‘Spirit of Mother Jones’ for McVerry

Fr Peter McVerry, founder of one of a leading homelessness charity, has received the 2015 Spirit of Mother Jones Award.

The accolade is hosted by the organising committee of the Spirit Of Mother Jones Festival, held annually in Cork’s Shandon Quarter to celebrate social activism.

“Fr Peter McVerry was the unanimous choice of the entire Cork Mother Jones committee to receive the award this year in 2015,” said Jim Nolan of the committee.

He praised Fr McVerry’s “unstinting efforts to provide a voice for those without a voice or power in society”.

Mary Harris Jones was born in Cork and became a union activist and champion of children’s rights in the US in the late 19th century. She was known as the “most dangerous woman in America” and “the grandmother of all agitators”.

Renowned for her fearlessness, she once famously addressed a rally in the middle of a gun battle between striking mine workers and hired mercenaries. “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” was her motto.

Very much in the spirit of Mother Jones, Fr McVerry used the occasion in the Firkin Crane Centre to deliver a talk criticising the “failure of successive governments to invest in social housing”.In a talk entitled “Homelessness – the failure of social policy”,

Fr McVerry, in a talk, called for emergency rent controls to stem the flood of homelessness.

Born in Down, Fr McVerry made tackling homelessness, social disadvantage, and drug addiction his life’s work as a newly ordained priest in Dublin’s inner city in the 1970s.

From a hostel in a three-bedroom flat in Ballymun in 1980, the Peter McVerry Trust now includes 11 homeless hostels, 100 apartments, and a residential drug detox centre.

Fr McVerry , whose numerous awards include The Freedom of the City of Dublin granted in 2014 and a Pride of Ireland Lifetime achievement award, welcomed the Mother Jones accolade but was keen to recognise the efforts of others in the charity.

“I’m a bit embarrassed by awards, to be honest,” said Fr McVerry. “The work we do includes over 200 people. It’s the staff and management who produce the results; I’m more of a figurehead, really.”