Fr Cyril Lovett visited Le Chéile Secondary School in Tyrrelstown to present Keelin Bellemand with her prize for her second place in this year’s Columban Schools Media Competition on the theme ‘Biodiversity Matters’.
Keelin’s teacher, Ms Elaine Cowley, encouraged students to enter this year’s competition and she also facilitated the presentation on Friday 3rd May 2024.
In his address to the 1,000 students in Le Chéile Tyrrelstown, Fr Cyril told them that Keelin has earned second prize in the image section of the competition by beautifully illustrating Biodiversity and Interrelatedness within her image, “showing true wisdom and witnessing to the school’s commitment to a Green agenda and to an ecology that truly cares for the earth, our mother”.
Fr Cyril Lovett’s Address to Le Cheile Students Tyrrelstown
Biodiversity – Interrelatedness
Here to present her cheque and commemorative plaque to Keelan Bellemand who won second prize in the image category of our Columban competition “Biodiversity Matters”.
Biodiversity speaks of all levels of life existing in one area, humans, animals, birds, plants, fungi, microorganisms. But Biodiversity also implies interrelatedness. i.e. all levels of human life depend on one another; the loss of one species of fish, the loss of the curlew or the cuckoo or a particular species of snail causes a gap that has immediate consequences for the rest of the web of life.
I think our ancestors had a better grasp of this in earlier times, but we have lost it along the way. In the course of my missionary life, I worked with indigenous people in Mindanao, southern Philippines, in Bahia, north-east Brazil, and with the Sioux people, the native Indians on South Dakota, in US. All these people had a unique grasp of the interrelatedness of the rest of life.
To give you an example, I was struck by the vocabulary of the Sioux: they referred to the ‘four-legged people’ – the animals; the ‘winged people’ – the birds, the ‘standing people’ – the trees, and ourselves – the ‘two-legged people’. The idea is clear we are talking about a cohesive web of life at all levels. These people often labelled ‘primitive’ or ‘uncivilised’ had this insight.
Then within the last ten years, what do you know? The scientific community, working on the Genome Project came up with some startling findings: Humans share 14,000 genes (70%) with the simple earthworm! Or more astonishing again humans share 97% of genes with the mouse!
Now we can understand why Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si’, “Every living creature has intrinsic worth and is made by God with the same loving care as we are…”
So that was the challenge facing Keelan Bellemand to present that Biodiversity and Interrelatedness in an image. She has done so beautifully and earned second prize in the image section of the competition.
I notice your motto is ‘Welcome, Wisdom, Witness’: your colleague has presented this beautifully, showing true wisdom and witnessing to the school’s commitment to a Green agenda and to an ecology that truly cares for the earth, our mother.
