Thursday, July 12, 2012

Wexford healing garden opened

http://www.enniscorthyguardian.ie/multimedia/dynamic/01055/5b1be86a-f314-4c2f_1055103t.jpgA ‘Healing Garden’ has been opened in Oylegate, Co. Wexford, by auxiliary bishop of Dublin Eamonn Walsh, eight years after he helped initiate its development when he was acting bishop of Ferns.

St. Raphael’s Healing Garden was opened as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the village’s St David’s Church.  

Its development was influenced by the need to provide a positive image of healing and reconciliation in light of the Ferns Report on clerical sex abuse in the diocese.

Bishop Walsh suggested to Ferns priest Fr. Jim Cogley, who is Oylegate’s parish priest, that in times of difficulty, big symbols were needed to keep people’s minds focused on the positive and the church needed to keep focused on its primary mission of healing and reconciliation.

Fr. Cogley, who had initiated the development of a Remembrance Garden in Kilmore Quay and a World War II Bombing Memorial in Campile, took the suggestion to heart and, backed by the community of Oylegate-Glenbrien, spearheaded the Healing Garden project in the village.

A closed off walled garden, that for decades was overgrown with briars and weeds,  was completely transformed to develop the garden.  

The garden is adorned with statues by local artist Ciaran O’Brien and marble from Cararra near Pisa in Italy.

Fr. Cogley said the use of the angel Raphael as a theme for the garden was inspired by a story he had been told by a woman, Ms Susan Mullins, who told him she believed Raphael had taken care of her during brain surgery.  

Cutting the ribbon on the garden, Bishop Walsh said that we live, “in a world of great noise but if we only listen to the noise outside and not the voice within, there’s a piece missing.”

“All wounds would heal in time unless we keep picking at them; there will always be a scar, but this garden asks us to face what must be admitted, grasp it and move forward.”

Dr Walsh said he hoped the garden would bring inner peace to anyone who was searching for it.