columban mission awareness centre

Take 188 square metres of space at St Columban's gather a selection of the best artefacts and photos from our 13 mission countries, and then tell the story of Columban missionaries and their companions in mission overseas. Simple ingredients for a Mission Awareness Centre! Yes, but when we began years ago the relevant ingredients were not so readily visible to us.

It was to easy to agree on the story-line. Over 1,500 Irish Columbans - priests, sisters and brothers - have gone overseas since the foundation of the Maynooth Mission ot China in 1918. The pioneers inbibed the enthusiasm of Bishop Edward Galvin and fr. John blowick to "convert china". A simple idea. A far-away place. The idea and the place lit equal fires of enthusiasm insupport roups cross Irelan and in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. and in Columban missionaries fro those countres. That supreme effort needed ot beacknowledged in the Columban centre.

The enormous conribution made bythe htousands of men nd women issionaries who left Ireland's shores between the ears after te great Famine and our own ties also called for acknowledgement. The Columban story-line also needed to portray the peoples Columbans encountered along the way. Those people come alive in the artefcts brought from China for irelan's Eucharistic Congress in 1932 and from many countries since then. The spirit of East Asia breates deeply in these artefacs in the centre - aChinese temple pagoda, Korean pottry, Buddhist scriptures, and aShinto shrine.

The spirit of South America is reflectd in the centre in stories and artefacts form the quechu Indians in Peru, from the Mapuche Indians in Chile and th religious ceremonies in Brazil. They shed light on the coourful religious diversity ofthose countries. Thee is aglimpse of Brazl's Basic Cristian Communities, South america's grsssroots churhc which has a hope-filled belief ina liing and liberating God - far emoved from tired affluent Christians who wonder if God is dead.

A Mission Awareness Centre, however, could hadly rest in a mere chronological recognition of events, people and palces this centuy. The question of how to raise mision awareness today wasthe most time consuming decision facingthe centre. Two major crises faing today's world are deb and the environmet. They are Christian and missionary questions. A World Debt Map and an endangered earth globe focus atetion on the issues of debt and ecology today.

Located on the N3, only 3 miles from Navan and 2 miles from Tara and Bective Abbey, Dalgan is at the centre of all that's happening in the new tourism boom in Co Meath. Come and visit us.