2 HOME NEWS

MARCH 2 2012 THE CATHOLIC HERALD

FFolllooww Thhee CCatholicc Heerald oonn Twwitttteer At Twitter.com/catholicherald

Director criticises migrant detention

BY ED WEST

THE DIRECTOR of the Jesuit Refugee Service has criticised the Government’s policy of detaining asylum seekers.

Louise Zanre said that the use of detention was often unnecessary and came with huge financial and human costs.

The latest Home Office figures for the final quarter to December last year show that 99 children were detained, of whom 79 were either in Tinsley House immigration removal centre or Seders pre-departure accommodation centre, which both have family accommodation. There is capacity in the 13 detention centres around the country to hold 3,397 detainees. Another 635 are held in prisons.

During the fourth quarter 41 children entered detention, including the pre-departure centres, an increase from 30 in the previous quarter. All of them were accommodated with their families, except for five who are age-disputed.

People are detained on the say-so of a civil servant, there is no judicial oversight, and there is no time limit on detention. The cost of detaining an individual is £110 per day.

“It is an iniquitous system, the cost of which ruins many people’s lives,” Mrs Zanre told Independent Catholic News.

“One of the biggest problems I’ve found from talking to detainees is the uncertainty, never knowing how long they will be held. It is different for the prisoner who knows the length of his or her sentence. For the detainee, it is just another day.”

In 2011, 102 children left detention, of who 59 were removed from the country. Mrs Zanre told The Catholic Herald that this showed there was, “quite a significant minority who should not have been in detention,” and she called for “judicial safeguards to be implemented to prevent people being detained unnecessarily”.

She said: “It’s much easier for a civil servant working for the state and with the state’s interests are heart to make a decision like that.

A new wing in the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre in West Drayton, London

PA photo

Some of those children might not have been detained at all if a court had supervised.”

Detention is thought to have a detrimental impact on mental and physical health, with detained children reporting insomnia, bed-wetting, weight loss, speech regression, depression and self-harm.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of General Practitioners, the Children’s Society and other bodies have criticised the incarceration of children. Among those who are detained are people who have had their asylum cases refused and are awaiting deportation, a process than can be lengthy. In some cases, such as with Palestinians, people are stateless because they are unable to receive travel documents.

Mrs Zanre said that the cost of the system in human terms is significant.

She said: “Detention may be a necessary evil, but it is overused and unnecessary.

There are a lot of people who are released from detention with temporary leave to remain. There is a human cost as well as financial one.”

The Government is committed to phasing out the detention of children after protests from the Church and other campaigning groups.

In December 2010 Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that Britain would end the widely criticised practise, a move that was welcomed by Auxiliary Bishop Patrick Lynch of Southwark, who is responsible for the Bishops’ Conference’s Office for Migration Policy. Mrs Zanre said: “The Government has certainly made some effort in relation to families, but still families are being split. It is not always appropriate or even necessary.”

Last summer the Government turned a converted special needs school in Sussex into a house for families facing removal from Britain, following the closure of the family unit of the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, in Bedfordshire.

Catholics mourn comedian Frank Carson

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

FANS mourning the death of Catholic comedian Frank Carson paid their last respects last weekend by visiting his casket.

Hundreds of mourners said their final goodbyes in St Kentigern’s church in Blackpool, Lancashire, as the 85-year-old’s coffin was placed in public view.

The comedian’s funeral and burial will take place in his native town of Belfast this weekend following his long battle with stomach cancer.

Carson’s parish priest, Fr David Burns, told the Belfast Newsletter that it was the comedian’s particular wish that his body be taken to in his adopted parish church before it was taken to his home town in Northern Ireland.

Fr Burns said: “Frank and Ruth used to come to St Kentigern’s every Saturday night when he was in town.

“He was working right up until the last six months of his life and he would go away sometimes for shows and events, but he would come to our vigil Mass when available.”

The priest said that the church was more than happy to help the Carson family during their period of mourning.

