JUST eight months ago, Fr Kieran Creagh was left for dead in a brutal shooting and robbery at the AIDS hospice he runs in South Africa. Yesterday, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern dropped in on the priest at the Leratong Hospice, east of capital Pretoria, and paid tribute to the Belfast man.
And Mr Ahern praised the vital work of the hospice and wasted no time in welcoming Fr Creagh back to work after the eight month lay-off he needed to recover from his injuries.
Last March, the Belfast priest disturbed a gang of burglars at Leratong and was shot three times in the arm and stomach.
Mr Creagh yesterday greeted Mr Ahern, who broke away from his trade mission to South Africa to visit the hospice which has treated 650 terminally-ill patients since it opened in 2004.
Just yesterday alone, five patients died.
The hospice is the only one of its kind in the area and was opened after Fr Creagh saw the suffering of AIDS and HIV patients at first hand.
It is staffed entirely by 40 local volunteers, while some of the nursing staff have been trained in palliative care, which is the main focus at Leratong.
"I would like to welcome Fr Creagh back to Leratong and congratulate him on his recovery. Fr Kieran was greatly missed," Mr Ahern said.
"The scourge of HIV and AIDS in South Africa is well documented but it is only by visiting facilities like this that you get a sense of how people's lives are ravaged by the disease."
Fr Creagh said he was delighted to be back at work among the people who live in the township around Leratong, which has a population of almost half a million people.
Earlier, Mr Ahern held talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki at parliament buildings in the capital, Pretoria.
Mr Ahern said afterwards he had raised the issue of suffering in Zimbabwe and that President Mbeki had given him a detailed but private account of what he was trying to do to ease the turmoil in that country.
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