Out of Harare

When John Moore met a group of Jesuits in Gardiner Street to tell his story of recent years in Harare, he conveyed a vivid sense of what existence there is like: the menacing proximity of riot police, who may break into a church in the middle of Mass; the loss of electricity from the city’s grid, and then the loss of diesel on which the college’s generator depended; consequently the loss of online contacts, which are John’s special responsibility in Arrupe college; the shortage of water, down to one helping per person per week; the wonderful resilience of the African scholastics, who do much of the administration; the uselessness of money in an economy with inflation well over two million per cent – and now even the paper has run out, on which the worthless notes were printed; the frustration of having residence permits delayed or refused – the government’s revenge for the bishops’ critical letter “God hears the cry of the oppressed”. Read more »

On the other island

While we have the Mission Office to keep in touch with our men in Africa and Hong Kong, those closer to home can easily be forgotten. There are four Irish Jesuits working in Britain: Kieran Barry-Ryan, Jim Hayes, Jack Donovan and Pat Riordan. Kieran, now 79 and enjoying rude health and energy, is finishing a long stint on the marriage and family ministry in Southwark diocese. He had worked in Dublin with Bill White on Marriage Encounter, in the days when it was flourishing. Bill died prematurely, and divisions in Marriage Encounter in USA sapped its effectiveness. Read more »

JRS Ireland bids Arthur adieu

The 2008 JRS Ireland Summer Programme of activities for asylum-seeking families would have been impossible without the generous support of volunteers Arthur Bommier, Maria Garcia, Bart Parys, Tina Peji and Angeline Fanning. On 31 July, Arthur Bommier (19) will return to France after a month of volunteering with JRS Ireland. He will start university in Paris in the autumn. He heard about the work of JRS Ireland through Sebastian Vaast SJ, who volunteered with the JRS Community Links project during 2005. Read more »

Jesuit assesses new Ireland at youth festival

“The atmosphere is great – it’s like Mayo’s answer to the Oxegen music festival.” So said Ann Lee, the Youth Ministry Director at Knock Shrine, talking about the Knock Summer Youth Festival, attended this year by nearly 1,000 young people from all over Ireland. And it wasn’t all fun and games. Many of the participants turned up to hear Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, of the Gregorian University in Rome, as he spoke about the “ambiguous power” of new culture on the imagination and about Ireland’s rapid transition from modernity to post-modernity. “As WB Yeats said,” Fr Gallagher continued, “the ‘unity of culture fragments’ in a society where there is a lack of anchoring. We can look at this whole new scene and react in an aggressive way, we can sulk, or, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet said, “readiness is all”, and we can respond with generosity and with our own disposition.”

Sunsets and silhouettes

Brendan McManus SJ, former editor of AMDG Express, has received ‘Honourable mention: amateur’ in a photo competition organised by Company, a quarterly magazine of the US Jesuits. His photo (pictured right) captures a pensive Gerry Clarke SJ, at the end of Dublin’s South Wall, silhouetted by a watery sun. The title of the contest was ‘The Ignatian View‘, and the winning shots are most impressive. Also in this month’s Company is an excellent article by John Padberg SJ about the decrees of GC35.

Film festival invites submissions

Young amateur and student filmmakers are invited by a Hungarian Jesuit academy to create films on the biblical theme of ‘trust’ and submit them to a film festival, which will be held in Budapest on 14-15 November 2008. This will be the thirteenth film festival organised by the Ferenc Faludi Academy, which aims to promote culture and education, especially among young people. According to the organisers, “The film festival is a great forum for this, especially because it has become international during the years”. This year, for the first time, they also invite the submission of photographs for the festival. The president of the festival jury this year is a prolific Italian film director, Pupi Avati. Application forms are available on the Academy’s site.

Short notices

• Mass for the feast of St Ignatius will be held in St Francis Xavier’s Church, Gardiner Street, on Thursday 31 July at 11.00am. The homily will be given by Fr Brendan Comerford SJ. All are welcome.
• The Curia Offices will be closed, to celebrate St. Ignatius Day, from close of business on Wednesday 30 July to start of business on Tuesday 5 August. In real emergencies, contact the Socius on 087-684-7652.
• The Jesuit Provincial of Malta, Fr Paul Pace (pictured here with John Dardis SJ), is currently spending some time in Ireland. He is staying in Manresa.
• Donal Doyle, who went to Japan as a scholastic fifty years ago, has landed in Ireland in time for Ignatius’ Day, and will be here for a few weeks. He may be contacted through his brother Frank: 01-6761656.
• Fr Peter McVerry SJ will address the theme of Christian spirituality and its capacity to be radically inclusive on Wednesday 30 July at 8pm in the Gasyard Centre, Derry, as part of the Gasyard Feile Festival.
• Fr Michael J. Kelly SJ, currently on leave from Zambia, will celebrate the RTE Mass on Sunday, 17 August 2008.

