On a hillside on the Derry-Donegal Border a 60-bed residential rehabilitation centre for those addicted to alcohol and drugs is nearing completion.
The £1.9 million centre is the tangible result of a healing ministry that has united all four Christian churches on a cross-Border basis.
The White Oaks Centre at Derryvane is situated on a 35acre farm close to the village of Muff, overlooking the city of Derry and the Donegal hills.
There is already a waiting list for treatment.
Once operational on May 1st the centre will be run by an experienced counselling and management team overseen by Sister Consillio, who already runs five such rehabilitation centres throughout Ireland.
The ethos of White Oaks will be based on her Cuan Mhuire Centres, offering healing for individuals, families and society. Her programme emphasises detoxification, spirituality (meditation), physical work therapy and counselling during a minimum of six weeks in residential care.
The centre has the support of the North Western Health Board, Northern Ireland's Western Area Health Board, Donegal County Council, the Department of the Environment, recovering alcoholics and medical personnel. The centre received funding from various agencies but still has a shortfall of about £200,000.
The pioneering drive to provide such a centre on a cross-Border and cross-community basis originated through a Donegal-born priest and his small lay community that has been involved in a healing ministry in the north-west for the past 20 years.
In a time when some clergy members have warranted a negative view of the priesthood, Father Neal Carlin has a refreshingly different perspective on living gospel values.
Committed to Christian unity, he has enlisted the backing of the Rev Joseph McCormick, Presbyterian, the Rev Matt Moore, Church of Ireland, and the Rev Alan Falls, Londonderry Methodist Mission Circuit. All four clergymen see the White Oaks development as a way of building on faith together.
"This is a work of healing, not only as we work together healing divisions that any honest person would admit exist between Protestants and Catholics in this area, it is also a work of healing for the poor and afflicted," Father Carlin said.
"The actual mission of Christ involves caring for the wounded and poor, and alcohol and drug addicts today are the poor and wounded. We cannot stand in judgment." Before undertaking the mammoth White Oaks project, Father Carlin and his then fledgling Columba Community began their healing ministry in Northern Ireland's jails. Every week for seven years from 1980 they visited prisoners of all denominations.
With no financial backing from the institutional church until the mid-1990s, the Columba Community managed to buy a bombed-out RUC station on Derry's Queen St in 1982. This is now a house of prayer and reconciliation and a much-used oasis of peace in the middle of the city.
Father Carlin was then given a ruined farmhouse on land adjoining the Border near Burnfoot in Donegal. The community has refurbished it and built small hermitages, known as St Anthony's Retreat Centre.
Reflecting on his time without the support and constraint of the institutional church, Father Carlin said it gave the Columba Community great freedom.