Parish supports Jason's summer with prisoners facing death

Jason with his mother Petra, and Fr Martin Harte, at this morning's event

There was strong parish support for today’s Coffee Morning event organised to help Jason Conroy with his expenses towards a summer helping people facing the death penalty in America, writes Brian Byrne.

A longtime parish stalwart as altar server since he was eight, and still helping out at weekends when he comes home from his UCD studies in Law, parishioners showed their appreciation by turning up in numbers.

His summer internship with Grace Law in Houston, Texas, will put him in direct contact with prisoners charged with capital crimes, helping the non-profit Grace Law firm to develop their life stories in the hope of mitigating their sentence from death to life.

Jason has to cover his own costs of getting to Houston, and while the internship comes with accommodation and a small food stipend, any funds that he can bring himself will mean less pressure on the resources available to the Center, which depends heavily upon the work of volunteers and interns to provide what are life-saving services.

It will certainly be a very different experience to most young people of his age who are travelling to the USA for the summer.