Reaching out to all with God’s mercy

The Divine Mercy Conference is about bringing God’s mercy to the world, writes Greg Daly

“Divine Mercy has been top of the agenda for the last three Popes,” says Don Devaney, organiser of the Divine Mercy Conference that will see thousands gather in Dublin’s RDS this weekend.

“They recognised that God’s mercy is for everyone and everyone needs God’s mercy,” he continues. “That’s what they’ve been pushing, that’s what the Year of Mercy was about. It’s been in many ways getting back to basics to recognise that God is God. They’re trying to ground us in the basics of life, that God is in charge, it’s his law, it’s his will, and that we won’t have happiness or peace until we do his will.”

This year’s conference is the 27th, with Don having been involved from the start, and has as its theme the words of Jesus before he led Peter to walk with him on the waters of Lake Tiberias: “Courage, it is I – do not be afraid.”

“The people who follow the Divine Mercy are actually apostles for divine mercy – they’re interceding for the entire world,” explains Don. “We don’t have theology degrees and theology backgrounds but are just ordinary people who God in his infinite goodness has chosen to intercede and pray for the whole world.”

That might sound self-important, but Don is under no illusions about the frail nature of God’s instruments.

“The conference is the work of God, I think it’s important to say, because it’s by God’s grace it runs and works – he uses broken instruments like ourselves, as in our committee, as part of it. We do realise this, and acknowledge our own brokenness and unworthiness to be a part of it, but nevertheless all he’s looking for is our availability and our yes to his invitation,” he says.

Traditional popular piety can be sneered at by some in the Church, but Pope Francis has consistently underlined its importance, speaking with approval and fondness on many occasions about those who he refers to as God’s holy faithful people.

“I hate to say it but there are elements in the Church who look on devotional stuff as being from another era that’s long past, and ‘God love them with their Rosary beads and their devotional mentality’,” says Don, arguing that such devotions really reflect an acknowledgement of God’s devotion to us and play a crucial role on the Church coalface.

“It’s a huge task, and though we can be perceived as being ‘devotional’ and kind of simplistic, that’s far from it,” he says.

As usual, this year’s conference has a packed agenda, opening with a free youth evening in the “intimate, prayerful space” of St Paul’s Church on Aran Quay on Friday evening, before moving to the traditional and much larger venue of the RDS for Saturday and Sunday.

Highlight

Speakers include leading charismatic Ralph Martin, Magnus McFarland of Mary’s Meals, and Caroline Simons and Emma Moloney on pro-life issues. Capuchin Fr Sean Kelly will lead the reconciliation service that Don sees as the highlight of the weekend, and the Salesian Fr Eunan McDonnell will lead Saturday’s holy hour with Franciscan Fr Paschal McDonnell leading it on Sunday. Saturday’s Mass will be celebrated by Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, while Bishop Eamon Walsh will celebrate the conference’s closing Mass on Sunday.

Asked where he thinks the extraordinary popularity of Divine Mercy devotion has come from, he says Sr Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun whose 1930s visions underpin the devotion, has helped the Church highlight one of its key roles.

“I do believe that St Faustina will be the next female doctor of the Church, because she’s made an enormous contribution to theology and spirituality in expanding the whole notion of mercy,” he says.

“The Chaplet of Mercy is key to it all,” he continues, pointing to the set of prayers that are at the heart of the devotion. “I think people find the Chaplet of Mercy very consoling – it’s easy to say and it’s very powerful. There’s a comfort and a consolation in it. People realise that it does bring them peace.”

As for the conference itself, which this Saturday looks set to draw in the region of 3,700 people to the RDS, he sees it as something people view as “a kind of coming together just to renew their spiritual batteries”.

“What people like about the conference is that we have Confession, we have Adoration, we have Mass and it’s bringing us back to something we’ve lost somewhere along the way. I think what the conference does is reconnect people,” he says.

This reconnection isn’t just for those who are established devotees of the Divine Mercy, but for anyone – even those on the fringes of the Church – he stresses, with this being essential to the charism of the Divine Mercy.

“No matter what sins someone has committed, they’re welcome back and there’s a special welcome for those who’ve been away for 20, 30 years, where the floodgates of God’s mercy open up,” he says.

“It’s so delighting to see people coming back, and as an apostolate we’re especially geared to that end of the Church, to the outcasts, to the people that are hanging on by their fingernails, to people that have given up – it’s an outreach to them,” he says, continuing: “What attracts me to it is the whole sense that we’re dealing with people that everybody else has given up on, and trying to reach out with God’s mercy and say ‘it doesn’t matter – come back, we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation’.”

Such an outreach should, he says, be at the heart of the Church’s mission, and he is effusive about how Pope Francis has made this central to his papacy.

“The Year of Mercy put mercy on new standing and it highlighted mercy and brought it to the forefront of people’s minds and the Church agenda. Mercy is love’s second name, and as I’ve said mercy is for everybody and everybody needs God’s mercy,” he says.

“That outreach is I think what Pope Francis is trying to do. There are 1.2 billion Catholics but there are 5.8 billion non-Catholics. He’s trying to reach out to them as well. It’s a very, very difficult job, and I would say we really need to just to pray for him, and pray for the decisions he has to make,” he continues.

Francis’ approach to this can cause those wary of the kind of risks he deems necessary to “go ballistic”, Don says, but the Pope’s pastoral agenda makes sense to him.

“It’s not conventional, but I think he is the Holy Father, and he is the leader of the Church – I think he sees a bigger picture,” he says. “I’ve never seen anything like the animosity towards him. I’m a big supporter of his, I have to say. People just don’t understand what he’s trying to do.”