REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MEDICAL MISSIONARIES OF MARY’S 9TH CONGREGATIONAL CHAPTER
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MEDICAL MISSIONARIES OF MARY’S 9TH CONGREGATIONAL CHAPTER, PURCELL HOUSE
Dia dhíbh a chairde inniu. It is a privilege to join you here today for your Ninth Congregational Chapter. I am grateful to Sister Margaret Quinn for the invitation to address this gathering and to each of you for the warmth of your welcome.
The inspirational challenge and guidance you, as Medical Missionaries of Mary set yourselves in your constitution - “today is a new day, be ready to walk in paths that are new” - is as powerful and evocative now as it was in 1937 when Mary Martin launched you on your work of practical help to the poor and suffering of the world. Her vision, her experience of pain and suffering over the previous 22 years of her life, her commitment to giving and helping distilled into the charism that has inspired this wonderful organisation to be healers of body and mind, whether here in Ireland or in some of the most hostile environments on our planet.
You have done this bravely, imaginatively, sensitively as professionals bringing professional medical care and as Christian missionaries bringing a message of love into places where you were witnesses to some of the worst horrors that people and nature can possibly visit upon human beings. The things others run away from in fear or horror, you walked deliberately into with a profound sense of responsibility and compassion. You arrived not with guns and all manner of physical security but rather with your skills, your courage, your vocation and that disarming quality of being women doing the unexpected work of care in the most unlikely of places. We know you are only human, so there have been days of deep loneliness, of fears and anxieties, doubts and at times despair but transcending all of those there has been a firmness of conviction, what St. Patrick calls “a mighty strength” that has seen you invest your lives among strangers mired in poverty, violent conflict and disease. These you treated as brothers and sisters. Your professional team drawn from eighteen nationalities has infused grace and hope into places which had given up on both. You have been daily, recurring miracles to so many people.
During my time as President of Ireland, I have been privileged to see your work in action, so quietly, unobtrusively under the radar of public notice but so effective in the lives of the suffering among whom you work. Kitovu Hospital in Uganda, on my first visit to East Africa in 2001, was an eye opener. The haunting spectre of HIV and AIDS allied to dreadful poverty and there you were working each day in the relentless war on the diseases which rob so many families of peace of heart and mind. Everyone has heard of the “flying nuns” of Turkana and as for mental health services in Arusha in Tanzania they would not exist but for the work of Dr. Sheila Devane whose work I had the privilege to see at Mt. Meno Regional Hospital.
The reputation your order enjoys has been built by the work of your hands over these seventy-two years of selfless service, this giving without counting the personal cost but rather seeing it as a receiving of fulfilment and grace. It has been a giving targeted at healthcare and the development of healthcare services. It has been a giving in solidarity with the poor and with the inspiration of the Christian gospel. How many lives it has changed – it would be impossible to count. How much good it has invested in humanity and in human decency - impossible to quantify. But then the work was never done for reward or for stockpiling numbers. The integrity of such work has long been endorsed by the financial and moral support of the Irish people and more recently by Irish Aid and Misean Cara. Now Ireland, people and government and missionaries and NGOs working as a team in many faceted partnerships are bringing a considerable uplift to the work of tackling global poverty.
Your work has and will continue to bring to you many a “new day” and require you constantly “to walk in paths that are new”. You have faced many trials and problems over each decade and today there are the anxieties that come from reducing numbers, an ageing population, the sheer scale of the AIDS epidemic and the tragedy of the scandals that overshadowed an otherwise proud legacy of years of acute hospital and specialist tropical disease care in Drogheda. So you come to this Congregational Chapter with much on your mind and much planning to do. The future is always uncertain. We are always at the mercy of unforeseen events and forces. Some days our hearts are broken by the inhumanity that human beings visit on each other, the greed and grasping that corrupt our world and the wildness of nature that can bring disaster and sorrow in its wake. On other days we remind ourselves that there are people like you who turn up to help, who do your best, wherever humankind or nature have done their worst. You turn up and you stay, while there is work to be done and no one else to do it, you stay. There are no big pensions or bonuses coming your way, no awards or long service medals, no formal recognition of this remarkable and selfless pooling of gifts which is the Medical Missionaries of Mary. That is why it is all the more important that I am here to say ‘thank you’ for all the good that you have accomplished, for witnessing to a life of service where selfish short-term gain has no place but where the work is done for a long-term investment in the betterment of all humanity. You don’t have a share price but the Medical Missionaries of Mary pay dividends that really matter. Those dividends are paid to the poor, the sick, the troubled and the overlooked and they are all the more precious to them because no-one sent you or forced you to be their friend, no law of man compelled you to care, and yet you do.
To all the participants in today’s Congregational Chapter and to your members worldwide, I offer my continuing encouragement for your special witness and charism in our world. May your Chapter release fresh energy, enthusiasm and imagination to carry you through the years to your centenary and beyond.
Comhghairdeas libh ‘s go raith míle maith agaibh go léir.