FORGET FOR A WHILE OUR OWN TROUBLES IN ORDER TO BRING SOME RELIEF TO THOSE OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN IRELAND

Having presented the people of his diocese with the suffering of the Irish Catholics for their faith, Bishop Eugene now speaks about the terrible sufferings caused by the Potato Famine which had started two years earlier, in 1845. It was to last for 7 years and in this period over a million Irish died of starvation and over a million became poor refugees in other parts of the world.

Eugene appealed to the people of his diocese for material help by giving them heart-breaking examples of the misery being experienced by their fellow-Catholics.

Well, my brethren, this Ireland, which powerful reasons endear to us who love the faith, is undergoing today at the hand of God (who wishes, no doubt, to hasten thereby her deliverance) one of the most cruel trials of her existence, exhausted as she is by so many other cruel trials. The public press, sombre enough in its accounts, only gives news that falls far short of the truth about her real distress. Without communicating to you all the details that have reached us, we will reproduce some of the things said about this country in the grip of a famine and sickness which are daily decimating an ever larger part of her unfortunate inhabitants. One item under date of January 26th last says: “The strongest man could not hold out; the famine shows itself on all faces and while the people are rapidly dying, there is an undisturbed quietness.” It is further said that the government has launched public works which can employ many people; but because of the dearness of groceries, the salary of a worker scarcely suffices for the nourishment of two persons, whence it often happens, through having to divide his miserable share, he lacks strength to continue to work and is condemned to languish miserably in a state of extenuation. One sees entire families often of eleven members stricken with fever; hospitals are full of sick persons; they cannot receive all those who come; they put as many as four in the same bed and they die in great numbers without a sound. Another letter of January 27th has this conclusion: “You cannot form an adequate idea of the frightful scenes of heart-breaking misery in the midst of which we live; in the whole of Ireland famine and fever wreak their terrible ravages.” The towns are reported to offer the spectacle of thousands of starving people gulping at street corners a soup distributed to them by charity and which, for the moment, prevents them from dying. As for the countryside, they cite as an example of the afflicting things that are happening, the following report of a doctor: “In a hut twelve feet long by eight wide, four human beings were victims of the epidemic, abandoned by everyone. One had been dead for several days and the others, consumed by a burning fever, had no bed other than a damp floor and no covering other than a humid blanket. The sickness raged so much and the corpse was so decomposed that the neighbours did not dare approach the hut.” Although the doctor had only one hand, he had to put the corpse in a coffin himself and carry it away for burial. The priests are also obliged to render this pious duty. From the countryside, the people flock into the towns where misery pursues them. The famine has made such progress everywhere “that it has exhausted a source of charity hitherto inexhaustible, that of the poor for the poor, which is familiar in Ireland and unexampled in the same degree in other countries, being so heroic and utterly prodigious.”

…We confine ourselves, dear brethren, to this sketch of the pitiful tableau; it is too striking to let your hearts resist the thought of forgetting a while our own troubles in order to bring some relief to those of our brothers in Ireland.

Bishop Eugene’s Circular Letter to the people of Marseilles, 24 February 1847, EO III Circular n 2

REFLECTION

Today there continue to be “Potato Famines” throughout the world. Eugene’s invitation to forget our own troubles in order to bring relief wherever possible, continues to resound.

“So much of the world’s suffering results from the sinful action or inaction of ourselves and others. For example, people look at a famine and wonder where God is, but the world produces enough food for each person to have 3,000 calories a day. It’s our own irresponsibility and self-centeredness that prevents people from getting fed.”  (Lee Strobel)