Sir, - One of my proudest boasts is that I went to "Christians". I am deeply indebted to the Christian Brothers. I was at school in Sexton Street, Limerick in the 1940s. Limerick people of my vintage will remember the Brothers walking each morning from the "monastery" in Sexton Street to staff the feeder primary schools throughout the city. They went, whatever the weather, to ensure the possibility of schooling for hundreds, especially the less privileged, in less prosperous times.
Yes, I remember one brother whose extreme severity I would rather forget. But that was one in the multitude whom I had the privilege of knowing (and he left the order at the time I was still in his class).
Many years on from Sexton Street, I met a Bangladeshi tea-garden manager. Imagine the thrill I experienced as we reminised about an Irish Christian Brother who had taught him, a Muslim from Bangladesh, in Shillong, India, and who had tried to make an opera singer of me in the great old Gilbert and Sullivan days, in Sexton Street.
Many years later a Sikh tailor in Thailand told me he wouldn't be around on Friday; he was going to the airport to pick up his children, coming home to Thailand for holidays. He had his children back for schooling with the Irish Christian Brothers in Delhi! These people spoke with deep appreciation about "our" Christian Brothers.
Few things annoy me as much as listening to the gripes about the Brothers of some who have done extremely well, thanks to those some Christian Brothers. I haven't the slightest doubt that those who harbour great memories of their time with the Brothers hugely outnumber whose who have bad memories - some, sadly, too well founded.
This is a time for rejoicing and congratulation on the beatification of the founder, Edmund Ignatius Rice. With that rejoicing I very much wish to be associated.
Yours, etc..
Chief executive, Concern Worldwide, Camden Street, Dublin.