What a week!

...the spectacular celebrations at St Patrick's, Soho Square, began with that wonderful Opening Mass (see previous blog post, below) then continued with a glorious Sung Vespers on the Eve of the Ascension, and a superb lecture by Papal biographer George Weigel, and concluded the next day with a magnificent Ascension Day Mass celebrated by His Eminence Cardinal George Pell who had come via Rome from Sydney, Australia...along with a great many other London Catholics I attended all of these events, and it was a great privilege and joy to be there.

In between I was at the CTS, with a couple of wonderful and loyal volunteers, packing up and sending out the prizes won by children in the ACW Schools Religious Education Project. We still have a good many more to send out: great quantities of beautifully bound copies of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, some lovely books on the Rosary, a delightful book of Gospel stories, and more. The number of essays sent in by children this year was vast - the project has grown and grown, and it seems almost absurd to look back and remember how we began it by just ending out some leaflets to schools and raising funds for it all from some coffee-mornings. The great breakthrough came when the CTS generously offered to sponsor it all, and provide prizes...and this, plus the extraordinary enthusiasm of volunteers who collect and read the essays, pack and mail out the prizes, and so on, have turned it into a big nationwide event...

And when I wasn't at the CTS, or sorting out my bike problems (the chain has broken...ggrrrrh) I was at a committee meeting of the ACW where we planned future events (pilgrimage to Minster in September, Annual Meeting with Dr Philip Howard as guest speaker and a documentary film about Blessed John Paul the Great, contact here for info). And then on Friday evening there was a gathering at a friend's house for the informal Catholic Cultural Group: wine, snacks, reconnecting with various friends...

And then on Saturday at St George's Cathedral, Southwark, the first of a wave of ordinations for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. The men lying prostrate before the altar, the great gothic arches soaring overhead. Glorious music surging, and history being made...