Dr Diarmuid Martin Archbishop of Dublin

All of us can work to bring this New Year’s message of hope to anywhere where darkness prevails.

The darkness has indeed not yet been dispelled. How can we celebrate and not be aware of the fact that we live in a world where peace is more than fragile, where conflicts rage and fester and where the responses are often phrased in a language that is inflammatory rather that words and deeds of peace?

There are new signs of violence in Ireland. There is the arrogant violence of that business of death, the drug world, which is unscrupulous and despicable. There is the continued violence of stabbings.

In these days, in particular, I ask myself how we can celebrate and not remember the anxieties of many elderly men and women living alone and who have now begun to fear the night for their own safety. How can we celebrate the joy of childhood when children are being trafficked, exploited, and abused and homeless?

Good can prevail. Christmas and New Year make our hearts different, even for a moment. Doors are opened, feuds are reconciled, old enmities are put aside.