Greg Daly
Members of the Irish core team Ireland’s largest women’s retreat this year was a “tremendous success”, according to organisers delighted by the presence of 250 women from Ireland and across Europe.
Tipperary’s Emma Sisk, ground coordinator in Ireland for the US-based Blessed is She ministry, said the retreat at the Emmaus Centre in Swords, Co. Dublin, had exceeded expectations.
“It was so much more than we hoped and prayed it would be,” she said. “The women who attended experienced something that is not easily described with words. God moved in powerful and unexpected ways and many women who came experienced deep, inner healing of their hearts.”
Entitled ‘Wild’ and inspired by John 3:8, the retreat featured four major addresses, with Ms Sisk giving the second address on the theme ‘Unashamed’.
“I wanted to uncover how sin, fear and insecurity can tame us and shame us as women and I really want to encourage all women to step into the glory of who they were created by God to be,” she said.
Thanking Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for celebrating the retreat’s closing Mass, Ms Sisk said she had received feedback speaking to “a huge desire in the hearts of women in Ireland of an authentic Catholic women’s ministry”.
“The women who came at the weekend absolutely loved it,” she said.