Letter from Dublin World Meeting of Families - 1

Cardinal Oswald Garcia at main WMOF Eucharist

Malcolm Green and his wife Josie, from the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St George, Enfield, are attending the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. Malcolm writes:

After many months of anticipation the World Meeting of Families in Dublin is finally underway. On entry one is greeted with a vast number of stalls demonstrating an array of religious orders, spiritual organisations, agencies and commercial organisations giving them the chance to share about themselves to inquirers from all over the world.

One can discover/deepen knowledge by attending a whole variety of workshops each morning band evening. In the afternoon Archbishop Eamon Martin surprised us by starting his talk singing the refrain to the conference hymn "The joy of love, a joy for all God's family". The summit of each day is of course the Eucharist, on the first day the main celebrant was Cardinal Oswald Garcias of Bombay who gave a powerful homily suggesting that the church must become more like a family. The International dimension was emphasised by the first reading in French, bidding prayers in various languages and part of the Eucharistic prayer in Spanish. At the offertory we were censed by bowls of incense being carried down the aisles. A truly wonderful liturgy.

In the evening YOUCAT was launched by Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a Catechism for children and their parents to share. He told us that in 1985 many bishops were aware knowledge of the faith had gone down dramatically. Pope Benedict asked the Austrian Bishops Conference to oversee this work which has turned out to be their most successful publication, available in 72 languages. He was grateful to the young people who had discussed every question and for the cooperation between the Bishops Conference, Church in Need and the laity.

The atmosphere at the whole conference is very friendly and not surprisingly international. One meets and chats to people from all over the world.

We are staying with a family in Balally, south of Dublin. Members of their parish are also entertaining some Little Sisters of Jesus, and pilgrims from Guatemala and Mexico. On Tuesday morning, the parish Eucharist was concelebrated by the Parish Priest and six pilgrim priests before both visitors and parishioners set out for central Dublin to walk the pilgrims way, visiting and praying at seven station churches. In the evening the parish kindly invited us to a meal so we were able to get to know each other better.