The St Vincent de Paul Society is twinned with a conference in India which it helps to support in Apostolic works
BONGA. The money from Sunday morning hospitality(tea and coffee after Mass) goes to help the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Bonga. Ethiopia. This comes to about £600 p.a.
We support CAFOD. Last year donors from the Parish have donated £3789 to this Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, some of it for the Indian earthquake appeal, other funds for development programmes.
Ukrainian Link. - Funds donated by Parishioners have helped to support several seminarians in Lviv and two students at the Catholic University of Lublin on their Masters degree in psychology. Funds have also helped to buy many textbooks for the Seminary library,to buy computers for the students' use, to print prayer books and to support apostolic works of the brotherhoods in the Lviv and Drohobych seminaries - in particular, students journeys to central and east Ukraine for evangelisation and to help in the Catholic parishes there..
Several parishioners have written to our local MP Mr Lindsay Hoyle, and to leading Parliamentary figures about such moral issues as human cloning, the provision of abortifacient contraception to girls as young as twelve without parental knowledge, moves towards euthanasia and eugenics.
Members of the parish recently submitted responses to the General Medical Council's consultation on Withholding and Withdrawing Treatment, strongly objecting to the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration from patients who are not dying i.e. starving the seriously ill to death. At present we are lobbying concerning some points in the Mental Incapacity Bill, and the Joffe euthanasia "death on demand" Bill.
Through the Archdiocese we support the Liverpool Archdiocesan Missionary Project, which supports several priests from the Archdiocese presently working in South America: Lima, Bolivia and Ecuador.
On Good Friday the special collection goes to the Holy Places in Palestine, to support the Franciscans who maintain these shrines and their work among the hard pressed Arab Christians of the Holy Land.
The Parish has each year donated £500 to the Society of St Peter the Apostle, sufficient to support one African or Asian seminarian through a years' seminary course.
The Church Collection plus the little red boxes in people's homes raised £1829 for the Association for the Propagation of the Faith which supports missionary work throughout the world, and the training of priests and catechists in Third World Countries.
Our Christmas Collection 2001 went to Aid to the Church in Need for the support of persecuted Christians in Southern Sudan. The amount of money rised was more than £1900. Another £446 for the work of the same charity was raised during the weekend of 13-14th April during an appeal by Mr Ralph Ferrigno
Our Christmas collection 2003 was divided between helping the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Ethiopia - Bonga and elsewhere, and towards the building of the church of St Basil in Zhitomyr, Ukraine, where Fr Vitaliy Sidoruk is parish priest. He is short of funds, but our donations have at least managed to finish the walls of the crypt and put a temporary roof on during the winter.
We have had several collections for Angela and Leo Duffy, our roving parishioners, who are near Phnom Penh in Cambodia for a few months, helping in a school run by the Salesian sisters.
The 2004 Easter Collection of £850 is to help Fr Hryhoriy Komar and the students at the Drohobych seminary of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
