Respondents in the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin expressed strong desire to connect with African Catholics living in Ireland. Mags Gargan and Chai Brady
New missionaries will ‘inject new life’
Irish parishioners are being urged to embrace new thinking and a new wave of missionaries from overseas as a way to revitalise the Church in Ireland. Decades after Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich provoked derision in the 1980s by saying the Church in Ireland would be renewed from Africa, the Church here in increasingly turning to missionary lands.
The Society of African Missions (SMA) has revealed that is has now turned to African priests to undertake mission in Ireland as an “injection of new life and energy”.
“To me it makes sense that missions should not be a one way thing, it should be giving and receiving,” Fr Michael McCabe, SMA Provincial Leader, told The Irish Catholic on his new decision to invite African priests to take up roles in Ireland.
“While the Church in Ireland seems to be going through a period of crisis and decline – and certainly a decline for the number of young people who come to Church – the Church in Africa is growing incredibly fast now. So they’re in a position to give back to the Churches that sent out missionaries to them in the first place,” he said.
“In Africa certainly the people themselves are young and the Churches are young and you get a feeling of that energy, and enthusiasm, and joy. Even despite difficulties, it’s not that life is easy in Africa, in some places it’s very difficult.”
Necessary
Fr Maurice Hogan SSC, the national director of World Missions Ireland, told The Irish Catholic welcoming African missionaries to Ireland is “not just a good idea, but a necessary idea”.
“Ireland is now mission country that needs to be re-evangelised,” he said. “It needs to be revitalised and that will come better from a young Church that is full of vitality. Anyone familiar with the African Church knows they are full of joy and vitality. So I think it will be a very welcome injection into the Irish Church to wake us up again and make us realise that the Church is mission of its nature rather than inward-looking.”
Fr Hogan also said the fact that the new papal nuncio is from Nigeria is “highly symbolic and very welcome”. “The Irish Church made a contribution to founding the Church in Nigeria and now the Nigerian Church is helping out Ireland to re-found its own missionary spirit again,” he said.