Rev. Fr. Michael Corcoran is Irish, and was born and baptised on 7th March 1960 in Kilkenny, Ireland. He responded to a missionary call and went to our MHM minor seminary St. Joseph’s College, Freshford , Ireland (1973 to 1978) . This was followed by major missionary formation in Roosendaal, the Netherlands, and then in St Joseph’s College, Mill Hill, London, where he made his Perpetual Missionary Commitment on 29th January 1985 and was subsequently ordained priest 18th August 1985 in Galmoy, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, and was appointed to Soroti, Diocese. Uganda. He continued to serve in East Aftrica in the following years, including being Vocations Director and Regional, and was elected to the General Council in 2005, with special responsibility for our missions in Africa. Having completed his five year term, he was later elected MHM Regional in Ireland and President of the Irish Missionary Union which he is still at the time of his election as General Superior of our Society.
He was elected 12th General Superior of the Mill Hill Missionaries on Monday 15th June 2015 and was re-elected on Monday 6th June 2022 for an additional five year period.
Message from the Superior General
There are many key issues facing mission and missionaries in today’s world. Each of us no matter where we are in mission must have a willingness to look at mission afresh, to see it as having to be open to all religious traditions and cultures, all part of the divine plan leading to a change of society with an emphasis on justice and the practice of human rights where everyone can ‘live life to the full’. It is not enough for us as missionaries to aspire loosely to influencing significant positive change rooted in faith-based values but essential that aspirations and ideals be broken down into practical, understandable and attainable steps that show a positive way ahead.
Mission obliges each one of us to be concerned with the joys, hopes, griefs and anxieties of all people, especially the poor and the marginalized, and to be actively involved in trying to change their situation, and to bring about peace where there is conflict. My recent visit to the conflict zone in Anglophone Cameroon allowed me to experience firsthand the positive role our missionaries play in being amongst the people afflicted by this ongoing struggle.
The Gospel message brings hope to all who are depressed and oppressed, love to all who are lonely and abandoned and peace to all who have lost hope. We are invited again and again to read the ever changing signs of our times clearly aware that ‘today’s vast and rapid cultural changes demand that we constantly seek ways of expressing unchanging truths in a language which brings out their abiding newness’. (EG n.41). The success of the mission and evangelization requires ‘renewed evangelisers and joy which is the most infallible sign of the presence of God’.
In ever watchful scrutiny of our own Mill Hill world, the General Council has on the recommendation of Chapter 2022, followed up on a number of areas as we read the signs of the times. The publication of the Finance Review, the setting up of a group of experts to advise on the Rome Procure, the creation of a Social Media Policy, the new edition of our Constitutions expressing how we love and serve in the concrete circumstances of our daily lives and of course looking at the use of our properties, their costs and their usefulness in the service of the Society’s mission.
As a Society, we have to be bold and ready to make difficult decisions as we move forward and to make best use of our limited financial resources. In doing this, we need to strike a good balance between Mission and Formation, continuing our missionary charism in going to ‘the scary edges’. It is not enough to be contented with setting ourselves up in established structures in order to survive and fail in our missionary drive to ‘go where the need is greatest’.
Gerry, Bernie and Philip join me in wishing you every blessing in your ministry.
God bless,
Michael Corcoran
Superior General