missionaries
Beginning
again in
Ireland
COURTESY OF TONY KEYA, GOSPEL REPUBLIC
Lea este
articulo en
español
en linea.
FATHER Richard
Hendrick, O.F.M.
Cap. speaks at
the end of a
prayer service
featuring the
Dublin Gospel
Choir.
Lisez cet article
en français en
ligne.
Read this
article in Spanish or French
online.
With its long history of Catholicism, Ireland might seem an unusual
place for the work of evangelization, but in a place that once exported
thousands of priests and members of religious communities, “All has
changed, changed utterly.”
BY
ANDREW
O’CONNELL
o W WERE you able to tell
the time on that clock?”
whispered the high-school
student, genuinely puzzled. “it had no
hands or numbers.” The
teenager was pointing
H
Andrew O’Connell is a columnist with The Irish Catholic
newspaper and communications director for the Presentation Brothers in Dublin.
to the empty monstrance sitting on the
altar. Just a few moments earlier it had
held the Blessed sacrament during a
prayer service for her class.
“i remember that moment clearly,”
says Father Richard Hendrick, an irish
Capuchin Franciscan friar. “The student
thought the monstrance was an ornamental clock and confused the Host with
the clock-face. At that moment it really
struck me that ireland is now missionary
territory and that evangelization needs
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