Letter in Irish Post (September 8th)
(Pictures shows Rita Connolly singing "The Deer's Cry" for the Pope in Croke Park as an Irish Hare appears on the giant video screen!)
Pope’s Message points to our hare
At the World Meeting of Families concert singer Rita Connolly gave a beautiful rendition of The Deer’s Cry, a time-honoured Prayer of Protection attributed to Saint Patrick.
An apt choice for the occasion because the lyrics resonated with the Pope’s own frequently expressed concern for nature and the environment. In a 2015 encyclical he lambasted the wilful destruction of tropical forests, man-made climate change, and other forms of ecological vandalism. The encyclical also alluded to the plight of wildlife species, lamenting the fact that “we see other living beings as mere objects subjected to arbitrary human domination.”
As Rota Connolly held the vast audience in Croke Park enthralled with her angelic voice, images of species in need of urgent protection appeared fleetingly on the giant video screen behind her. As well as the polar bear and the panda, we saw the hare.
Its fortunes vary, but here in Ireland it is under intense pressure from both loss of habitat and the ghoulish activities of coursing clubs. Recently, the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht issued a licence permitting another coursing season. Netting of hares has already begun. Apart from the stress, injury, and death that will occur on the coursing fields, there has been a noticeable decline in the Irish hare population.
Last August ecologist Karina Dingerkus stated on RTE’s Mooney Goes Wild that “over the last 50 years, hare numbers have declined significantly”, adding that “they’re in trouble.”
If the government doesn’t act decisively to protect the Irish Hare, it may be doomed to the same fate as the curlew, whose demise was ignored by successive Ministers with responsibility for wildlife until the bird was close to extinction.
In 2015, the Pope, who took the name of Saint Francis of Assisi, a man who abhorred animal cruelty, tweeted a line from the Catholic Catechism: “It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.”
I was reminded of that quote when I heard Rita Connolly sing The Deer’s Cry and saw the vibrant, evocative image of the hare on the video screen. I would implore the Taoiseach and all our politicians to take pity on the persecuted Irish Hare and put an end to Ireland’s most barbaric blood sport.
John Fitzgerald
* You can read more about the long-running campaign to protect the Irish Hare in Bad Hare Days: