Irish priest pens biography of Holy Ghost founder

A County Clare priest has launched a new book about the co-founder of the religious order to which he belongs.

 

Fr Christy Burke’s book No Longer Slaves charts the life and career of Fr Francis Libermann, who set up the Spiritan or Holy Ghost order in the nineteenth century.  

Fr Burke, who is a native of Kilmaley, was himself a Holy Ghost missionary and spent 36 years working in Kenya in schools, a seminary and a university.  He also worked as a chaplain in the National Rehabilitation hospital in Dun Laoghaire before he retired in 2009.

The book is based on research he undertook years ago as a student in Rome for a doctoral thesis.

Fr Libermann, who was French, was born in 1804 in a ghetto in Alsace and was originally an Orthodox Jew – he even seemed destined to take over from his father as a rabbi.  

But he lost his Jewish faith and shortly afterwards followed two of his brothers into the Catholic Church.

Libermann entered a seminary in Paris, and when his father discovered this, mourned him as dead.

After his ordination, he started a small religious order to do mission work with freed slaves in Reunion, Haiti, and Mauritius, which ultimately merged with another small group called the Congregation of the Holy Ghost.

Fr Burke said he hopes his book will encourage readers to reflect on the relevance of Libermann for the mission that is required in Ireland today.  

He said that when he worked as a missionary in Kenya, there was much more co-operation between the Church and the people than had been apparent in Ireland.

“We depended a lot on local people because we were foreigners and (religious) communities emerged that were more or less independent of the priest in many ways,” he explained.  

“They would meet and have their own services because of the shortage of priests.”

“That’s coming in Ireland now and people are worried about the shortage, whereas it’s an opportunity to develop another type of ministry.”

Fr Burke said that Libermann saw the priest as just part of a community, with the community calling the shots. 

“If there was a shortage of priests and they couldn’t get to Mass, they called a meeting and read the bible – that was the strategy of Libermann in the 1840s,” he said.

SIC: CIN/IE