Alarm over rise in suicides

Priests risk becoming desensitised to the tragedy of suicide due to the growing numbers of people who are taking their lives in the Midlands area of Ireland, according to a priest of Kildare and Leighlin Diocese, writes Sarah Mac Donald.

Fr Paddy Byrne, a curate in the parish of Portlaoise, where seven suicides have taken place in the locality since 1 April, expressed concern that the “severity of a death by suicide was beginning to just not register” with clergy, who in the Irish Church were hugely under pressure and overworked due to the decline in priest numbers. “We are living in a consumerist world and often we are seen as a commodity – as a service provider,” he said.
Fr Byrne continued: “We find ourselves in situations where you can celebrate up to 100 funerals in the parish in the year – we literally go from one funeral to the next. In urban areas we can become like sacramental mechanics.”

He questioned the provision of resources for clergy “on the frontline” who were being called to “the car crashes, the tree or the attic – wherever suicide takes place”. “It is up to ourselves to foster safe places and I think as a Church we are very poor at that,” he said.

Asked why he thought the suicide rate appeared to be increasing in the Midlands, the 42-year-old curate suggested that a “crisis of hope” and a “crisis of spirituality” was being replaced by a sense of nihilism which left people unable to find the resilience to overcome the storm clouds they encounter in life.