Prayer of Commitment
We the Parish Pastoral Council,   

promise to listen to and honour the life of this Vincentian parish community.

We will strive to direct, develop and to serve the needs of the people who come to worship here.  This we will do, sharing in the philosophy and spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, whose life’s work was based on a true respect for human dignity and a profound awareness of his own poverty.

We will endeavour to promote works of justice, mission, catechesis and evangelization which find a home here.

We will encourage and support the structures which have made this parish a place where the elderly, the young, the broken and the pilgrim find safety and a spiritual home.

We will seek to develop a liturgical and spiritual vision in harmony with that of the Second Vatican Council which will serve the growing needs of our community and lead it into the future.

We will seek to include others of all faiths, all nationalities, all spiritualities, to respect difference and to promote unity.

We understand our need to deepen and nourish our own faith journey and, from a true sense of prayer, communicate the values of the Gospels in all our work.

We will honour this Church as a sacred and beautiful place of devotion, spirituality and prayer both now and as far into the future as our days will be.

We remember that we now walk in the footsteps of those worshipping communities who came before us and accept the challenge which they too faced in proclaiming the Scriptures, in gathering in holy sacrament and sacred song and in sharing the bread of life which sustained them and around which we now gather.

Above all things, we serve to know God, to love God and to do all things to enable others to know the love of the God in whom all things were made.  The God of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Address by our Guest Speaker:  Mr. Pat Liddy, Artist and Writer launching The Care of Souls - 27th September, 2006

Even though I left Phibsborough for Donnycarney over 30 years ago, I remain a Phibsborian at heart and was more than delighted to be invited back tonight to launch this new book by Anne Marie Walsh The Care of Souls.

My late Dad was born in St Peter’s Rd and my mother, who thankfully is with us tonight, only moved into Phibsborough when she got married but has been a proud resident for the last 63 years.

I have the richest memories of both Phibsboro and St Peter’s. 

Phibsborough and the surrounding areas, inevitably a very different place then than it is now, were a child’s paradise.

·        The warren of little streets, the canals, the railways and fields all fueled a child’s imagination.

·        In the absence of supermarkets there were the daily trips to Doyle’s Corner for fresh bread in Downes’ Bakery, to Byrne’s the butcher, to Paddy Neville the grocer and the occasional visit to the Bohemian Café for a tub of ice cream.

·        Every day, except Sunday, I was despatched by my dad to buy the sport’s edition of the Evening Mail, often waiting around Doyle’s Corner for ages as I dare not come home with the edition that did not include all the latest results of matches and races.

·        In a time, when very few had television, I often stood outside the window of Tele Rents just watching programmes even though I could not hear the sound.

·        The Bohemian and the State Cinemas were my universities. I attended them about 3 times per week and from the four penny seats, I learned all about the wider world.

·        Attendance at religious ceremonies on a very regular basis in St Peter’s was just accepted as part and parcel of life. The weekly confession was a must when each of the many confession boxes had full pews waiting outside. A luxury of St Peter’s was that it had so many priests and, since you always had the same old sins, you could go to a different priest each week.

·        You could get Mass at almost any time of the morning with sometimes two or more Masses running in tandem from the many side altars.

·        There is a lovely photograph in this beautifully illustrated book of a church full of very pious boys attending the monthly meeting of St Patrick’s Temperance Sodality. This is of very fond memory to me. Once a month, on a Friday evening and again on the following Sunday morning we gathered in our appointed seat. We were divided into guilds designated by a large banner, 3 rows of seats to a guild, with an older boy or an adult acting as prefect who dutifully ticked off our names in the attendance books.

·        The most enjoyable aspect of the sodality was the annual excursion after Christmas to the Boh or Bohemian Cinema for our free film.

Many parishioners have shared memories such as these with Anne Marie and they are faithfully recorded in this delightful book. But time moves on and St Peter’s also moved on and adapted with changing circumstances

·        St Peters became even more central to the Phibsboro community in 1974, a couple of years before I left home, when it became a parish church. We had always treated the church and its priests as if it had always been our parish so it made very little difference on the ground except to consolidate the relationship between the priests and the local community and opened the church to also look after sick calls, births, marriages and funerals.

·        St Peters also engaged in and still is very active in various outreach programmes

·        Anne Marie charts the development of St Peter’s as a parish church and fondly remembers its parish priests, from Fr Fagan, the first parish priest, down to the present day.

·        Anne Marie tells us that from its earliest days in the 19^th century, St Peter’s was important to and active in the lives of the people of Phibsboro. In this book you will find the history of these difficult times when this district was an impoverished backwater in Dublin. Once the Vincentians moved in, the endemic local problems of poverty, moral and spiritual neglect and lack of education were tackled with vigour.

·        In time, with the support of the local people, one of the finest churches in Dublin and a much-needed primary school were built.

·        There is something special about St Peter’s and you feel when you come in that it is a very alive place. As Anne Marie points out, there are always some people about, and candles burn away on the side altars or one can always hear the comforting sound of the trickling water coming from the Memorial Garden Shrine.

·        And there is more to the building itself than its wonderful Gothic interior. There are the exquisite stained glass windows including some by Harry Clarke, and the priests here are to be commended for commissioning new stained glass windows and icons by contemporary artists.

St Peter’s has remained relevant to the contemporary society of Phibsboro and has more than answered the modern challenges of changing times. The Care of Souls helps us to better understand where we have come from and helps us to confidently chart the journey that lies ahead.

Finally, may I congratulate the author of this book, Anne Marie Walsh, Fr Brian Moore whose idea it was to publish the book, the designer Jim Walsh who happens to be Anne Marie’s brother, and all the priests and parishioners who contributed in one way or the other.

I highly recommend this book as a great read of the history and contribution of St Peter’s and I urge all parishioners to buy a copy for their homes and indeed to buy an extra copy of two to send as very acceptable presents to former parishioners or children who have fled the parish nest, so to speak. 

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