Mags Gargan
Some of the 124 members of Parish Cells of Evangelisation in Ireland who accepted an invitation to meet Pope Francis in the Vatican to celebrate their permanent recognition from the Pontifical Council for the Laity in 2015. A new lay-led initiative is aiming to put a structure for evangelisation in place in Ireland, modelled on a successful movement in the States.
A mission team from FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) has been invited to Ireland as part of The Summit ’17, which takes place at Croke Park Conference Centre in Dublin in July.
“We had heard about FOCUS and went to their conferences in Dallas and San Antonio and saw the success of their work. We looked at their model for evangelisation and thought it would be a great thing to try to bring to Ireland,” said Fr James Devine, one of two priests on the organising team.
Disciples
“The idea is try to make modern disciples and put a shape on evangelisation. A lot of people in Ireland know we need to evangelise, but they are not sure how to go about. Focus have been doing this for 20 years in the US and we are trying to learn from them,” he said.
“We are hoping this will be the start of something that will grow and hopefully we can make it bigger and better next year.”
Speakers include FOCUS founder Curtis Martin; Vice President of the Augustine Institute, Dr Edward Sri; director for Evangelisation for the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, Fr Michael Gaitely and a Focus Mission team.
The conference is limited to 250 people. See http://thesummit17.com/
