Fr Pat Hogan, who has been parish priest of Southill for the past five years, said there is a regrettable attitude in other parts of the city that what happens to the people of Southill and other areas, such as Moyross, was “their problem” rather than one for the entire Limerick community.
“I think it’s a big thing for Limerick to own the problem – that’s the only way a city can progress and move forward,” Fr Hogan said.
He was speaking at a function in the Clarion Hotel at which he was named Limerick Person of the Month for his humanitarian work and his efforts to highlight social injustice, poverty and exclusion.
“We need to own the problem and ask what we are doing about it,” he told the people of Limerick.
Fr Hogan said that people living in the city’s troubled estates “can’t open their mouth because they’ll get a brick through the window” and there is “no law” to save them.
While he is “annoyed and angry” at criminality, his faith is restored, he said, by the “resilience of good people, their sense of humour and endurance.”
Fr Hogan said that of all the events in his troubled parish in the past five years, he found two recent murders to be particularly disturbing.
“That someone would go out on a Sunday morning and take two people out, for whatever reason, is very hard to comprehend,” he observed.
“We thought we were getting away from the insane evil acts of violence, but this landed us back in misery and re-opened old wounds.”
SIC: CIN/IE
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