National Family Support Network
SERVICE OF COMMEMORATION AND HOPE
Words of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin Archbishop of Dublin
Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, Sean Mc Dermott Street 1st February 2019
“This is a parish where so many people give their time and energy in building up this community, especially in hard times. I am talking about teachers, social activists, local representatives, local Gardai, and community workers and many others who have no specialist title, people who build up community simply by being good neighbours.
It is also a community that has been marked with sadness. So many lives of good young people, young people we loved and knew were full of hope, have been taken by the unscrupulous exploitation of their lives through drugs. How many times this Church has been filled with the tears of the community as some of the most promising young lives ended abruptly and tragically in drug related deaths.
I cannot repeat often enough that the drug trade is a ruthless trade in ruining lives, a callous trade in death. It is a ruthless, cynical and diabolic trade that has no respect for any life. It thrives on destroying the lives of the weakest, whether of those who fall to abuse or those who they trap and intimidate into becoming agents of their despicable trade.
There are great families in this parish, parents who do everything they can for their children. The parents of this parish have the same dreams as parents anywhere: that their children will grow up safe and healthy, that they will get on in life with a decent job and with a family of their own and in turn be good citizens and good neighbours.
The National Family Support Network is deeply bound with the people of this parish and especially with the women of this parish. The Family Support network has spread around Ireland and has become real pioneering landmark of support for families and especially for women who have gone through dramatic loss without ever having the time to grieve.
Each year now groups representing centres around Dublin and around Ireland come together to remember and to find motives for hope. It would be hard to think of this gathering taking place in any other community. That is a real tribute to the people of this community.
All of you here this evening represent, communities that have shown extraordinary resources of goodness and caring and courage in the face a sadness. We go away renewed in our conviction that we can and must work to ensure that our future will be one of goodness and hope.
We remember those who have died and we say thank you to the Network for the way it has reaching a helping hand out to women, courageous women in their sorrow. “
