Young Partners

JVI: Fr Liam O’Connell, who directs Jesuit Volunteers International, sent us word of two new volunteers, Josephine Kehoe from Gorey, and Dermot Bradley from Rochfordbridge, Co. Westmeath. They are going to work for one year at Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre (KATC), near Lusaka, Zambia. Josephine will manage the construction of ten Eco- friendly farmers’ houses, made from special bricks which use only 5% cement, have efficient water collection during the rainy season, use biodigesters (see below) for the creation of propane gas, and will be equipped with energy-efficient stoves. Read more on the AMDG Website.

Bart Rides the Tide

Fifty years ago Fr Bart Kiely SJ, now professor of psychology at the Gregorian University, won the Lee swim as a 16-year-old. It is a different race now, 1700 metres downstream through the middle of Cork, helped by a turning tide. This year Bart set his sights on breaking 60 minutes. Scorning a wet suit (that would have put him into a different, sissy category) and braving hypothermia, he has just repeated the swim, and front-crawled the distance in 55 minutes, twenty minutes better than in 2007. Beside the water he bumped into a rival swimmer from his youth, Mary Wylie, now a grandmother. She was the fastest girl in Munster when Bart was the fastest boy. Bart would not confirm that he is organising a swimming race down the Tiber for the Prefects of Vatican Congregations.

World Youth Day

Conor: In Australia the ‘I’ bowed gracefully and took a step backwards to cede primary focus to the ‘We’ and the ‘Us’. A strong feeling of community reigned supreme. Will we carry that sense of community in our bones back to homes across the earth? Can we turn it outwards and light a stronger flame under our Social Spirituality? Will we breath new life into this, a spirituality that ‘takes its focus beyond ‘me’ and how ‘I’ feel, and looks sideways, downwards, upwards…….toward society, and the world, and all its gifts and all its injustices?

Figures in a Landscape

Fatima Fiesta

Ignatian Pilgrims

Last month Fergus O’Donoghue SJ led a group of 34 Irish prilgrims to Spain. He writes:

“The pilgrimage is based on St. Ignatius’s Autobiography and is intended to bring pilgrims to the places in which the significant events in his life occurred. So we stayed at Loyola for four nights, which gave plenty of time for prayer in the house where he was born and where he experienced a spiritual reawakening many years later. We visited the buildings he would have known in the nearby town of Azpeitia and even arranged a group photograph outside his mother’s birthplace in Azcoitia (ignoring the bemused gazes of a large crowd of Basque-speaking teenagers). We went to the Franciscan shrine at Arantzazu, high in the mountains, where Ignatius made his first pilgrimage.

Short Notices

• Starting on 1 September, 2008, there are a number of events to celebrate the golden jubilee of St Declan’s school, Northumberland Road - the secret Jesuit school! Keep in touch through St Declan’s website: stdeclan@iol.ie. Read about it in “Special Needs” in the October Sacred Heart Messenger.
• August saw the publication (by Four Courts Press) of a historical study by Francis Edwards, a British Jesuit: Title “The enigma of the Gunpowder Plot, 1605: the Third Solution.”
• US Jesuit Thomas Sweetser is the lead speaker at a Pastoral Conference on 29-30 September at the Marino Institute, Dublin 9. Details from bernie.martin@iecon.ie
  
• Recent Jesuit appointments: Fr Joe Dargan succeeds Micheál MacGreil as Chairman of the Pioneer Association, and Fr Paul Andrews succeeds PJ Farrell as Director of Jesuit Communications.
  

Brendan is Gone, Long Live Brendan

You may wonder what has happened to Brendan McManus, the first and late editor of AMDG Express. After an intense immersion course in the Conemara Gaeltacht, putting a Galway blas on his Fermanagh Gaelic, he has settled down to coordinate pastoral care in Colaiste Iognaid in Galway, where he also teaches media studies in Transition Year, manages a soccer team and is Track Tutor (sic) to the school’s runners. Not much time for crosswords.

They Give With Nothing to Gain

Northside People West, a suburban Dublin newspaper, featured JUST on 3rd September, around the experience of Jean and Karl, would-be third-level students in Ballymun:

Jean had been 29 years out of school when she decided to follow her dream of becoming a primary school teacher. But she almost abandoned her ambition when she faced her first college exam. “It was horrendous. I cried my eyes out on leaving the exam hall. Then I phoned Frank Brady from JUST and he invited me over for a coffee. We had a great chat, and he assured me I knew what I needed to know, and prepared me for my next exam the following day.” Read More on the AMDG Website