CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE WHO ENRICH US WITH NEW GOSPEL INSIGHTS (Constitution 8)

We will always be close to the people with whom we work, taking into account their values and aspirations.

Constitution 8

We will let our lives be enriched by the poor and the marginalized as we work with them, for they can make us hear in new ways the Gospel we proclaim.

Rule 8a

In 1850 Eugene visited the Oblates in England. He was proud of their closeness to the poor and wrote:

I went to Liverpool where another kind of marvel was waiting for me. Our Fathers, as you know, are in charge of the district of Holy Cross inhabited by a great number of poor Irish to whom they provide the aid of religion. It would be too long to describe to you all that is done in this miserable shed which serves as a chapel and which fills up six times on Sundays.

Letter to Fr Henri Tempier, 10 July 1850, EO III n 42

Some background to this situation:

This part of the city was a vast dockland slum, housing many thousands of Irish immigrants who had fled Ireland after the devastating potato famines of 1845 and 1847. Many had used Liverpool as a staging area to go to other lands, but thousands stayed in the area in the most squalid conditions. It was made up of dingy tenements, joined together in airless courts and polluted by open sewers and piles of rubbish. By the end of 1847 over 300,000 impoverished and fever-ridden immigrants from the Irish famine had settled in the Liverpool area. These immigrants formed the vast majority of the parishioners of the parish. It was estimated that the parish contained about 11,000 Catholics, though this number kept increasing with the arrival of every ship from Ireland. (https://www.omiworld.org/lemma/liverpool-holy-cross-parish-1850-2001/)