Anniversaries: Bishop Ambrose Griffiths OSB, Kathryn Reece, Harry Bell, Alison Lovat, Fr Charles Macawley OSB, David George Brown, Gemma Casey, Brendan Smith
HOME COMMUNIONS If you require Holy Communion at home, please contact John Ridge: [email protected], Fr Kentigern or Fr Bernard either by e-mail or leave a telephone message by 8.00pm on Friday evening stating whether you require a weekly visit or a one-off call. Someone will then be in contact to arrange a suitable day and time to visit.
EASY FUNDRAISER Do you regularly shop online? Did you know you could support your church at the same time? For more information speak to Tracey in the Parish Office and see information leaflets in the Hall.
WORLD COMMUNITY OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION Meets each week: Mondays at 2pm - 3pm in St Ben’s Hall: contact Mary Sturges Thursdays at 8pm - 8 45pm on Zoom: contact David and Sue Walsh Should you wish to join either group contact Mary Sturges 01439788563.
CHRISTIAN MEN OF THE VALLEY Meet each Monday at 8.00pm to share faith, friendship and interests.
FABRIC PROJECTS Works have cost £35000. To date, we have received £987.67 in fabric donations. All contributions to these costs will be gratefully received.
CAFOD Donate to CAFOD’s Israeli-Palestinian Crisis Appeal at cafod.org.uk/ipc or call 0303 303 3030. or to the Sudan Crisis Appeal: cafod.org.uk/SudanAppeal or call: 0808 58 588 85.
INVITATION FROM OUR SCHOOLCHILDREN As part of their celebration of the Jubilee Year some staff and parents have contributed recipes to a “RECIPES FOR HOPE” Cookbook. This will raise money for the current School charity “The Upper Room Project”. For more details or to purchase, please contact School.
Methodist Asylum project - MAP 'Thank you to all, who left their contributions for the people who are welcomed, to the Methodist Asylum project in Middlesbrough. They were delivered on May 28th. A grateful acknowledgement to those who packed and labelled the bags and boxes containing the donations. While not necessary, a lovely surprise. More details of next delivery will be posted in the middle of June. Mary Sturges 01439788563. /[email protected]
VOLUNTEER DRIVERS As part of the experiment in providing more time for Fr Kentigern to develop his Leadership of the Parish, Fr Bernard will be taking on some of the visiting of the housebound in Gilling. The next opportunity is 4 July
AMPLEFORTH LOURDES PILGRIMAGE There's spaces available for assisted pilgrims on the Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage from 11th to 18th July. We're specifically looking for pilgrims who are able to walk a little (or a lot) unaided, however all applications from assisted pilgrims will be considered. Many assisted pilgrims live completely independently, but are only able to join our joyous week in Lourdes because of the additional support we can provide through our clinical team and volunteers, young and old. The pilgrimage fundraises throughout the year to ensure that anyone can apply to join our pilgrimage as an assisted pilgrimage regardless of personal circumstances. If you are interested in joining us, or know someone else who may be, please speak to Emma Craig or Gavin Williams after mass on Sunday, email Gavin at [email protected] or visit www.ampleforthlourdes.org.uk
THE CHURCH OF ST HILDA AND THE CHURCH OF OUR LADY AND ST BENEDICT Rev James & Fr Kentigern invite you to join them for
COMMUNITY PRAYERS 10.00am Monday 23 June – Our Lady & St Benedict Monday 7 July – St Hilda Monday 21 July – Our Lady & St Benedict Followed by refreshments and fellowship
THE ALPHA EXPERIENCE In October 2025 we will be offering the opportunity to join the Alpha Experience. At present we ask you prayers as we discern the right people to lead this. We also ask that you pray about and discern who might be invited to take part in this experience. Who do you know with questions about faith or who is seeking meaning for their lives?
WALSINGHAM PILGRIMAGE Easingwold SVP / Parish are organising this for 27-29 August, and have a very few places left. (£335 per person). If interested please speak to Mary Borrett.
YOUTH 2000 Youth 2000 are coming back to Ampleforth this year from Friday 22nd - Monday 25th August for our Summer Festival 2025! We are so excited and are hoping to welcome almost 600 young people this year! As such, we need as many priests and as many rooms available for young people as possible. To help us free up beds for more young people we are asking local families to consider if they are able and willing to host any priests or religious this year. All their meals will be provided for at the Summer Festival, our priests would just need a bed to sleep in at night. If you think this is something you and your family could offer, please get in touch with Youth 2000 at [email protected] or by texting Louisa at 07444 214089.
