Long-lost video footage of a County Galway ‘faith healer and visionary’ has been discovered after more than two decades.

The video diaries of Mary Malone, a faith healer from Mountbellew, have been released on social media platform, YouTube. One of the videos shows Ms Malone, and her husband Malcolm, returning on a visit to Mountbellew in 2000.

As well as offering a unique view of the North-East Galway town at the turn of the millennium, it features several local people who are filmed speaking with Mary Malone as part of the documentary.

It portrays a village in more innocent times. Footage of a market in full-swing, old cars lining the streets, and interviews with locals welcoming Mary Malone home offer a glimpse of rural Ireland at the time.

In one section of film, a young Mountbellew man on a bike, reminisces with Mary Malone about life growing up, which included collecting call cards.

“I love coming back to Mountbellew,” she declared in the film, and joked with another man: “I’ve put ye on the map!”

They discuss how Mountbellew was a fine tourism town and all that it needs was a hotel.

Over the course of the half-hour footage, locals ask Mary Malone for help to heal their sick relatives.

Among those interviewed was Joe Noone, a cousin of hers, and mechanic and businessman. “It’s great to see you,” he said. They chit-chat about her home in England, their familial links, and her husband’s love of fishing, and Mary Malone’s ‘healing’ of his mother.

It also features footage of the couple in her cousin’s house a mile outside Mountbellew, where they stayed before they embarked on a healing tour of Ireland.

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