The far-right is creating a climate of fear, the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Denis Nulty has warned.
He was speaking at the annual Columbanus Day Mass in the Cathedral of the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary, in Carlow. Referring to the story of the Good Samaritan, Bishop Nulty said that solidarity with each other can be in “short supply” and this can be seen “in the rise of the ‘far-right’ where creating fear is their mantra.”
Protests against accommodation for asylum-seekers have become more common in Ireland, as elsewhere in Europe, where far-right parties are on the rise.
Citing Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the bishop said people change by coming into contact with suffering, and that suffering can often “soften even the hardest heart.” He advised people of faith to focus on “the one lying on the ground,” left to die, as in the Good Samaritan story.
“Luke’s parable is a reminder that despite the individualism of today’s world,” the bishop said, “no one person is an island, each of us is a piece of the human continent.”
Bishop Nulty said Europe is facing a short supply in solidarity, and that is not the Europe “our founding fathers, inspired by St Columbanus, envisioned.” He said, “Europe risks fracturing at the edges, because individualism has been allowed to trump solidarity.” For the bishop, investment in the armament industry at the expense of humanitarian budgets is “chilling.”
The 26th Columbanus Day took place from July 11-13. During the weekend, over 250 visitors from France, Germany, Italy and Northern Ireland alongside pilgrims from other Irish counties celebrated the Irish missionary monk.
“For Columbanus,” Bishop Nulty said, “Christ was always the anchor and centre-point of his mission.” The saint offered an example of humility, penance, modesty and charity, according to the bishop.
In his homily, the bishop also mentioned the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He said, “it used to be ‘not in my back garden’, now it could easily be ‘not welcome in my country’. The man roughed up on the road to Jericho would remain so.”
He St Columbanus would have no doubt what being a neighbour to someone in need meant. “Columbanus and his companions arrived on the shores of Continental Europe at a time that was anything but favourable for Christianity” and were a glimmer of hope in the dark times.
The bishop concluded saying, “We are each called to be that glimmer of hope, to be that neighbour to the one in need.”
