A day out in the country

Every saturday, we have a community outing day where we can visit anywhere from churches and monastries, to ice rinks and parks. Yesterday, we went to visit two great friends of the school in Ascot. Anne and Dan Hill are a married couple originally from America. Their house is right in the middle of the countryside with a beautifully big garden! We took with us Fr Alexander's new puppy, Ambrose, who couldn't believe his luck when he found himself surrounded with so much grass!

Anne showed us true hospitality, and demonstrated the importance of how the table should be layed; making sure no one is left alone at the end of the table. Edna and Allen also made homemade choc chip cookies for everyone - the true American way which were very delicious!

Dan told us some amazing stories about his encounters with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Since he met her in 1992, he has built a number of orphanages for the Missionaries of Charity. Anne and Dan have a deep trust in the power of the Holy Spirit and it has clearly affected their whole lives. They are a truly inspirational couple to meet.

Vincent Gardiner (Student 2006-2007)

Vincent was a student of the School of Evangelisation last year and has since gone on to prepare for studies for the Priesthood! It was wonderful to hear from him the other day ... and we look forward to having him visit us here in Soho for a few days next week. In the meantime, we wanted to share with readers of the blog just how Vincent is doing and what some graduates of the School get up to! Read on to find out ...


I'm studying for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Southwark - a step I would not have taken so soon if I hadn't been at the School of Evangelisation. This year I'm at The Royal English College, Valladolid, Spain, for a propeaodeutic year of human and spiritual formation, with some catechetics and pastoral formation thrown in too. The College is beautiful and comfortable, with an excellent combination of the best parts of Spanish (food and siestas) and English (everything else) cultures. Living with 20 other men discerning the priesthood would perhaps seem quite intense if I hadn't had the year at St Patrick's to prepare me!

I'm spending January in a parish in Liverpool (i.e. somewhere I've never been before), seeing what a parish priest does; visiting hospitals and schools, taking Holy Communion to the housebound, praying with the families of the dead; bringing hope. Next year I will be moving away from Spain, perhaps to a seminary in England. Though there are six and a half years before I might be ordained a priest, I am sure that God is guiding me gently towards whatever He has planned for me, and that I am in the right place at the moment.

English Culture Night

Last Saturday we had our second culture night of the school year. Anthony and I "prepared" (or bought!) traditional fish and chips from the chip shop. We also made a steak and ale pie, apple pie and trifle - which no one had had before, but I think was well liked!

It was Allen's 23rd birthday too so we made him a very british victoria sponge for his birthday cake! We were blessed to be joined by Fr Francis, Sr Elizabeth and Fr Dennis - an American priest from Maryknoll who is good friends with Allen. It was a great evening playing the detective game, Cluedo, and of course watching Fawlty Towers!

We're Back!

We're finally settling back into normality at St Patrick's. All the students had a refreshing break after Christmas visiting family, friends, and catching up with sleep!

We began the new year with a silent retreat at Ampleforth - a Benedictine monastry up north. We were surrounded with the silence and beauty of the countryside for 5 days.

It was quite a challenging retreat - our longest period of silence yet! But it was very fruitful for a lot of us - it's obvious that Christ uses every moment of this silence to draw us closer to Him and fills us with His grace to prepare us for our next busy term.

What is an Advent Mission??

What is an Advent Mission? Here’s my interpretation… It’s a week when the doors of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Soho are opened wide and dozens of highly energized and inspired Catholic young adults spread through the streets of London to talk to strangers, give gifts, flyers and refreshments to anyone and everyone who passes us. We are no longer shy if we were before, because we are all out of our element, but we do it for the Lord. He is our strength, our inspiration, our energy. When we don’t know what to say to people, He gives us the words or the grace to just listen. We are the humble servants spreading the Gospel of Christ, perhaps just by our smiles and greetings, but hopefully by our invitation to meet Jesus this Christmas. Even if you have a relationship with Him, we remind you to visit and renew that relationship. We may never know how many people we effected, or what might have touched them. Our only aim is to spend all our energy, time, talent and prayers in the work of bringing people to their natural, innate faith and speaking of that desire of faith in terms of Christ and His entrance into this world, which was through Mary our mother and model. I don’t feel that I’m imposing on others, because I honestly believe in the Truth that the Church is guarding and teaching, and it such good news that I would be selfish to keep it to myself. The people on the streets can accept or reject it, but I pray that I can convey it in a way that speaks of its beauty and presence in everyone’s life.

