Keash Parish Receives Funding for St Kevin’s Church Keash from The Albert Gubay Foundation.

Albert Gubay was born in Rhyl, north Wales in 1928, the son of an Iraqi Jewish father and an Irish Roman Catholic mother. Brought up in a caravan for the early part of his life, Gubay recalled, “I had a very hard father. I had two sisters. He was soft on them and hard on me.” For Gubay junior, this meant having to help with his father’s market stall. “I was always made to work at a very early age,” he recalled. “I finished school at 4pm and by 5pm I was working. It was seven days a week.” As a young man struggling to support himself and his family by selling non-sugar sweets during rationing after the war, he recalled that he made a pact with God, saying in a prayer: “Make me a millionaire and I’ll give you half of my money”. Albert Gubay became a multimillionaire who later became a leading philanthropist, through his Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation, from the early days Gubay was already redistributing his wealth, having paid for the building of a church on the Isle of Man and for an extension to a church in Leixlip, County Kildare, in memory of his mother. In 2010 he created the Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation, based on the Isle of Man, by donating £470m of his personal fortune. The foundation, which receives around £20m annually from Gubay’s businesses, reinvests half that income into the Roman Catholic Church to fulfil Gubay’s pact with God. In February 2011, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI bestowed upon Mr Gubay the Knight Commander with Star of the Order of St Gregory the Great. This is an order which is given for conspicuous service to the Church and society. The award was bestowed on Mr Gubay for the philanthropic work he carried out over many years and in recognition of the establishment of The Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation. The Archbishop told Gubay and the gathered congregation during the bestowal ceremony, “Albert, your generosity – thoughtful, intelligent, measured yet seemingly boundless – is a great sign of the generosity of God. This is so because you make it clear that you expect no public acclaim, no list of honours, no fanfare of trumpets. You are generous because God is first generous to you. And that is your great lesson to us all today.” He spent the last years of his life organising his affairs so that on his death The Derwent Group could be left to the Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation. That charity will now fulfil his commitment to the Church and will use its substantial resources to benefit a wide range of other charities. Whilst this impressive bequest will encompass his lifelong vow to use half of his wealth to benefit the Church, it now goes well beyond this. Many other charities will be able to benefit from the annual income generated by the property companies that will be owned by the charity. His implementation of this simple but impressive idea also means that the overall funds available for charitable causes will carry on growing in perpetuity.
Albert Gubay’s ambitions for the charity also drove his whole approach to money. Always a frugal man, his care with money had a purpose. His philosophy is summed up by his comment that: “Every penny wasted or lost reduces the pot available to the charity.” Keash Parish applied for funding for St Kevin’s Church Keash and were awarded £17,500 which came to €19,800 when lodged to our parish account last Friday. We express our deep gratitude to the Gubay Foundation, also I would like to thank all those who helped with the various stages of the application, namely the Parish Pastoral Council, the Parish Finance Council, Keash Church Fundraising Committee and the people of the parish, since the application was lodged the foundation were updated in the final proposal of the donations made by parishioners and your generosity and commitment to raising funds is of huge benefit when seeking funds. Also I would like to pay particular thanks to our Engineer James O’ Hara who gave of his time generously to sending on the foundation all the necessary documents that accompanied the application. We will now be able to add €19,800 to Keash Church Roof Donation fund. The total Expenditure on the Church Roof was €97,356 which thankfully came in under budget, this means when we add €19,800 we will have €61,871 leaving us with still having to raise €35,485. So every donation small or great is appreciated. May God grant Ablert Gubay the light and glory of heaven for his generosity to our Parish and the Roman Catholic Church.