The Guild Master...

...of The Keys the Catholic Writers' Guild, Mary Kenny, has a good piece in the Irish Independent about the Eucharistic Congress. I've been hearing a good deal about it, too, as I've spent this week at the offices of the CTS in London, working on the Schools RE Project run jointly the CTS and the Association of Catholic Women. A team from the CTS spent the week in Dublin and returned highly enthused and inspired, which is quite the reverse of how I thought things would be. I hadn't known they were going, but learned about it when I arrived at the South London HQ (Vauxhall, in a building that owes its existence to Bishop Brown who worked long years in what was then a very poor district and who built the fine church of St Anne, now a thriving parish). A great procession of the Blessed Sacrament with about 12,000 people surging along, a packed stadium for the final rally on Sunday - the only complaint was that the various talks and workshops were in rooms that were too small, in some cases only sitting 200 people, so many were turned away and were disappointed. The Congress wasn't the biggest thing happening in Ireland at the weekend - for many, football took precedence. But it was a great event, a turning-point, and a sign of hope: read Mary's piece, and you'll get something of the flavour.