“The feeling was that they wanted something for people on this side of the water that would have known him, whether they be fellow parishioners or people who

Frank Carson joked that his meeting with John Paul II lasted longer than Reagan’s knew him around Blackpool or even further afield,” he said.

Fr Burns described the comedian as popular and down to earth. “He was a very popular man,” he said. “Lots of people knew him, worked with him or just knew him as a parishioner. He was very much the same whether you met him on the street or saw him on television.

“He was always ready with a smile and a joke. He liked being with people and making them laugh.”

Frank Carson’s funeral takes place tomorrow morning at St Patrick’s Church, Donegall Street, Belfast.

He was born in Belfast in November 1926 and grew up in a part of the city known then as Little Italy.

He attended St Patrick’s elementary school and sang in the choir at St Patrick’s church, Donegall Street.

He is survived by his wife Ruth, his daughter Majella and his two sons, Tony and Aidan.

Upon hearing the news of Carson’s death Trevor Carson, a nephew and a goalkeeper with Premier League side Sunderland, said: “After a lengthy and wearisome illness, my uncle, friend and hero has passed on to join the great comedy legends of our generation.”

Due to his tireless charity work Blessed Pope John Paul II inducted him into the Order of St Gregory in Rome in 1987. Carson proudly said: “I got 17 minutes with His Holiness. President Reagan only got 11.”

Carson was also known for telling Irish jokes, including on abortion. “They say you can’t have an abortion in Ireland, [but] it’s not true – only there’s a 12-month waiting list,” he said. Editorial Comment: Page 13

Kinnoull Centre for

Spirituality Home of the Redemptorists in Scotland Monday 2nd to Thursday 5th April 2012: Holy Week Retreat ‘The Journey to Easter’ Frs Kieran Brady and Tom MacCarte CSsR We follow Christ's Way of the Cross, to Calvary and to the joy of the Resurrection. We spend these sacred days with Jesus, looking for the times when our paths cross and our journeys become one. Monday 6th to Friday 10th August 2012: A Summer Retreat ‘With him there is plentiful Redemption’ Fr. Gerry Mulligan CSsR We spend a few peaceful days reflecting on God’s love for us made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord. He is the one who walks with us in all our ways. God is with us in all the changes in our journey. Friday 12th to Sunday 14th October 2012: A Reflective Weekend ‘That you may have life to the full’ Fr. Daniel O’Leary We are called in to the deep by God’s dream for us. The retreat will be about our journey to wholeness, towards personal transforma happier way of living and of passing on that Joy.

Also available: Our seven week Sabbatical for Priests and Religious. Please do contact us for further details.

Redemptorist Centre of Spirituality

Telephone: 01738 624075 Email: stmaryskinnoull@btconnect.com www.kinnoullmonastery.co.uk

Display Advertisement & Inserts Sales:

call James Quantrill on

020 7448 3610

Ethicists’ appeal for infanticide provokes outrage Scottish cardinal hails Pakistani martyr as a hero

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

Continued from Page 1 the fact that a foetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore... when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call afterbirth abortion should be permissable.”

The authors also support infanticide for non-medical reasons but do not state at which point in a baby’s development infanticide would no longer be permissable because “it depends on the neurological development of newborns, which is something neurologists and psychologists would be able to assess”.

Following the Daily Telegraph investigation into of sex-selective abortions prolifers have expressed fears about the practical consequences of abortion laws. When investigative journalists secretly filmed clinicians apparently agreeing to arrange abortions on the grounds of sex, one consultant was recorded saying: “I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination.”

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said that evidence of sex-selective abortion in Britain “confirms the reality of eugenics in modern British medicine” and called on the Government to cut ties with private abortion providers.

Anthony Ozimic, communication manager for SPUC, said: “This investigation confirms the reality of eugenics in modern British medicine, in which some innocent human beings are deemed too inconvenient to be allowed to live.

“Sex-selective abortion is an inevitable consequence of easy access to abortion, a situation to which the pro-abortion lobby has no convincing answer.

