7 minute read
A place of sanctuary
William Hayes shares how Tullamore Presbyterian Church in Co Offaly – the first PCI congregation to receive a ‘Church of Sanctuary’ award – is helping to provide welcome and hospitality to refugees and asylum seekers in the town.
On the second Sunday in Advent in 2022 we had a very special service in Tullamore Presbyterian Church. Places of Sanctuary Ireland, an organisation that works to build a culture of welcome, hospitality and inclusiveness across the island of Ireland, presented us with a ‘Church of Sanctuary’ award. We were one of the first churches in Ireland to receive this award and the first Presbyterian Church on the island to do so.
The service in which the award was given marked another step on what is now a 14-year journey for the congregation. Over that time, we have worked in Direct Provision centres, with government-led refugee resettlement programmes, families assisted by the Red Cross, informal refugees from the Libya conflict, Afghan families reunified under United Nations programmes and, most recently, families fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Our work with refugees and asylum seekers began in earnest in around 2009 when volunteers from the congregation started working in a nearby Direct Provision centre, helping families with young children to run a parent and toddler group. A Direct Provision centre is something akin to an open prison in which people who have applied for asylum in Ireland are assessed to see if their claim can be upheld and they can be granted ‘leave to remain’ in Ireland. These centres are often disused hotels and whole families share one room. If you have ever spent a week cooped up in a hotel room with an average-size family, you will have a small idea of the capacity for stress to build up in close quarters when that time goes from weeks to years.
The parent and toddler group was something of a lifeline for young families, especially young mothers, and gave the children time to be children. After two years, the management of the Direct Provision centre received government funding to provide this facility on a daily basis instead of the once a week that the church could offer. Consequently, we stepped back from the work but continued to help families on a one-to-one basis. This work set a pattern that would continue over the years in Tullamore Church. The congregation would see a need, they would respond and as the need would change or be taken over more formally by other bodies, the church would step back but continue to offer more traditional pastoral care.
The most recent work in which congregation has been involved is what we have called the International Welcome Centre. It began in late 2013/early 2014, when the church was approached by Offaly County Council to be involved in a refugee resettlement programme for Hazara refugees from Afghanistan. The families had come to Ireland having originally fled to Syria. Our church’s role was to provide a meeting place every Thursday afternoon for the families to come together and meet Irish people from their own neighbourhoods.
At the same time, ‘a good neighbour’ programme was started, involving people in the local community who could help and support the refugees in the parts of town where they had been settled. This resulted in a fascinating mix of people from many different parts of the world meeting together in our building on Thursday afternoons. When the formal phase of the resettlement programme had finished there was a strong desire among the Afghan community and the people involved to keep the Thursday drop-in going, while expanding it to people of other nationalities. This became what we rather grandly call the International Welcome Centre, which has become a place of grace and blessing for people who have made Tullamore their home.
Along with families from Afghanistan and Syria, people from Russia, China, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Brazil, Germany, France, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Italy, India and Turkey find a warm welcome at the centre. Over the years, the character of the work has changed with the Welcome Centre evolving with the different waves of migration that have come through Tullamore. We have, for the most part, been blessed with translators or shared/ common languages such as Persian, Russian or Spanish. When someone arrives with no common language, we are very thankful to be living in the era of Google Translate!
Like most Irish county towns, Tullamore is an astonishingly diverse place for its size and rural context. For example, a discussion a few years ago with some mums and dads at our normal parent and toddler group ‘Busy Bees’ revealed that the 44 different families present comprised 22 different ethnicities and nationalities. This has meant that in order to simply be a local church working within our parish we had to learn to be a community that reaches out and provides a welcome space for people of many different nationalities and backgrounds.
Reflecting some of this diversity within modern Ireland, Andy Pollok, the Places of Sanctuary board member who presented the award, said, “As somebody with a Czech refugee father and an Irish Presbyterian mother, it is a real joy to be able to present Tullamore Presbyterian Church with this certificate and welcome them into the Sanctuary family”.
He went on to say, “This marks only the beginning of their sanctuary work. There is a huge need for good-hearted people in this country to reach out a hand of friendship and welcome to the poor, lonely, often frightened people from overseas who have come to Ireland seeking work or sanctuary, not least to prevent the kind of fear-inspired far-right reaction that we have seen in a few places in Ireland, Britain and other European countries recently.”
Awards are nice, and it’s good to be recognised by outside bodies for the work that we do as a church, but there was something really sobering in Andy’s words to us as a congregation: “This marks only the beginning of their sanctuary work.” Despite all that we have done and the impact it has had on so many families and individuals, we have only scratched the surface of the huge amount of work there is to be done here in Tullamore, never mind the work across Ireland.
The world around us is going through one of those historical phases, as it has done in the past, where people affected by war, economic hardship and natural disasters have found themselves having to move from their own countries and regions and find safer places to live in other countries.
Irish people have done this repeatedly down through the centuries, moving to Britain, America and continental Europe to find work, safety and freedom. Our Presbyterian ancestors did this throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In the past, it was people leaving our shores who sought help from others overseas. Nowadays, it is people coming here to Ireland who need our help and support. Our churches are ideal places to provide the kind of help that refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants need.
They need to find people who are welcoming, connected to their local community and willing to take the time and make the effort needed to help them integrate and thrive for however long they are here. Where better than a church to find such people and what better opportunity to share Christ’s message of love and redemption with the world than when the world turns up on our doorstep, looking for our help, looking for friendship and hoping for sanctuary?
Rev William Hayes is minister of Tullamore Presbyterian and convener of PCI’s Republic of Ireland panel.
