Omeath Parish marks Cemetery Sunday in Omeath on 9 August 2026, its annual blessing of the graves. Cemetery Sunday is a long-standing tradition in Irish Catholic parishes, usually held once a year in summer, when a priest blesses the graves of the parish dead and leads prayers for the deceased. The ceremony typically involves an outdoor service of prayers and hymns, after which the priest walks through the cemetery sprinkling holy water over individual plots, and many families tidy and decorate graves in the days beforehand. Cemetery Sunday in Omeath falls the day before the parish separately marks the feast of St Lawrence on 10 August, patron of its church in Omeath, and less than a week before the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 15 August, another date on the parish calendar. The day tends to draw a strong local turnout, including people who no longer live on the Cooley Peninsula but return specifically to visit family graves.

Good to Know

• Date: Sunday 9 August 2026
• Location: the parish cemetery in Omeath, on the Cooley Peninsula
• An exact time was not published on the parish website at the time of writing, so check the parish’s weekly bulletin or Facebook page closer to the date
• Free to attend, open to all, no booking needed
• Part of Carlingford and Omeath Parish, in the Archdiocese of Armagh, which covers St Michael’s Church in Carlingford and St Laurence’s Church in Omeath
• Annual event, held every summer

Getting There

Omeath sits on the Cooley Peninsula on the shore of Carlingford Lough, about 12km north of Dundalk on the R173. The village once had its own railway station on the old Great Northern Railway branch line to Carlingford, but that line closed in the 1950s, so there is no rail service to Omeath today. A car is the most practical way to get there, with parking available in the village near the church and cemetery. Omeath was historically a popular day-trip destination for visitors crossing the border from Northern Ireland, and the village still sits close to the Cooley Mountains and the Carlingford Greenway.