Dublin is a city full of "alienated and marginalised" people, where some children sleep rough and some suburbs do not feel safe, the new Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Glendalough has said.
In his first sermon in the post, the Most Rev John R.W. Neill said that Christians needed to engage to a far greater extent with the society around them. Speaking at his enthronement in Christ Church Cathedral on Saturday, he said: "This ceremony takes place in the middle of a beautiful city, but a city full of alienated and marginalised people. This is a city where children still sleep rough. This is a city where there are suburban as well as downtown areas where nobody can feel truly safe.
"This is city where despair for many is a feeling that seldom leaves them. This is a city to which many a foreigner came hoping to find a welcome, but feels met by an ever-increasing suspicion. We are surrounded within this diocese by rural alienation as well. People whose way of life on the land is rapidly coming to an end. Young people, and the not so young too, are finding the pointlessness of life as much in the country as in the city, and suicide is the tragic way out that seems to be for them in those terrible moments their only choice."
Addressing inter-church relations, he said that delays in ecumenical advance had come about when "we had either been slow to extend a welcome ourselves or else slow to accept with joy the welcome offered by others". He continued: "The sort of relationship we have with one another as Christians will tell the world very quickly whether we are people with good news to tell, offering a place of welcome to others, or whether we are happier left to our own devices."
Among the attendance were Cmdt Tom Boyce, representing the President, Mrs McAleese, who was abroad; the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Dermot Lacey; Senator Martin Mansergh; and the Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent. The clergy from other churches included Cardinal Desmond Connell, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin; the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto; Father Bernard Treacy, Dominican Order; Dom Paul McDonnell, Benedictine Order; Father Ireneu Craciun, Greek Orthodox Church; Father George Zavershinsky, Russian Orthodox Church; and the Rev Donaldson Rogers, Methodist Church in Ireland.
Church of Ireland bishops present included the former Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Donald Caird [Bishop Walton Empey, who preceded Archbishop Neill, was in Canada], Bishop Richard Clarke, Bishop Michael Mayes, Bishop Richard Henderson, Bishop Michael Jackson, Bishop Kenneth Good, Bishop Alan Harper, and Bishop Christina Odenberg, of Lund \. Retired bishops present included Dr James Mahaffey, Rt Rev Roy Warke, Rt Rev Brian Hannon and the Rev Robert Halliday [former Bishop of Brechin in Scotland].
