04 Sep 2018
Fr Alan Neville MSC spoke with Lydia O’Kane, Vatican News correspondent, at the Festival of Families in Croke Park on Saturday, August 25th. Reflecting on the sheer joy of this momentous occasion, Fr Alan speaks of the importance of acceptance, togetherness, and presence.
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is hope. Amen.
Lydia O’Kane: The curtain has come down on a stunning event – tell me what you thought of it.
Fr Alan Neville: It was just wonderful. We had everyone gathered together – we had people from all around the world, we had fantastic music, incredible dancing, and these wonderful testimonies, people coming out and sharing their stories. It was incredible, and there was a lovely sense of authenticity to it, a lovely sense of reflecting, amoris laetitia; actually, life is complicated, but families are the very foundation of who we are as a Church and who we are as a society, and that actually, as a Church, we’ve got something to offer, and working together, we can support one another. Coming together with something like this, this is what it means to be a Church. Okay, it’s a huge stadium, but we’re all gathered here. We’re gathered in prayer and there’s joy and there’s hope. You’ve got people who are homeless, people who are travellers, people who are refugees and asylum seekers, people from Ireland, everyone together, and it’s just wonderful.
LOK: When the Pope came in, there was a huge uproar of affection for him – there was so much affection for him in the stadium tonight, wasn’t there?
AN: Oh yeah! As Irish people, we pride ourselves on our hospitality, but there’s something about Pope Francis, I think. When you see him, he just seems like there’s great warmth there, and as Irish people, we respond to that. Even if you just take the first step, we’ll just embrace you – it is a land where, God willing, we make everyone feel welcome. We’ve travelled the whole world, and when someone comes here, there’s this real sense of, “Do you know what? It’s great to have you here!” And certainly for Pope Francis, it’s a huge occasion, because it’s 1979 since we last had a Pope in Ireland, and people still talk about it – “Where were you when that happened?” And this is that moment now. We’ve got kids beside us here who were playing music, they were wonderful, and when the Pope visits next time – God only knows when it will be – but they’ll be able to say, “I was there and it was amazing. We gave him a great welcome, and he was fantastic.”
LOK: What do you think it means to have the World Meeting of Families in Ireland?
AN: I think that maybe as a country in Western culture, there’s a real sense that for families, if they’re really struggling at the moment, there’s a lot more pressure perhaps than there was previously. Maybe the question for us then as a Church is, what do we do to support families? You know we’ve had difficult referendums here in Ireland recently, and you’ve got to acknowledge that – but then you’ve got to say, as a Church, do we actually back up what we say? How welcome do we make families in our Church? Do we merely tolerate them? Do we merely tolerate kids who come to Mass and cry and maybe make a mess, or run around, or laugh, or do we actually say, “Listen, you’re welcome, it’s so wonderful to have you here. You are actually the most important part of this entire Church.” The actual Irish word for “church” is “teach an phobail” – it’s “the house of the people”, that’s what it means. The buildings are beautiful, the artwork is incredible, the stained glass windows are stunning – but if we don’t have the people, it means nothing at all. And so in Ireland, the church is the house of the people.
LOK: Just one final question – what do you think people will take from the Pope’s words back to their own families? What do you think they’ll take from this evening?
AN: I think that maybe it’s something he brings himself, that gift of presence. We had it there when we had a family from India, the D’Costas, speaking about things like social media – not necessarily bad things, but how are we present to one another? Or the Richardson family, the challenges that they face. You can imagine, with 10 kids now in a house, it’s very chaotic, but there’s presence together. Pope Francis is very keen on how we treat one another, and there’s that real sense of, you don’t go to bed angry with one another, you’ve really got to be able to say “please”, “thank you”, and “I’m sorry”. And actually, another one that I’m sure he’s a very big fan of as well, is “I love you”. There’s something amazing with kids – if you ask a child how much God loves them, or does he love his mother and father, they have no doubt whatsoever, they believe 100% they are loved entirely. Something happens as we get older, we tend to forget that, or we feel almost ashamed to say it. There’s a real need to reclaim that, because we’re meant to be a people of love. I think that’s what we take away – “please”, “thank you”, “I’m sorry”, and “I love you”.
LOK: And on that note, Fr Alan, thanks so much. It’s been a great evening and thank you for talking to us.
Listen to Fr Alan’s interview here: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2018-08/apostolic-journey-ireland-festival-families-testimonies.html