REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERENCE FOR THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PRESENCE OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. Is mór an onóir agus pléisúir dom bheith anseo inniu. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom. It is a great honour to be with you today as you celebrate 150 years of the presence of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit in Ireland and 300 years of the Spiritan Mission worldwide. My special thanks to Brian Starken, Provincial Superior, for the invitation to be part of these festivities.
Here in Ireland we associate the name of the Holy Ghost Father with education. Your investment in the potential of young people over a century and a half is incalculable. Beginning with the opening of the legendary Blackrock College in 1860 to the more recent formation of the Des Places Educational Association to oversee the management of the now extensive Spiritan school network, yours is a story of thousands of young men and more recently young women, educated in the Spiritan charism. Each one has their own personal debt of gratitude for the help they received from the Congregation and the school teachers and staff which created an opportunity for each one to flourish and to give the very best of themselves, to themselves, their families, their professions and their communities. There is no true way to calculate the worth of that work but we know that you are owed a huge debt of gratitude for the many generations of fidelity to education in Ireland. Your parish and pastoral work helps build up community solidarity as well as bringing company and support to many through the vagaries of life’s journey.
You are of course an international congregation and around the world you are known for service to the poor, to human rights, to development through education and evangelization. Irish Spiritans have been at the very heart and the very start of many of those missions world wide and they have been not only impressive ambassadors for the Congregation and its charism but for Ireland. In situations where hope was hard to find and oppression the norm, Spiritans placed themselves as signs of contradiction and of care, helping individuals and communities to take their first steps towards new-found freedom and opportunity. Each missionary chose a difficult life over the comfort and familiarity of home, just as Claude Francis Poullert des Places chose to forego a lucrative legal career to live and work with the poor and to begin the mission of the Spiritans. 300 years later the integrity of his work and his values are evident in the way the Order continues today in 55 countries around the world. Part of that success is due to the huge influence of your “second founder” Francis Libermann who transcended family alienation and ill health to minister to the native population in the French colonies and in particular to liberate slaves. Des Places and Libermann did not adopt popular causes nor were they well understood by their contemporaries. Theirs was a message of personal responsibility for the wellbeing of the poor and theirs was a radical message of the equality and the loveability of all humankind. Those messages are no less uncomfortable today. The work of Des Place and Libermann is still unfinished. The Spiritans have for three hundred years chipped away at the vanities, the inequalities, the attitudes and the hostilities which keep so many of the world’s citizens trapped in cycles of misery. They have taken huge personal risks and suffered all sorts of indignities including sickness and death itself in order to fulfill their vocation of care and to bring their message of hope. Mostly their work has been done out of the limelight, unremarked except by those who immediately benefitted from it. None of it was done for recognition, for payment or for reward beyond seeing others flourishing instead of floundering.
The kidnap of Sharon Commins and Hilda Kawuki in Darfur and the ongoing ordeal faced by Fr Michael Sinnott in the Philippines are a recent, stark reminder of the risks faced by all development workers, whether missionaries or lay people. They also give us an insight into the quiet world of selfless outreach that goes on each day and into the strong character and resilience such work calls for. I have been privileged over the years to meet many Spiritan missionaries, indeed I have been privileged to have counted some of them among my dearest and closest friends. I have seen them place all their gifts, their talents, their energy and their best years in the utterly selfless service of others from whom they asked nothing and expected nothing.
In October 1859, three French Spiritan priests and one brother arrived in Kingstown, now Dun Laoghaire, and the Irish Province was born. They too came to give, not to take, to build up not for themselves but for us and for our future. Looking back over the sweep of the one hundred and fifty years we can see what they could not see. We see the harvest of the seeds they planted in hope and in faith. They were small in number but big in vision. I think we can be sure they would be well pleased to see how their work has flourished here in Ireland and across the globe. Would they be worried by the prevailing trends which have seen vocations dry up in the Western world? I doubt it. They planted not for the season but for the sesquicentenary, for the long haul. Today as Kimmage welcomes Spiritans from other continents the circle is complete and we are right to celebrate this anniversary with real pride, real joy and renewed hope. I wish you well in continuing your valuable work for many years ahead. Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.