The bishops of England and Wales, Cafod and St Mary’s University are hosting a webinar on 12 September to mark the Season of Creation. Speakers are Archbishop Peter Loy Chong of Fiji, Sr Margaret Atkins, a Canoness of St Augustine in the community at Boarbank Hall in Cumbria and author of Catholics and Our Common Home: Caring for the Planet We Share. Cafod director Christine Allen will chair and participants to be welcomed by Bishop of Salford John Arnold, lead bishop on the environmental for the bishops’ conference.
Pilgrim Ways is a new digital resource that provides walking routes to key pilgrimage sites in each diocese of England and Wales, with the aim of deepening participants’ faith. “My idea is to create a pilgrim way in each Catholic diocese – from the cathedral of that diocese to one or more shrines within the same diocese,” said project lead Phil McCarthy. He is walking each route himself and adding directions “so people can follow them easily”. There are pilgrim passports to get stamped along the routes and certificates at the end of walks. Routes tested over Summer 2023 include St David’s Cathedral in Cardiff to two Marian shrines at Penrhys and Abercynon.
Almost 500 years after a statue of Our Lady of Ipswich was removed from its shrine in the town, a replica has been produced and is now installed in the Lady Chapel of St Pancras Catholic church in Ipswich. In 1538, the statue of Our Lady of Ipswich was removed from its shrine in Lady Lane by Thomas Cromwell’s men and taken to Chelsea in London, to be burned, along with statues from many other shrines around the country including Walsingham. A new statue was commissioned last year and will be blessed by Bishop Peter Collins of East Anglia on 15 May next year.
Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham will be the principal celebrant at Harvington Hall’s Centenary Mass on Sunday 3 September. The moated Elizabethan manor house in Worcestershire draws pilgrims every September for the annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of the English Martyrs. This year marks the centenary of Harvington Hall’s rescue from ruin by Ellen Ferris, who gifted the hall to the Archdiocese of Birmingham in 1923. The hall has the greatest number of priest hides of any house in the country. These are secret chambers where recusant clergy in the 17th century could take refuge. Four martyrs especially venerated at Harvington are St John Wall, St Nicholas Owen, Bl. Edward Oldcorne and Bl. Arthur Bell.
Benedictine monks in north Yorkshire have launched the Ampleforth Abbey podcast. Now available via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts, new episodes of 10-15 minute reflections from the monks are being released every week. They are titled “Home Retreat”. The Abbot of Ampleforth, Robert Igo OSB said: “It’s great to connect with new and evolving audiences and we believe the podcast provides us with an important opportunity to reach many people with the good news of the Gospel.”
The Dean of St John’s Cathedral in Portsmouth is appealing for more than £100,000 to restore a stained-glass window wrecked last year by storms. The West Window, installed in the cathedral in 1906, spans 228 square feet (70 square metres) and contains approximately 9,700 panes of glass. Repairs to the six saints who feature in the window– including St Swithun and St Wilfred – will cost £5,000 each, while each pane will cost just over £10 to repair. Father James McAuley said: “The total cost of the restoration… is far beyond the means of the cathedral parish, situated in one of the poorest parts of the diocese.”
The Children’s Commissioner for England is to deliver the Catholic Union’s annual Craigmyle Lecture. Dame Rachel de Souza DBE is to speak on the topic of creating a society where children can flourish. The lecture is free but tickets for the talk, held at 6:30pm at the University of Notre Dame in Suffolk Street, London must be booked in advance via Eventbrite. The talk will be live-streamed. Guests attending the lecture will be invited afterwards to a drinks reception.
Professor James G. Clark is to give a talk on the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the library of Southwark Cathedral at 6.30pm on August 31. An advisor on the BBC television series Tudor Monastery Farm, Clark teaches history at Exeter University. His research, based on national and regional archives and historical artefacts, challenges claims that the dissolution between 1536 and 1540 of England’s 850 religious houses was universally popular. Evidence shows that some people kept fixtures and fittings from the monasteries as souvenirs. Tickets cost £3 and must be booked in advance. Copies of Professor Clark’s book, The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History described as “invaluable” by Eamon Duffy in The Tablet will be available on the night.
Archbishop Eamon Martin has prayed that ambassadors, witnesses and missionaries for Christ will be raised up for the Church in Ireland which is “going through a testing time”. At Mass celebrated on the Hill of Slane, where St Patrick lit the Paschal flame, the Archbishop said the “need is great” as “many sons and daughters of Ireland are drifting away from the practice of the faith; some may even have abandoned God”. The terrible sins and crimes of abuse have had tragic consequences for victims and “obscured the light of the Gospel” for many. “This must be a purifying time for the Church in Ireland, a humbling time, which brings us to our knees to beg forgiveness for the awful betrayal of a sacred trust,” he said.
The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice has warned that Ireland is emitting carbon at about three times the global average when its emissions should be reducing to zero. Highlighting how active transport such as cycling, walking and public transport embeds climate sustainability into everyday practices, the centre said one of its goals was for every primary and secondary student to have a safe cycle route to their school. However, it warned that children who do want to cycle to school are under-protected and at great risk in a battle for space with motor vehicles. Traffic congestion, the JCFJ said, is one of the costliest elements, in terms of money, health, productivity and pollution, of modern life and countries committed to active travel see obvious benefits in having fewer cars.
“Our Church is at its strongest when it is out in the community as a field hospital,” Fr John Joe Duffy told those attending the first day of the annual Knock Novena in Co Mayo. Recalling the tragedy which befell Cresslough, his small Co Donegal parish, last October when 10 people were killed in a gas explosion and many others injured, Fr Duffy said he “relied on God” as “a guiding light” during those “darkest days”. The Raphoe priest said God asked the people of Cresslough to reach out in care and compassion to the grieving families and those injured. “A cruel tragedy befell us, we have survived, our spirit is strong,” he said.
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