Sligo cathedral parish is bringing in an international specialist evangelisation team in a bid to bring the city’s young people back to religious practice. The team of seven young people from Canada, the US and South Africa, are arriving in Sligo next week and will spend eight months working with local young people.
They are members a ministry called Team NET (National Evangelisation Teams), which is a Catholic youth ministry programme with a mission to challenge young Catholics "to love Christ and to embrace the life of the church”.
The Cathedral’s administrator, Fr Tom Hever, said the initiative which will cost €60,000, was inspired by a drop-off in church attendance by young people.
“There is a concern in the church generally that young people have drifted away; while many young people in Sligo still go to Mass and are involved in church activities, it is obvious that the majority are staying away,” he explained.
Fr Hever said dropping out of church attendance seemed to be occurring most frequently after children leave primary school.
He believed the evangelisation team initiative was the first of its type in Ireland but it has been successful in Canada and the Unites States, he said.
“With co-operation, support and involvement of parents, teachers, families and young people, we are confident it will be a success,” the administrator remarked.
The visiting evangelisation team will stay with different volunteer families for two weeks in the course of their eight-month stay in Sligo.
The volunteers are themselves aged between 19 and 21, have undergone a careful selection process and have spent five weeks in Canada training for their mission.
“This is an attempt to being young people back to the Church, to show them that we care about them and that we want them,” said Fr Hever.
“They will speak the language of young people of today and hopefully our young people will respond”.
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(Source: CIN)