A Justice Parish gives hope and inspiration 
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay Cullen
As I write this, I am in Ireland participating in the Justice and Fair Trade week at Graystones Parish in county Wicklow where Father David Halpin and the parish team has launched a new initiative to make the Graystones a justice parish and help troubled youth in Dublin and in several projects in the developing world where children are suffering abuse and neglect.
The new trust and direction of the parish is called The Two Coats project because of the gospel admonition to share one coat with another if we have two. The goal of the parish council and the active parishioners is to inspire the whole parish to become actively engaged in helping those suffering oppression, exploitation and hardship and to share what is more than what they need. The heart of the Gospel and mission of Jesus is to save all humanity from suffering and evil and redeem all mankind. Christians everywhere are all called to fulfill that mission. Our faith in Jesus is not to be merely an assent to dogmas and fulfill rites and rituals of worship and praise, but to know and understand the hard realities of those that have little or nothing in the world, make their lives better and help change a very unjust world.
The Justice Parish was launched last May 28 by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Very Reverend Diramod Martin. During the launching ceremony - that was filled with song and music and a spirit of celebration - he told of his visit to Liberia some years ago where he found a small girl covered in plaster from head to chest. "What happened?” he asked and was told that during the genocide, the killers had tried to chop her head off. But she had miraculously survived.
The first in Europe, the Graystones Justice Parish takes on several projects in the developing world. One is the rescue and recovery of children jailed in the Philippines. The new law - Juvenile Justice Bill, passed after intensive lobbying and campaigning and signed a few weeks ago by President Arroyo will release thousands if it is implemented. It also orders that all children under the age of 15 be sent to a home instead of jail if accused of a crime. We have to work hard to implement that law and see no children are left in the jails to be abused.
The Justice parish will join us in taking on that vital and important mission to free the child captives and to see the face of Jesus himself in these young people some as young as ten years old and even younger.
The Preda-Akbay youth theatre group was in Graystones school and parish also as part of their European tour to promote the dignity of Filipinos and develop support to the cause of human rights and develop awareness about the destructive side of mining, jailing and trafficking of children. Their powerfully musical drama tells the story of bad mining and the poverty it brings and trafficking and jailing of innocent women and children as a direct result.
The impact of our campaign against the sex Mafia in Olongapo City and all over the Philippines is having a strong impact as sex abusers are brought to trial and others are challenged. This work has its dangers, threats and harassment. Eight members of the Preda staff are presently harassed by false charges and baseless arrest warrants on a libel case. We did not even receive the subpoena to attend the court hearing. The evidence dragged up by a complainant has a single phase in a Preda newsletter several years old. It is obvious to al that the rampant corruption has put us in the dock once again of truth and justice. None of these false libel charges will slow us down. We have had it all before and surely again.
These are the occupation hazards of human rights workers and sometimes they are accompanied with death threats but it's all part of our mission, as it was of the mission of Jesus and the apostles. [End]
