South Africa Project

This summer eighty Slí Eile Volunteers went to South Africa to work on two projects – the building of a three-classroom school block for Ntabeni, JSS, Hillside, and the building of an eight-cubicle toilet block for St. Matthew’s JSS, Mukoba, both schools under the shadow of the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa’s Eastern Cape.  The overall aim of the project was to help orphan and vulnerable children in that AIDS-torn environment. The volunteers were 2009 Leaving Certificate students and their teachers from Clongowes Wood College, Belvedere College, Coláiste Iognáid, Crescent College Comprehensive, Terenure College and Loreto Beaufort. Slí Eile organized the project, in partnership with Friends in Ireland (FII), the Irish NGO established and run by John Clarke and R.T.E’s  Marian Finucane, who visited the projects this summer. Read more. Read more »

Naomh Iognáid as Gaeilge

Scéal an Oilithrigh,  Iognáid Loyola ina chuid focal féin. Tháinig aistriúchán a rinne Alan Mac Eochagáin ar dhírbheathaisnéis Naomh Iognáid amach le déanaí. Towards the end of his life Saint Ignatius sat in the garden of the house in Rome on a few occasions with a certain Father Da Câmara and told the story of his spiritual life starting with his injury at the battle of Pamplona. The Spanish original has all the simplicity and directness of the spoken word as Da Câmara didn’t want to change anything of what he had heard. Alan’s Irish translation captures the vitality and spontaneity of Ignatius’ narration. Thirteen drawings by Michael Johnston, a recent Art graduate of the University of Ulster, blend perfectly with the text.  Read more »

Roving new laptops

Back in June, Coláiste Iognáid (the ‘Jes’) won a Hewlett Packard Innovation in Education grant to provide a mobile classroom of tablet PCs. The school was selected for its commitment to making practical usage of technology in delivering the school curriculum.  Now the prize has arrived, and our picture shows Vice-principal Catherine Hickey supervising its unpacking.  The new laptops will be used in different classes, from maths to media studies, and a special trolley will allow them to be moved between different classrooms. The aim is to create a roaming computer suite which would enable the maximum number of students and teachers to achieve computer literacy, and equip them for participation in knowledge economy.  This platform will allow students to access digitally provided content in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

Food4Soul Food4Body

Leon O Giollain SJ has a strong ecumenical dimension to his Chaplain’s ministry in UCD. On 30 September he and fellow-chaplain Gillian Kingston hosted an evening of prayer and fellowship for about thirty students from various denominations and from many different parts of the world, under the rubric: One Lord, One Faith. The focus was on Jesus’ prayer: ‘that all may be one’. A candle was lit,  a Bible opened, and a cross was placed  at the centre of the beautiful contemplation room, symbolising their unity around the Risen Lord. After prayer, they proceeded to the Function Room to enjoy a wonderful lasagne and some homemade sweet-cake.  Leon and Gillian hope to make it a regular event.

Richard in mud and boulders

Last week Richard O’Dwyer was coping with deafness and malaria, and feeling as sick as he had ever felt in his life. This latest bulletin makes no mention of sickness, and the travelling conditions he describes are not for the feeble-bodied or faint-hearted. It is a measure of the marvels of the internet that he is describing an episode that happened only two days ago. “We were ready to leave the JRS compound in Lobone at 8am on Sunday morning, 18th October, for Lerwa, a village which is about 30kms away and the most far- flung of all the chapels in which we minister. I was travelling with Bernhard Knorn SJ, a newly-arrived scholastic from Germany. Bernhard will be working with JRS Lobone until September 2010.  Read more below. Read more »

Western Pioneers gather and plan

On Saturday 10 October last the Connaught membership of the PTAA met in the Park Hotel, Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo for a day-long session of discussion and debate. It brought the West’s Pioneers together to reflect on the Association’s role to date and to start engaging in a process which will facilitate the exploration of new opportunities and ways forward for the PTAA. Fr. Joe Dargan, S.J., Chairman of the PTAA, Padraig Brady, PTAA CEO, P.J. Farrell, Provincial Delegate, Robert Shannon, PTAA President and Orlaith O’Callaghan, PTAA Advocacy & Communications Manager, travelled to Kiltimagh for the event.

Short notices

• On 13th October the Coláiste Iognáid Debating Society, joined by students from Scoil Ursa, debated whether Religion should be taken out of the school curriculum. The motion that Religion should be removed was passed!
• Tom Leyden SJ, who works quietly in Belfast for the last eleven years with an ever-widening circle of other Christians,  has found a large audience (300+)  for a series of extra-mural lectures he has given in QUB: on Blaise Pascal, on Saint Augustine, and this year on the history of Judaism, and on the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.
• Congratulations to Eugene Quinn, director of JRS, and his wife Val, who on 16 October became the parents of a baby boy.
• Fr Dermot Murray has moved temporarily to Clongowes to care for the People’s Church, while Ronan Geary is in Cherryfield recovering from sickness.

Fr Noel Barber is Acting Provincial until 31 October

Forthcoming events

• Former Taoiseach John Bruton, currently the EU’s representative in Washington, USA, will give the Fourth Public Lecture sponsored by Studies and The Iona Institute: on ‘The role of religion and Christianity in the European Union’. Monday, 16 November: 8 p.m. in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin 2 (behind the Davenport Hotel). Admission is free.
• Also in mid-November Fr Stephen Chow, Jesuit Supervisor of the two Wah Yan colleges in Hong Kong, will visit Dublin for four days (14-18 November) to see the Belvedere-Wah Yan exchange programme in action, and to visit old friends – Stephen made his noviciate in Manresa. Further details closer to the date.
• The Leinster PTAA will host their provincial conference on Saturday 7 November next at The Hazel Hotel, Co. Kildare. All Leinster Pioneers are welcome to attend.