Speech at the opening of the Ozanam Centre
Saint Joseph’s Conference, Saint Vincent de Paul Society, Cavan, 25th February 2014
A Chairde dhíl,
Dear friends,
Tugann sé an-phléisiúr dom bheith sa Chabhán inniu chun ionad pobail nua Cumann Naomh Iósaf a oscailt.
[It gives me great pleasure to be in Cavan today to open the Saint Joseph’s Conference’s new community centre.]
May I thank Johnny O’Hanlon, President, for inviting me here this morning, and all his colleagues in the Housing Conference who so generously dedicate of their time, thoughts and heart to the service of the most vulnerable in the community.
I would like, also, to avail of this occasion to acknowledge the work of the Conference’s founding President, the late Tom Tierney. Tom dedicated much of his tremendous energy to building and consolidating the Saint Joseph’s Conference, and he was, I was told, a great man to raise money and spend it wisely.
This Centre we are opening today is named after the wonderfully gifted, courageous and idealistic twenty-year-old student who founded the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in France in 1833 – i.e. Frédéric Ozanam. This choice of name in itself bears testimony to the living legacy of Ozanam.
As a lay Christian with a passionate concern for social justice, a questioner of the status quo in church and state, and a defender of the civil rights of the poor and dispossessed, Frédéric Ozanam is indeed a figure who remains a powerful source of challenge and inspiration for both the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and the Ireland of today.
His vision was one of uncompromising commitment to social justice:
“Justice,” he wrote, “is a fixed star which human societies try to follow from their uncertain orbits. It can be seen from different points of view, but justice itself remains unchanged.”
What gives its unique force to Ozanam’s vision is that it combines the inextinguishable quest for the ideal of justice with very practical concerns of how to respond to poverty and exclusion. For Ozanam, faith was best conceived as what gives impetus to actions. And it was this realisation which actually brought the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul Society into existence in the spring of 1833, when, during a heated debate at the Société des Bonnes Études, somebody challenged Ozanam and his fellow-students by asking:
“What is the Catholic church doing for the poor of Paris? Show us your works!”
Which provocation prompted one of Ozanam’s friends to articulate the now well-known reply:
“Let’s visit the poor”.
This injunction, radical in its simplicity, has become the Vincentians’ guiding principle. The actions of the St Vincent de Paul’s Society’s members are rooted in the conviction that the struggles of the marginalised are the struggles of society in general. By visiting those in need, by understanding their backgrounds, by bearing witness and giving voice to their lived experience, they work for social change at community level, at the micro level of every visited person’s life, and on the wider scale of our society at large.
The prodigious development of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, from the small, student-led ‘Conference of Charity’ to the great worldwide organisation it is now, owes a great deal to Frédéric Ozanam’s extraordinary personality and compelling vision.
It also owes something to each and every one of the Society’s volunteers over the years; to each and every one of you present here this morning, who constantly breathe new life into the original vision and impulse; and to each and every one of you who endeavour, day after day, to seek out the forgotten, be a voice for the voiceless, and work to build a more just and peaceful society.
Today the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul numbers about 700,000 members in some 148 countries across the world. In Ireland, the Society was established in 1844, that is, just eleven years after its foundation in Paris, and it became very active during the Great Famine. Today, the Irish branch of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society has 9,500 volunteers who work in over 1,000 Conferences across the country.
The Saint Joseph’s Housing Conference, here in Cavan, is one important link in this great, countrywide network of support, with its multiplicity of shelters, community centres, projects and activities, all characterised by a will to go beyond mere philanthropy in order to address the root causes of poverty and social injustice in our society. The Conference’s members, employees and volunteers all share an ethos which drives them, not only to assist, but also to stand in solidarity with the poor and insecure.
If asked to show your works, as Ozanam and his friends were challenged to do at the famous session of the Société des Bonnes Études, I know that all of you who are involved with the St Joseph’s Conference would have no difficulty answering.
With its stock of 32 one or two beds apartments and its 3 houses, your Conference provides long-term housing for vulnerable people, as well as short-term housing for those who need a temporary shelter in order to find respite – be it after a family break-up, a loss of job, or while they recover from an addiction – before they move back into the community.
Let me clarify something: the use of the term ‘vulnerable’ is too often associated with specific categories of people – “vulnerable older people”, “vulnerable children,” for example. This must not obscure the fact that none of us present here this morning are ‘invulnerable.’ All of us have urgent needs for care at various stages in our lives, as a consequence of infancy, physical or mental illness, impairment or other vulnerabilities. All of us can, one day, face existential circumstances such that we will need the support of organisations like the St. Vincent de Paul.
The visits made to people’s homes are a core element of this support provided by Conferences such as Saint Joseph’s, or indeed Saint Patrick’s, here in Cavan. I am sure that the bonds of friendship woven between the Conferences’ volunteers and staff and those they visit bring meaning, warmth and joy to the lives of both the visitors and the visited.
And as they build relationships with the visited, Josephine Curry and her colleagues are enabled to reach a true understanding of the obstacles faced by those with whom they befriend, and to develop an awareness of the larger societal issues that lie at the root of many of their difficulties.
Such practices are, in my view, an enactment of the values of solidarity and fraternity in the deepest sense.
And I have no doubt that this most recent achievement of the St Joseph’s Conference – this new community centre – will foster even more occasions for joyous, fraternal gatherings. Sabina and I are truly delighted to have been able to visit these premises this morning, to have met the happy children of the Stepping Stones pre-school, to have seen the Breffni Community Employment agency, the kitchen and the various meeting rooms.
Projects such as this one, dedicated to improving the welfare of those most in need and, thereby, of the community at large, are highly commendable.
Their worth only increases in times of economic hardship and moral confusion such as ours. I fully agree with the Saint Vincent de Paul Society’s National Vice-President, Professor John Monaghan, who suggested that Irish people must move beyond anger and recrimination, and set about the task of building an alternative future. Here is what he said:
“We do not want to look back on this period as one when the seeds of future social inequities were sown, but one in which the values necessary for a socially just, fair and caring nation emerged.”
And so once again, I would like to commend the work of the St. Joseph’s Conference, as well as that of the other three Conferences operating in Cavan – Saint Patrick’s, the original Conference; St. Peter’s, who support people who travel from night shelter to night shelter; and Our Lady of the Wayside, who work with the Travellers’ community.
The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, founded almost two hundred years ago by Frédéric Ozanam, has lost nothing of its relevance in this new century; it reminds us of the important choices still to be made in today’s Ireland: how do we view those who are in need of assistance? What values are to guide our actions as we build our shared future on the ruins of a failed economic model?
It is my profound conviction that the ethics of friendship and the building of caring local communities which the Saint Vincent de Paul Society nurtures are key to this shared future.
Comhghairdeas libh ar fad. I wish you every success in your future endeavours, and a long life to the Ozanam Centre.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.