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.