The eight-time All-Ireland winner donated his final Celtic cross to St Augustine’s Church in Cork CityFr Richie Goode with the chalice containing Christy Ring's All-Ireland medal at St Augustine’s Church in Cork. Thu Jul 09 2026 - 10:06 • 4 MIN READAt the Washington Street entrance to St Augustine’s Church in the centre of Cork City there is a poster announcing the last Mass to be celebrated here: Sunday, July 12th, 11.30am, it reads, “No tickets needed.” The chalice they will use on Sunday is a hidden treasure that only appears for special occasions. In 1954, Mass-goers donated jewellery to embellish a shrine to Our Lady of Good Counsel in a corner of the church. But when the gold and silver was melted down for that purpose, there was enough material left to fashion a chalice. Part of the excess was Christy Ring’s eighth All-Ireland hurling medal.“I’d say he was going on the principle that there were plenty more where that came from,” says Fr Richie Goode, one of only three remaining priests from the Augustinian community in Cork. As it turned out, it was Ring’s last All-Ireland medal.For a period in his life, Ring lived just around the corner on Grand Parade and during that time was a daily Mass-goer in St Augustine’s. Donations of jewellery to churches were not unusual in the 1950s. In the middle of the decade a cluster of churches were built in newly-developed areas of the city and an appeal was made for donations of household gold and silver. That typically meant wedding or engagement rings, which was also the case in St Augustine’s.The chalice at St Augustine’s Church in Cork City which contains the gold from Christy Ring's eighth All-Ireland medal. The chalice is a beautifully ornate piece, with a figure of Our Lady on the stem surrounded by little white gemstones. Among the features on the base is a cross, which, according to Fr Goode, is reputedly where the gold from Ring’s All-Ireland medal was employed.Underneath the base is an inscription which is of its time. It reads: “The gold and precious stones of this artistic chalice were donated by the loving, grateful and devoted clients of the Mother of Good Counsel, Marian Year, 1953-54. A prayer for them.”The gold chalice was never pressed into everyday service. “It was always seen as too precious,” says Fr Goode. “You’d be afraid of people leaving it around. It could easily disappear. It’s worth quite a bit, I think.“The last time it was used here was last July, on a fateful day. I took it out for the Sunday that Cork were in the All-Ireland final. I left it down there on the altar after the Mass, if people wanted to look at it. Well, there were people up kissing it and rubbing it to arthritic knees and Lord knows what else. I had to put someone standing there in case someone went off with it.”It was extremely rare for GAA players to donate their medals to churches, but Ring’s act of generosity was not unique. In the GAA Museum is a chalice from an Augustinian Friary in New Ross that has four of Aidan Doyle’s medals secured to the base; two of them are All-Ireland football medals won during Wexford’s four-in-a-row between 1915 and 1918. In that case, the medals are still intact. The inscription on the bottom of the chalice which contains the metal from one of Christy Ring's All-Ireland medals. Fr Goode’s uncle, Dec Goode, also donated three All-Ireland medals he won with Waterford to an Augustinian church he used to attend. Two of them were junior All-Ireland medals and the other was from Waterford’s first minor All-Ireland title in 1929.Ring’s seven other All-Ireland medals are on display in the GAA Museum, on loan from the Ring family, and that is where this chalice may ultimately end up, though nothing has yet been decided. “There are a lot of people interested in acquiring it,” says Fr Goode. “I rang Cork GAA to ask were they interested, and obviously they were. I’ve been told that Cork City Museum are interested in it. The Bishop [of Cork and Ross, Fintan Gavin] I think would be interested in it. “Some of our fellas want to put it in our own archive, but that’s a pointless exercise because it’s like one of these Rembrandts that people buy and lock them away and nobody ever sees them. You’d prefer that it would be Cork City Museum, or Cork GAA, or Croke Park [Museum], that at least it could be seen. It’s a beautiful piece and it has a historic connection.”The Augustinian Order have been ministering to the people of Cork for nearly 800 years, but an accelerated decline in vocations and an ageing clergy led to the decision to close the church in Washington Street. When it was announced in February, a poster was erected at the door of the church outlining in stark detail the decline in numbers in the order; in 1976, the poster reads, “we had 234 members in the Irish province, today we have 55 members.”Christy Ring ahead of the 1960 National Hurling League Final between Cork and Tipperary. “Now there are 52,” says Fr Goode. “Three have died since we put up that poster, and among the three that are dead was the youngest man in the province. That speaks for itself. It’s not as if the remaining ones are in the first flush of youth.”On a week when many invocations were said for Cork hurling, St Augustine’s is likely to be full on Sunday. The chalice is a portal into a faraway world, long ago.IN THIS SECTION