The outgoing Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland has said he has witnessed “an intense, hidden vitality” in Irish parishes and dioceses especially in the West and the North of Ireland and has “no doubt” it will bear visible fruit in the synodal process and in a resurgence of vocations to the ministerial and religious life.
In written answers to The Irish Catholic as he prepares to leave the Diplomatic Service, Archbishop Luis Mariano Montemayor said his strongest first impression of Ireland had been “the rapid change in Irish society, very different from the one I had known in Dublin 38 years earlier, and particularly with regard to the role of the Catholic Church in public life”.
But he said that contrary to what one might therefore expect, what he witnessed on the ground especially in visiting communities in the West and North of Ireland, was “the generous commitment of so many lay faithful, men and women, to sustaining the life and ministry of the Church in the parishes and dioceses”. He added: “I can say that I have perceived an intense, hidden vitality which, I have no doubt, will bear visible fruit in the synodal process we are experiencing and in the resurgence of vocations to the ministerial and religious life.”
Ireland was Archbishop Montemayor’s first European posting in a diplomatic career spanning 35 years and, he said, practically every continent. He served in Ethiopia and Thailand, in the Democratic Republic of Congo — where he was “gently asked to retire ‘for my own safety’” — and in Colombia, where Pope Francis entrusted him with supporting the peace process with the National Liberation Army.
A vocation formed at the Faculty of Law in the University of Buenos Aires during “a very violent period in Argentine society”, he said his call was to the ministerial priesthood; the diplomatic service “was not in my plans”, but a proposal from his Archbishop. “God is full of surprises indeed!” he said.
After almost 42 years of priesthood he added he is “much more aware of the spiritual fragility of the human person and, at the same time, of God’s infinite mercy” — a reason, he said, why he intends to spend his retirement helping in parish ministry in his own city for as long as he can.