News Briefing: Britain and Ireland

Cafod urged people, schools and communities to work together in the 2025 Jubilee to campaign for an end to debt and for global justice.

“In considering the challenges we face, the Pope highlights the inhuman treatment of migrants, environmental decay, the confusion created by disinformation, the refusal to dialogue, and the immense resources spent on war,” Cafod said. “These challenges require not “sporadic acts of philanthropy” but change on a personal, cultural, and structural level “in order to confront the present state of injustice and inequality.”

Mary’s Meals, which feeds 2.4 million children daily and is headquartered in Scotland, is also campaigning to feed the hungry in the Jubilee Year, designated a year of hope. 

Green Christian has launched a campaign to support the Climate and Nature Bill’s second reading on 24 January. More than 100 MPs now support the Bill, to tackle the climate and nature emergency. People are being invited to write to their MPs to increase the number to at least 150 MPs, and to support vigil outside parliament.

How this Catholic charity is helping to feed the hungry in the face of the ravages of climate change

Importance of changing attitudes as the climate crisis strikes home

Christian CND announced its spring 2025 pilgrimage 29 May to 2 June through the Peak District, stopping at places of reflection and prayer. It said pilgrimage brings together faith, activism, and community and is a time to strengthen bonds, experience the beauty of creation and reflect on God’s call to peacemaking. “Every step becomes a prayer, a witness, and a step towards the peaceful world we dream of,” said Christian CND.

A Columban priest delivered the homily at evensong on the Feast of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on Sunday 29 December 2024. Fr Robert McCulloch noted that Becket was murdered in the cathedral 854 years ago “at this very time” and said that throughout the world today, “many men and women are persecuted, at times up to death, because of the Gospel”.

He told The Tablet: “We have gone through troubled times in our Christian history in England. Yet, how at home I felt standing in the midst of so many who are happy in the household of the Christian faith.”

Fr McCulloch has visited the cathedral annually since September 2014 when the Vatican cricket team played the Archbishop of Canterbury’s XI. Based in Rome, he was a foundation committee member of the Vatican team. 

Christian Aid is to launch monthly series of webinars, inviting people to learn new skills on combating global poverty. Beginning next Monday, the aim is to help people understand poverty and how to speak up in ways that help create change.

Papal biographer Dr Austen Ivereigh will lead a day-long workshop at Belmont Abbey on 18 January on implementing the Synod. “Becoming a Synodal Missionary Church in and around Herefordshire” begins at Hedley Lodge, Belmont Abbey at 10am and concludes at 4pm.

This is the second session on implementing the Synod led by Dr Ivereigh who attended both sessions of the Synod on Synodality as an expert advisor. The first session, held in November is now available online. 

Synodality and the parish – priests in dialogue

The Church at a turning point

A committee is appealing for testimonies of the holiness of Brother Michael Strode, the founder of HCPT  (Hosanna House and Children’s Pilgrimage Trust), which brings thousands of disabled and disadvantaged people on annual pilgrimages to Lourdes.

Strode first visited Lourdes as a doctor in 1951 and founded the HCPT in 1956, later becoming a Cistercian monk at Caldey Abbey in Wales. He died in 2019 aged 96, and often said of his work, “It wasn’t me at all but rather God acting through each and every one of us.”

Please email any testimonies of his holiness to the Committee for Brother Michael’s Cause via secretary@brothermichaelstrode.org

Dr Lorna Gold, president of the board of the Laudato Sì Movement, has described Caritas Europa’s new report, Going beyond economic growth: Europe’s role in building a just economy for the common good, as “visionary” because she said it sets out “the building blocks of a just and sustainable economy” and “an agenda of hope”.

The report warns that the predominant economic system, centred on economic growth as the main goal and on GDP as the main measure of progress, is “a key root cause of the major problems and injustices Caritas Europa strives against”.

Sometimes it can be easier to become focussed on what is wrong with the world and what is wrong with people, Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin has warned. Speaking about this year’s Jubilee of Hope, Bishop Doran said it is “an invitation to each one of us to have confidence in our own future, because the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts, and because we are the children of God”. Forgiveness, he said, is one of the traditional themes of Jubilee. “The first place where we learn to forgive and to accept forgiveness is in our own families.”

Year of hope – Joanna Moorhead anticipates the Jubilee

Bring hope with a ‘yes to life’ in Jubilee Year, says Francis

Bishop of Down and Connor Alan McGuckian SJ paid tribute to The Priests who are retiring from music performing after 50 years. Speaking at the farewell concert for Frs Eugene and Martin O’Hagan and Fr David Delargy who all serve in the diocese of Down and Connor, Bishop McGuckian said they had “brought joy to so many across the world”.

The Priests achieved multi-platinum status worldwide and a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling debut by a UK Classical Act. The trio have sung for three popes. They were awarded MBEs in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2020.

John Wijngaards, well-known campaigner for the ordination of women priests, has died aged 89. He resigned from the priesthood himself in 1998 after Pope John Paul II banned any further discussion of the issue and in 2005, founded the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research. The last of the 35 books he wrote throughout his life was published only last month. 

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