On 14 March SPARK Social Justice and the J&P Commission, in partnership with Leeds Trinity University, had organised a presentation of the 2024 Romero Lecture. The Archbishop Romero Trust organises this event every year, taking a guest lecturer on a short UK-wide tour.
This year the speaker was Dr Raymond Perrier, Director of the Denis Hurley Institute in Durban, South Africa.
Denis was a very engaging speaker and carried everyone along with his energy. To illustrate his theme he took the verses from Isaiah that Jesus used in the synagogue: ‘ I came to bring good news to the poor, to set prisoners free…’ etc. For each phrase, he illustrated how these were demonstrated by St Oscar Romero (assassinated whilst saying mass) and by Denis Hurley, former Archbishop of Durban (who lived until he was 90 but who was an outspoken campaigner against Apartheid during the 1980’s).
Raymond invited questions at the end of his presentation and there followed a lively discussion with the 30 or so people who had come along. A large part of this centred around where else each of us finds the inspiration to keep on working on social justice issues when it feels as if there is so much going wrong in the world: where do we find resilience?
John Battle, Dr Ann Marie Mealey, Amy Kiani, Dr Raymond Perrier & Julian Filochowski
We recorded Raymond’s lecture. He is putting this together with his presentation and will make it available on the YouTube channel of the Denis Hurley Centre. So, if you missed the lecture, there will be an opportunity to watch his presentation and listen to what he had to say. We will advertise this when it is ready.