IRELAND
The Guardian
August 17, 2018
by Harriet Sherwood
Catholic priests in Ireland need to be missionaries in their own country to meet the challenges of a changing society, Eamon Martin, the most senior church figure in Ireland, has said ahead of the pope’s visit to Dublin next weekend.
“We are in mission territory in many ways as Catholics in Ireland,” Martin, who is archbishop of Armagh as well as primate of all Ireland, told the Guardian.
“Ireland was always renowned as a missionary country, sending priests all over the world to spread the Catholic faith. But there’s a need for mission here in Ireland now, a need for a new evangelisation.”
In the four decades since the last papal visit to Ireland, that of John Paul II in 1979, the country has seen a steep decline in the numbers of people attending mass and the moral authority of the church has been shattered by revelations of child sexual abuse and mistreatment of vulnerable women in the Magdalene Laundries.
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