Fr Stan Fortuna to speak at Saint Joseph Summit

St. Brigid of Kildare building the Church of the Oak, detail from a window of St Etheldreda’s church in London. / Lawrence OP via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Dublin, Ireland, Feb 1, 2022 / 03:00 am (CNA).

The feast of St. Brigid of Kildare, Ireland’s female patron saint, will be a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland beginning in 2023, it was recently announced.

Her feast is Feb. 1, and the bank holiday will be observed on the first Monday in February, or on Feb. 1 when that day falls on a Friday.

The public holiday was welcomed by the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Kildare.

“It is very appropriate that a new public holiday will honour Saint Brigid. As the secondary saint in Ireland to Patrick, for too long she has been lost in his shadow. We warmly welcome the news that Brigid is being rightly, and long after time, acknowledged,” Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin, and Pat Storey, the Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Meath & Kildare, said Jan. 27.

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s Tánaiste, said Jan. 20 that “From next year, Ireland will have an extra public holiday at the start of February to mark Imbolc/St Brigid’s day … This will be the first Irish public holiday named after a woman. It marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the equinox, the beginning of spring and the Celtic New Year. The creation of a tenth public holiday will bring Ireland more into line with the European average and it is one of five new workers’ rights that I am establishing this year.”

The fifth century abbess St. Brigid is one of Ireland’s three patron saints, along with St. Patrick and St. Columba. Most historians place her birth around the year 450, near the end of St. Patrick’s evangelistic mission.

Brigid was born out of wedlock to a pagan cheiftain named Dubthach and a Christian slave woman named Broicsech. The chieftain sold the child’s pregnant mother to a new master, but contracted for Brigid to be returned to him eventually. According to one of the more credible biographies of Brigid, Hugh de Blacam’s essay in “The Saints of Ireland,” the child was probably baptized as an infant and raised as a Catholic by her mother. Thus, she was well formed in the faith before leaving Broicsech’s slave quarters, at around age 10, to live with Dubthach and his wife.

After this, Brigid’s faith grew immensely. She gave generously to the poor and tended to the sick. One story says Brigid once gave away her mother’s entire store of butter, which was later replenished after Brigid prayed.

Once she was released from servitude, she was expected to marry. However, Brigid had no interest in marrying. She went so far as to disfigure her own face and prayed that her beauty be taken from her so no one would want to marry her. Because she refused to change her mind about marriage, she received permission to enter religious life.

Brigid, along with seven friends, is credited with organizing communal consecrated religious life for women in Ireland.

In 480, Brigid founded her monastery in Kildare, called “Church of the Oak”. The monastery sat on top of a shrine to the Celtic goddess Brigid. Throughout the rest of her life, she established several monasteries across Ireland.

Brigid rooted her life as a nun in prayer, but she also performed substantial manual labor: cloth making, dairy farming, and raising sheep. She also spent time traveling across Ireland founding new houses and building up a uniquely Irish form of monasticism. When she was not traveling, pilgrims made their way to Kildare, seeking the advice of the abbess.

Brigid died around 525.

Bishop Nulty and Pat Storey noted in their statement that “Every school child knows the song of Brigid and how her cloak covered the area we know today as the Curragh, Saint Brigid’s Field. Brigid is linked with the earth, with agriculture, particularly ploughing, sowing, milking, butter-making and, of course, vibrant Christian faith. Brigid was extravagant in her hospitality.”

[…]

United States Naval Research Laboratory’s infrared-gray satellite image of Hurricane Ian. / Public Domain

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 27, 2022 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

As Hurricane Ian bears down on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Bishop Gregory L. Parkes of St. Petersburg asked for prayers for “protection during the storm.”

In a message emailed to each parish in his diocese, and posted on the diocese’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, Parkes offered a prayer of his own.

“Loving God, maker of heaven and earth, protect us in your love and mercy. Send the spirit of Jesus to be with us to still our fears and to give us confidence in the stormy waters. Jesus reassured his disciples by his presence, calmed the storm, and strengthened their faith,” he said.

“Guard us from harm during the storm and renew our faith to serve you faithfully. Give us the courage to face all difficulties and the wisdom to see the ways your Spirit binds us together in mutual assistance,” Parkes prayed. “With confidence, we make our prayer through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

On Tuesday afternoon the Category 3 storm struck western Cuba and headed into the Gulf of Mexico. While the exact path of the hurricane is not yet known, forecasters have issued warnings for the entire Gulf Coast. Current projections are for the storm to hit between Tampa and Ft. Meyers on Wednesday.

The Diocese of St. Petersburg is, for now, to the north of the hurricane’s expected path, but dangerous flooding and damaging winds are expected for all of Florida’s west coast. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for coastal and low-lying areas.

Tampa officials warned residents on Tuesday to take the hurricane seriously, as first responders are not sent out if winds are higher than 40 mph.

With sustained winds expected to reach 115 mph, and gusts up to 145 mph, the National Hurricane Center warned that “locations may be uninhabitable for weeks or months.”

[…]

Alfred Magero, Matthew Njogu, and Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi are three Catholic fathers from Africa who recently shared insights about being a present dad, protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and being a model of family values for their children with ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa. / Credit: Photos courtesy of ACI Africa

ACI Africa, Jun 17, 2024 / 12:37 pm (CNA).

On the occasion of Father’s Day 2024, a day focused on the celebration of fatherhood, four Catholic men from different African countries recently shared their experiences of impacting the lives of their children.

