Archbishop Eamon Martin's Message for St  Patrick s Day 2025 - video Dailymotion

Archbishop Eamon Martin's Message for St  Patrick s Day 2025. #newyork #stpatricksday #ireland #catholic

Transcript

00:00Friends, in this Jubilee year, I'm sending my St. Patrick's Day message from St. Patrick's

00:11Cathedral in New York, where I've travelled on a pilgrimage of hope.

00:16Our patron, St. Patrick, lived his life as a pilgrim of hope.

00:21Despite being trafficked into slavery, Patrick dared to hope in God, and later in life he

00:26answered the call of the Irish, and returned to the land of his captivity as a missionary

00:31of hope.

00:32During my pilgrimage here to New York, I've met hundreds of Irish-American families, and

00:38I prayed at the Irish Hunger Memorial, which is a poignant reminder of the countless Irish

00:44people who left their homeland during that awful time, many with little more than the

00:49clothes on their backs.

00:51But still, in their hearts, they carried the priceless treasures of faith and hope, and

00:56the hope they carried was much more than any human optimism.

01:00It was a hope forged in adversity, and rooted in the strong faith which centuries beforehand

01:06had inspired St. Patrick himself.

01:10Christian hope confronts the difficulties of this life, with eyes fixed on our heavenly

01:15homeland.

01:16Hope is a challenge to action for peace, justice and solidarity with others, especially the

01:22poor and the marginalised.

01:25Many Irish people and their descendants helped to build the great city of New York.

01:29They were leaders of hope in their church and in their society.

01:33All ten of the Archbishops of New York since 1850 were either born in Ireland, or had Irish

01:39parents or grandparents.

01:41A very moving and prayerful moment for me in my pilgrimage of hope has been a visit

01:46to the Ground Zero Memorial, and I was also honoured to pray with firefighters at Rescue

01:533 NYFD station, remembering there the firefighters, including many Irish Americans who lost their

02:00lives in that tragedy.

02:02The theme of peace has been forefront in my mind these days.

02:07I visited the Disarmament Exhibition at the United Nations building, and also travelled

02:13to Capitol Hill in Washington DC to reflect with my good friend, Church of Ireland Archbishop

02:19John McDougall, on the unfinished work of peace and reconciliation in Ireland.

02:25Friends, as sons and daughters of St. Patrick, somewhere deep inside all of us, the voice

02:31of God is challenging us to be pilgrims of hope in this troubled world.

02:36I pray this St. Patrick's Day that every one of us will have the courage and strength

02:41to make a difference, as St. Patrick did.