Tony Foy leads training for a group of NET missionaries. NET Ministries Ireland has finished six weeks of training and has sent their five teams off to their local areas despite a “battle” due to Covid-19, NET Ministries Ireland Director Tony Foy has told The Irish Catholic.
Following a day of celebration of their commissioning, Mr Foy said, “The day was great. It was very, very poignant. It’s been like a battle this year, all the way from March right through to November. It’s been a battle – a battle to get them into the country, a battle to get places to take them in, it’s been a battle to do everything and at the same time stay Covid compliant, which we’ve managed to do. It was like a victory – the day was like a victory.”
All the missionaries from abroad spent two weeks quarantining upon reaching Ireland and the remainder of the training period in lockdown at NET’s training facility.
They’ve been trained to live as a close unit in the areas to which they’ve been sent, while remaining fully compliant with all of the Government’s Covid guidelines.
“They’re very strong. They’re a very, very strong group of missionaries and as a whole, I think they’re feeling very united and, you know, adversity has proven to be a potent ingredient in training good missionaries,” Mr Foy said.
“We know that the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church, we’re thriving under adversity and we’re not lying underneath it. It’s something that we feel – we feel compelled to spread the Gospel in Ireland, and we feel that young people need the Gospel.”
A recently-minted member of the team, Peter Aherne from Bray said, “For me personally during the first lockdown it seemed like we were just stuck in that situation and there was no way out. So now being a NET missionary it’s really important to me that we can meet young people where they’re at. We can let them know that beyond the loneliness and fear there’s something more.”
The sentiment was echoed by Grainne Clancy, a qualified teacher from Armagh: “As an Irish person, it’s a privilege to be a witness of Faith to the youth of my own country.”