Welcome to the website of the Kilmore Diocesan Pastoral Centre.
The Centre has been rooted in the values of the Gospel and the teaching of the Church since it was established. It has been a significant resource to the diocese for over 10 years now, responding to an unanimous call made at the Diocesan Congress in 2000 to establish a centre to meet the needs of the new models of parish and Church where there was full lay participation, helping people wanted to learn more about their faith and to deepen it.
In these intervening years, the Kilmore Diocesan Pastoral Centre has developed and grown, promoting and facilitating ministry and faith development. It has been a source of hope and positivity for a church challenged from within and without.
In his message for the 48th World Communications Day (2014), Pope Francis posed a very challenging question: “Can communication be at the service of an authentic culture of encounter?” He went on by saying: “I find an answer in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is also a parable about communication. Those who communicate, in effect, become neighbours. The Good Samaritan not only draws nearer to the man he finds half dead on the side of the road; he takes responsibility for him. Jesus shifts our understanding: it is not just about seeing the other as someone like myself, but of the ability to make myself like the other. Communication is really about realizing that we are all human beings, children of God. I like seeing this power of communication as “neighbourliness”.
This is a theme which we in the Diocesan Pastoral Centre team wish to live up to. The Centre wishes to play an integral role in what Saint John Paul II described as “that mission of gaining new impetus in Christian living, making it the force which inspires our journey of faith”. [Novo Millennio Ineunte … On Entering the New Millennium, 2001]. We want to be of service to the priests and people of Kilmore through the provision of a variety of opportunities which will help develop people’s faith and their experience of ‘Church’ as well as educate body, mind, spirit and heart. The Centre will continue to nourish us – young and old, lay and cleric – as we commit to exercising our Christian calling to ‘Launch out into the deep’ and to proclaim the Kingdom of God.
Good communication channels will be critical to ensure the success of what we do here in the Diocesan Pastoral Centre – our communication to you and yours to us. The availability of this website, our presence on other social media, and the publication of our newsletter Glad Tidings three times a year, will help in that regard.
I hope this website will keep people informed about planned events and training opportunities, about what is available in terms of services and accommodation options for small or larger meetings and conferences or, indeed, for more long term arrangements.
While the Centre is primarily focused on pastoral development and renewal in the Diocese of Kilmore and providing facilities for a number of diocesan organisations, its amenities are also available to external organisations as long as the events do not conflict with our Christian ethos. Feel free to contact us to see if we can meet your requirements or if you have any ideas about possible events or service provision in the future.
Through the intercession of St. Patrick, St. Felim and the other saints associated with the Diocese of Kilmore, may this Centre continue to be of service as we respond bravely and imaginatively – priests and people alike – to Christ’s invitation to ‘Launch out into the deep’ and proclaim the Kingdom of God in these challenging and testing times.
God bless
Seán Coll
Director