National Ecumenical Pilgrimage in York, 18th June 2025, 2 pm The late Holy Father, Pope Francis, gave this Jubilee Year the title “Pilgrims of Hope”, and, as sisters and brothers in Christ, we are coming together in the historic pilgrimage site of York Minster to renew our baptismal promises as fellow Christians on the pilgrimage of unity. On Wednesday, 18th June 2025, at 2 pm, we will gather at the south door of York Minster. There we will wait as the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Middlesbrough walk together from the shrine of St Margaret Clitheroe towards the Minster. When they arrive, we all enter together into York Minster for a service celebrating our common baptism and reaffirming our baptismal commitment to hope and unity. The service will end around 3.30 pm and we hope you will be able to join us for refreshments afterwards. If a group from your parish are able to come, could you please email Kinga Kosterska, at the directorate of mission at the Catholic Bishops Conference, with the number of people you are expecting. Her email is [email protected]
DIVINE RENOVATION And a third webinar… All welcome to watch LIVE at 7.00pm on Thursday 3 July in St Benedict’s Hall.
JUSTICE AND PEACE The West Bank Please keep free the evening of Thursday June 26th. 7 for 7.30. - St. Benedict’s Hall - for Neil Irving, who has recently spent three months in the Jordan Valley as a human rights monitor with the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, and has agreed to come and talk to us and take questions on daily life for Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, telling the stories of the people he met. We hope there will be other speakers or panel members and that Gaza will also figure in the discussion. Please make an effort to welcome Neil and support this venture, bringing yourself, family and friends.
MIDDLESBROUGH FOODBANK - MFB We hope you will be able to continue to do your best to support the MFB and contribute to the SUMMER HOLIDAY APPEAL which will involve all of its usual loyal supporters, as well, as those in the villages of Cawton, Gilling, Oswaldkirk and Stonegrave, thanks to Peter and Sue Allen. PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN AND INCLUDE TREATS AND SUMMER SNACKS, eg CEREAL BARS, BISCUITS, CRISPS and SWEETS! NEXT DELIVERY: TUES. 15th JULY ‘25 DEADLINE FOR DONATIONS: 12 noon MON.14th JULY ‘25 PLEASE HELP ALL YOU CAN! Donations should be left at the back of Our Lady and St Benedict’s Church as always. PS. MFB GIFT AID forms are now available at the back of church for individual donations of cash and cheques. If you are able to, please could you hand them into the office along with your donation or give them to us directly?
SATURDAY EVENING REFRESHMENTS Come enjoy some refreshments after the Vigil Mass on Saturday 14 June. An opportunity to meet and share with your fellow parishioners. In St Benedict’s Hall.
THE LAST ENGLISHMAN Come along to a FREE entertaining talk on Colonel Wintle of the Royal Dragoons, a seemingly Colonel Blimp character who was in fact a man of intelligence, action and bravery who spoke truth to those in power - even if it meant disagreeing with his seniors or putting right politicians, crooked solicitors and other 'clots' in sometimes very decisive ways! Rob Thompson will be enlightening us in St Benedict's Hall on Thursday June 19th at 7 pm. Drinks and nibbles will be served. Donations to the Parish will be welcomed.
FINANCE COMMITTEE After the latest meeting of the Committee on Wednesday 28 May, they invite all Parishioners to a Forum after Mass on Sunday 29 June. Here the accounts from 2024 will be presented and the current financial position shared.
WORKS At some point in the next couple of weeks there will be some disruption on the road-side of our estate. Water main works will be being carried out involving traffic lights and the closure of our drive to vehicles. Watch out for details. On Wednesday 3 July Emergency Lights will be being installed in the church. It may be that the work will overrun into Thursday 4 July, but Mass etc will not be affected.
