Bishop Phonsie Cullinan Bishop Phonsie Cullinan is sending a message of hope out to Irish people as many parishioner’s self-isolate in the wake of Covid 19
He has been making a video every day since March 13 on the Facebook page of Waterford and Lismore diocese. Each video contains a message of hope for his diocese.
“This is a small effort by me to try and reach out to people to let them know that they are not forgotten. That God has not abandoned them, that he is still with us and it is a message of hope that I’m trying to put across and it is a way of reaching out,” he said.
He said that he was impressed by priests in northern Italy in how they have been able to keep close to their people. Pope Francis, in his midday Angelus address thanked these priests for their creativity and all they are doing to keep the faith alive.
“So much news arrives to me from Lombardy about this creativity,” Francis said.
“Priests [there] who think,” he reflected, “of a thousand ways to be close to the people, in order that the people do not feel abandoned; priests with apostolic zeal, that understood well that in times of a pandemic.”
Sense of meaning
The bishop feels that while the virus will make life difficult, it will hopefully urge people to search for a sense of meaning, he said: “I think it’s going to bring a lot of good out of people, I think people will see the deeper things the things that we can really count on, and ultimately its only God.”
The videos have gotten a very positive response with comments of thanks flooding in and 51 shares on the first video.
“There is confusion and there is a sense of isolation, as I said this morning on a radio programme, to quote Dickens, ‘It is the worst of times but it is also the best of times.”
Bishop Phonsie said if St Paul were here now, he would be using technology to spread his word. “This epidemic has spurred me on to start using those media much better.”