“The Government needs to cut its ties to private abortion providers and to abortion rights organisations. They are complicit in sex-selective abortion domestically through their support for abortion on demand and internationally through their complicity in China’s population control programme.”

The pro-life charity Life, which offers non-directive counselling on abortion called on the Government to take action.

Life spokesman Mark Bhagwandin said: “This represents the culmination of years of abuse of the abortion laws in the country to the extent that the rate of abortion is one every three minutes.

“The Telegraph investigation clearly shows that some abortion providers feel they can not only abuse, but also blatantly break the law.”

BY JOHN NEWTON

CARDINAL KEITH O’BRIEN has paid tribute to murdered Pakistan politician and human rights campaigner Shahbaz Bhatti, calling on people to take up his cause in defence of religious freedom.

Cardinal O’Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, made the comments in a message which will be read out at a peace concert and rally in London on Saturday March 10, commemorating the first anniversary of Mr Bhatti’s death.

In his message the cardinal praised Mr Bhatti’s human rights work and drew attention to the Pope’s admiration for his commitment to social justice.

He said: “Shahbaz Bhatti was a truly remarkable hero whose legacy must live on in our own lives.

“The call of religious freedom was one he made his own and anyone who cares about the dignity of the human person will listen to his words.”

“Pope Benedict XVI has paid tribute to what he described as Shahbaz Bhatti’s ‘untiring battle for the rights of minorities [that] ended in his tragic death’.”

Mr Bhatti, Pakistan’s first federal minister for minority affairs, was shot dead while travelling to work in Islamabad.

The Cabinet-rank politician and Catholic was killed after campaigning on behalf of Asia Bibi, Pakistan’s first woman to be sentenced to death under the blasphemy laws.

In his message, the cardinal drew attention to the last interview Mr Bhatti gave before his death, in which he spoke of the death threats he had received for campaigning against the blasphemy laws and about his own faith.

Mr Bhatti said: “I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] Cross, and I am following the Cross, and I am ready to die for a cause.”

Reflecting on his words, Cardinal O’Brien said: “His witness is a remarkable one that has lessons for us all.

“First of all, he embraces the Cross – the centre of the Christian faith – and he was faithful to the example of Jesus Christ, following in his steps.

“Second, he is prepared to live out that faith, standing up not just for the Christian community but for all religious minorities who experience persecution on the pretext of blasphemy.”

Cardinal O’Brien has spoken out frequently in defence of religious freedom, drawing on his travels to many parts of the world where Christians are oppressed and persecuted.

NEWSBULLETIN Over 700 Londoners to become Catholic at Easter HUNDREDS of Londoners are preparing to be received into the Catholic Church at Easter.

Eucharist was a “powerful reminder to cradle Catholics of the privilege that we are able to part take in every week”.

Over 700 people took part in Rite of Election ceremonies at Westminster Cathedral last weekend, making a commitment to entering into full communion with the Church.

Anthony Curran, director of catechetics, said their longing to receive the

He added: “This is a very special year to be joining the Church. With the Eucharistic Congress, the launch of the Year of Faith, the Queen’s diamond jubilee, and the Olympics, 2012 promises to be memorable and inspiring.”

Sacred items stolen from church CHURCHES in Walsall have been asked to be vigilant following the theft of the tabernacle, brass candlesticks, crucifixes and other religious items from St Joseph’s Catholic church. The items, discovered missing on Sunday morning, are together worth about £5,000.

Also stolen were a chalice and a silver-plated ciborium. Damage was caused to nativity figurines as the offenders searched for brass and other valuable metal.

Parish priest Fr Burke said: “I am very sorry for the people that did this, and for the people of the parish who were so distressed. This is the first time in 45 years that anything like this has happened and hopefully it will be the last. I would like to thank the police for how quickly they responded.”

Police constable Adam Harris said: “We are hoping that someone’s conscience will help retrieve these items so that we can restore them to their rightful place.”

Archbishop: Iʼm not persecuted THE ARCHBISHOP of Westminster has said he does not believe Christians in Britain are being persecuted for their faith.

