A Journey with St Patrick ♣
This St. Patrick’s day we will be having a special reflection evening in the Sacred Heart Church on Western Road with Music, Song and Poetry on our Live Stream at 7pm.
Lenten Services 2021
As we begin our Lenten season and journey this year, we do so after already a long year of limitations and lockdowns. It feels like we have already given up so much. It has been hard. Yet these coming weeks can be a precious time to open our hearts to the Lord who loves us intimately and has compassion on his people; to be renewed, restored, healed and converted. In opening our hearts to Him, so also we open our hearts to one another and to our world. We pray, we fast, we reach out in selfless giving.
Despite our continued physical isolation from one another, may this Lent be a graced time for us; that we each may yield fruit in due season (Communion antiphon for Ash Wednesday). For these 40 days we journey together.
Have a blessed journey.
Fr Carl Tranter
MSC Provincial Leader.
Congratulations to Miguel Ibarra MSC on his First Profession
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Miguel Ibarra MSC and his fellow novices, Erik Bryan de Mattos MSC and Witalo Souza de Jesus MSC on their First Profession on Tuesday night.
Miguel is a member of our MSC Region in Venezuela and has just completed his noviciate in Itajubá, Brazil. He began his formation in Maracaibo with Vicente Buitrago and then Tom Mulcahy before transferring to the Pre-Novitiate in Sao Luis, Brazil. We are particularly grateful to his formators in Brazil, Everton da Silva MSC (Pre-Novitiate) and Getulio Saggin MSC (Novice Master) for their welcome and close accompaniment of Miguel.
Miguel will now move to the MSC Scholasticate in Sao Paulo to continue with his theology studies. We had hoped that he would be able to go the MSC International Scholasticate in El Salvador but because Venezuela has closed consular services during the Covid-19 Pandemic it has not been possible for him to obtain the necessary documentation.
For those of you who may wish to watch the celebration you can do so on YouTube here
We welcome Miguel as a professed member of the Province and assure him our support and prayers as he continues his formation journey.
MSC World Projects Appeal 2021: Typhoon victims in the Philippines
In the middle of November 2020, the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Vamco (known locally as Typhoon Ulysses), which left in its wake loss of life, severe flooding and damage amounting to millions of euro.
Typhoon Vamco was the most powerful typhoon to hit the country in seven years and the community of 25 OLSH Sisters have been ministering to badly affected families in two very poor areas of Manila.
“In the face of such damage, it is hard to know how to help and what to do,”
writes Sr Ruth S. Yburan FDNSC, Regional Leader of the Daughters of Our Lady
of the Sacred Heart in the Philippines.
The initial focus was on providing emergency aid such as food and water to families who have been left destitute and displaced by the typhoon, and now, the Sisters are helping people to rebuild their lives, starting with purchasing the necessary materials to help people to restore homes that were demolished by the storm.
“This is a long-term task, and we would be very grateful for any assistance you can give us.Please be assured of the prayers and gratitude of the Sisters and the people to whom we minister.”
– Sr Ruth S. Yburan FDNSC
MSC World Projects Appeal 2021: Educating disadvantaged youths in the Congo
Last year, our World Projects Appeal introduced you to the children of the Yetsi region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Bishop Toussaint Iluku MSC was raising funds to build a school in an area of extreme poverty and hardship.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is ranked as one of the poorest countries in Africa. The diocese of Bokungu-Ikela, located in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was founded by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in 1961 and is an area of real and pressing need.
The population depends on agriculture and livestock for their livelihoods, and on a day-to-day basis, they live hand-to-mouth in precarious conditions.With the diocese coming up to its 60th anniversary, Bishop Toussaint and MSCs in the region are shining the spotlight on the lack of educational facilities in the region.
The Catholic Church is one of the main sources of hope for struggling families in the area, particularly when it comes to education, and our MSCs are doing their best to lay the groundwork to give local children,and generations to come, hope for the future.
Thanks to the generosity of our mission friends here in the Irish Province following last year’s appeal,Bishop Toussaint and his team were able to fund the construction of a school building in Yetsi.
Work is ongoing on the project; however, the school is sorely lacking in equipment as essential as benches and tables. The children can often be seen studying on the floor due to the lack of the most basic facilities,creating additional challenges for students who already have very little, and who are desperately trying to make the best of what they have in order to build a more hopeful future.
Some of the pupils bring their own chairs from their homes. However, many of these children are from homes that have so little, they don’t even have a chair to bring to school.Those children who don’t have them, they have the
floor, where they sit down and follow the teacher.”
– Bishop Toussaint MSC