23.02.2026
Work of Charities Celebrated at Black Santa Service
The generosity of Dubliners and the hard work of charities was celebrated in St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, yesterday (Sunday February 22) at the annual Black Santa Service. Representatives of more than a dozen charities joined parishioners of St Ann’s for the distribution of the proceeds of the 2025 Black Santa Appeal which took place in the days before Christmas outside the church.
This year’s celebration was bittersweet as Fred Deane, who has been the face of the Black Santa Sit Out for over a decade and has braved all sorts of December weather and a pandemic, announced that 2025 was his final year.
Paying tribute to Fred’s dedication, parishioner Arthur Vincent said he had worked hard as Black Santa for more years than he cared to remember and thanked him for his contribution and hoped he could be persuaded to change his mind. He also thanked everyone who generously supported the appeal.
2025 was the 25th anniversary of the Black Santa Sit Out in Dublin and it raised a total of €67,287. Every cent donated goes to the charities which this year were Protestant Aid, Brabazon Trust, Alice Leahy Trust, Laura Lynn Foundation, Solas Project, Samaritans, Salvation Army, Simon Community, Barnardos, St Vincent de Paul, Capuchin Day Centre, St John’s House, Focus Ireland and the Discovery Choir.
The service of Choral Matins was taken by the Ven Gordon Linney, former Archdeacon of Dublin, who also gave the sermon.
He referred to the anthem, Adoro te devote by Cecilia McDowall which was composed following the Napalese earthquake in 2015. He said the line: ‘That the sight of Your Face being unveiled I may have the happiness of seeing Your glory’ should encourage the representatives of the charities in their work.
“In a way what charities do is an unveiling of the face of Jesus Christ to people with all sorts of needs… Whether you are religious or not, what you do in your charities is the unveiling of the face of Jesus Christ and we have the happiness of seeing his glory. Your organisations lift people up,” he commented recalling the words of Jesse Jackson who died last week and believed in human rights for everyone.
He added that the message on the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness from the Gospel reading [Matthew 4: 1–11] had a message for what was going on in the world today. Each of the three temptations had a current equivalent he said: turning stone into bread speaks today to the greed of global politics; the temptation to throw himself from the temple is the appeal to populism today; and the third temptation to forget about God and the value system, speaks to the unwillingness to show compassion for the poor and the hungry and the homelessness.
