The Bishop of Portsmouth...

...has made an important announcement, which you can read here...

Sacred Heart Church in Bournemouth is a  most beautiful building which this writer knows well from a lovely family wedding held there a few summers back. There is beautiful liturgy, glorious bells, a thriving parish... This new chapter will be a good one.

But the loss from the diocese of Southwark will be great, as Fr Peter Edwards at St Joseph's, New Malden,  is a wonderful priest and his parishioners won't want him to leave. The Sunday Mass attendance is over a thousand, the parish teems with young people and families,  and there are always people praying in the church, from early morning until evening. A  bright pleasant Parish Centre - replacing a dank smelly old hall -  has  an excellent bookshop, a large hall for Confirmation groups and mother-and-baby groups, and lectures, and  parish lunches, and tea-and-chat, and more, and rooms dedicated to different saints for a whole range of other evangelistic and charitable and educational activities.  Fronting on to the main road, a lovely Mary Garden (incidentally featured on EWTN recently) invites passers-by to stop and pray and many do every day, leaving posies of flowers by the statue of Our Lady, and sometimes prayer-requests.

Some years back, a group of us started a THANK YOU TO OUR PRIESTS at the Holy Week Chrism Mass, and I am so glad we did as there is so much good work that is done to bring the Good News of the Gospel to modern Britain.