Mary Chambers, Trish Forde and Martin McDermott sent us this update:
On a November evening in 2019, Sr. Catherine Brennan and some members of the Westport Eco-Congregation visited our small parish to help us explore what becoming an Eco-Congregation was all about. A short time later, Roundfort, Robeen and Carras Eco-Congregation was born! We are a collection of three Churches and five Schools in South Mayo/North Galway. We are a 100% rural parish with approximately 550 households.
The year started off strong … in January we held our first event, an Unwanted Christmas Gifts Recycling Drive and we had a great response to it. We were fortunate to be able to donate clothes, toiletries, sweets and other gifts from the drive to the Ballyhaunis Inclusion Project, who were thrilled to receive them.
For Lent, we ran a #Fast4Earth campaign and encouraged parishioners to consider sacrificing something for the environment over lent, such as reducing their amount of plastic usage, having shorter showers and minimising food waste.
On March 28th, we held Mass by Candlelight from Robeen Church to mark Earth Hour. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, our Parish Priest Fr. Mike Murphy celebrated the Mass to an empty Church; but we were all present in spirit, and watched on the Parish Facebook Page. The Mass even got some coverage in the Western People Newspaper, with some very poignant quotes from Fr. Mike:
“Maybe this crisis will also remind us that this is God’s world, not ours, and we need to continue to pass it on to future generations in good shape for their future”
With the restrictions in place, our plans for further events had to be re-considered. In April, we decided to run a Backyard Wildlife Competition, encouraging parishioners to upload wildlife photos that they took within 2KM of their home. We were blown away by the response, so much so that we found it nearly impossible to pick a winner. In the end, all entrants received a packet of wildflower seeds, and we look forward to seeing the pictures of the wildlife that will be encouraged into their gardens later this summer.
All of our Backyard Wildlife entries can be seen on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ecoparish
We look forward to continuing the success of the first 6 months of our new group, adapting our events and communications to our communities “new normal”. We hope to spread the message of caring for our common home and gain even more support from the fantastic people of our parishes.