Today, the Irish missionary chapter is drawing to a close. Our last missionaries are nearly all elderly and either retired or determined to die in harness. So, what will be their legacy? And who, if anyone, will take their place?
Since the mid-19th century, Irish missionaries have followed the example of earlier “saints and scholars” in taking their faith to every corner of the known world. At the peak of the Irish missionary movement, in the 1960s, over 6,000 Irish Catholic missionaries were dispersed over 80 countries. Now, though, with vocations evaporating and the last Irish missionaries ageing and dying, a movement, which put Ireland on the map in terms of moral influence, is coming to a close. Today, there are only about 450 Irish missionaries still scattered around the world and most of these are well over the age of sixty. By the end of this decade, that number is likely to fall below 200. In this ambitious and compelling 2-part series, Bryan Dobson and Dearbhail McDonald travel the country and the world to explain the origins and impact of the Irish missionary project, for better and for worse, and to assess its legacy.
At its heart, this series is an odyssey of human encounters, as Dearbhail McDonald and Bryan Dobson explore the shifting social and religious landscape at home and abroad that created this unique cultural and religious phenomenon, which has had such a profound influence on the Irish culture and psyche. They will demonstrate how Irish missionaries enabled Ireland to punch way above its weight, in terms of global influence, while also raising consciousness of global affairs, at home. At one point, it seemed that every Irish family had a member out in the missions, creating direct connections between the Irish and the world’s poorest and most oppressed peoples. Some of those priests and religious undoubtedly led heroic lives of self-sacrifice, but sadly, the legacy of some others is more tainted, even toxic. For better and for worse, that is the story the series tells, with fairness and unflinching honesty, while the last Irish missionaries are still able to share their experiences first-hand.
From the earliest days of Columba, leaving Derry to spread the good word to the pagan Picts of Scotland, to the liberation theology of those who worked with some of the poorest children in South America in the late 1970s, Irish Missionaries have long travelled to the farthest known corners of the world. They have been adventurers, diplomats, activists, advocates for human rights, peace builders, doctors, teachers and nurses, their work helping to bring about great change in the countries they have served. From Apartheid and AIDS in South Africa to war and starvation in Biafra to deforestation and the murder of indigenous people in the Amazon basin, they have witnessed humanity’s greatest challenges and its worst failings. To tell their stories is to tell the stories of the Ireland that they left, the countries where they worked and the people they served during times of seismic social, political, economic and religious change. But there is also another side to these stories: cases of abuse, repression and cover-up and accusations of cultural imperialism are mixed unflinchingly into this nuanced exploration, in order to explain the causes, context and legacy of this chapter of Irish history.
The series unfolds over two one-hour films. Each presenter has a particular frame of reference and their complementary approaches and perspectives are interwoven across the two episodes. The Last Irish Missionaries is neither an elegy nor an assault. Rather, it acknowledges what Irish Missionaries have contributed to global society and our own. Dearbhail McDonald and Bryan Dobson explore why so many Irish priests, nuns, lay people and other religious felt called to spread the Gospel to the farthest reaches of the world. They hear firsthand about their experiences and the impact of those individuals – sometimes heroic, sometimes thwarted, sometimes even persecuted or martyred. And they ask if we or the world will be poorer for the disappearance of the last Irish missionaries.
In a final ironic twist, as the series questions the legacy of the Irish missionary movement, it reveals how it is becoming inverted, with the missionary orders, long starved of vocations in Ireland, now recruiting new vocations overseas to carry on their work there and to re-evangelise the Irish at home.
Produced with funding from Coimisiún na Meán’s Sound & Vision Fund.
Episode One
At its peak in the 1960s, over 6,000 Irish Catholic missionaries were dispersed over 80 countries. Today there are fewer than 500. It’s the end of an era. In the first of this two-part series, Dearbhail McDonald and Bryan Dobson trace the beginning of the modern Irish missionary movement, meeting those who have returned to a changed Ireland after a life of service overseas and those who are still on the frontline in some of the world’s toughest environments.
