Press Releases19 Dec 05

Rt Revd Ken Good's Christmas and New Year message

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR MESSAGE
Rt Revd Ken Good
Bishop of Derry and Raphoe

?He became poor??

The child at the heart of the Christmas event was born into poverty. His birth took place in conditions that would never have complied with health and safety regulations. Soon after his birth, he and his family had to flee as refugees in a politically troubled and unstable land.

God did not wait until circumstances were secure and conditions ideal before this remarkable intervention into human affairs took place. Jesus got involved in an anguished and tangled world where poverty of all kinds frustrated adults and children alike. This child came as Good News to bring peace and goodwill, salvation and hope. He became poor to make a difference to those in every form of poverty ? physical as well as spiritual.

This Christmas, while most families in Ireland will be able to enter into the joy and excitement of the festive season, tens of thousands of children who have been born into severe poverty on this island will have little to celebrate.

They will be much more likely than their friends to miss out on Christmas, on a nutritious meal each day and on new clothes; they will be more likely to have their electricity cut off; they will be more likely not to have friends round to their house; and it is quite likely that their parents will be in unmanageable debt.

Recent research by Derry Children?s Commission, funded by Save the Children, reveals that rates of child poverty in Londonderry are even higher than elsewhere in these islands, with the consequent hardships being even more keenly felt here than elsewhere.

Christmas, is a time to prioritise generosity. It is heartening to see the very generous public response to the many appeals to provide gifts for children and support for families in need.

But any real application of the Good News of Christmas for those children who live in severe poverty must lead to more radical changes which bring them fresh hope, which bring freedom from crippling debt and which provide a way out of the powerlessness that prevents them from seizing the opportunities their contemporaries will enjoy.