Can I begin by adding my words of welcome to Belfast and this Cathedral to you all. This is a proud moment for all of us who call this Province our home. We are honoured that you have chosen to come here for your Sixty-ninth Conference and I hope the claims Joan Smyth made in her printed welcome have come true – ‘touch the spirit, feel the welcome’.

On a personal level I am delighted to congratulate my old friend Joan on her Presidency and that the dream of the Northern Ireland Soroptimists has come true through your visit.

Your visit to this Cathedral in the midst of a busy schedule allows you to add a dimension of great importance to your experience : to pause so that whatever your tradition or culture may be in the dignity of worship you can reflect on the priorities of your mission. I say ‘mission’ for I believe we live in the age of ‘mission’ for individuals, for society and for organisations.

Your mission speaks of being ‘a global voice for women’ through ‘awareness, advocacy and action.’ Your work and witness have made this claim a reality through the advancement of the status of women, the recognition of human rights and equality and not least that vital promotion of human friendship across the world.

As a mere man can I state the obvious - womanhood has come of age in our generation? In the international aspects of my work within the Anglican Communion I have seen for myself the struggle for equality and opportunity for women in many nations. From senitude to service, from bondage to leadership, from imprisonment of mind and body to influence womanhood has changed the face of our world. But so much more needs to be done. In the more local aspect of my work the role of women in the changed and changing face of Northern Ireland has been crucial. That real story has yet to be fully told. But the influence of women on our peace process has been immense.

So may I suggest two reflections for you at this stage of your Conference.

First, I ask you to consider the age-old concept – responsibility.

You all carry responsibilities in your chosen professions to say nothing of your role as women in the home, family and community. Those responsibilities can be great or small. But none are insignificant. Responsibilities can be allocated or inherited. They can be welcomed or unwelcomed – they can be embraced or avoided. But responsibilities they remain.

In the Christian Gospel we teach that we are our brother’s keeper and that responsibility for others goes much further than even being the ‘good Samaritan.’ But if our generation has learned anything it must surely be that word or action which appears local at first sight can have repercussions far afield. The global world is a small place – and it is becoming ever smaller. Words spoken here can be transmitted simultaneously across that world. An idea shared in the east can touch hearts throughout the west. Injustice reflected in a locality can become headline news in hours. Equally sheer goodness, sheer humanity can encompass societies a world apart.

Your great movement allows responsibility for humanity to be exercised above and beyond your professional demands.

It has been in that international dimension of my work that I have so often marvelled at the way women have shown the way in what I call human responsibility for others.

In the back streets of Rio I have seen how two women have transformed the lives and given hope to the street-children. Unafraid, visionary and through sheer compassion they have rescued and given a future to countless unwanted children of the street.

In the misery of the refugee camps of Uganda I have seen the dignity of mothers whose pride in how their children dressed in what little they had was so obvious.

In the slums of Brazil I have seen how one girl, a priest in the Episcopal Church, has brought decency to those who scratched an existence out of the city rubbish tips.

In a small hospital in west Africa I have seen the inspiring and selfless work of an exhausted woman doctor overwhelmed by endless numbers of children dying of AIDS – a woman whose every waking hour was devoted to care and mercy.

Responsibility for others exercised a world away – but in the moving tapestry of our common love for life, our common humanity – shining examples of the nobility of womanhood. And if we doubt this fact of responsibility could any have imagined that the work in the back streets of Calcutta by a frail nun could have made the world aware of Mother Theresa?

Perhaps the point I am making for your reflection is simply this : no one can tell the power of good which can stem from even the most rudimentary exercise of genuine responsibility for and to others.

Many of you hold key positions in your chosen professions. These responsibilities are clearly defined. Surely it is this wider world of responsibility which comes from privilege, a responsibility so vividly portrayed in your current Report, that the professional privileges so many of us enjoy become truly ‘responsibility for our neighbour?’

There is so much in your Annual Report to support this thinking. Far beyond your many professional demands responsibility for others, the exercise of your humanity – that responsibility is so clearly being met.

Second, may I ask you to reflect on another key word of our generation – reconciliation.

Here in Northern Ireland there is no more over-worked and yet misunderstood word than reconciliation. Throughout the dark years of our suffering we have prayed for reconciliation of difference, reconciliation of different religious and political aspirations. You are here when the tender plant of community peace is being nurtured. You have seen this past week how tender that plant is. While the world has learned of our violence and suffering, when the world has witnessed our political ups and downs the real essence of the Peace Process lies in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women. No political solution, no proclamations of ends to violence, no ‘road maps for peace’ which do not win the hearts and minds of ordinary people will have any hope of success. This has been and is one of the real lessons of Northern Ireland’s past.

I remember the boy in one of our schools who asked me a simplistic yet profound question :

“How will I recognise the day I wake up that reconciliation has happened?”

The simple truth is that learning to live with difference, learning to reconcile different communities, learning to build bridges, is a process – not a fact.

As I read the accounts of Soroptimist International that fact calls out to me. So much of what you do is a sort of pilgrimage. So much of the good you bring about takes time. But as in all aspects of life it is often the doing of the job which is just as important as its completion. So much of what you are achieving is all about reconciliation. Surely the truth is that in learning to respect and in learning to live with difference we learn true maturity.

Responsibility and reconciliation. Two words which fall easily from our lips. But two words which find their real worth when we turn them into action.

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these the least of my children, ye have done it unto me.”

May God encourage you in your own exercise of responsibility and may you go on making a difference for good to those who must be at the receiving end of real reconciliation.