By Cian Molloy - 30 August, 2020
Dublin parishes are being asked to identify and nominate at least one young adult each as candidates for a foundational
Pope Francis: ‘young people are the windows through which we see the future’.
leadership programme (FLP) being run jointly by Catholic and Church of Ireland Archdioceses.
“This course has been run previously and resulted in many graduates taking up positions of leadership in their parish, [and] in the diocese during the recent World Meeting of Families and at World Youth Day (WYD),” says course promoter Gerard Gallagher of the Office for Evangelization and Ecumenism at the Holy Cross Diocesan Centre in Clonliffe.
Commenting that many parishes report problems in creating, developing and sustaining youth ministry programmes, Mr Gallagher said: “This course is designed to support young adults and in turn, their parishes. It is a dynamic, integrative and highly practical programme which will enable the participants to begin developing their skills as leaders and role models within their local faith based communities.”
Provided primarily from St Paul’s Church on Arran Quay in Dublin city centre, the course uses online learning, group work and live lectures/inputs in a socially distant and compliant space. Generally, participants will have one day of lectures at Arran Quay, with the rest of the learning done remotely.
The programme starts in October and runs until May, with dates being announced tomorrow here. The course costs €100. The student chaplaincy at Dublin City University is offering to cover the enrolment cost of any DCU student who signs up to add the FLP to their undergraduate or postgraduate studies.
In a letter to priests and parish administrators calling on them to nominate individual parishioners for the course, Dublin’s head of evangelisation quoted Pope Francis’s remark ‘young people are the windows through which we see the future’. Mr Gallagher added: “The local parish is the seed bed for these young people to discover and grow in faith. Pope Francis also challenged young people at WYD to ‘get off the couch’. Hopefully, this course will do that.”