YOUTH CHURCH @ AMPLEFORTH The final sessions of the Academic Year are now running: 6.30 – 8.00pm Sunday 15 June & Sunday 29 June – Village Hall Sunday 22 June & Sunday 6 July – St Benedict’s Hall Youngsters in Year 5 are welcome to come for a taster…
One man’s further thoughts on the so-called Assisted Dying Bill: As the date for the third and “final” vote in the Commons on the controversial Bill approaches - June 20th is the likely date - it is time to muster our forces in opposition to a Bill the end effect of the success of which will be to devalue life, life which we have no right to cut short. Each killing, whether or not requested by the sufferer, whether or not performed with pure compassion devoid of all thought of personal gain or convenience, asserts and affirms our control over life, an assertion which chimes with the Zeitgeist underlying the massacre of the innocents in Gaza, as well as with the casual approach to life which justifies to some our interventions during the Colonial era, those in Iraq and Afghanistan (ostensibly in pursuit of the Common Good), the Russian intervention in Ukraine, and all such land grabs ignoring life and people. Life - the lives that is of others - is immeasurably cheaper. Prisoners of conscience or the whim of autocrats, migrants, asylum seekers, the starving poor are not killed, regrettably they just die! Life is no longer held by all to be inviolable, to be preserved for its own sake, never to be taken or given up (save to protect the life of others.) This casual approach to life is apparent also in our despoliation of nature (in pursuit of greed). And yet life will reassert itself: as Hopkins says, “for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”. We as Christians on the other hand inconveniently affirm (with other religions) the sanctity and inviolability of life. The Zeitgeist, whatever its causes, is not God. Our doctors, religious or not, know this. Hundreds of doctors have in the last few days appealed to MPs via an open letter to the PM demanding the proposed legislation on June 20th. be voted down - “We write with great concern regarding the introduction of a Bill to legalise doctor-assisted suicide. The NHS is broken, with health and social care in disarray. Palliative care is woefully underfunded and many lack access to specialist provision….The thought of assisted suicide being introduced and managed safely at such a time is remarkably out of touch with the gravity of the current mental health crisis and pressures on staff. It is impossible for any Government to draft assisted suicide laws which include protection from coercion and from future expansion. Canada has clearly demonstrated that safeguards can be eroded in a matter of just five years; it has been roundly criticised for introducing euthanasia for those who are disabled……and plans for the mentally ill have been paused because of international concern…. The shift from preserving life to taking life is enormous and should not be minimised. The prohibition of killing is present in all societies due to the immeasurable worth and inherent dignity of every human life……The prohibition of killing is the safeguard. The current law is the protection for the vulnerable. Any change would threaten society’s ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse; it would undermine the trust the public places in physicians; and it would send a clear message to our frail, elderly and disabled patients about the value that society places on them as people. Far from one person’s decision affecting no one else, it affects us all. Some patients may never consider assisted suicide unless it was suggested to them. Nearly half those who choose assisted suicide in Oregon cite ‘feeling a burden’. As healthcare professionals, we have a legal duty of care for the safety and wellbeing of our patients. We, the undersigned, will never take our patients’ lives – even at their request. But for the sake of us all, and for future generations, we ask do not rush in to hasty legislation but instead fund excellent palliative care. Yours sincerely, ……..”
We call ourselves a democracy and our voices must therefore be used and heard. If we do not exercise our democratic right to speak, we do not deserve to be heard, not can we save our democracy, valuable despite its drawbacks. Our political leaders hold the key to the door behind which lies the demise of our human right to, inter alia, life. Our MPs have their hands on the key! There is time to act.
ASSISTED BYING BILL With the debate continuing and the next vote due on 20 June, it is possible to watch a recording of the recent local forum using the following link: [email protected]
Stop assisted suicide - sign the local petition! Only 28 MPs need to change their minds to defeat the Leadbeater Assisted Suicide Bill on Friday 20 June – several already have. Sign the petition to your local MP to stop the Bill! Please take action now and sign this petition to your local MP: www.righttolife.org.uk/petitions - it takes just 30 seconds! Or sign the sheet at the back of the church.
ABORTION LEGISLATION Labour MP, Tonia Antoniazzi, has tabled a new extreme abortion up to birth amendment ahead of Report Stage of the Crime and Policing Bill. This change would likely lead to a tragic rise in the number of babies’ lives being ended through late-term abortions carried out at home. Please help us stop this! Please take action now and visit www.righttolife.org.uk/uptobirth to email your MP - it takes just 30 seconds!