Irish dioceses lose millions in bank share wipeout
Sarah Mac Donald
BANK SHARES held by Catholic dioceses in Ireland have collapsed, losing the Church mil- lions of euros. The Church, according to the register of the Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank’s (AIB) shareholders, has seen thousands of shares plunge in value in the country’s biggest banking fiasco. The Archdiocese of Dublin’s 400,000 shares have plummeted from €10 million in 2007 to being now worth just €270,000, while shares held by the Primatial See of Ireland, the Archdiocese of Armagh, have plunged from €7.6m to €204,000. The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has seen his own personal shares plummet in value from from €21,206 down to €322. A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Dublin said that while it looked like the archdiocese had a major shareholding in the Bank of Ireland, “the reality is that the shares are held
here in trust for 199 individual parishes in the diocese”. She added, “There isn’t one col- lective entity – parishes are each separate entities in their own right.” The share value wipeout comes as the
Church in Ireland is attempting to raise between €7m and €10m to host the 2012 Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. Ireland’s economy has stalled, seeing property prices collapse and unemployment soar. However, the Secretary General of the 2012 Eucharistic Congress, Fr Kevin Doran, denied that the collapse in the value of the Church in Ireland’s bank share investments would threaten Ireland’s hosting of the event. Fr Doran said that the Congress would be funded by private donations, sponsorship and delegate fees. Last year’s special national church collection towards defraying the costs raised just under €1m. Fr Doran acknowledged that fund- raising posed “a challenge in the present economic climate”.
Women ‘feel excluded from Church’
IRISH CATHOLIC women say are not suf- ficiently appreciated by their Church according to the findings of a new survey, writes Sarah Mac Donald. The study, which interviewed women across
Ireland, shows stark differences between Irish Catholic women’s attitude to their Church and that of those in non-Catholic denomina- tions. Sixty per cent of the Catholic women interviewed agreed with the view that “my Church appears to put men first”. This con- trasted with 68 per cent of Protestant women who disagreed with the statement in relation to their own Church. Only a quarter of Catholic women felt their
Church treated them with respect compared with 94 per cent of Protestant women. And almost three-quarters of Catholic women felt
that the Church “has tried to control the posi- tion of women in society”, a view which was held by just 20 per cent of Protestant women in relation to their own Church. However, the findings did show that women remain actively involved in their Church. The study was conducted by the Social
Attitude and Policy Research Group at Trinity College Dublin and looked at attitudes of Catholic and Protestant women in Ireland by interviewing more than 500 of them between 2002 and 2006 in 12 counties. A Dominican Sister, Geraldine Smyth, of the Irish School of Economics, said that while the Church was good at highlighting the plight of vulnerable women in the public sphere, this “does not translate into the Church where women are not sufficiently valued”.
Hollis to leave Portsmouth next year
THE BISHOP of Portsmouth is to step down in November next year after 23 years as head of the diocese, writes Christopher Lamb. Bishop Crispian Hollis told The Tablet: “I plan to offer my resignation and for it to take effect in November in 2011, more or less around my seventy-fifth birthday [17 November]. I’ve been here 23 years, it’s a long time, I’ve done a lot but now is the time for a new person.”
All bishops are required to offer their res- ignations at the age 75, although in some cases they are asked to stay on for a couple of years until a successor is found. Bishop Hollis cannot actually leave Portsmouth
38 | THE TABLET | 13 November 2010
until a new bishop has been appointed. From February 2009 to May this year, the diocese ran a fund-raising campaign, Living Our Faith, which raised £13 million. In a recent diocesan report, the bishop said: “I am confident … that, because of your support and encouragement and commitment, I will be able to hand on my successor a diocese in which the necessary process of pastoral restructuring is well under way to ensure that we work most fruitfully in the service of Communion and Mission. We are also a dio- cese which has a “war chest” of about £13m to facilitate the implementation of the Pastoral Plan. That’s not a bad legacy!”
FROM THE ARCHIVE 50 YEARS AGO
The Future of Guy Fawkes Day I see a letter in the paper asking whether the Archbishop of Canterbury’s [Geoffrey Fisher] visit to the Pope might lead to an end of Guy Fawkes’ Day celebrations. Many people besides the more historically minded Catholics would like to see them brought to an end, when they read of the immense queues waiting at Bow Street to be fined for rowdy or dangerous behaviour. Guy Fawkes remains the least known of the few really famous Englishmen … It is a great pity we do not know more about his early manhood and his service as a soldier in the Low Countries. By a curious irony, his Christian name is really the same as Vitus, the patron saint of comedians…Up to about 100 years ago the Book of Common Prayer still retained a special service of thanksgiving on 5 November, and I believe there are still two places in Sussex, Lewes and Battle, where the Pope as well as Guy is burnt in effigy: but not, the Archbishop can assure the Holy Father, with any personal feeling on anybody’s part, but simply from pride in keeping up an old local custom, or so my Sussex friends assure me.
Patron of Grocers One of the most extraordinarily and surely unsuitable patron saints is that St Michael is the patron saint of grocers. There is here an obvious reference to the scales with which he is often depicted, scales being the traditional moment of temptation for the grocer. But there are plenty of more earthly saints who have had more to do with food than St Michael. But then he is also … the patron of X-Ray therapy, doc- tors, technicians, nurses and patients, as well as of the Germans, for his martial prowess.
The Tablet, 12 November 1960 100 YEARS AGO
The daily papers have informed us this week, that “the Holy Father’s sight was tested on Saturday by his oculist from Dublin, who expressed himself satisfied with the result, and found that it had scarcely changed since the previous exam- ination two years ago.” It seems a little hard that the name of an oculist so favoured from afar should go unrecorded; and a reference to the pages of The Catholic Who’s Whowill probably supply the news- paper’s omission: “Patrick K. Cahill, born 1853, optician of Dublin; attending Optician to Leo XIII and to Pius X; author of essays on vision, and contributor to the ophthalmic journals; received the jubilee medal from Pius X, 1909. The Tablet, 12 November 1910
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