Nuncio welcomes ‘rebirth’ of Catholicism in Ireland

THE PAPAL nuncio to Ireland has spoken of a rebirth of the Church in the country and a renewed enthusiasm among young Catholics for their faith.

Archbishop Charles Brown, who was appointed at the peak of the clerical abuse scandal in 2011, said that Irish Catholicism had entered a new “springtime”.

He told the Catholic News Service: “The Church in Ireland has been through a good 20 years of real suffering, of a winter. I think that after this period of difficulty something new is beginning. We are beginning to see green shoots of renewal.”

He added that young seminarians he met at St Patrick’s College,  Maynooth, and also in Rome, had a renewed enthusiasm for their faith. “A new generation has gone through that difficult period but has been purified by it,” he said.

But earlier this week the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, revealed that only two Catholic priests in Dublin are under the age of 40. Speaking after ordaining a new priest, he anticipated greater lay involvement across parishes in the future. In his ordination homily, the archbishop said it was time to show that “the Church is a community of those who care for all those on the frontiers of society – the frontiers of abandonment and poverty – but also for those who are searching to understand the meaning of their existence.”

 Pressure is growing in County Galway for a memorial to be erected to nearly 800 babies and children believed to have been buried in a septic tank beside a home for unmarried mothers run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.

To read the archbishop’s homily, visit www.thetablet.co.uk