St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. Photo: Courtesy of SPPU. Priests gathered at the annual Maynooth Union reunion have been urged to cherish and renew the friendships at the heart of their ministry, in a warm address that drew on Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence.
Welcoming alumni back to St Patrick’s College for the gathering — held every year since the Union’s foundation in 1895 — Fr Eugene Duffy, President of the Maynooth Union, said the occasion represented “a genuine appreciation for the gifts received in being ministers of the Gospel and for the many blessings that our work has brought us”.
This year’s reunion honoured 10 diamond, 17 golden and nine silver jubilarians, with Fr Duffy noting that the numbers celebrating major milestones are “thankfully increasing each year”. The combined years of service in the room, he said, was “a salutary reminder of the enormous contribution” that Maynooth graduates have made to the Church in Ireland and beyond — a contribution, he suggested, that deserves to be celebrated without apology.
“Even in Church circles, there is the fear that any public celebration of the work of the clergy will bring charges of clericalism with it,” he said. “Today is not about claiming privileges or standing on dignity,” but rather an occasion of gratitude for family, friends, teachers, mentors “and the people whose lives it has been our privilege to touch along the way”.
Fr Duffy framed the Union’s founding purpose — fostering “a spirit of support and friendship” between the seminary and its past students — through the lens of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, subtitled On Safeguarding the Human Person in the time of Artificial Intelligence. The Pope uses the word “relationship” 54 times in the document, he noted, “fraternity” 13 times and “friendship” six times.
While acknowledging that “all of us, irrespective of age or position are effectively addicted to scrolling on our screens”, Fr Duffy said that “there is no substitute for the personal, face-to-face encounters we have with family, friends or colleagues” — a truth, he suggested, that the Union Day itself embodies.