Greg Daly
The American group who led Ireland’s largest women’s retreat last year have said they will return to Ireland this year and feel they have more work to do in the country.
Highlighting the importance of links built with the Irish co-ordinators of November’s retreat, which saw 250 women gathering at the Emmaus Centre in Swords, Co. Dublin, Beth Davis, Director of Ministry Advancement at Blessed is She, told The Irish Catholic the group is “thrilled” to be returning to Ireland in 2019.
“The primary mission of our ministry is community and prayer. So after journeying with this team and praying for the women who would attend for almost a year, serving with them for a weekend didn’t feel like we were finished,” she said.
Explaining that the group “deeply desire to invest in the women in Ireland” and across Europe to facilitate friendships centred on Christ and to help create community on the ground, she said: “We love our online community – and thank God for it! – but the heart of our ministry has always been to connect women in person.”
The group was originally founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 2014, and has over 30,000 members online spread across five US Facebook communities and one European one. The 2018 retreat in Ireland was the group’s first retreat outside the US.