The Catholic fathers — who hail from Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria — talk about the importance of “being present,” of protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and of being a model of family values for their children, who they believe someday will become parents as well.

Tony Nnachetta, 68: Fatherhood is a full-time enterprise

Tony Nnachetta is a married father of four who attends the Church of the Assumption Parish in Nigeria’s Archdiocese of Lagos. Nnachetta has been a parishioner there for 40 years, and he was wed there 38 years ago. A member of the Grand Knights of St. Mulumba, he originally hails from the Archdiocese of Onitsha.

I got married to my friend after we dated for four years. I was looking forward to fatherhood and I was mentally prepared for it. Here are the lessons I have learned along my fatherhood journey.

First, being a father means you watch your children grow and become independent. You watch them get to a point in their lives where they can engage in a debate with you and even disagree with you.

Fatherhood is a long process. You would be fortunate to go through the entire process and maybe see your children’s children. I have seen mine achieve excellence in school and even leave home and go across the world as they sought to become independent.

Wherever your children go, what is important for them is what they take away from home — what they take from mommy and daddy. I have always told mine to “remember the child of who you are.” This means that they are not allowed to break the Christian values in our family. 

I taught them to always stand for the truth and never to flow with the tide. We have encouraged them to always say what they mean. These days, they have jokingly turned around the statement and they tell me, “Remember the dad of who you are,” and we laugh about it.

You can’t always be there to take the bullet for them, but you can support them through prayers. Our family relies a lot on the intercession of the saints. We call ourselves a family of Jesuits because the school my children went to is under the patronage of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

My own patron saint is St. Anthony of Padua and my wife’s is St. Rita of Cascia. All the years, these saints have kept us well protected.

Fatherhood is a full-time engagement. It is not like you can be a father in the morning and take a break in the evening. You worry about your children even when they are grown and have left your home. They preoccupy you everywhere. You wonder whether they are warm and if they have had their meal. But all this brings a father immense joy.

Young fathers in Africa are overburdened by poverty. Because of poverty they don’t have a way to help their families. Others are scared to enter the marriage institution. Poverty has made young men weak and helpless. Some are leaving their young families and going to faraway places outside the continent to make a living. 

Poverty is eroding family values because some fathers do what they do, including stealing, for their children to survive. In doing so, they are setting a bad example for their children …

It is important for our leaders to confront this situation. They must accept that they have let us down.

Matthew Njogu, 75: Tips on being a present dad

Njogu is the moderator of the Catholic Men Association at St. Austin’s Msongari Parish in Kenya’s Archdiocese of Nairobi. His children are now grown up and he offers the following insights on being a present father.

Fathers need to be present in the lives of their children. For a long time, it was assumed that it was the mother’s responsibility to take care of the young children; fathers kept off. But being absent in the lives of your children hurts your relationship with them. They end up growing up without you having any impact on their lives.

Unfortunately, some fathers assume that fatherhood ends at providing material things… They don’t pay attention to their children’s growth milestones. And when they eventually try to establish a connection, they find that the children are already all grown without knowing anything about their fathers.

Simple things like dropping your children off at school help you connect with them. While stuck in traffic on the way to school, you can talk about things that will help you understand your child and for him to know you.

Always try as much as possible to have dinner with your children and help them with schoolwork. And always try to make up for the time you don’t spend with them.

Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi, 53: Raising a Christ-like family

Nkamanyi runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two children ages 16 and 20. He tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many,” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Here are his insights into nurturing a Christ-like family.

It is the joy of every responsible young man to be called “daddy” or “papa.” Having a Christ-like family is the greatest gift for a father; a family like that of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.

My appeal for Catholic fathers is to hold their families firmly, to provide for them, and to protect them from all dangers in the contemporary society, where values are being eroded.

I don’t believe that being a father is a challenging task. God already gave us the innate potential to be fathers. I believe that God can’t give you a role that you can’t perform.

It is unfortunate that many young men are choosing to be absentee fathers. From what I have seen, many children raised by a single parent end up adopting wayward behaviors.

Alfred Magero, 48: Being a present dad in a low-income setting

Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Parish of the Archdiocese of Nairobi. The father of three has been married for 29 years and shares his experience and that of other Catholic dads raising their children in a low-income neighborhood.

I am raising my children to become God-fearing adults. This is not an easy task in the community in which we live, where there is a lot of poverty, drunkenness, and other characteristics typical of a low-income [neighborhood].

Many fathers rarely interact with their children since their main focus is to provide for their families. They leave for work before their children wake up and come back at night when the children have already gone to bed.

The young men and boys we are raising are experiencing a different environment from ours when we were growing up. With the whole world brought to them on the palm of their hand by a simple tap on the phone, this generation is dangerously exposed. They need us, their fathers, to constantly give them direction. They need us to be their role models. 

They need us to constantly remind them that they are in Africa and that they should not adopt alien cultures, especially those bound to destroy the family.

As fathers, we must remind our young ones to uphold African values that kept the family unit and the society glued together. Africans knew the importance of loving and caring for each other. Unfortunately, this value is being eroded, and in its place, now we have individualism. Older men in families would educate young men to be responsible adults. Unfortunately, we no longer have this kind of education.

This article was first published by ACI Africa, CNA’s Africa news partner in Africa, and has been adapted by CNA. 

[…]