Cardinal Seán Brady urges Irish people to support campaign against world hunger

The Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady has urged Irish people to join the campaign against world hunger in his Christmas message.

He said he invited everybody, but especially public representatives and all who believed in a more just and compassionate world, to support Pope Francis’s call for an all-out concerted action to end world hunger by 2025.

“For far too long we have allowed global hunger and local poverty to be seen as tolerable,’’ he said. “The fact is this – we can solve the problem of hunger and poverty, if we decide to do so.’’

It should be recalled once more, said Cardinal Brady, that the work of Christmas began when “we feed the hungry and may God speed that work in 2014’’.

Family love
He said he hoped all who came home for Christmas would feel really welcome and find the Lord in their loved ones. "As those who have come for Christmas from afar know well, the love we experience in our families is precious. For it is a reflection of the love which God has for each one of us, the same love which inspired the father to send his beloved son to be our saviour on that first Christmas night.''

He hoped those without company, food and warmth would be sustained by the concern of fellow humans. "Of course, I am thinking of people in need here at home, but also people in the Philippines, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. " He was thinking of the many people worldwide who had no peace: "Through the work of wise and compassionate negotiators, may they, too, experience the salvation brought by Christ."

Unjust austerity
Bishop of Cloyne Dr William Crean said it was very difficult to find joy and contentment in a time of demand and stress. He added that while the troika might have, in political terms, given us "the purse back'', great hardship continued to be inflicted on fragile families and schools. Satisfying the troika and the recovery of sovereignty might appease the markets, but the trickle-down of their austerity formula to genuine good families had been most unjust.

“Political leaders need soon to redress these impositions,’’ Dr Crean said. “Otherwise, satisfying the markets will reap a very negative social harvest in Irish society.’’