PRESIDENT MARY McAleese paid tribute yesterday to the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who, she said, were dedicated to a “life of service where selfish short-term gain has no place”.
There were “no big pensions or bonuses coming your way”, Mrs McAleese told the ninth congregational chapter of the missionaries, “no awards or long-service medals, no formal recognition of this remarkable and selfless pooling of gifts’’.
She said she wanted “to say ‘thank you’ for all the good that you have accomplished, for witnessing to a life of service where selfish short-term gain has no place, but where the work is done for a long-term investment in the betterment of all humanity’’.
The President said: “You don’t have a share price but the Medical Missionaries of Mary pay dividends that really matter.
“Those dividends are paid to the poor, the sick, the troubled and the overlooked and they are all the more precious to them because no one sent you or forced you to be their friend, no law of man compelled you to care, and yet you do.”
She conceded that today the Medical Missionaries of Mary faced “anxieties that come from reducing numbers, an ageing population, the sheer scale of the Aids epidemic and the tragedy of the scandals that overshadowed an otherwise proud legacy of years of acute hospital and specialist tropical disease care in Drogheda’’.
We were “always at the mercy of unforeseen events and forces,’’ she said.
“Some days our hearts are broken by the inhumanity that human beings visit on each other, the greed and grasping that corrupt our world and the wildness of nature that can bring disaster and sorrow in its wake.
“On other days we remind ourselves that there are people like you who turn up to help, who do your best, wherever humankind or nature have done their worst. You turn up and you stay.”
Mrs McAleese concluded: “While there is work to be done and no one else to do it, you stay.’’
