Press Releases
CHURCH PLEA FOR URGENT ACTION TO SAVE LIVES
The Church of Ireland today made an urgent appeal to the governments of developed countries to give 0.7% GNP towards World Aid.
And in a resolution passed at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, the Government of the Republic of Ireland, not withstanding present budgetary constraints, was urged to give now in order to save millions of lives.
The Most Revd. Dr Richard Clarke, Bishop of Meath and Kildare, said: “The 0.7% from our income is a principle. It is also crucially important that what we require of others we are prepared to do ourselves.
“This appeal for 0.7% of GNP to go to the needs of the developing world has been made to the governments of the developed countries. Sadly our own government in the Republic of Ireland is talking more the language of aspiration than of achievement in this matter.
“Ireland, we are told, hopes to give 0.7% of GNP to alleviating the horrors of deprivation and dispossession in the developing countries by 2008. By then millions of lives which we, as a country, might easily have saved, will have been needlessly lost to preventable disease and starvation.”
Further information from:
THE CHURCH OF IRELAND PRESS OFFICE
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