Editorial 

Welcome to our first newsletter for 2026.As we begin a new year across Kildare Ministries, I extend a warm welcome to all who are joining our community - students and families beginning a new chapter, staff commencing new roles, and those who take up leadership and governance responsibilities. We are enriched by your presence and by the gifts you bring to our shared mission.

Each new year carries both promise and responsibility. In 2026, our core value and theme is Justice. It is a word that is often heard, sometimes debated, and always significant. Yet justice is more than a response to wrongdoing or a reaction to crisis. Justice is about relationship - about how we choose to live with one another in dignity, fairness and mutual responsibility.

This year, we are invited to see justice not simply as action in moments of urgency, but as daily practice. Justice is the steady work of aligning our hearts, our structures and our decisions with what is right.

The prophet Micah offers words that remain both simple and demanding:

“… what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

Justice, kindness and humility are not abstract ideals. They are relational commitments. They shape how we speak to one another, how we exercise authority, how we allocate resources, and how we make decisions that affect others. They call us to examine whether our policies, practices and priorities truly reflect dignity - particularly for those who are vulnerable or unheard.

Our Living Justice Living Peace Charter reminds us that justice has always required courage and imagination:

Jesus called for creative and revolutionary changes. He taught by word and example that our compassion, love and reconciliation would lead to Justice and Peace. To the outsiders of his society, he offered a place at the table.

Justice, then, is not passive. It is creative. It is courageous. It reshapes tables so that those previously excluded are welcomed. It asks us to look carefully at who feels on the margins in our communities and whether our structures genuinely make room for them.

At a time when conflict and violence are increasing both overseas and within our own country, we are reminded how fragile peace and social cohesion can be. While we cannot resolve every global crisis or heal every division, we can attend faithfully to the spaces entrusted to us. Justice begins in the decisions and relationships that shape our communities each day. It is expressed in the way we build inclusive communities, form young people with conscience and compassion, and make decisions that place dignity at the centre. 

As ministries shaped by the courage and compassion of Brigid, Nano and Bishop Daniel Delany, we inherit a tradition that understood justice as lived reality. Their leadership was relational and generative. They created communities where dignity was protected, education was accessible, and hope was tangible.

We are called to be enablers of justice. Not in dramatic or performative ways, but in steady, faithful ones. We enable justice when we create space for another’s voice, when we exercise authority with humility, when we design policies that protect the vulnerable, and when we form young people who can think critically and act compassionately. Justice is rarely the work of one person alone; it is cultivated in communities that choose dignity over convenience and relationship over division. In this way, justice becomes not an initiative, but a shared way of being.

As we begin this year, perhaps the invitation is this: where does justice begin for us? In our leadership? In our classrooms? In our governance? In our relationships?

May this be a year in which justice is not only spoken about but practiced. Not reactive, but relational. Not abstract, but visible in the way we lead, teach, serve and accompany one another.

And may we walk humbly, together, in the steady work of right relationship.

With every good wish for the year ahead,

Nicole Mangelsdorf

Executive Director