It is almost unjust and unchristian to speak of economic success at a time when homelessness has reached unprecedented levels in Ireland, Bishop Brendan Leahy has said.
In a letter read in Limerick churches ahead of the Church’s first World Day of the Poor, Bishop Leahy noted how Irish homelessness has been a crisis for some years.
“But somehow, week in week out that crisis deepens and yet we hear at the same time boasts of how our economy is growing,” he said, maintaining that this huge disparity needed to be dealt with.
Success stories
“It is almost unjust and unChristian for us as a nation to be aspiring to become one of the great economic success stories of Europe while at the same time we have a hidden story, in many cases, of new forms of poverty and homelessness,” he said.
Emphasising that while there are many initiatives in Ireland that reach out to the homeless, refugees, and others on the margins, he maintained that such outreach cannot be outsourced and that everybody has a part to play in tackling these issues, calling on people to “do our part to help our political leaders to address the various scenarios of neglect that our country still suffers”.
The bishop’s letter was published in the aftermath of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar claimed at the Fine Gael National Conference that Ireland has “a low level of homelessness compared to our peers”.
According to Focus Ireland, 8,374 people are currently homeless in Ireland.