U2 Eucharist to Benefit Partners in Health

U2 Eucharist to Benefit Partners in Health

The U2 Eucharist returns to the West Gloucester Trinitarian Congregational Church on Saturday, March 31 at 7:00pm. A Christian worship service that uses the music and lyrics of the Irish rock band, the U2 Eucharist is intended to raise awareness and money to overcome extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS around the world.

Proceeds from this service on the Saturday before Holy Week will be given to Partners in Health, a Boston-based organization devoted to combating HIV/AIDS and drug resistant TB in Haiti, Peru, Russia and several African countries.

"The response to our first U2 Eucharist in November was so positive that we wanted to offer the event to our community again," said the Rev. Christopher Ney, pastor of the West Gloucester Church.

Following the first U2 Eucharist in November, several members of the congregation, as part of a program to increase their understanding of the issues of global poverty, read Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains about Partners in Health and Dr. Paul Farmer.

Farmer first observed the extreme poverty, AIDS, TB and other health problems which were prevalent in the central highlands of Haiti while he was a student in the 1980's. He went on to earn his MD and a degree in Public Health and created Partners in Health to take his innovative approach to medicine to Peru, Siberia and many other hot spots of poverty and disease. Inspired, in part, by Biblical values of justice for the poor, Farmer calls his approach a "preferential option for the poor in healthcare."

"We were so deeply moved by what this one man accomplished through his dogged determination to help poor people," said Jack Bishop, Chair of the West Gloucester Church Council, "that we decided that having a return engagement of the U2 Eucharist was the most logical way for us to reach out to the community to support Dr. Farmer's organization."