Re Allianz Insurance and Gaza: Parishioner’s Letter to Archbishop Eamon Martin and Bishop Tom Deenihan

Dear Archbishop Eamon Martin and Bishop Tom Deenihan,

I have previously written to you Archbishop, in July 2025, as a committed yet frustrated Catholic at the variability in the church’s action in relation to Gaza. I acknowledge that you, for the third time, called on the people of Ireland, Catholics and non-Catholics alike to call out what is taking place in Gaza. In your August 2025 statement you said, “Ireland’s Bishops have condemned, in the strongest terms, the genocidal acts being carried out with the sanction of the Israeli government, actions that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.”

I again write, seeking the Catholic Church in Ireland to take a lead in calling out those who seek to profit from the misery, death and genocide being perpetrated in Gaza. Specifically I am referring to Allianz Insurance; a company that has been identified by UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, to be financially complicit in Israel’s campaign of death and destruction in Gaza. After 7^th October 2023, the Israeli Government issued bonds, specifically for its war aims in Gaza, which up to mid-2025 had yielded $8 billion (USD), of which nearly a billion were purchased by the Allianz group.

Having been part of protests against the GAA’s ongoing association with Allianz in sponsoring its National football and hurling leagues, I have become aware of Allianz’s reach to other parts of Irish society, worryingly including their relationship in providing insurance cover to Catholic schools and parishes, here in Ireland.

Given Ms. Albanese’s work, I would urge you as Primate of All Ireland and chairperson of the Bishops’ Council for Education, respectively, that the relationship between the Catholic Church and Allianz be terminated. In making this request, I note in August 2025 the Association of Catholic Priests similarly called for  Allianz to be dropped by the Church. And I am not looking at this matter in a vacuum, I am aware there are a number of alternative insurance providers who could replace Allianz, including Ecclesiastical Insurance, Brady Insurance, Howden Ireland and Archas. I would suggest it is incumbent upon the Bishops’ Conference and the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association to examine current insurance arrangements at parishes and schools and seek a provider not tied to this (or any) genocide.

Without exception, at any protest about the GAA’s association with Allianz, speakers invoke how the GAA has replaced the Catholic Church as the “organisation of the community”. Yet to the utter disappointment, even disgust of many, the GAA remain unmoved. The standing of the GAA has been diminished markedly by their intransigence. 

The Catholic Church has a choice, to either join the Irish Government, the union movement and the GAA, in paying lip service to the atrocities being carried out in Gaza, or it can reflect where Jesus would have stood; as he did when, in a rare display of anger, drove merchants and money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem.

I trust this matter will see the Church walk in the shoes of Christ, with those who are oppressed, displaced and downtrodden.

Yours in Jesus Christ

Philip Brady

(St Vincent de Paul home visitation volunteer and choir member St John the Baptist, Clontarf, Dublin)

(Full contact details with Editor)