Bishop Michael Duignan, chair of the Council for Immigrants of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, recently addressed a seminar on ‘Journeying together with immigrants’.
The seminar was organised by Dr Gary Carville, executive secretary to both the Bishops’ Council for Immigrants, and to its Commission for Soctal Issues & International Affairs.
Attendees were drawn from diocesan liaison personnel for immigrants as well as by immigrant chaplaincies across Ireland.
The first session was chaired by Toni Pike, peace, justice and ecology coordinator of the Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (AMRI), and was addressed by Eugene Quinnn and David Moriarty of the Jesuit Refugee Service who spoke on the topic ‘Ireland’s accommodation crisis – a challenge to solidarity and hospitality’.
The panel discussion involved Sr Alacoque Gleeson RSM, from Ballinasloe, who reflected on practical responses to welcoming refugees into the local community; by Albina Polyshchuk, from Ukraine and now living Loughrea, who spoke on adapting to and the experience of living in an Irish community; and Fr Willie Purcell, from the Diocese of Ossory, who informed the seminar on the pastoral response provided by the diocese’s orientation team to migrant communities at parish level.