Margaret Cartwright
There are ambitious plans to put the promotion of vocations centre-stage in 2016, writes Margaret Cartwright
Vocations Ireland is excited about receiving a recent grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. This will give us the opportunity to plan and develop new programmes towards helping the development of a growth in the understanding of the call to religious life and ultimately to a growth in vocations.
Pope Francis’ call last year for those in the consecrated life to “Wake up the world!” has begun to re-awaken religious in Ireland to their own call and to find new ways of telling the story of their lives and ministry today.
We have set out a tentative plan for the first half of 2016. This will include the development of vocation promotion, media and social media training for vocation directors, discernment programmes for those interested in religious life through initiatives such as Samuel Groups, exploreAway residential week-ends and spiritual accompaniment.
We are planning to develop new ways of telling the story of religious life in terms of why and how they were founded and the many new ministry initiatives that religious are involved in today.
Initiatives
We are working on some new initiatives that will address vocation promotion in schools and youth groups through information and reflection days for religious education teachers and youth leaders. This is in direct response to the many requests we have received from teachers in relation to getting to know and understand something about the many religious orders that exist in Ireland, learn about their founders, the meaning of a call to religious life and the ministries in which they are involved.
Leading on from the call for religious to ‘wake up the world,’ it is right and fitting that we celebrate consecrated life and invite as many as possible to join with us in celebrating and offering a response to Pope Francis invitation for 2016 to be a Holy Year of Mercy highlighting the Catholic Church’s mission to be a witness of mercy in the missionary life of the Church.
Margaret Cartwright is Director of Vocations Ireland www.vocationsireland.com