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Grandparents Gather at Ireland’s Knock Shrine to Pray, Organise : 18th Sep 09
Irish grandparents have finally found their voice, stated the founder of the new Catholic Grandparents Association as an estimated 14,000 grandmothers and grandfathers converged on Knock Shrine, Co Mayo, recently. They were attending the third annual National Grandparents’ Pilgrimage and the launch of the new organisation by Mayo grandmother Catherine Wiley.
She said the response from pilgrims had “stunned” her, and people from all over the country had told her they wanted to be involved in the new group. “The association will be a voice for grandparents and will also offer them practical assistance. In many cases, grandparents are the ones holding families together”. Among the pilgrims at Sunday’s event was Michael Lambert, 102, from County Roscommon and Tom Ketterick, 95, the Mayo man who recently reached the final of the World Cup Brown Trout Angling competition. Seán and Margaret Davin travelled from Dublin for the event at Knock. Mr Davin called it “an extraordinary day” for grandparents.
People have often overlooked the key role that grandparents play, he commented, but now a “fascinating new consciousness of that role has been raised”.
The Primate of All Ireland, Seán Cardinal Brady, pointed out that the “bank of grandma and grandad” was critical to the success of the Celtic Tiger, and the resources of grandparents would prove crucial to our economic recovery. In years gone by, children usually took on financial responsibility for their parents as they grew older, but now the reverse was true, he noted. “It is your time and money which is now holding many families in this country together as they struggle with the consequences of the global economic crisis”, he told grandparents.
He also restated his opposition to proposed legislation on homosexual “civil partnerships”: “Any society which diminishes the value of the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, diminishes the very foundation of society itself”. The Irish Times. September 14.
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