At the end of the week, we all had some amazing stories to share and I think we were all in awe at what the Lord can do when we give ourselves to him completely. Above all, I have met some great students from the Emmanuel School of Missions in Rome and I look forward to seeing them again when my school goes to Rome in March. I know that we all worked so very hard this week, but we had a lot of fun in the process.

Advent Mission I

Thomas,Vanessa and students on the Plane to London...

Last Monday ninteen students from the Emmanuel School of Mission and a host of other guests flew in to join us for a huge week-long Parish mission at St Patrick's.

The mission began on Tuesday, with our first day of evangelisation on the streets.

In the evening the Church was packed with over one hundred homeless people and a very large number of volunteers (including the) for our Open House Christmas Party. We removed the Blessed Sacrament from the Tabernacle and transformed the Church into somthing of a banquet hall!

There was time on Thursday for the students, who came from all over the world, to see some sights.

Advent Mission II - On the Streets

Uriel and Clara Evangelising on Oxford Street

During the day we would take it in turns to go out into the Square and to Oxford Street to talk to people and invite them to the Church. The SPES students had prepared gifts, scripture passages and flyers to give to people.



There had been a lot of careful and thorough planning that had gone on behind the scenes to ensure that things worked smoothly. Five different programmes of activity had been devised and the students, divided into teams names after Missionary Saints, took it in turns to apply themselves to each programme.

The teams out in the streets were working together to combine singing and entertainment with stopping people to talk to them and invite them to the Church. Equally important were the teams inside St Patrick's involved with welcoming, taking people before the Blessed Sacrament and praying with them, and also those in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament themselves, supporting the other teams with their prayers.

Advent Mission III

While out on the streets we were also encouraging peopleto come and participate in our evening events at St Patrick's. These included a Carol concert on Wednesday night and Thursday's 'Evening of Joy', led by the Emmanuel School of Mission students:

Then, on Friday, we took to the streets again for a concert outside the French Church followed by a candle-lit procession back to St Patrick's with an icon of the Madonna and Child:

We sang through the streets of Soho before bringing the icon back to St Pat's, where the Blessed Sacrament was exposed.

On Saturday night we had a Street concert outside St Patrick's led by our talented Gospel Choir, followed by a Mercy Evening. The arrival of (literally) hundreds of drunk santas, obviously bored of their pub crawl, presented an interesting oppurtunity for evangelisation.

The prayers of those inside the Church were answered when several of the santas were led inside to pray before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

Walking through the Streets with Our Lady

Our Advent Mission is underway, and life at St Patrick's is busier and crazier than ever. Before all the mission started though, we experienced the relative peace and tranquility of processing through the streets with Our Lady to honour her Immaculate Conception.

We processed from St Patrick's to the French Church, Notre Dame de France, Leicester Square, singing hymns to Mary. It was a beautiful evening, and it seems that people are often very receptive to honouring Our Lady. Some people stopped and crossed themselves in the streets, others paused to listen or were clearly intrigued.

More on the Advent Mission coming soon...

Martyrs Walk

Last Saturday we walked from Tower Hill to Tyburn Convent following the route that Martyrs would have been dragged along as part of the middle stage of being 'Hung, Drawn and Quartered'. A large part of the route is the same as we take in the morning on the bus - so it was a familiar route which we saw in a totally new and different light, as we prayed the Rosary and Stations of the Cross, reflecting on the heroic witness of the English Martyrs. The journey for the martyrs would have ended at Tyburn Tree, where they would have been dismembered. The Tree no longer stands, but a plaque marks the spot. We ended our journey a little further up the road at Tyburn Convent, where a young sister showed us the crypt which has plenty of relics.