They filled out the Dublin’s Pro Cathedral this evening, mainly older men and women, most of whom had been in residential institutions as children and some who had been in Magdalene laundries.
Many had been at Christine Buckley’s funeral in Mount Merrion four weeks ago. Some who were unable to make that were determined to be in the Pro-Cathdral today for her month’s mind Mass.
Earlier, about 150 of them had walked there through the city centre from the Aislinn Centre on Jervis Street, with Christine's husband Donal, her daughter Cliona, sons Darragh and Conor, close friend Carmel McDonnell Byrne, and Senator David Norris.
The Aislinn Centre was founded in 1999 by Christine Buckley and Carmel McDonnell Byrne to assist people who had been in residential institutions as children.
Many on the walk wore a white solidarity ribbon on their lapels with a metal image of the GPO attached, signifying the 1916 Proclamation of Independence and its promise to cherish all the children of the nation equally.
As at the funeral, official Ireland was well represented again at the month's mind Mass, with Cmdt Cmdt Kieran Carey representing the Taoiseach, Minister of State Joe Costello, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who opened the Aislinn Centre in 1999, and Senator Norris.
The Mass celebrant Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin recalled how at the funeral on March 14th, as they waited outside the church of St Therese in Mount Merrion for the hearse to arrive, he was “particularly struck by the numbers of men, men who had hard obviously led hard lives” present.
They were “men who had suffering sculpted on their faces and who were not used to being with the so called ‘great and the good’ but who put on their best suit as they extended a final gesture of affection to Christine”.
Each, he said, “had their own story. Together with hundreds of other men and women, Christine had been a lifeline to them, enabling them to ovecome their suffering and to try and achieve some semblance of a life they had once only dreamed of.” They were “the often hidden recipients, of Christine’s kindness and attention”.
Her work, he said, was “that of restoring people; restoring hope, giving people a renewed sense of a self-worth which had been robbed from them”. Her spirit, he said, “will continue to breathe life and restoration into the work she established while she was here. Her love will be always present with her close family, with the extended family of those she helped and with the even wider family of the many of us who loved and respected her.”