In an interview with the Guardian, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said: “I personally don’t feel in the least bit persecuted. I don’t think Christians should use that word.”

His comments follow Baroness Warsi pointing to a rising tide of “militant secularism”.

BBC harsher on Christianity THE DIRECTOR general of the BBC has said that Christianity is treated less sensitively than other religions because it has “pretty broad shoulders”.

Mark Thompson, a Catholic, said that other faiths had “very close identity with ethnic minorities” and as a result were covered in a more careful way by broadcasters. He also said complaints involving an AK47 “definitely raise the stakes”.

Petition gains 50,000 signatures A PETITION opposing the introduction of same-sex marriage has been signed by more than 50,000 people in just one week. It can be signed at C4m.org.uk.

Tangney Tours

II S

A S S

RO ME

ME DJUG O RJE

I A G O

S A NT

I MA

FAT

K RA K O W

HO LY LA ND

HO L

I E UX

I S

LLO URDE S

Lourdes Groups & Diocese Lourdes Groups & Diocese

Brochures now available for the following:

SOLL: 31 May - 6 June, Exeter & Stansted by Air

Plymouth: 1 - 8 June by air from Exeter Middlesbrough: 1 - 8 June by air from Teesside Birmingham: 2 - 8 June by air and coach from Birmingham

Paisley: 29 June - 6 July by air from Glasgow

Leeds: 6 - 12 July by air from Yorkshire Scotland from Glasgow: by air - 13 - 20 July Nottingham: 16 - 21 July by air from East Midlands

Motherwell: 20 - 27 July by air from Glasgow Brentwood: 22 - 27 July by air, 22 - 28 July by train Westminster: 22 - 28 July by Air, Train & Coach Hexham & Newcastle: 27 July - 3 August from Newcastle

The Catholic Association - Southwark, Clifton, Portsmouth, Northampton, East Anglia, The Carmelites,

Stonyhurst: by Air, Train and Coach: 24 - 31 August

Raphael: 3 - 7 September by Air

Visit our website for more information!

Lourdes by Air - 2012

9 to 13 April - Easter 4 nights from: £511pp

Spring Bank - 1 to 8 June: £640pp 6 to 8 June, 2 night special: £299pp

Lourdes and Shrines tour 21 - 27 October, 6 nights by luxury coach - Lourdes, Rocamadour,

Nevers and more. From £519 per person

Holy Land 2012 Holy Land 2012

Join Fr Stephen Webb, the 7th to 14th of June,

departing from London and Manchester.

Price: £1,199 half board per person. Join Fr Stephen Myers, the 3rd to 10th

September, departing from London. Price: £1,199 half board per person.

If the above dates are unsuitable, please contact us as you may be able to join one of our other groups, or why not lead a group yourself?

STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS!

Join Fr Mark Madden 5th - 14th May 2012

A full board Parish Pilgrimage Contactusforafreebrochure

Join us on: www.facebook.com/tangneytours

II S

A S S

RO ME

ME DJUG O RJE

I A G O

S A NT

I MA

FAT

K RA K O W

HO LY LA ND

HO L

I E UX

I S

LLO URDE S

5126

Established 1974

www.tangney-tours.com e-mail: info@tangney-tours.com FREE BROCHURE LINE: 0800 917 3572 THE CATHOLIC HERALD MARCH 2 2012

BBeeccoommee aa ffaann ooff TThhee CCaatthhoolliicc HHeerraalldd At Facebook.com

3

HOME NEWS

More parishes prepare to join ordinariate

Three ex-Anglican clergy and over 200 lay people plan to cross the Tiber in Holy Week

BY ED WEST

OVER 200 former Anglicans are preparing to be received into the Catholic Church through the personal ordinariate in Holy Week.

Events are planned for three parishes in England as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham welcomes former Anglicans for the second year.

And in Rome last week around 100 members of the ordinariate went on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving, led by the Ordinary Mgr Keith Newton. Anglican hymns, chants and prayers reverberated off the marble walls of St Peter’s Basilica as some members of the world’s first ordinariate for former Anglicans celebrated their coming into the Catholic Church.

