THIS SUNDAY in Rome Pope Francis is canonising two great Catholics of the last century: Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Óscar Romero. You can’t do justice to both men in a single front page so today I will concentrate on the archbishop. The canonisation today is an event of phenomenal
Continue readingTHE MONTH OF OCTOBER, at least since the 16th century, has been associated particularly with the recitation of the Rosary, and indeed today is sometimes called Rosary Sunday. Traditionally the Church encourages us to make a particular effort this month to make use of this traditional form of devotion. In
Continue readingI’ve begun reading a rather engaging book called The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Some of you may know of it and perhaps even read it. If you haven’t done so I feel fairly confident in recommending it to you. Very briefly, it is about Harold, a sixty plus year
Continue readingIN THE PARISH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING on Tuesday, following Home Mission Sunday last weekend, there was some reflection on the need for Evangelisation and Mission in the life of this parish. Being a missionary, being someone who wants to share the truths of the Christian religion with other people, is
Continue readingTODAY IS HOME MISSION SUNDAY, when we pray for God’s blessing on efforts to re-evangelise this country and ask you to support the work of the Home Mission Office of the Bishops’ Conference. For details of what the money is used for go to the Home Mission Sunday website. Each
Continue readingAS YOU KNOW a very important event is happening in Liverpool this week-end, the first national Eucharistic Congress in England since 1908, entitled Adoremus. Three of our parishioners will be there, commissioned recently at Mass to be our delegates – Sister Pat Devine, Alicja Krivicky and Ruth McConkey. I think
Continue readingJust over a century ago, in 1917, the renowned Anglican priest and writer Ronald Knox was received into the Catholic Church in a small private ceremony at Farnborough Abbey in Hampshire. Shortly afterwards he wrote a brilliant account of the whole process of his spiritual conversion, entitled A Spiritual Aeneid.
Continue readingThe rescue of the twelve boys and their coach trapped in Tham Luang caves in Thailand, for more than two weeks, has been seen as a story of great success and a miracle… and rightly so. It brought to the fore the best in humanity – love and concern for
Continue readingWEDNESDAY was the feast day of St Benedict, generally regarded as the founder of monasticism in the western Church, who lived in the fifth and sixth centuries in Italy. As the Roman Empire gradually fell apart these were years of great turmoil in Italy, marked by lawlessness and violence. The
Continue readingIn 1936 my maternal grandmother Peggy Hallum died of cancer – she was only thirty-six and my mother only fourteen. When I was a child my mother often used to talk about her mother’s illness and death; and one thing which I remember vividly was her telling me how much
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