Europe’s post-war recovery holds valuable lessons

An uncle of mine, a proud Corkman, served as a Catholic chaplin with the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War.

He campaigned from 1944 across north western Europe where he comforted the wounded and prayed for those who died.

There are pictures of him on the banks of the Rhine, celebrating Mass in a bombed out Cologne church and sitting in the cockpit of an abandoned Stuka bomber.