In mid-2025, RTÉ, the Irish state television station broadcast ‘The Last Missionaries’, a documentary which charted the evolution and decline of the Irish missionary movement in the 20th century. As well as interviews with the priests and women religious who had dedicated their lives (often at great cost to their own health and welfare) to the communities they had been assigned to by their orders, the second episode of the series featured an interview with Anne O’Mahoney, retired international director of Concern Worldwide, who had been a development worker in Ethiopia during the famine from 1983-85. Although O’Mahoney has herself dedicated her life to supporting those most in need, she passed a comment which sums up the general misunderstanding that exists around the role of Catholic missionaries within the societies they serve. She stated that the role of development workers was to make themselves redundant by training the indigenous population to do whatever work was needed to improve the lives of the community. This development strategy was designed to allow NGOs to move on as quickly as possible from areas so that they could help the next set of people who found themselves in need. The comment was made in a way which led the listener to question the efficacy of the Irish missionaries’ work: as some of the missionaries featured in this documentary had been ‘in country’ for decades, did this mean that they had failed in their task? But the Catholic Church is not an NGO, it is not an aid-organisation, it does not ‘do’ development; it is a Church, concerned as much with the saving of souls as it is with the material welfare of communities. Such a misunderstanding is common in much of the academic work on the Catholic Church, be it examining its role in education, development, health or one of the many other issues with which Catholics find themselves involved. Carmel Gallagher’s nuanced, meticulous, and sensitive monograph, Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society, provides an antidote to this, taking an inductive approach that shines a light on the lived experiences of the missionaries themselves. In doing so, she allows their voices to emerge and helps to develop understandings of what missionaries are seeking to achieve.

The role of the Irish in the Catholic missionary movement is well known but little is understood about the retirement experiences of the priests and women religious. Retired Missionaries is based on life course interviews with 37 male and female missionaries who had returned to Ireland, a decision which was ‘often related to completing an assignment, a sense that their main work was done or that the time was right in their own lives’ (p. 102). The first chapter, Irish Catholic Missionaries, provides something of an overview. It explains the methodology employed, recounts the history of the Irish missionary movement and addresses questions about mission in 21st century Ireland. Chapter two, Missionary Focus, explores how participants understood their work as it changed over their life times and recounts the evolution from a focus on evangelisation to the missionaries becoming catalysts for change in the local communities that occurred. Chapter three, The Missionaries Themselves: Pathways, explores the influences that inspired missionaries to fulfil their vocations. The fourth chapter, The Missionaries Themselves: the Realities, Challenges, and Joys of Mission Life, focuses on the changes in work and identity that occurred during the missionaries’ life course. Chapter five, Interculturality, explores this concept from the perspective of the participants. Chapter six, Changing Church, addresses the ways in which changes in the Catholic Church have been reflected in the life experiences of the missionaries. The seventh chapter, Approaches to Mission, examines the methods of missionary work focusing in particular on the development of contextual theologies. Finally, chapter eight, Life Stories of Retired Missionaries: Perspectives for Contemporary Irish Society and for the Catholic Church, reviews the meaning of the missionary project from the perspective of the participants and asks what can be learnt from their life stories.

The themes that emerge in this monograph are numerous and Gallagher shows great skill in weaving these throughout her narrative. These range from gendered experiences of mission, to the influence of the Second Vatican Council, to the trauma experienced by missionaries. The most interesting from my perspective, however, are the changes in the theology of mission that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century. The changes that occurred in the theology of mission as a consequence of the work of Irish missionaries were significant. Gallagher sums it up thus: ‘the new models of mission that emerged in the post-Vatican II period involved identifying needs in collaboration with communities themselves, being attended to the underlying social justice issues that blighted people’s lives and linking faith and social action’ (p. 38). Such an approach wiped away colonialist notions of evangelisation which had forced western ideas regarding faith onto communities that were already well developed. In its place came dialogue and a process of evangelisation in reverse where the missionaries and communities learnt from one another and grew in faith together. As Gallagher tells us, ‘the idea of not having all the answers and learning from the people and the culture while giving the good news of the gospels was a common theme addressed by the missionaries’ (p. 44). This was essentially a process of letting go for the missionaries, one in which they discarded long held ideas of the superiority of their own culture and religion, and opened themselves up to a process of inculturation which enriched their lives in ways they did not expect or anticipate. As a result, they were able to fully immerse themselves in the ‘Good News’ of the Gospels.

This is an excellent book, and it has left me with more questions than answers opening up new seams of enquiry in my own work on women religious and peace-building. Gallagher does an excellent job at portraying the lived experience of her participants, remaining faithful to their words without imposing her own ideas on them, and in doing so presents us with a nuanced and sensitive picture of a marginalised group in Irish society.