Students highlight Palestine problem
Kilcullen's input into the recent Palestine Awareness Week was organised by seven Cross & Passion Transition Year students who are working to earn John Paul II Awards.
They took as their project last autumn the highlighting of the situation in Palestine, and in association with the SUAS Knitting Group are helping to provide aid to a maternity hospital in Bethlehem.
"The students have set up a Social Justice Group as part of their faith project associated with the awards," says Kilcullen's pastoral worker Hannah Evans. "They were encouraged by Trocaire, who provided them with a lot of information. They also thought it would be of interest to the parish as many parishioners have been out to the Holy Land in recent years."
Contact with the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem was made through local woman Miriam McDonnell, and a person directly involved with the hospital came and gave a talk to both the TY Year in CPC and the SUAS group.
The knitting group responded by making up 'baby packs' of clothing for the hospital, both for premature babies and for the outreach programme conducted by the hospital to families living in the desert areas of Palestine.
The operators of the outreach service have a very difficult time, because it can take three hours or more to get out through the checkpoints in the 10-metre wall which has been built around Bethlehem and other Palestinian areas by the Israeli authorities.
A day of awareness was conducted on a recent Sunday, beginning with a Mass, which included bringing up gifts which represented Palestine. In his homily, Fr Michael Murphy noted that the segregation wall 'ruins life' for very many people in Palestine, making their life 'very, very hard'. "Anything we can do to support the Palestinian people is very important, and Jesus himself was a Palestinian Jew."
The Mass was followed by refreshments and an exhibition of information about the current situation in Palestine. The SUAS group also displayed samples of the baby kits they have made.
"We're really trying to highlight the conflict in Palestine, to make local people more aware of it," says Daniel Murphy, one of the students. He says they found when they began the project that there was a very low level of awareness about the situation.
"I actually didn't know a lot about it myself apart from odd details, like when graffiti artist Banksy sprayed the wall," he says, adding that his group wants people to become more active in trying the persuade the Israelis to stop their blockade.
A petition calling for an end to US vetos in the UN on the Palestine situation was also available for signing, which it is hoped will be presented to President Obama when he visits Ireland next month.
"The students have also put together sets of information for all the teachers in the College who teach religion, with a view to them being used on an Awareness Day in CPC itself," says Hannah.
Pictured (top) are Kilcullen CPC students Daniel Murphy, Helena White, Katie Byrne, Libby Brady, Sinead Dempsey, and Daniel Brierton, at the Palestine Awareness Day they organised in Kilcullen; and (below) Hannah Evans, Kilcullen Pastoral Worker, with Nancy Fitzpatrick of the SUAS Knitting Group and some of the baby kits knitted by the group for babies in Bethlehem.
(NOTE: This piece originally appeared in the Kildare Nationalist. We normally post such stories the week following publication, but your editor forgot this one.)