Fr Len Black, a Catholic priest who served as an Anglican pastor in the Scottish Highlands for 31 years, said in his homily at the place where the Apostle Peter gave his life that: “Wonderful is not a strong enough word to express how we feel to be here, and where his successors guarded the faith for generations.”

He said that Mass at the basilica and the pilgrimage to Rome generated “a feeling of coming home”.

After celebrating morning Mass last Friday in a side chapel, the group moved to the centre of the basilica and stood in front of the Confessio, the Chapel of the Confession that honours St Peter’s confession of faith that led to his martyrdom, and recited the General Thanksgiving, a traditional Anglican prayer.

Mgr Newton told the American Catholic News Service: “That was very moving, thanking God for all we received this year and for the pilgrimage.”

The week-long Lenten pilgrimage highlighted the season’s call to conversion but was also an opportunity to thank Pope Benedict XVI for establishing a structure for welcoming former Anglicans into the Catholic Church. Mgr Newton also met the Pope at the end of his general audience last week.

The group of pilgrims included a dozen priests who have joined the Church since the ordinariate was established in January 2011 for former Anglicans in England and Wales. This followed the Pope’s 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.

Mgr Newton said that ecumenical dialogue seemed no longer to have full and visible corporate union as its goal, and had become more of an exercise in finding common ground and ways to cooperate, while the Anglican Communion fell further away from seeking revealed truth.

He said that Blessed John Henry Newman saw himself engaged in a battle against liberalism, or rather, “that view that it didn’t really matter what you believed, they were all

Members of the ordinariate visit St Peter’s Basilica during their pilgrimage last week Photo: Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham equally important and that there was no such thing as revealed religion”.

Mgr Newton, who was an Anglican bishop, said the underlying motive for him and many others to break with the Anglican Church was “because we believe in revealed truth” and obedience.

The creation of an ordinariate, he said, was a particularly Catholic way of building reciprocity between traditions in which each shares and contributes its own unique gifts with the other.

“That seems to be exactly the way that ecumenism should go,” he said. “It’s the

Holy Father’s vision and we’ve got him to thank for it.”

The ordinariate in England and Wales recently celebrated its first anniversary while the personal ordinariate in America was officially inaugurated in February.

Last Monday Cardinal

Bernard Law celebrated and preached for the group at Santa Maria Maggiore, recalling in his homily the devotion of Anglo-Catholics to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the evening the group celebrated the traditional Anglican service of Evensong in Santa Maria in Trastevere, singing words from the Book of Common Prayer. On Tuesday the Ordinary presided at the Eucharist in San Girogio in Velabro, the titular church of the ordinariate’s patron, Blessed John Henry Newman.

Deacon James Bradley, communications officer for the ordinariate, said of the

Rome trip that “there were particular highlights but more generally it was good for the lay faithful to get to know each other and see the clergy, the size of a parish and spread across Britain. In terms of the laity meeting the officials, it made such a difference.

“The Holy Father greeted us specifically during the general audience, which I know many groups get but it was nice to be recognised nonetheless. We were very warmly greeted.”

He added: “We sang two Newman hymns, and that was a particularly poignant moment. Newman would have never imagined that a group of former Anglicans would be singing his hymns in his church.”

He also said that the trip would have lasting impact on the ordinariate’s members, who are scattered across the country.

He said: “There’ll be a constant getting together now, as fellow Catholics. We’ve now got this process of preparing people in Holy Week for the receptions.” There will be three major receptions in Holy Week, in Darlington, Harlow and Croydon, with a handful of smaller groups up and down the country.

Michael Vian Clark, director of music at the Benedictine Buckfast Abbey in Devon, said he had put together “a scratch choir” out of the pilgrims who came from different parts of Great Britain.

Mr Vian Clark said: “Good music in the liturgy is a slice of heaven. It’s a glimpse to heaven and it allows people to realise that the liturgy and the Mass is a gift which is not of this world.

