IRELAND
Crux
Kevin J. Jones
March 18, 2017
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY
Benedictine Monks in Ireland have made praying for the sins of priests the focus of their ministry. The scandals regarding sexual abuse by clergy gave an “incalculable blow” to the Church’s credibility in the country, but the resurgence of monastic life after the Reformation offers a glimpse of hope.
DUBLIN, Ireland — Prayer, reparation, and praising God are the focus of a new Benedictine priory in Ireland, which focuses especially on reparation for the sins of priests.
“It was never our predetermined plan to come to Ireland,” Silverstream Priory’s Father Benedict Anderson, O.S.B., told Catholic News Agency. “But we believe that, through circumstances that we could never have foreseen, Divine Providence placed us here to play some sort of role, however modest, in the life of the Irish Church.”
Silverstream Priory is the home of the Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
The priory is a former residence of the Visitation Sisters in Stamullen, a village about 22 miles north of Dublin. It is believed to be the first monastery established in Ireland’s County Meath since King Henry VIII suppressed them.
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