Paul Keenan
Irish religious orders engaged in making altar breads face being forced out of their work by cheap imports and shifting religious realities in Ireland, it has been revealed.
Traditionally the work of contemplative and enclosed orders, the production of altar breads has seen those orders as the main suppliers of hosts to parishes, chaplains and major religious events such as the 2012 International Eucharistic Congress.
However, speaking to The Irish Catholic this week, the same orders paint a bleak picture for the future of their work as secular manufacturers continue to increase their presence in the Irish ‘market’.
Speaking from St Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn, in Co. Waterford, Sr Fiachra said that “anyone producing altar breads in Ireland now is being squeezed by imports. Our costs are high and haven’t come down. That hurts us.”
More locally, Sr Fiachra identified such factors as falling Mass numbers and necessary cost-cutting in parishes as having an impact on St Mary’s work
Congress
For those who received Communion at the 2012 Eucharistic Congress, it was altar breads, 250,000 of them, supplied by St Mary’s that made that celebration possible. St Mary’s produces three million altar breads per year, from brown and white flour. The process involves five-sister teams working throughout a bake, the perfect pursuit for a contemplative order.
“The breads are something we do as we pray,” Sr Fiachra points out. “There’s a blessing in every box. Sadly, though, it’s becoming ever more a non-religious product with a number of plants from Eastern Europe flooding the market.”
At the Carmelite Monastery of the Immaculate Conception at Roebuck Road in Dublin, meanwhile, the impact of cost-cutting and imports has already forced the sisters to take remedial action, cutting the hours of part-time lay workers from three days to two in an attempt to meet the financial challenge to their main source of income.
“We have suffered a huge drop in income,” Sr Teresa said, while identifying some of the same factors as those faced in Glencairn.
“Parishes are clustering and if we didn’t have an agreement to supply one of those parishes, we can lose the whole contract,” she told The Irish Catholic by way of example.
Nor is it a simple case of reducing prices to be competitive in the marketplace, she adds. “Because the imports are sold so cheaply we cannot reduce our prices to match.”
While also identifying the production of altar breads as perfect for the contemplative sisters at Roebuck – “it can be undertaken in prayer, and in silence” – Sr Teresa also cites another major advantage of locally produced breads.
“Every year between April and May we have children’s first Communion. That brings with it the question of childhood allergies, such as nuts and eggs. With our hosts we can absolutely guarantee that there are no allergy issues.”
Guarantee
Sr Gabrielle of the Redemptoristine Sisters, based in Drumcondra in Dublin, concurs with this, identifying the adherence of the orders to Canon law on making breads simply from water and flour as a quality control guarantee for the faithful.
However, as prioress to the order which is the largest single supplier of altar breads in Ireland, and with three full-time lay staff assisting the sisters in work that has been central to the Redemptoristine life for the last 75 years, Sr Gabrielle sees a grim future if parishes do not bring themselves to ‘buy local’.
“We depend on the altar breads to survive,” she says, while acknowledging that the lack of money at parish level plays into the hands of the bigger manufacturers who “can afford to give free samples to get contracts”.
“What can we do?” Sr Gabrielle wonders at this point. “All we can do is appeal to the loyalty of purchasers to keep us going.”
