Our Lady Queen Of Peace Church Dublin - Merrion Road Church Dublin D4

Welcome to Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish!

Apart from providing useful information about the parish, its groups and the various activities, it is our desire to use this website to share our faith with you, providing resources and links for faith development, both personal and family.

We also want to facilitate piety and prayer and hope you will find the Daily Mass Readings (with commentary) helpful.

Since 2008, priests of the Opus Dei Prelature have been entrusted with the pastoral care of Our Lady Queen of Peace. See Daily Message taken from the writings of St Josemaría, Founder of Opus Dei, which gives some insights into his charism.

We would appreciate your feedback. God bless you and please visit us often!

Fr Fergus

Our Lady Queen of Peace WEBCAM

We have recently installed a webcam and will livestream all Masses each day on the Parish Facebook page.
(Mass Times above in Top Box on right).

We welcome parishioners and friends who may wish to participate online in our liturgies. They are also recorded and may be viewed afterwards here.

Arrangements during Level 3 restrictions

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin wrote (on Friday 18 Sept) that:
in the light of the very worrying increase in infection in the Dublin area, the entire County Dublin will be placed on Level 3 of the Government’s COVID-19 Resilience and National Recovery Plan, beginning at midnight tonight and for at least a three-week period.

Places of worship will have to remain closed from midnight tonight, except for private prayer, weddings and funerals. Attendance at wedding liturgies and funerals would be limited to 25.

Religious services can be transmitted online with no public presence.

MASSES will be livestreamed from Our Lady Queen of Peace as follows:

Monday - Friday	07:30, 12 noon
Saturdays	10am, 12 noon & 6pm (Vigil for Sunday)
Sundays	10am, 12 noon, 9pm

CONFESSION TIMES:

Monday - Friday	10am - 11:45
Saturdays	10:30 - 11:45
Sundays	10:45 - 11:45

Annual CROSSCARE Collection, 19-20 Sept 2020 postponed

Crosscare’s annual collection cannot now be taken up due to Level 3 suspension of public worship. Parishioners who come for private prayer may use the donation envelopes available. You can also donate on line at www.crosscare.ie

Crosscare’s focus has always been to serve the most vulnerable in our society. During this crisis we are working hard to ensure that the essential services we provide remain available to our service users while operating in line with Government and HSE advice to ensure that our service users and staff are protected.

While some of our face to face services have had to be adapted to meet HSE requirements, as much as possible we are continuing to provide supports through other remote means including phone and web based technologies.

Pope Francis' Prayer Intention for September 2020

Respect for the Planet’s Resources:

We pray that the planet’s resources will not be plundered, but shared in a just and respectful manner.

Video of the Pope:

Helpful reflections on the Pope's intention from Apostleship of Prayer here.

Monthly 9pm Mass with a Youth Focus, Sunday 6 September 2020

Pope Francis has been encouraging all of us to listen to and encourage youth. In his Apostolic Exhortation following the 2018 Synod on Youth, he wrote:

"We cannot just say that young people are the future of our world. They are its present; even now, they are helping to enrich it”.

(Christus Vivit, 64)

In response to the Holy Father's invitation, we are pleased to be able to celebrate once again, after lockdown, our 9pm Mass with a Youth Focus. All youth are welcome.

Some young people have already volunteered to facilitate the liturgy by acting as ushers, others by enhancing the liturgy with their music or by helping in the sanitisation of the church after Mass.

For the moment, due to Covid restrictions, we regret that it will not be possible to offer the customary light refreshments after Mass.

Relationships Enrichment: Sessions for engaged and recently married couples

Every cloud has a silver lining. The lockdown gave us many opportunities to meet virtually over the past few months. Currently Relationships Enrichment is on a break. We plan to resume in September. If you'd like to receive a link to future meetings, contact Fr James by email at jpatrickhurley@gmail.com. You can also reach him by phone at 086-107 2930.

Scroll down to links to the podcasts on Family Time and Communication by the experienced Couples Counsellor, Nacho Tornel.

A record audience "tuned in" for our virtual meeting on Monday 29 June which featured the screening of a wonderful talk on Marriage by Scott and Kimberly Hahn, entitled: Living Sacrament - Primary Channel of Grace. There was a very lively discussion afterwards.

On Monday 15 June we were joined from Scotland by Emmet Dooley and his wife Lucy who hails from there. Married for ten years, having changed homes multiple times and had four children along the way, they talked about challenges they faced and how God has helped them find solutions every time.

Short podcasts available here.

Relationships Enrichment meets regularly on Mondays. We draw on the teaching of the Catholic Church, as well as on the help and advice of experienced married couples.

€16,170 raised in 2019 Christmas Appeal for Parish Outreach Project: Queen of Peace Primary School for Girls, Lodwar, Kenya

Our Annual Christmas Appeal in support of Queen of Peace Primary School for Girls, our parish outreach project in Lodwar, Kenya raised €16,170.

Last year €15,010 was donated. In 2017 a total of €13,960 was raised.
(See School website, Facebook page and photos).

The photo on the right shows Fr Fergus with Bishop Dominic Kimeng'ich in Nairobi in August 2016, giving him our summer contribution of €5,290. A further €12,480 was raised at Christmas 2016.

The school is developing very well, as Bishop Dominic outlined in his November 2019 email:

"I would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to you and the Parishioners of Our Lady Queen of Peace for helping me achieve my dream of building a Church school for the girls in Turkana. Now we have Queen of Peace Primary School. This year it recorded very impressive performance and I am proud to note that all the girls who did their Class 8 Kenya National Primary Education examinations attained the marks to join good Secondary schools. Now they have the opportunity to a bright future.

The latest structure that has just been completed in the school, with your help, is the Convent for the sisters who are teaching and at the same time forming the girls. There are 4 sisters now in the school and they are very happy because they have moved into the brand new convent - thanks to the collection you made last year."

Total donations from our parish since 2011 amount to €128,210.

Presentation to Tony Collard on his retirement as Sacristan, 1 December 2019

Our very popular Sacristan, Tony, has retired after many years of selfless service to Our Lady Queen of Peace. We will miss his huge support, his smile, his versatility and we wish him many years of happiness.

A good number of Tony's many friends in the parish gathered for the occasion. Peter Flanagan, Chairperson of the Parish Pastoral Council, presented him with a generous gift from our parishioners. Afterwards we mingled over refreshments prepared by Yvonne, Peter's wife.

See more photos here. Photo album here.

Making your FIRST COLLECTION and SHARE donations more tax-efficient, using envelopes

There has been a good response to our initiative of using an envelope system for our First Collection and Share Collection, which began on 1 July 2017.

If you would like to participate in this scheme, please fill out the form (downloadable at the bottom of the page) and hand it in or email it to the Parish Office.

If you prefer not to use the envelope system and wish to make your contributions tax efficient, you might like to make your Collections contributions via the Parish Office. Once we can trace donations back to you, then they can be processed for tax reclaim purposes.

What are the benefits of such a system and how will it work?

Under current tax law, since we have charitable status, any cumulative donation in a given tax year to Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish of €250 or more (by way of Family Offering, Dues, First Collection or Share Collection) is eligible for tax relief (amounting to almost 45% of the donation). This tax relief would be paid directly to Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish.

As can be appreciated, we can only reclaim tax for First Collection or Share Collection contributions when we are able to record the source of these donations. The envelope system facilitates this.

For example, a €5 donation for the First Collection or Share Collection, using the envelope system, could possibly yield an extra €2.25 on that donation.