MPs: rights of Christians are left at the bottom of the heap

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

EQUALITY LAWS dealing with sexual orientatation have weakened the rights of religious believers, a group of parliamentarians have declared.

In a report by the parliamentary group Christians in Parliament MPs and peers said that since the implementation of the 2010 Equality Act, “early indications from court judgments are that sexual orientation takes precedence and religious belief is required to adapt in the light of this. We see this as an unacceptable and unsustainable situation.”

The report goes on to quote the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, stating: “Christians cannot hang up their faith as they enter the workplace. Thus a culture war has arisen out of primary legislation, which has been left to the courts to settle. And indeed the courts have gone about their business on an unfortunate trajectory that appears on the face of it to have left religious believers at the bottom of the heap.”

The authors of the report include Catholic Labour MP Jim Dobbin and Conservative MP Fiona Bruce.

Although the report asserts that Christians in Britain are not “persecuted”, it expresses fears about the marginalisation of Christian belief since the introduction of equality laws and highlight the need to amend the law so that Christians do not fear arrest for articulating their beliefs.

The report argues that the evidence they received shows there is a “hierarchy of rights” emerging in Britain, where the rights of the individual trump the greater good. It states: “Such a hierarchy involves some groups becoming politically and legally privileged at the expense of other groups. This was identified as particularly prevalent in relation to sexuality.”

The report states that evidence reveals widespread discontent with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

It said: “The evidence presented to the inquiry was overwhelmingly negative about the EHRC. Many saw it as embodying a secular humanist philosophy of equality and to be ideologically biased against religion and authentic diversity. Many submissions suggested that the EHRC was not fit for purpose.”

The report cites evidence of the

EHRC’s financial support for the gay couple who brought a claim against Christians who would not permit unmarried people to share a double room in their bed and breakfast.

It quotes evidence from Aughton-Ainsworth solicitors which states: “The EHRC has been so thoroughly ‘infiltrated’ by an anti-Christian bias that even when the EHRC tries to do the right thing it is ‘hijacked’ and forced to backtrack. In the case of potential Christian foster parents Mr and Mrs John and Derby City Council, the EHRC intervened in support of the council (this was not an Aughton Ainsworth case). Counsel for the EHRC said that Christian values are like an ‘infection’ that could harm children. Following complaints, the EHRC was forced to apologise and print a retraction on its website (March 3 2011).”

But the report also emphasises the importance of proportionali ty from Christian campaign groups in the way they approach issues and present their case.

It said: “The actions of some campaign groups can discredit the Church in Britain and result in perceptions that Christians are seeking unfair exemptions. By bringing highly emotive cases to the fore, they also can add to the feeling among Christians that they are more marginalised than they actually are.

“On some occasions we perceive that campaigning becomes inflammatory or even counterproductive to Christian freedoms. This is due to factors such as: the strategically unwise selection of cases; a distorted presentation of facts for manipulation of the media, and, most alarmingly, the deliberate misinforming of the church constituency in order to motivate support.”

Future of thriving Liverpool parish hangs in balance

BY STAFF REPORTER

A THRIVING parish in Liverpool serving 600 Catholics may soon be closed, it emerged this week.

The parish, St Austin’s Grassendale, is run by Ampleforth Benedictines who are preparing to withdraw later this year.

Abbot Cuthbert Madden of Ampleforth told the parish this week that Archbishop Patrick Kelly of Liverpool, like the Benedictines, faced a “considerable” shortage of priests.

“At this moment,” he said, “I do not know the precise shape of things to come.”

Abbot Madden said there was an “urgent need” for parishioners to offer suggestions to the diocese’s Pastoral Area Working Group about the “future shape of sacramental provision”. These suggestions, he said, can then be passed to the archbishop.

He said that in the coming years Ampleforth Benedictines would be withdrawing from at least five other parishes in Lancashire.

“I need hardly say how sad both the community and I are that we have no choice but to leave parishes we have served for generations,” the abbot said.

