Terry Prone: Was reverence for Fr Peter McVerry enough to turn blind eye to trust?
Mainstream media has treated him with a pally respect rarely accorded to a member of the clergy, especially one on the board of, and board secretary to, a body with a billion euro budget
Originally published in the Irish Examiner.
The first description I ever heard of Fr Peter McVerry was one word divided into two for emphasis.
He was, a government minister told me, “IM-possible”. The first syllable uttered on a risen cadence, the second set of syllables accompanied by a headshake, often with closed eyes, as if opened eyes would cause the minister to see even more difficulties posed by the Jesuit.
That was 30 years ago and the government minister’s identity and indeed party have faded into an odd commonality of anonymity. Forgotten.
Yet almost every government minister since then, and particularly those working in the area of the unhoused, pretty much signed up to that description of the Belfast-born priest: IM-possible.
It wasn’t so much that McVerry couldn’t be bought. It was that no matter how much a government acceded to his demands, he was never satisfied. Never grateful.
Never appreciative of political effort. Always wanting more.
An activist blessed with a permanent argumentative sense of entitlement, not for himself, but for those he saw as needing his help.
"McVerry has always had the great strengths of the revolutionary, starting with a literal-minded opportunistic response to need which brooks no opposition."
If, 20 years back, Fr Peter met someone on his city rounds who needed a bed that night, that someone was getting a bed where Fr Peter lived, even if the other Jesuits in the communal domicile weren’t thrilled at the prospect.
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