Tim O'Leary

Business executive. Public affairs pedigree. Six kids, one wife. Keeping the faith. Tweets my own.

[Australian High Commission, Papua New Guinea @AusHCPNG]

What a game! Congrats to Valley Hunters on their first CRU premiership. My two staff members, Kenny and Paddy, like the rest of their team, put it all on the line in this heart stopper of a GF. Well done boys, enjoy the victory, you deserve it! Day off on Monday for sure 💪🏾🇵🇬🇦🇺🏉

[Tim O'Leary @TimPatOleary]

Joe https://t.co/uWRWkNOnxB

[Tim O'Leary @TimPatOleary]

Joe https://t.co/WgofsLhK7t

[Senator Rónán Mullen @RonanMullen]

Put down the weekend papers for a minute. Don���t let the day pass without thinking about and honouring these people, and maybe wondering how, even in small ways, we might try to imitate them. Thanks to my friend Brendan Purcell for his words about the Ulma family.

https://t.co/hLLbVrLysJ

“St Paul’s words to us today, ‘Avoid getting into debt, except the debt of mutual love. If you love your fellow men you have carried out your obligations.’ Today’s homily was written in the blood of the martyred Ulma family, on Sunday being beatified, maybe the first time that’s happened to a whole family. One of the nine family members was an unborn child until just before his death. He doesn’t have a name, he’s referred to only as “the seventh child” of parents Józef and Wiktoria Ulma.

The Ulma family lived on a farm in the village of Markowa in southeastern Poland, not far from the present-day border with Ukraine. In 1942, Józef and Wiktoria decided to take in eight Jews, despite the threat of the death penalty from the Germans for helping to hide Jews. Three families, the Goldmans, the Grünfelds, and the Didners, hid in the attic of their small two-roomed house. For months, they provided them with a roof over their heads and food, where the Jewish families helped out with the farm

In the early hours of March 24, 1944, Nazi police descended on the Ulma family home. They forced everyone to line up and shot dead the eight Jewish residents. They then killed Józef and Wiktoria, and their children: Stanisława, aged 7, Barbara, 6, Władysław, 5, Franciszek, 4, Antoni, 2, and Maria, 1. The house was set on fire, the bodies quickly buried, and the murderers celebrated the massacre with vodka and laughter. 

A week later, the bodies were dug up to give them a more dignified burial. The diggers noticed that beside the body of Wiktoria, who had been seven months pregnant, was a newborn child. She had entered labour at the time of her execution.

The Sept. 10 Mass won’t be celebrated in a big city cathedral, but in the carefully prepared soccer field of the Ulmas’ village of Markowa, population of 4,000.

Before the Mass a play about the Ulma family, ‘Called to Love’ will be performed. After the Mass, Markowa will be connected with the Vatican for the midday Angelus prayer. Then at 4 p.m., prayers will be said at the cemetery where the Jewish people who were slain before the Ulmas are buried. The beatification of “the Good Samaritans of Markowa” will be attended by Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland.

Asked why he’s attending the beatification ceremony, he said: “The Righteous Among the Nations are the best people in the world. They risked their lives for their Jewish fellow citizens, and some, like the Ulma family, gave their lives for them. This is a very important step by the Church—to show the faithful how they should act, and not only in times of the Holocaust, not only against anti-Semitism, but in all conditions, for all people, regardless of their origin or nationality—a person has a duty to save others.”

But why did the Ulmas do it? The Polish bishops said that “the heroic decision to help the doomed Jews was not rash, but came from reading the Word of God, which shaped their hearts and minds, and thus their attitude toward their neighbour. The Bible was a true book of life for them, as shown by the highlighted Gospel passages [in their family Bible], especially the parable of the Good Samaritan. Embedded within their family Bible, a word was underlined: ‘Samaritan,’ accompanied by a resounding ‘yes.’

The Ulmas, trying to live like Christ, were ready to give their lives for their neighbours. Józef and Wiktoria were known in their community for being  ‘willing to help anyone who knocked on their door. They built their family on the foundation of faith with fidelity to the two essential commandments: to love God and to love your neighbour. Their heroic attitude is a testimony that love is stronger than death.’”

[The Irish at War @irelandbattles]

#OnThisDay 1981 Bobby Sands died in Long Kesh prison after 66 days on hunger strike. He & the other hunger strikers protested for special status as political prisoners rather than criminals. Sands was an elected MP at the time of his death. He was 27 years old.
#Ireland #History

[BBC Archive @BBCArchive]

“I consider myself a remarkable fella.”

#OnThisDay 1963: David Attenborough met Jack Mulholland, an Irishman who preferred the peace of a ghost town in Borroloola to the pressures of conventional life.

[Anthony J. Granado @AnthonyJGranado]

Prayer first. "Unlike nearly all other companies in the world, the monks don’t care about constant growth,” says Father Michael Holleran
https://t.co/xplYYQkxhr

[Father V @father_rmv]

Ven. Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan of Vietnam:

I was in prison for 13 years, 9 of which in solitary confinement. Two guards watched me but never spoke to me; just yes and no.

