Priest in Scotland wants to visit in jail the man who robbed him

July 21, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Motherwell, Scotland, Jul 21, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Patrick Hennessy, who was robbed and attacked in May at his rectory in Scotland, says he has forgiven his robber and wants to visit him in prison to give him pastoral care.

Michael McTaggart, 41, was sentenced to four years imprisonment July 17 at Glasgow Sheriff Court for the May 13 robbery of Fr. Hennessy, 73.

Fr. Hennessy told the Scottish Catholic Observer after the sentencing that “it’s a heavy sentence for the fella and I feel quite sorry for him as I think he must have so many problems. I wasn’t expecting him to get anything like four years jail time, it’s obviously a huge mistake for the guy.”

“I would now actually go and visit him in prison if it could be arranged because he obviously needs some help.”

Around 9:40 pm on May 13, McTaggart knocked on Fr. Hennessy’s rectory door. Fr. Hennessy is pastor of St. Columbkille’s in Rutherglen, in the Diocese of Motherwell, and is known regularly to help those who come to his door with donations of food.

McTaggart grabbed the priest and demanded money.

“Father Hennessy gave him two pink collection envelopes he believed to contain £10 each and five pounds from his pocket,” prosecutor Louise MacNeil told the court, according to Glasgow Live’s Ashlie McAnally.

McTaggart continued asking for money, and Fr. Hennessy gave him a donation box, thought to have had about GBP 100 ($130).

While McTaggart went through the envelopes in the donation box, Fr. Hennessy was able to run into the street and alert neighbors, and McTaggart fled.

At the sentencing the judge, Martin Jones, addressed McTaggart, saying, “You have pled guilty to an extremely serious offence … You used violence to extract money from him and pulled hm in to the house after you had obtained money and threatened him in the vestibule of the premises.”

“The time has come to realise if you continue offending this way your sentences are going to get longer and longer.”

At the time of the assault, McTaggart had been released early from a previous sentence.

Fr. Hennessy said the St. Vincent de Paul Society will now handle donations at St. Columbkille’s, and is operated out of the parish hall.

The Motherwell diocese commented that “the safety of priests and religious living in parishes is paramount. In light of recent incidents, the diocese has offered support to all priests to review the security measures across all presbyteries and parish halls.”

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English bishop dedicates ‘Year of Holiness’ in 2019

December 4, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Shrewsbury, England, Dec 4, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a pastoral letter marking the first Sunday of Advent, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury dedicated 2019 as the diocesan Year of Holiness, calling attention to the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the universal call to holiness.

“It is this universal call to holiness which I wish all of us, clergy and people, to focus upon anew. It is striking that, amid all the crises of the 20th Century, the central message of the Second Vatican Council was that every one of us, in every state of life, is called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of love: that is, called to become nothing less than a saint,” Bishop Davies wrote.

“Advent is a time of renewed hope leading us to the light of Christmas,” he said. “It is a journey we make in the darkest days of our year. Such days evoke the dark shadows in the world around us, and those failures in the lives and witness of Christians which have at times cast dark shadows over the face of the Church, obscuring for many, the clear light of Christ shining from her.”

He said that “our renewal in holiness” is “the only renewal of the Church which will ever matter … It is why only saints resolved the crises the Church has faced throughout history and why they have proved to be the great evangelisers.”

“It is also why, today, amid the dark shadows of scandal and the challenge of a new evangelisation of western societies, it is urgent to recall this one goal of every Christian life for it is in the saints that the true face of the Church shines out. For, though they can have their place, no pastoral programme; no discussions amongst us; no re-organisation or re-structuring can ever accomplish this; only our striving for holiness to become the saints we have been called by God to be.”

Both “our Christian calling and the ultimate goal of every human life” is “to become, in the end, a saint,” said Bishop Davies, recalling that Christ told us “that this is the one thing which alone matters.”

The bishop noted that Pope Francis wrote in a recent letter that “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

“A saint is someone who reaches the complete and everlasting happiness of Heaven. We might say that holiness is happiness … it is only by being holy that we can be truly happy.”

Bishop Davies said: “The Holy Father writes, ‘Do not be afraid to set your sights higher, to allow yourself to be loved and liberated by God’. For holiness, he writes, is ‘the extent that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we model our life on Christ’s’. We can never reach this goal by our own unaided efforts. By the grace of God we can!”

He encouraged everyone in the Diocese of Shrewbury to recall in the coming year that there is found in the Church, holy though composed of sinners, everything needed to grow in holiness.

“In daily prayer, frequent Confession and, above all, in the Holy Eucharist, we are given the Divine means, the grace to reach this goal,” wrote Bishop Davies.

“This is our purpose as we enter anew into Advent,” the bishop concluded. “Let us ask Our Lady, she who is ‘full of grace’, to accompany us along the path to the holiness, the true happiness to which we are called. In the beautiful words of the Second Vatican Council, we know that in the most Blessed Virgin Mary the Church has already reached perfection and in our struggle she shines out for us as a sign of certain hope and consolation until the day of the Lord shall come in splendour.”

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