Presbyterian Church/General Assembly: In the past decade, 30,000 Africans have come to Ireland, about 20,000 of them from Nigeria, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland was told in Belfast yesterday.
About 10,000 people had come from Romania, and another 10,000 from former Soviet Union countries, continued Rev Tony Davidson, quoting research done for the Irish Council of Churches (ICC).
Presenting the report of the Church's Inter-Church Relations Board, he noted that Romanian and Russian Orthodox churches had been set up in Dublin, and that the Russian Orthodox Church had become a member of the Irish Council of Churches.
He said so too had Cherubim and Seraphim Churches last year on the basis of being part of a larger church with significant membership in other places in the world.
"I asked a member of Waterford (Presbyterian congregation) recently were they majority black; he said they were until the Russians joined," he told delegates.
There were as many as 10,000 people in black majority churches, which were "mushrooming around towns and cities of the Republic",
"Irish church relations cannot ignore their growing influence on the inter-church scene. This is real street inter-church relations as local congregations have to make decisions on whether or not to allow some of the churches use their premises.
"We are becoming a multi-cultural society." There was "a wind from the south blowing many people from around the world into Ireland, making this island a very different place from what it was a decade ago".
He recalled growing up in Dungannon "a typical Ulster town divided on sectarian lines with high unemployment.
"These days a walk through Tescos on a Saturday evening and you might feel out of place with a white face. About 800 people, mostly from Portuguese colonies, are living in mid-Ulster.
"Many ministers will be aware of the high numbers of nurses from the Philippines in hospitals we visit," he said.
Not everyone welcomed such change, he said, pointing to a report in last Saturday's Irish Independent of African Pentecostal church pilgrims on Bray Head who were terrorised by a knife-wielding gang which screamed racial abuse at them and threatened to throw them over the side of a cliff.
They were told: "Niggers! This is our country! Go home to your own country!"
Rev Dr Gordon Gray reminded the Assembly that "unlike other but worthy organisations" the Presbyterian Church's opposition to racism was rooted "firmly in biblical theology and ethics, diagnosing the scourge of racism as a manifestation of human sin".
The report he and Rev Davidson presented elaborated that this was "rooted in the biblical understanding of the dignity and worth of the human being".
It also questioned "the effect of the Dublin Convention, requiring asylum-seekers to apply in the country in which they first arrive.
"This appears to give too little recognition to factors such as language, already resident family members and friends, and the need to cross other countries to reach, for example, Britain or Ireland by a land route."
The Church was concerned "lest this lead to injustice, hardship, heartache and physical danger to those being returned to a country they did not intend to be their final destination", it said.
On deportation, it said "where children are involved in cases where refugee status might otherwise be refused, clemency should be shown.
"Families should not face the choice of being broken up or sent to a country which the children have never seen or barely remember."
The report was adopted by the General Assembly.