Oct 11, 2022
This year’s annual Masses for deceased MSCs and Daughters of the Lady of the Sacred Heart will take place around the country in November, as we remember those who have gone before us in the light of the Lord.
Annual Masses will take place at 3pm on Sunday 6th November in the following venues:
- Sacred Heart Church, Western Road, Cork (this Mass will be live-streamed here)
- Woodview House, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
- Croi Nua, Taylors Hill, Galway
and
On Sunday 13th November at 2pm in St Patrick’s Church, Ballybay
We keep all our deceased members in our prayers.
We would like to invite you to pray with us during the month of the Holy Souls as we remember the MSCs and Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart who worked so hard to ensure that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is known and loved everywhere, and by everyone.
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Oct 6, 2022
Welcome to the Winter 2022 edition of the MSC Message!
• Read a special greeting from Fr John Fitzgerald MSC, Director of the MSC Missions Office.
• Find out more about the latest updates from the MSC Centre for the Poor in the Philippines, where the MSC Centre for the Poor Agricultural Cooperative are working to bring brighter prospects to local communities, while nurturing and restoring harmony with the natural world.
• Catch up on the latest news from the mission fields, including updates from our MSC brothers in the Guatemala and Fiji, and our OLSH Sisters in Papua New Guinea and Burkina Faso, West Africa.
• Discover more about the work being done by MSCs in southern Haiti, where homes and communities must be rebuilt following a devastating earthquake in August 2021.
• Fr Alan Neville MSC writes from South Sudan, where he is currently ministering with the Loreto team in Rumbek.
• “Ordinary men answering an extraordinary call from God”: Read a message from Fr Con and Fr Tony, our Vocations Team.
• Find out more about recent celebrations in the Irish Province, where three of our MSC community recently celebrated 50 years of ordination at their Golden Jubilee.
Read the Winter 2022 edition of the MSC Message
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Aug 11, 2022
Early in 2021, the Irish Province of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart joined forces with the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Papua New Guinea to raise funds for a laundry in their aged-care centre in Port Moresby, as part of our annual MSC World Projects Appeal.
The Hartzer Centre is an aged-care facility attached to the main convent in Port Moresby, the country’s capital, where the Sisters care for elderly OLSH Sisters and MSC missionary priests who have devoted their lives to serving the people of Papua New Guinea. Eight rooms are dedicated to the care of elderly residents at the centre, and it was an ongoing worry that the facility did not have a dedicated laundry area of its own, with nurses carrying all dirty laundry through the convent dining room to reach the communal washing area. This has been a pressing hygiene concern, especially in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In December of last year, Sr Rosaleen O’Brien contacted us with an update on progress on the new laundry facilities being installed in the Hartzer Centre – progress that had been slowed considerably due to the effects of the COVID pandemic. We have been delighted to receive further updates in recent weeks, with thanks to our benefactors for their help in getting the project completed.
“Please convey our gratitude to all of the donors for their great contribution to the laundry project for our aged-care facility,” writes Sr Rosaleen. “We have at long last completed the work which has taken time because of COVID, and also a lack of materials when needed.”
“I do not know what to say, as it is such a help to us here – especially with our infirm patients, who, in this climate, need a lot of care each day,” Sr Rosaleen continues. “Sr Gabriella and her helpers are truly happy with this project.”
“We continue to pray for each person who has donated money for this important project, especially during the COVID pandemic, which is still affecting so many people around the world.”
We add our thanks to those of our OLSH Sisters; the ongoing support of our mission friends and benefactors here in the Irish Province provides immeasurable encouragement to our Sacred Heart family around the world, especially in these particularly challenging times. Sincere thanks to all who helped to provide these essential facilities for the elderly residents of the Hartzer Centre, and to all who continue to offer their friendship and their prayers as we continue on our shared missionary journey to make God’s love known everywhere.
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Aug 4, 2022
As the people of the Philippines continue to rebuild their homes, lives, and livelihoods following the devastation caused by Typhoon Odette in December 2021, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart are ongoing in efforts to help with repair and restoration.
In the middle of July, the Facebook page for the MSC Mission Office in the Philippines reported that the MSC Task Force Odette had held a ground-breaking ceremony in Gilutongan Island, located in Cordova, Cebu, to mark the beginning of the housing project here.
The MSC Typhoon Odette Housing Project has been in force throughout the first half of this year, with construction beginning in Bayagnan Island in Surigao City in March, and now, with the next phase of the project underway, more than 160 families in Gilutongan Island will be able to live safely and comfortably once again in secure homes.
Our Sacred Heart Sisters, the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, are also facilitating the rebuilding of homes, and the restoration of livelihoods in the Philippines – most recently, for fishermen in Barangay. The OLSH community in the Philippines donated motorised fishing boats to the fishing community of Barangay Caw-oy, and these boats were named in honour of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.
Together, we pray for the continued success of these relief programmes, for all of our MSC brothers and OLSH Sisters in the Philippines, and for the families and communities they serve.
Gilutongan Island images via the Facebook page for the MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc.
