Renata Steffens
Dr Carmel Gallagher with Sean Fleming TD, Minister of State for International Development and Diaspora, Fr Tim Lehane President of AMRI and Gerard Gallagher Secretary General of AMRI. Photo: John Mc Elroy. Over one hundred people gathered for a one-day symposium entitled ‘Mission Now’ organised by the Association of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (AMRI). The event hosted in Avila Retreat Centre in Dublin happened on October 4 and included the launch of the book Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society.
The publication is the result of a study undertaken by Dr Carmel Gallagher (TUD) and her deceased co-researcher Dr Ricca Edmondson (NUIG).
During the official launch Sean Fleming TD, Minister of State for International Development said “Our society owes you, the Irish Religious and Missionaries, a huge debt of gratitude for the work that you and your colleagues have embarked upon internationally.”
Speaking to The Irish Catholic previous to the event, Dr Gallagher said the research started in 2020 when she and her co-researcher had retired from their lecturing jobs.
“We had often spoken about how we felt that this group of missionaries were somewhat forgotten in Irish society… We felt that they had been ignored, I suppose, with the decline in the Catholic Church and the scandals and the overall sort of negative discourse on Catholicism and Christianity in Ireland,” Dr Gallagher said.
The researcher told this paper they used AMRI as the gatekeeper when contacting and selecting the missionaries. “We ended up interviewing 37 altogether, which was much, much bigger than we intended.”
AMRI said in a statement that this book “details the extraordinary lives of women and men from ordinary backgrounds who, in their living witness to Gospel values, encountered some of the most challenging global social problems.” “The author argues that the lives of these missionaries offer valuable perspectives on what it is to be Christian in contemporary society.”