COMMENTS made by an African cardinal and quoted at a church ceremony in Newcastle West at the weekend have caused disquiet among some members of the community there.

And, according to a number of people who spoke to the Limerick Leader, a small number of the congregation left the Good Friday ceremonies where Fr John Mockler gave the homily and quoted from the controversial Cardinal Robert Sarah.

Fr Mockler did not respond to a request from the Limerick Leader to speak about his homily, which some of the congregation were unhappy about. However, his homily notes seen by the newspaper, read: “Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Vatican’s prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, has issued a stark warning to all inheritors of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture: The “West will disappear” and “Islam will invade the world” and “completely change culture, anthropology, and moral vision” unless we bend the arc of our culture back toward its Judeo-Christian roots.”

The comments of Cardinal Sarah, allegedly quoted by Fr Mockler, were heard and perceived to be anti-migration and anti-Muslim by some members of the congregation.

But according to one church source, Fr Mockler’s homily could not be understood as anti-Islam or anti-migrant. Putting it in context, he said, the message was that Christians must practice their Christian faith as diligently as Muslims do.

“There is room for everybody but we, as one religion, as Christians, are letting down our Christian heritage, turning our back on it and the natural consequence of that is that Christianity will drop off while Islam will flourish because they (Muslims) celebrate their Muslim faith. We do not do that,” he said. “We can take a leaf from their book.”

Fr Mockler’s homily notes continued quoting the Cardinal saying: “The spiritual crisis involves the entire world. But its source is in Europe. People in the West are guilty of rejecting God. My country is predominantly Muslim. I think I know what reality I’m talking about.”

Cardinal Sarah, Fr Mockler said, had highlighted the problem as “Christians abandoning their heritage” and rejecting God. The Passion narrative should be a sharp reminder to people not to let this happen, Fr Mockler said.

One woman at the church described the sermon as ‘hate speech’ and said people were annoyed and upset about it.

“Anybody I have spoken to, that is what they took from it,” she said. “To hear it coming down from the pulpit, I couldn’t believe it.”

A young man who was at the ceremony said he was taken aback by Fr Mockler’s words.

“He was quoting a priest or someone from Rome who was saying that the invasion of migrants and Muslims would destroy Catholicism unless they turned back to Catholicism,” he said.

And a number of people told the Limerick Leader that members of the congregation left the church but were unable to quantify this.

Cardinal Sarah is viewed as a Church traditionalist, whose views on a number of issues appear to differ from those of Pope Francis.