CAFOD action to Fix the Food System

CAFOD is organising a petition to help poor small-scale farmers world-wide by asking the World Bank to change its’ laws on buying seeds. These laws mean that farmers have to buy all their seeds from commercial companies and are not allowed to use their own or local seed sources which would be cheaper. Our Parish Justice and Peace group is supporting the petition, and after the Masses this weekend and next we will be asking parishioners to join with us by signing the petition in Church. You can also go online by looking up cafod.org.uk/food where you can find out more and complete your details to support the campaign on your phone or laptop.

Heritage Open Days - St Godric's

This year, we are planning to open our lovely church to visitors from 11.00am until 2.00pm on five days:

Friday 8th September,

Saturday 9th ,

Thursday 14th,

Friday 15th

and Saturday 16th .

We will offer all who call a warm welcome and the opportunity to learn about our history with the help of live guides, information sheets, quiz sheets for young and old and of course, refreshments! None of this will be possible without your help which has been so generously provided on past occasions and for which we are appealing yet again! Can you spare even half an hour, can you provide refreshments, or serve them? No offers refused! If you can help at all, please sign up on the sheets at the back of church or contact Kathleen . THANK YOU in advance for any help you can provide!

Thought from Fr. Colm - 27th August

Sadly, Bernard Reid passed away last Monday morning after a long and brave struggle against illness. Bernard was a teacher by profession, but he was also a very committed parishioner. He was also an organist and was always more than happy to assist at Saturday evening Mass in particular if Mary Hammill or Paul Crilley, the regular organists, were unable to play. However, it was his overall obliging and friendly personality that we will all miss. He is now at peace with his brother, Fr. John, who died not so long ago. Our prayers are with Bernard’s wife Yvonne and family. We continue to emerge from the trauma of Covid and the devastating effects it has had on so many. Our confidence is still 60% that we’re back to the way we were. Much needs to be done by way of rebuilding. Yes, variants of the virus may still be with us, and may always be, but life goes on and we need to continue rebuilding. New roles, new responsibilities are now part of that rebuilding. Altar servers, readers, Eucharistic Ministers are all needed again. Children’s Liturgy in both churches need more volunteers too. We need more involvement from our growing international community. This last group is one of the very positive dimensions to our parish and contributes greatly to our growing congregations at weekends. When we gather in October to review and plan, lets hope and pray that we will then do some real soul searching on how we as a vibrant parish can become even more so.