Write a commentWhen a man of religion says these words we should all take note as you’d expect a cleric to be full of the joys of the season.
When you hear Newry reared Fr Peter McVerry’s take on things though you certainly could easily understand the contradiction.
Fr McVerry founder of the Peter McVerry Trust has been working with homeless and vulnerable people in the Dublin area for 40 years and was in Newry recently for the Newry Chamber of Commerce Charity Dinner.
Referring to the homeless compere at the dinner Gerry Kelly asked “Are they invisible people” Fr McVerry replied “That’s the hardest part of being homeless. I always thought the hardest part of being homeless is not having a bed for the night, having to find a doorway or an abandoned building, but it’s not! The hardest part of being homeless is to know that people think you’re invisible. People pass you by as if you did not exist. Your whole self esteem and your dignity hits rock bottom when you become homeless and that’s the hardest part, to know that if you disappeared of the streets nobody would even notice you were gone. Your life has no meaning, no value to anybody else, You’ve totally lost your dignity.
“And so when people ask me what are we doing with homeless people, I say yes, we can give some of them accommodation, we can give some of them drug treatment, we can give some of the counselling, but what we’re really trying to do is to give them the message that they’re just as important and just as valuable as anybody else. If we’re not giving them that message we may as well pack up and go home cause the rest isn’t worth it.”
He continues “I think the only way of changing attitude is to actually meet homeless people, and get to know some homeless people. We have 14 or 15 year old kids who spend a week in our drop in centre with homeless people. Just talking, listening to them changes them! Some of them describe it as a life changing experience, they get behind the label, homeless person, drug addict and they meet the real person, they realise the real person is exactly the same as them but their path in life has gone in a very very different direction. So I think you can watch videos about homelessness, read it in the newspapers, until you actually get to meet and get behind the label of homeless person it’s very very difficult to change attitudes.”
On Christmas Fr McVerry had this to say “A lot of homeless people tell me they would love to fall asleep on the first of December and wake up on the first of January.”
"Christmas is a horrible time for homeless people. I hate Christmas myself, I hate it, because most of the people I work with hate Christmas, not only is there huge financial pressure on them. You know everybody’s going around at Christmas, they’ve new clothes on they’re looking well.
"Homeless people want to do the same. They want to have new clothes on for Christmas. It’s part of their sense of their own dignity but they don’t have the money to buy them. If they’re going to go home, maybe they have children, maybe their children are in care, they want to meet their children at christmas, they’ve got to have a little present for their children and they don’t have the money to buy it. So it’s a huge time of financial pressure as it is for many other families as well but if you can imagine Christmas Day for a homeless person who is on the streets. Christmas day everything is closed, there isn’t even a cafe that you can go into and have a cup of tea. There’s no transport running the streets are deserted and you’re walking the streets there. It is the most miserable day of the whole year. That’s why I hate Christmas. All the homeless people I work with, they just want that day to be over as quickly as possible”
On getting funding of which they need to raise €3M per year Fr McVerry commented “People are extraordinarily generous. I’ve had some lovely letters. I had a lovely letter from a seven year old kid who had just made his first communion. There was 50 Euro in it and he said ‘I’ve just made my first communion and I want to share the money I got with children who are less fortunate than myself’ Lovely letter and then five years later a letter from the same kid ‘I’ve just made my confirmation, I want to share the money’ I just say there’s a family that has wonderful values and is imparting wonderful values to their children”
Homelessness is not limited to the large city’s of Dublin and Belfast. Newry also has it’s fair share. Spare a thought this wintertime and maybe think how you can make a difference to even one person.
There are many charities and organisations locally that work with the homeless and they would love your assistance in whatever way you can provide it.
See www.pmvtrust.ie