But I knew that after all, they were my brothers and I had to be kind to them. I had no gift to offer as a prisoner. I had nothing at all, nothing to please them. What to do? One night, a thought came. "You are still very rich. You have the love of Christ in your heart. Love them as Jesus loves you".

The next day I set to work, first, by showing gladness and by smiling. I began to tell stories about my journeys in countries where people live in freedom and enjoy their culture and great technical progress. That stimulated their curiosity and they asked many, many questions. Slowly, very slowly, we became friends. They wanted to learn foreign languages. My guards became my disciples! The atmosphere of the prison changed considerably. The quality of our relationship changed for the better.

At that time, in another part of the area, a group of twenty people were learning Latin to be able to read Church documents. Their teacher was a former catechist. One of my guards was in the Latin class, and one day he asked me if I could teach him songs in Latin.

"There are so many", I replied, "And they are all so beautiful".

"You sing and I’ll choose", he retorted.

And so I sang Salve Regina, Salve Mater, Lauda Sion, Veni Creator, Ave Maris Stella - You’ll never guess the song he chose. The Veni Creator!

I can’t begin to tell you how moving it is to be in a Communist prison and hear your guard, coming down the stairs at 7 AM every morning, on his way to the gymnastics yard for physical exercises, singing the Veni Creator!

I will speak one language: Charity.

In another prison in Hanoi, I became friends with my guard and was able to request a piece of metal wire. He was terrified. "I studied in the University of Police that when someone wants electric wire, he wants to kill himself!" he cried. I explained that Christians, and most of all priests, do not commit suicide.

"And so what are you going to do with electric wire?" he asked.

"I need a chain to wear my cross."

"But how can you make a chain from wire?"

"If you bring me two little pincers, I’ll show you."

"Much too dangerous!"

"But we’re friends!"

He hesitated and finally said, "It’s too hard to refuse. Tonight at 7 PM we’ll do it. But we have to finish before 11. I’ll have my companion take the evening off. If he knew, he’d denounce the both of us."

That evening, with the tools he brought, we cut and shaped and worked together to make my chain and we finished it before 11 PM!

This cross and chain are not only my souvenir of captivity, as precious as that may seem. They are a constant reminder that only Christian charity can bring about a change of heart. Not arms, not threats, not the media. It was very hard for my guards to understand when I spoke about loving our enemies, reconciliation, and forgiveness.

"Do you really love us?"

"Yes, I really love you."

"Even when we cause you pain? When you suffer because you’re in prison without trial?"

"Look at all the years we’ve spent together. Of course, I love you!"

"And when you get out, will you tell your people to find us and beat us and hurt our families?"

"I’ll continue to love you even if you wish to kill me."

"But why?"

"Because Jesus taught us to love always; if we don’t, we are no longer worthy to be called Christians."

There is not enough time to tell you all the other moving stories which are proof of the liberating power of the love of Jesus.

You wear one uniform and speak one language—Charity.

Charity is the sign by which you will be recognized as one of our Lord’s disciples. It is a badge which costs little but is most difficult to find. Charity is the most important language. Saint Paul regarded it as far more important than being able "to speak the languages of men and even of angels".

[Tim O'Leary @TimPatOleary]

via @NYTOpinion https://t.co/0EBQPcMLGB

[Olga Tokariuk @olgatokariuk]

A haunting image of a woman killed by Russians in Irpin. Keys of her house next to her body, with the EU flag on a keychain

[Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ @COLRICHARDKEMP]

Today in 1940 the Russians began the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish army officers & “intelligentsia”, mostly shot in the back of the head with pistols.

[Tim O'Leary @TimPatOleary]

God bless Ireland

[Irish Foreign Ministry @dfatirl]

“Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine”

“We live in each other’s shelter”

On this #StPatricksDay

#Ireland 🇮🇪 stands in solidarity with the people of #Ukraine

We are thinking of you today

[The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent]

The video that President Volodymyr Zelensky demonstrated during his virtual address to the U.S. Congress earlier on March 16.

Video: Zelenskiy/Official/Telegram

[Gray Connolly @GrayConnolly]

A new central Europe being born before your eyes.

[Alexander Stubb @alexstubb]

Please take a moment to watch this beautiful version of Sibelius’ Finlandia in honour of Ukraine. And please #RT for #Ukraine.

Ylioppilaskunnan laulajat: Finlandia | Apua Ukrainaan – Suuri tukikonsertti | TV | Areena | https://t.co/u8HO2t8tS1 https://t.co/NrqNzhjFXr

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

The last remaining Ambassador to Ukraine from an EU country is Polish Ambassador @B_Cichocki. 🇵🇱🇺🇦

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Pietà

Lviv train station

Photo Daniel Leal @AFP

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

Today Poland does for Ukraine what nobody did for Poland in 1939.

[Lord Ashcroft @LordAshcroft]

Incredible...

[Gray Connolly @GrayConnolly]

The Poles stepped up. History will be justly scathing of the performance of the EU at this time, but will make special mention of the Poles, who refused, as always, to appease the Berlin-Moscow axis.