This year, our MSC Missions Office on the Western Road, Cork, marks 60 years in operation. Together, we’re celebrating 60 years of prayer, of fundraising (in countless creative shapes and forms!), of local and global outreach, of friendship, of unity, of faith, of hope, and of love. Many of the mission friends that support us today are carrying on the long-standing tradition of their parents and grandparents, and we are so blessed and privileged to benefit from generations of this friendship and support, with our sincere and heartfelt gratitude.
The MSC Missions Office on the Western Road, Cork, celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2026.
In the spirit of our anniversary year, we will take a look back through the archives over the coming months, and explore just some of our missionary work and local activities throughout the years.
We begin in the Spring of 1981, when the MSC Message featured a piece on our Venezuelan mission, which had begun 13 years previously. Fr John Jennings MSC was among the team out there at the time, and now, over 40 years later, he continues to live with the people of Maracaibo and Caracas, accompanied by Fr Tom Jordan and Fr Tom O’Brien in his daily ministry.
Article from the MSC Message newsletter, Spring 1981
Our Spring 1981 newsletter also provided recipes for scrambled eggs and homemade pizza – an interesting precursor to today’s vigilance around the necessity of fresh foods over processed!
Finally, a familiar face pops up in an edition of the MSC Message covering the events of 1982/1983… Our very own Fr John Fitzgerald, current director of the MSC Missions Office, is pictured taking a break for tea. It’s nice to see that some things don’t change!
The MSC Missions Office is not a stand-alone entity, but rather a real and living part of our extended Sacred Heart family – a family that includes our missionaries all over the world, the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, lay workers and volunteers, and the mission friends and benefactors that make it all possible. It is quite simple – without your support, we could not do what we do, and for that, we are so truly grateful.