St Clare of Assisi Parish

The Easter Triduum is the period of three days from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday.

There are three main services during the Triduum;

• The Mass of the Lord’s Supper is celebrated on Holy Thursday at 7pm. This year Holy Thursday falls on April 1st.
• On Good Friday we have the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion at 3pm. Mass is not celebrated on Good Friday and the Holy Communion distributed at the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion is consecrated on Holy Thursday. This year Good Friday falls on 2nd April.
• On the evening of Holy Saturday at 7pm we will have the Easter Vigil, the most important occasion in the Christian year. This year Holy Saturday falls on 3rd April.

We will also have Mass on Easter Sunday morning at 9.30am.

To all who took part in the Rite of Election which took place last week at the Cathedral. Continue reading

Thank you and well done

Our parish Christmas Fair, which took place last weekend at St Margaret’s Church Hall, raised a grand total of £2,160.79 (details inside). This is a tremendous amount. Thanks you to all who helped organise the Fair, who worked on the stalls, who gave so generously of their time, skills and money, and to all who supported the Fair in any way.

Is it you?

The fabulous Christmas Cake and bottle of Champagne are, at the time of writing, still unclaimed.
The winning ticket is a yellow ticket number 119 and is believed to have been sold at a Saturday evening Mass.
Please check your ticket numbers! If you believe you have the winning ticket (the security number will need to be checked) please contact Maureen Dowd at fundraising@stclare.org.uk.

A special note of thanks

Thanks to all those from outside of our Catholic community who continue to support our Christmas Fair, especially to the Anglican community of St Margaret’s, Jane Dionysiou of Plantarama Garden Centre (01642 320514) and Bob Singh of McKenzie Dry Cleaning (01642 247605) for their generosity.

Our Parish Christmas Fair

Our parish Christmas Fair raised £2,160.79 from the following;

There were also kind donations totalling £436

Of this amount £375 was given away as raffle prizes leaving £61

However £15 of this total was received after the money was banked

The money banked was £1736.79 + (£61 - £15) £1782.79

The extra donation of £15 needs to be added to this along with the kind support of Barclaycard who will match £ for £ the tombola total (£58+£305) making the final total £1782.79+£15+£363
Final total £2160.79

On Sunday 11th May at our 9.30am Mass we will meet the candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation. Please start to include these young people in your prayers.

Confirmation will take place on June 11 at 6pm in St Francis’ Church (not the Cathedral).

The First Holy Communion Mass takes place on Saturday 10th May at 10.30am. Congratulations to all involved.

This Mass means that there will be no Mass at 9.30am.

Please take care when parking and avoid parking on Low Lane if at all possible. This is the busiest day of the year for traffic on Low Lane.

The official opening of the new St Clare’s school building took place on Friday 30th March. This was a very big day for our school.

The children were excited because there were so many visitors coming to our new school building. They were coming to take part in a special Mass. This is our way of saying “Thank you” to God for all he has given us, especially our new school home.

Some of our visitors were quite surprising. We expected Monsignor Dasey, the new Vicar General, who was representing Bishop John Crowley because Bishop John is on leave. He was accompanied by Fr Gerard Robinson, the Diocesan Vocations Director. Some of us were surprised to find out that Fr Gerard is an ex-pupil of St Clare’s.

Another ex-pupil of St Clare’s School is Fr John Paul Leonard, Parish Priest of St Clare’s parish, who concelebrated the Mass for the official opening of our new building. He was joined by quite a lot of other priests, including Canon Eddie Gubbins who was Parish Priest at St Clare’s before Fr John Paul.

The very first Parish Priest of St Clare’s also came to our big day. He is Fr Tony Barry, who is now 87 years old and about to celebrate his diamond jubilee, which means he has been a priest for sixty years. He was here with Monsignor Ricardo Morgan, who was Fr Barry’s assistant priest in the early days of St Clare’s parish. Fr Barry and Monsignor Morgan have been best friends since those days.

Fr Barry was one of the most elderly people at our celebration. There were some people who are much younger!