The parish is not an outdated institution. In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (n.28), Pope Francis says that “because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of pastor and community”.

Pope Francis was still a largely unknown Jesuit archbishop in Argentina when a group of us in the Redemptorist parish in Bergvliet, Cape Town, decided to form a study group to explore aspects of our faith together.