After 8 years bringing our cluster of parishes together as parish priest, at the end of July 2021 Fr Shaun Church left the parishes for a well-deserved sabbatical year. He concluded his time with us celebrating a Mass in each parish followed by an outdoor reception and parishioners came out in the greatest numbers we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic to say farewell. In his last homily to the parish Fr Shaun focused on the phrase from St Paul’s prayer for the Philippians: ‘that your love for each other may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best’. He echoed this prayer asking for the parishes to always remember that ‘what is best’ must be what is best for our mission of evangelisation, rather than just for self-preservation. We wish Fr Shaun every blessing in his ministry in the years ahead and thank him for all his hard work in our parishes.
Photos courtesy of Paul Burke