REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT RELIGIOUS SISTERS OF CHARITY CONFERENCE “JUSTICE AND THE DOWNTURN..
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT RELIGIOUS SISTERS OF CHARITY CONFERENCE “JUSTICE AND THE DOWNTURN: SHARING MARY AIKENHEAD’S.."
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.
Good morning everyone and thank you very much for your very warm welcome. I am very pleased to be here with you today at this special conference as you celebrate the life and works of a great Irish woman, Sr. Mary Aikenhead, in the sesquicentenary of her death in 1858. My special thanks to Sr. Miriam for her welcome and to Sr. Stan for the invitation to join you today.
Your Conference focuses not on your foundress herself but on this difficult time we are living through economically and the downstream consequences for issues of social justice. Yet Mary Aikenhead’s preoccupations in her own day are precisely yours today. She was born immediately before the French Revolution in that era of radical politics which would unleash a whole new understanding of the rights of the human person and an impulse for egalitarian democracy that would not come into its own until the latter half of the twentieth century.
She was born into very comfortable family circumstances but her parents were far from blind to the inequalities and the grim poverty which was the lot of most of the citizens of her home city of Cork. The squalor and misery all around that city provoked in her a restlessness that took hold of her heart and made her a lifelong champion of the poor, a formidable advocate in favour of change.
We know how she founded the Religious Sisters of Charity, a radical new mould for religious congregations which until then stayed behind convent walls. Mary Aikenhead put herself and her sisters to work out among the community wherever there was need. She often said that "There is no charity where there is no respect for the poor". And with a ferocious determination she began in Dublin a movement that would set up in Ireland and across the world a network of hospitals, orphanages, schools and outreaches to prisoners and other poor.
Respect for the poor was a revolutionary notion in that world of vain empires of both Church and State. It still is in many parts of the globe today. Then and now the work of Mary Aikenhead’s heart and hands was carried out by the women who joined the Sisters of Charity and the many others who have become supporters of their charism of care for the poor. It would be impossible to fully do justice or to quantify the many people whose lives were enhanced and helped by the Sisters of Charity and it is important to acknowledge the contribution made over almost two centuries.
But there is a candle burning here today, lit earlier this morning when you held a minute’s silence in commemoration of those whose childhood experiences of institutional abuse are so graphically set out in the Ryan report. Some of that suffering happened to children in the care of the Sisters of Charity. It is a sad chapter in your Order’s history and indeed in Irish history, a millstone of biblical proportions and one that calls for Mary Aikenhead’s resilience, determination, humility and focus in the journey of amending and healing which lies ahead.
Mary Aikenhead once famously wrote “How my heart trembles at the awful state of our poor people and really, in a sense, more dreadfully do I feel about the miserable rich ones.” Those words resonate with the subject of this Conference “Justice in the Downturn.” The Ireland of her day, and for most days until recent years, was one of relentless downturn except for a tiny, privileged elite. That we have known considerable progress, prosperity and success in Ireland would, I am sure, please her greatly but she would too have an aching heart at the sudden change in fortunes which have brought so much unhappiness, stress and worry into people’s lives, particularly after a period of such optimism. There are those who have lost jobs, who face high levels of personal debt, who are terrified of tomorrow and the next day because of the bills they cannot pay and the hopes of their children that they cannot fulfil.
There are those who have come to Ireland in recent years, who have worked hard to make a start at a new life here. They face the same worries as their Irish neighbours but without the embedded family and community supports that they left behind in their homelands. They have little back-up here, little to fall back on and there is always the lurking danger of a nasty word here or a racist jibe there to add more misery to their daily experiences. At all costs, as a nation which exported its people all over the world, that experienced generations of racist anti-Irish jibes, we have to make a stand in the name of justice against those who would drag us down the road of scape-goating and stereotyping.
There are those who are engaged in great works of care for those so easily excluded from the mainstream, the homeless, the poor, those with disability, the carers, the addicts, the offenders, the chronically ill, the dying. So much of the work of care relies on donations from the public, from corporations and from government. While the public are remarkably generous even in this tight financial climate, the corporate donations are inevitably affected as well as government spend and as a consequence services that are lights in people’s lives are under pressure.
In these tough times the organisations which deal with the poor and the marginalised are seeing the emergence of a new poor who are often baffled by the sudden change in their fortunes and embarrassed by their inability to cope like they used to do. We know that this moment will pass, that we will return our country to a sound financial footing and to prosperity. We will face down this testing period as we faced down many a crisis before but between the problem and its resolution there will be difficult territory to cross and there will be real suffering and hardship for some. Your work places you right in the frontline. You are in a very good position to see and hear what is happening and to judge what responses are needed to show solidarity and care for those who are in need of help through this bad patch to better times beyond.
Thank you for asking the questions and for gathering to probe the answers. We need champions to be looking out for our people, for all of our people, for those of us who share this country are in this together as neighbours, colleagues, family and friends, as community to one another and with a responsibility for one another. I look forward to hearing what this conference has to tell us as we try to construct a road-map to more secure times.
Finally, may I join with everybody else in wishing Sr. Stan a very happy special birthday this month – June is a great month for a birthday Stan – and I take this opportunity to thank you for the tremendous contribution to national life that you have made and continue to make.
I wish you well with this important and timely conference and for the opportunity to reflect on the life of a truly remarkable Irishwoman, Mother Mary Aikenhead. Born in the foment of revolution, she lived long enough to see the violent inferno of famine consume Ireland. She was tested by the fragility of the world around her, tested by her own frail body which was overwhelmed by catastrophic illnesses. Yet her faith did not collapse. She did not give in to the counsel of despair. Instead she kept on trying until her last breath to work for a fairer, freer and happier world and so must we.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.