Chernobyl charity founder,
Adi Roche on “Trailblazer” St. Brigid
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| Adi Roche, Voluntary CEO Chernobyl Children International at Vatican Radio |
To mark the feast day of St. Brigid of Ireland, the
Voluntary CEO of Chernobyl Children International, Adi Roche speaks about the
saint’s influence on her life and her work with the charity she founded nearly
30 years ago.
By Lydia O’Kane
On the 1 February the Church celebrates the
feast of St Brigid of Ireland. She is the country’s second patron saint, after
St Patrick, but perhaps because of his timeless popularity, St Brigid’s own
story has been somewhat overshadowed. Brigid lived around the time of St.
Patrick, and it was he who inspired her to convert to Christianity. She became
known as Brigid of Kildare and founded many convents including the Abbey of
Kildare. As time passed, the saint’s generosity, courage, and compassion for
the poor became legendary as Irish missionaries spread her story on their
travels.
To mark the feast of this beloved patron of Ireland, the
Voluntary CEO of Chernobyl Children International (CCI), Adi Roche was the
guest speaker at this year’s St Brigid’s Day event organized by the Irish
Embassy to the Holy See on Thursday evening at St Isidore’s Church in
Rome, which is under the auspices of the Irish Franciscans.
Adi, who hails from Co.Tipperary began working on Chernobyl
in 1986 in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and set up Chernobyl
Children International in 1991 after a desperate appeal, made by Belarusian and
Ukrainian doctors, to take the children away from Chernobyl’s highly toxic and
radioactive environment so that they had some chance of recovery.
St. Brigid, a formidable force
Speaking to Vatican News, she describes St. Brigid as the
“ultimate trailblazer” who was one of her icons growing up. “She was a
formidable force”, Adi says. “And for those of us who are working on issues of
human rights, on justice... we draw on Brigid for the energy, because we have
such a resonance with her story.”
The CEO’s own story with Chernobyl has its roots in
Ireland’s peace movement where she was working as a full time volunteer when
the accident happened in 1986. “I remember vividly where I was in a school in
Middleton, in Co Cork…” From that moment, Roche says, she felt a calling to
become involved in the unfolding catastrophe.
Chernobyl today
Adi notes that “Chernobyl is forever, because it remains
what we would call an unfolding disaster, because of genetic damage, that is to
the air, the land, the water.”
“One of things we’re trying to get the message out on
is the cross-generational aspect. While the accident was 1986 which sounds like
a generation, a lifetime ago… and certainly in the media it has disappeared
from the headlines... because they see it as an historic event, but nothing
could be further from the truth, particularly for those who are eating,
sleeping and breathing in what has been declared the world’s most radioactive
environment”, she says.
Telling the story for a new generation
Over 33 years on from the events of Chernobyl, a new
generation is learning about the accident through the HBO and Sky television
mini-series entitled “Chernobyl”. Adi came on board as a consultant and
describes it as a series with “integrity and authenticity” which honours the
people who risked their lives at the time. Among those were the men known as
the “Liquidators” who quite literally put their lives on the line to stop the
disaster from escalating.
Needs and programmes
Chernobyl Children International continues to provide
support and care decades on from the disaster in the form of specific
programmes, such as, a child cardiac surgery programme in Belarus and Ukraine
to combat the marked increase in cardiac birth defects since Chernobyl.
Adi says that a lot of the programmes now are also geared to
building infrastructure, training and education and CCI “works to support
children in institutions across Belarus to regain their right to a family life
and to end the institutionalisation of children in conjunction with Belarusian
authorities.”
The message of Pope Francis
During a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan in
November, Pope Francis affirmed that, “the use of atomic energy for purposes of
war is immoral, just as the possession of atomic weapons is immoral.” Asked
about the importance of the Pope’s voice on issues such as these, Adi describes
it as profound. It was “so important that he did it when he did it and where he
did it, because you had the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and
then at the end of that same century we had the disaster of the nuclear
accident in Fukushima. To have the leader of our Church giving a profound
message of peace of justice… let me tell you for those of us on the ground, the
foot soldiers, that is a message that is heartwarming.”
A word about Hope
For Adi, who has devoted over 40 years of her life
campaigning for issues relating to the environment, peace and social justice,
there is always hope.
Hope, she emphasizes, “is what sustains us because we have
nothing else, and I often think of the words of the writer Victor Hugo when he
said, ‘the word that God has written on the brow of every man is hope’, and for
me hope is the most enabling gift of all.”
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