Pioneers celebrate 100 years

The Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart will celebrate 100 years on December 28th, and commemorative events have been announced in Dublin.

The highlight will be a public rally at Croke Park on May 30th, which the President, Mrs McAleese, will attend.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, will be the principal celebrant at a Mass there, and the sermon will be given by Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, who has been spoken of as a successor to Pope John Paul.

Other events include a centenary ball in March; an international convention at Maynooth in June; and pilgrimages to Knock and Paray-le-Monial, Paris, in July.

Celebrations will begin with a Mass of Thanksgiving at St Francis Xavier Church, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin, on December 28th at 3 p.m.

Father Micheal Mac Greil, chairman of the association's board of management, has said it is not an anti-drink movement. "It is rather a pro-sobriety organisation."

The association's central director, Father Bernard McGuckian, said thousands of Irish people considered themselves indebted to its founder, Father James Cullen from Wexford. His simple idea of "consecrated abstinence by a few as an antidote to overindulgence by the many" had wrought a moral miracle on a grand scale, he said.

A survey carried out about five years ago estimated that 8 per cent of Irish adults were Pioneers. The association's big growth area is Africa.