PLEASE HELP OUR SACRED HEART FAMILY IN THE PHILIPPINES
Jul 21, 2022
Soon after arriving in South Sudan in November 2020 for my current appointment, I received a WhatsApp message from Fr Abzalón, the Superior General of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, wishing me the best with the new mission and saying that he would like to visit one day. In the height of the pandemic, travelling anywhere seemed unlikely, and the possibility of coming to Rumbek would test even the most credulous of believers.
Less than two years later, though, I was in Juba to welcome him early on a Wednesday morning. When I first arrived in 2017 on a research trip, the airport was a simple tent, with no chairs that worked, and a length of runway. Now we have graduated to a building with one carousel, a sort of Central African Knock International Airport if you will. After a brief prayer to St Jude, he successfully negotiated the labyrinthine entry visa process, and we were off.
Challenges and resilience
Part of the Superior General’s mission was to see what was happening in Diocese of Rumbek and to explore if there was a need for a greater MSC presence. To that end, we spent our first day meeting with the head of religious missionaries in the country and then the coordinator of the Jesuit Refugee Service (both coincidentally Irish) to get the lay of the land and a sense of the reality of the people. That evening, we had dinner with Christian Carlassare, the newly ordained Bishop of the Diocese of Rumbek. He returned to the country just last March to be ordained, following an attempt on his life in 2021. Over cremated nyama choma (a speciality of grilled meat), the Bishop told him of the many challenges the Diocese faced, but also about the resilience of the people who persevered through a long fight for Independence and the Civil War of 2013.
Before sunrise, we were back to the airport for our flight to Lakes State. The closest approximation to the domestic departures experience is if you imagine the chaos in Dublin Airport earlier this year, then squeeze it all into one-tenth of the space, occasionally switch off the power, raise the temperature about 20C, and then you’re about half-way there. However, our guardian angels were working time and a half, and by 8:10am we had arrived in Rumbek and were heading to Loreto, which would be Fr Abzalón’s base for the week.
Exploring Loreto and beyond
Fr Abzalón had the opportunity to explore the Loreto compound, beginning with the Mary Ward Primary Health Care Clinic. In addition to looking after all the students and staff, it has responsibility for nine local villages encompassing 27,000 people. Most come for vaccinations, nutritional support, and especially malaria treatment. In the primary school, there are 1,400 day pupils, with a further 340 boarding girls in the secondary school. We are coming to the end of the first semester, so everyone was intent on their revision for exams. That afternoon he came to the Catholic University of South Sudan, Rumbek, where I work as principal. There, he met the young men and women who are training to be the teachers and the business people of the future.
It’s hard to believe in recent years that to drive into the east of Rumbek would mean that you were taking your life in your hands. It would be highway robbery, except there was no highway and if you got away with just being robbed you would be doing well. With the arrival of the new governor last year there have been far fewer problems. On Friday, we joined the final-year students and some of the staff to be part in a peace walk to the Parish of the Good Shepherd in Thonaduiel. We started off like good pilgrims at dawn and arrived eight hours later and 45km away, finishing with a short time of prayer. It was a witness for the villages we walked through of the country that could be built together if peace were to flourish.
South Sudan celebrated its Independence on the 9th of July 2011, and every year since then it has been a day for processions, speeches, and sports in Freedom Square. They have an understandable sense of pride over the establishment of their nation, but are conscious too of the outstanding issues that remain, most notably peace building, the rights of women, and the first elections that are due to take place next year. The Loreto students were out in force for the day and their marching was featured on national TV, to the great excitement of all the girls.
Pioneering work
The next few days allowed Fr Abzalón the chance to visit some of the local villages in Maker Kuei, where we are based. People live in simple conditions with a quiet dignity and have a genuine warmth for visitors. He took a cooking class to learn how to make combo (a type of stew containing vegetables, peanuts, and meat) over a charcoal fire. He also attended some of my CRE classes in the secondary school and shared what life is like in Guatemala, his home country. It was a special blessing to have him celebrate our Sunday Mass for the students outdoors under the shade of the neem trees.
As his week came to a close, Fr Abzalón still had a lot to see. On Tuesday, we went to visit the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Mapourdit. The Daughters are the trailblazers of the Chevalier Family in South Sudan. They have been here for over twenty-five years and they endured many hardships before the country won Independence. Today, they continue their pioneering work in education and healthcare under the most challenging of conditions.
Thursday came around quicker than anticipated and Fr Abzalón headed back to Juba to get a COVID test and an onward flight to Rome. Looking back on his experiences he wrote to us that same week:
“The mission … is a wonderful and prophetic project of education and integral promotion, especially of young women. The community there struggle day by day to build and transform this challenging and complex, but at the same time, beautiful reality. The Chevalier Family is present in South Sudan.”
– Fr Abzalón Alvarado Tovar MSC
Superior General of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart
Ben Nhialic areer kek a yin,
Fr Alan
Read more from Fr Alan’s missionary journey in South Sudan:
PLEASE HELP US TO TRANSFORM LIVES IN SOUTH SUDAN
