Bishop of Limerick reflects on the future of the church using the words of the late Pope Benedict

BISHOP of Limerick Brendan Leahy has said that the “example for the future of the church can be drawn from both prophetic words of the late Pope Benedict from over 50 years ago and the lives of Sts Ita and Brigid.”

The Limerick bishop was attending a Mass in honour of the feast day of St Ita in Raheenagh Church, Kileedy, where Limerick’s patron saint set up her community of nuns in the fifth century.

Bishop Leahy said that Pope Benedict foretold, in a radio interview as far back as 1969, the era of rapid transformation and secularisation that would be embarked on.

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“In that radio interview Pope Benedict, then a young theologian, concluded with prophetic words that are often repeated and certainly speak to us in Ireland today,” Bishop Leahy said.

The words from Pope Benedict were that the church “will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning...”

Bishop Leahy remarked how Pope Benedict predicted during that interview that the church would be a more spiritual church but that it would be difficult for the Church.

“He told us that, as a small society community, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members," Bishop Leahy said.

“He said it would make the church poor and cause her to become the church of the meek.

“But the then theologian Joseph Ratzinger ended his interview on a note of hope, highlighting how the church as a little flock will be rediscovered as providing the meaning that so many yearn for and have been searching for in secret," Bishop Leahy added.

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Bishop Leahy said that Sts Ita and Brigid also offered an example of how the church lived out its mission in another era.

“It’s not that we have to repeat pedantically what was done in any previous era. But we can draw inspiration from the work of the spirit in women like St Ita and St Brigid and their communities and pray that today too we open to the renewal being brought about by the spirit in many small steps but especially in the synodal pathway that the church in Ireland is following.

“The future may be smaller. St Ita was just one person in one moment of time in a community that was limited primarily to West Limerick. Yet, her example, light and charism live out fourteen hundred years later. St Ita dedicated herself to prayer and simplicity. There’s a great message in that for us,” the bishop concluded.