We need to hear about the witness of those who point to a better world

Growing up in the late 1980s, a staple of my childhood reading was magazines like the Far East filled with stories of the heroic work of missionaries in distant lands. I remember being enthralled by what I read about Irish priests, brothers and sisters and the risks they took in their ministry.

Whether it was standing up to the communist authorities in China or standing with the poor and marginalised in Latin America, it was obvious to me that our missionaries were there like beacons of light – potent witnesses to the Gospel of Christ in good times and bad.

Every generation needs heroic witnesses who, inspired by the love of Christ, point to a better world and a better way to live.

The great heroes of our faith are not distant memories. We have seen them in our own times.

Loggers

Think of Sr Dorothy Stand who was killed in Brazil in 2005 because of her outspoken campaign against loggers and landowners. Or Fr Ragheed Ganni (a former student of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome) who was killed in 2007 in Iraq because he defied an order from Islamists who wanted him to close the local church and give up his ministry with the people.

Closer to home, fresh attention is now being paid to the case of Fr Hugh Mullan who was shot dead by the British Army in Belfast in 1971. A fresh inquest last week confirmed what many of us have known for a long time: that Fr Mullan was shot dead while carrying out his priestly duties administering the Sacrament of the Sick under a hail of bullets.

Local people are keen that his heroic witness be recognised formally by the Church and he be declared a martyr. There are similar calls about Fr Noel Fitzpatrick.

Both men did not shrink from what had been asked of them in their call to priesthood: to be willing to lay down their lives for God’s holy faithful people.

Saints

Of course, people are not made saints as a reward for a life well lived, or even for acts of heroic virtue. People are raised up as saints by the Church because they are proposed as models. Canonisation is not an individual honour for the person, but a formal recognition by the Church that they are signposts and exemplars of Christian living.

At a time when we have rightly been sickened by the cases of priests who betrayed the trust of the Christian community and visited horrific crimes upon the most vulnerable, hearing about men who lived their priesthood in imitation of Christ is not only inspiring – it is vital.

These are our witnesses who tell us that despite all of our failings and sins, that love has the victory. They tell us that despite all its failings, the Church is still a place of holiness. We need to hear them time and again.