Work and pray at Sacred Space

This summer sees Sacred Space become an apostolate of the Irish Jesuits. No longer under the aegis of the Jesuit Communication Centre, where it was begun almost ten years ago, the site is being established with its own structure and administration in an office adjacent to those of the JCC and Messenger on Leeson Street. “The site is now the regular prayer-source for some 14,000 people every day, delivering over a million pages a month to people from right around the world,” the site’s editor, Piaras Jackson SJ, told AMDG. “Maintaining and developing the site is a challenge but the appreciation of the ‘Sacred Space community’ is very encouraging, as our feedback shows.” To assist in the current development, Sacred Space is advertising to fill an office administrator vacancy.

Quiet revolution

The hallowed offices of the Sacred Heart Messenger, 37 Lr Leeson Street, have seen a quiet revolution in the last two months. Readers will have admired the new design which John Looby introduced last January. Since then Ken Rue has taken over as Accounts Manager, and Triona McKee as General and Marketing Manager. Both come with considerable experience in the publications field. Accountant Ken, in addition to his two-days-a-week job in the Messenger, is preparing for ordination in the Church of Ireland. Strabane-born Triona has worked on consumer magazines in London, and had a stint on the production side of Phoenix magazine. It is striking how quickly their benign impact has been felt in Number 37.

IMRS relaunched as Misean Cara

The Irish Missionary Resource Service (IMRS) was recently relaunched as Misean Cara. The subtitle is “Mission Support from Ireland”. This new name indicates a shift of emphasis, from Irish missionaries bringing the faith out to peoples, to Irish support for the indigenous churches of formerly missionary countries, which are now themselves the source of missionary effort. The rebranding was marked by speakers such as Liz O’Donnell, former Minister of State, Indian Sr Terry Abrahams and Tullamore Jesuit Michael Kelly (both pictured here). Zambian Sr Pereka Nyirenda, also present, summarised: “People on the ground in Zambia say: they came to us, they lived with us, they learned from us, they loved us. They started with what we knew. They built with what we had. Now that the work is done and the task is accomplished, we can truly say that we were enabled to do this work ourselves.” Read more »

Fun continues on JRS Ireland’s Summer Programme

A Family Fun Day will be held in Mountjoy Square Park on Thursday 24 July for the families of asylum seekers who are participating in JRS Ireland’s Summer Programme. The programme has been running since July 10 and has catered in many and varied ways for Dublin-based asylum seekers and their families. There have been twice-weekly swimming sessions for the children, as well as workshops and art classes. The Family Fun Day will involve treasure hunts, face painting, circus games, kite making, races, football and a picnic. The Summer Programme will continue into August with a trip to a working farm in Wicklow, a trip to the beach (weather permitting), bowling, swimming and art workshops. For more details, contact JRS Ireland.

Master of Emo

Cholmeley Dering Harrison, who died in Emo on 18 July, had a long association with Irish Jesuits, beginning with his 1969 purchase (for £42,500!) of Emo and its huge walled estate. Though he was unhappy with some of the alterations made to adapt the place for a noviciate, he recognised that we had rescued the magnificent house and estate from rack and ruin, and poured sweat and tears into its maintenance. He was a congenial host to visiting Jesuits, and was a particular friend of Fr Conor Harper. May God be good to him. There will be a memorial service in St John’s Church, Coolbanagher, on 9 September, which would have been his 100th birthday.

Miscellaneous

John Dardis is in Rome, after a heavy weekend mastering Moodle (see story above), and briefing Fr Stephen Buckland SJ, the Zimbabwean-born Jesuit (pictured here with John) who will take over as Zimbabwean Provincial on 30 July.

Mass in Gardiner Street church for the feast of St Ignatius Loyola, on Thursday 31 July, will be at 11 a.m., with a homily by Fr Brendan Comerford SJ. All are welcome to the Mass, especially Jesuits and colleagues and friends of Jesuits.

Our former editor Brendan McManus is plunging into Galway life by taking an intense Irish language course in Carraroe. Of the 65 adults on the course, only two are Irish.

Bill Mathews is just back from an excellent Madrid conference on Religion and Science which has become the new focus of Bill’s academic energies.