Parish group reach out to Nigeria

A fundraiser to benefit the victims of persecution by Boko Haram in North East Nigeria is linking the parishioners of St Anne’s Church Bailieborough with a parish in Nigeria. Fr Joseph Fidelis runs a Trauma Centre in Maiduguri, Nigeria, but previously served his ministry in the east Cavan town.

Fr Joseph assisted in the parish of Bailieborough in the summers of 2017, 2018 and 2019 when he was a member of the Faith Matters Group. One of the members, Pauline Nugent, recalled her early encounter with the Nigerian cleric.

“He challenged us a bit,” she says. “He was very enthusiastic and fresh. You thought 'here is someone who is a strong voice in the church'. He is a very warm and genuine person.”

Friends of Fr Joseph say he is “the type of person who can be having the best of a craic with you one minute and the next minute telling you a harrowing story”.

He was described as having “a great way about him with the young and old”

Despite holding an appointment in Rome after Bailieborough, the popular cleric was anxious to return to his home country: “Fr Joseph had a strong desire to return to Nigeria, because he knows it is a very dangerous time for Christians there.”

“He wanted to be in the thick of it and he wanted to support anyone who was suffering. That's why the trauma centre is so amazing,” Pauline tells the Celt.

More than 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed because of their faith in the last three years. The Christian Association of Nigeria reports that 900 churches in northern Nigeria have been destroyed.

Last September members of the Faith Matters Group participated in a parish walk from St Anne’s Church Bailieborough to Killann Church and then onto Shercock Church.

The money raised, and which continues to be raised, assists Fr Joseph in his ministry. Pauline says turning thought into action is the reason for their efforts: “We are a Divine Mercy prayer group. We thought 'what could we do to help', so we started fundraising. It was personal because we knew Fr Joseph.”

Pauline says the work undertaken in the Trauma Centre in Maidugur is vital. The town has a population of three million of which 1.4 million are internally displaced people who have fled their home towns and live in refugee camps.

“We put collection boxes in the church for mass in Bailieborough and Shercock before the lockdown and we raised almost €5,000 from that,” Pauline tells. “Then we had the gofundme page and that has been getting great support.”