057 873 1182 raheenparish@gmail.com

An Instrument of Peace

John Hume put his devotion to what was right above what was best for himself, his life’s work was given its ultimate return in the Good Friday Agreement he signed 22 years ago. Hume had a multitude of qualities that allowed him be a singularly resolute peacemaker...

Mind your Mind

I was moved by Brendan O Connor’s interview with Brent Pope recently. Brent spoke of his reflective-time during the lockdown. He thought of his mother in New Zealand who had gone into a home. He thought of those 30 years in Ireland away from home and family. He...

Stay Positive

Our world screams out for poetry even if it can’t cope with it.  Faith can only exist in a world of poetry.  God is always big and bigger.  Little minds have nothing worthwhile to say of God or faith. The rigids and the dogmatics and the absolutes, live in the world...

Appreciate Little Things

Ode to a mouse  or a spider: Robbie Burns writes well on the little things. When he was ploughing, he disturbed the home of a mouse. He apologised in a poem. ‘Ode to a mouse.’ He admits too, how careless humans are and disrespectful of the social status of life where...

Suicide – A pandemic that continues to devastate

During the past ten days, five lives have been lost to suicide in Laois. Wonderful lives, abruptly ended, leaving behind families overwhelmed with grief and sadness. We live in most challenging times, I suggest all our vulnerabilities are exaggerated in a time of...

Ending Direct Provision

Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Ireland have launched a new study, Protection with Dignity: Roadmap to System Change, which identifies necessary steps for system change to put an end to Direct Provision. Five years after publication of the first fundamental review of the...