Young people leading new spring in Irish church, nuncio says

Friday, June 6th, 2014

Young people are helping to lead a rebirth of the Catholic Church in Ireland, the apostolic nuncio to that country believes.

American-born Archbishop Charles Brown told the Catholic News Service that this rebirth is like spring after 20 years of winter.

“You see a renewed enthusiasm among young Catholics in Ireland now,” Archbishop Brown said.

Young Catholics represent what is best in the tradition of Vatican II, “the idea of communicating the ancient unchanging faith in a new, vibrant and attractive way”, he explained.

After working at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Brown was appointed to his current role in 2011, amid widespread outrage about abuse in the Irish church.

Archbishop Brown says he is impressed by young Irish seminarians he has met.

“A new generation has gone through that difficult period, but has been purified by that,” he said.

But Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin revealed this week that only two priests in his archdiocese are younger than 40.

The nuncio believes overall priest numbers will decline for a while.

“Parishes will have to share resources and combine and cluster, and that will be an opportunity for lay people to take on a larger role in the Church,” Archbishop Brown said.

He said priestly vocations remain crucial for Church renewal.

But Ireland has had a recent reminder of darker aspects of its past with reports of the bodies of 796 children from a Catholic-run mother-and-baby home being put in a mass grave.

The deaths were in a home for unwed mothers in Tuam run by the Bons Secours nuns in the west of Ireland from 1925 to 1961.

The remains were reportedly buried in a disused septic tank.

Local death records cite sicknesses, diseases, deformities and premature births as causes.

This would reflect an Ireland that, in the first half of the 20th century, had one of the worst infant mortality rates in Europe, with tuberculosis rife.

The Irish government has established a working group to address details emerging about such Catholic-run, state-funded homes and the burial of deceased children.

Sources