The Augustinian Friars in Britain

Our Hearts are Restless until they Rest in You, Lord

Woodvale’s Fund Raising for Ishiara

Two Augustinian parishes in Southport are raising money to send young people from their own churches, and from their twin parish in Kenya, to an international youth gathering in London next year.

 

‘Our international Order has asked the UK province to host the 2010 youth encounter,’ Father Brian Lawlor OSA, Prior of the Augustinian community at Woodvale, Southport, explains. ‘Our national youth worker, Michela Notarianni is organising the event with her new AYE assistant Claire Webster  and a small team of young people and friars. St John Stone’s parish and the Sacred Heart parish both gave Claire and Michela a big welcome when they brought the AYE road show to Southport recently to tell our young people what is planned for next year’s gathering in London.

 

''Their visit was followed up by meetings of the two parish councils who agreed to support the event and decided to strike while the iron was hot. They had retiring collections after Mass at both churches, which brought in £615 to initiate an AYE fund to offset expenses.

 

‘We hope to send a number of people from both parishes down to London,' Father Lawlor adds. 'They can’t really afford it themselves. They are young – university students and so on – and don’t have a lot of money. So we shall do all we can to subsidise them. St John Stone's parish has also extended an invitation to three young people from our twin Augustinian parish in Ishiara, Kenya. Father David Fitzgerald, the parish priest there, has replied with great enthusiasm and is working out the expenses involved.

 

‘We want to invite three young people over from the mission and pay all their expenses. If they can fly into Manchester we shall arrange for them to spend a few days looking around the city and at Liverpool before coming to Southport, where they will stay with some of our families. Then we shall take them down to London for the week of the youth gathering and bring them back afterwards to show them some of the countryside.

‘It will be a great opportunity for them to enjoy the international flavour of the Order and enjoy the hospitality of St John Stone’s parish. They have not got the money themselves so there is is no way they could afford it on their own. The two Southport parishes have already pledged one-third of the money they raise at their Christmas Fair on Saturday (21 November) towards the AYE fund.'

St John Stone's twinned with the Augustinian parish in Ishiara a year ago, says Father Lawlor. 'Since then we have donated £15,000 to help build a school, to restore the goat herd on which people depend, and to help with education.'