Steve Dooley, a parishioner, said he was “staggered” that the parish was under consultation for closure.

He said: “Pope Benedict talks about increasing secularism, but a vibrant parish with five Sunday Masses is going to be abandoned. If this happens, then it is the end for us all. I see no hope.”

Speaking to parishioners, Abbot Madden said that in a meeting with Archbishop Kelly he had impressed upon him two of the parish’s key features.

He said: “Firstly, there is the commitment to the Mass. The Sunday Mass attendance and, even more, the weekday Mass attendance is a remarkable feature of the parish.

“Second, I believe that I have noted your real commitment to prayer and to each other. I am always impressed by the number of people who come before Mass and stay after Mass to pray, and I am impressed by the ministry to the sick and housebound which is another prominent feature of this community.”

Meanwhile, three other parishes in Liverpool may be closed by Easter. Our Lady of Good Help church in Wavertree, St Gregory, Netherley, and St Paschal Baylon, Childwall, are all earmarked for closure.

Parishioner Tracey Hassan told the Liverpool Daily Post that shutting Our Lady of Good Help was “absolutely wrong”.

“Every Sunday that church is full,” she said. “Generations of my relatives have been married there. It’s a lovely, welcoming church.”

Dozens of other churches are reported to be under review.

Minister: we can change definition of marriage

BY ED WEST

THE GOVERNMENT’S Equality Minister has criticised the role of churches in the debate over same-sex marriage, saying that Christians do not “own” marriage. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Lynee Featherstone said the Government had a right to change the definition of marriage and promises to challenge those who “want to leave tradition alone”.

Gay marriage could be implemented by the end of May under Coalition plans, which are supported by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Citing the words of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, who is a prominent opponent of the Coalition’s plans, she said that how marriage is defined is up to “the people”.

She wrote: “We understand how strongly some religious groups feel about the issue, which is why we are listening and we want to work with them. But there is a range of other views we need to listen to as well.

“I want to urge people not to polarise this debate. This is not a battle between gay rights and religious beliefs. This is about the underlying principles of family, society and personal freedoms.”

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said that the Government had no mandate to introduce such legislation.

Athletes to address Catholics at Wembley

BY ED WEST

GOLD medal-winning Olympic athlete Jason Gardener will address a group of Catholic youths at Wembley Arena later this month.

Mr Gardener, who won gold at the 2004 Athens Games and is rated as one of Britain’s alltime best sprinters, will be joined by Paralympian long jump record holder Stef Reid at the Flame Congress, to be held on March 24.

The congress is being organised by the Catholic Youth Ministry Federation (CYMFed) and will be attended by over 7,000 young people from around the country.

Two young athletes from Kenya will also address the congress, as will former Olympians Sister Catherine Holum and Bridget Parker, as well as Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, Fr Timothy Radcliffe and Barry and Margaret Mizen.

The day will also feature prayer, dance, drama, and will aim to promote the Olympic values of “respect, friendship and excellence”.

Fr Dominic Howarth, Flame Congress coordinator, said: “The athletes have each got a story which is really inspiring for young people. Stef Reid had her leg amputated when she was 16 after an accident, and hers is a real story of grit and courage. That sense of discovered faith at a time of adversity will really inspire the young people.”

thisFastDayFriday2March thisFastDayFriday2March

. 285776

no c harit y ist e re d

Re g

By giving something up for Lent and donating the money you save to CAFOD, you can help provide clean water and sanitation for the world’s poorest families. We can fight water poverty together this Lent.

By giving something up for Lent and donating the money you save to CAFOD, you can help provide clean water and sanitation for the world’s poorest families. We can fight water poverty together this Lent.

RR37098

cafod.org.uk/lent cafod.org.uk/lent

Matching your donations with

Matching your donations with

This Lent, the UK Government has pledged to match, pound for pound, whatever you give – doubling your donation and helping to change even more lives.

This Lent, the UK Government has pledged to match, pound for pound, whatever you give – doubling your donation and helping to change even more lives.