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Whats on this Week
For Masses, streaming, and church open times see panel alongside
For events for students and young adults see the page here.
Monday 4:30pm Rosary Group – contact parish office
Tuesday 7:30pm – Discussion group – Prayer course
https://zoom.us/j/96161676521 ID: 961 6167 6521
Thursday / 10am: parish discussion group all welcome- see right column
https://zoom.us/j/92452001507 ID: 924 5200 1507
Thursday 8pm Virtual Deep Waters
Friday 8pm Lectio Divina
https://zoom.us/j/92327977736 ID: 923 2797 7736
see below for details of each event
Saturday 11 to 11:45am at St Joseph’s – Confession
Opportunities on Wednesdays and Fridays
- Monthly on Wednesdays (next session 27 October) we have “An Evening with Friends” . Recent restrictions meant a loss in the opportunity to chat with friends and other parishioners at or after Mass. In response we have been running online a purely social opportunity to be together as a community and chat. This runs as an hour on Zoom hosted by David Miller. David will ensure that there is an opportunity to talk to each other, and do some fun things together. This has been weekly, but now that live is a bit more normal we are stepping this down to monthly. Join him at 7:30 take part and find out more. The zoom link for the next meeting is https://zoom.us/j/97896232496 Meeting ID: 978 9623 2496
- Lectio Divina – an hour of prayer and reflection led by monks from Worth Abbey. Every Friday at 8pm
- https://zoom.us/j/92327977736 ID: 923 2797 7736
Fitzherbert Community Hub
A new short film has been added to the hub website. View it at
Many of you will have enjoyed visiting the community cafe run by the Real Junk Food Project at St John the Baptist before lockdown. It was really popular with parishioners and members of the wider local community alike but because of the condition of the parish hall and kitchen we were only able to open one lunchtime a week, despite such high demand. You will also be aware of the Food Hub, coordinated by Brighton Table Tennis Club, that has been operating out of St John the Baptist. Covid-19 has exposed the extent of food poverty in the area that we serve and the food bank is now providing food for 300 people a week and ready cooked meals to 45 refugee/asylum seeker families, some of whom have no recourse to public finance or cooking facilities.
Building on these two initiatives we are now working in partnership with our three co-located grassroots charities, Voices in Exile, Brighton Table Tennis Club and Real Junk Food Project to raise funding to redevelop the parish hall at St John the Baptist, creating a flexible, multi-purpose, socially inclusive Community Hub with a commercial standard teaching kitchen, dining area, food bank, full disability access (including a lift to the upper rooms) and additional meeting spaces. Central to our plans is the provision of a daily “pay as you feel” (customers pay what they feel the food is worth or what they can afford) community café using food otherwise destined for landfill. This is an exciting opportunity for us as a Parish as not only will we have access to a lovely new parish hall and cafe but we will be able to live out our faith through social outreach and community building.
Full information is on the hub website at https://fitzherbertcommunityhub.org.uk/
Please have a look at the short films in the following link which considers local need and how this project will help:
https://vimeo.com/485661450/bd2d8972d0
https://vimeo.com/513801042/0954aa37d0
Mass times
We have been able to attend Mass again starting on Ash Wednesday.
The regular pattern is now that weekday masses are at 10am at St John the Baptist (except Thursdays) and 6pm at St Joseph’s (except Monday). For Sundays there is the 6pm Saturday vigil mass and the 11am Mass at St John the Baptist, and 11am and 5:30pm masses at St Joseph’s. . The full details are in the newsletter.
The obligation to attend Mass is still suspended. When you come to church please remember that there is still a covid risk, so precautions, including social distancing and not talking socially anyone before, during or after Mass are still very important.
- CONFESSION. Our main session is from 11 to 11:45am on Saturday mornings at St Joseph’s, or by arrangement with a priest.
Improving Mental Health Support in Brighton
On October 14th nearly 40 members of our Parish attended a live-streamed Assembly event to help improve mental health care support services in Brighton and most especially for the young. Canon Kieron and three other parishioners attended in person. The organisers were delighted with this level of support. Our parishioners joined just under 500 others from the Community Organising Alliance of some 18 Faith, non-faith and educational local groups known as Brighton Citizens UK. The event was hosted by One Church at the Florence road venue.
During the event our three local MPs, the head of the Council and the Chief Medical Officer for the local NHS Trust presented their vision for Brighton, listened to 5 testimonies from alliance members and agreed to work concretely and co-creatively with the alliance to help improve mental health support in Brighton. Amongst those who gave testimonies were Cyril Dykes from St Josephs and Grainne Byrd (Deputy Head Cardinal Newman).
Follow up meetings are now being scheduled for the head of Council and Chief Medical Officer and alliance representatives to continue the dialogue of how to reduce stigma, improve access to services and reduce social isolation and digital exclusion that have worsened during the pandemic. The event was covered by local radio and by BBC News South East who featured a short piece on Friday 15th Oct. Please access via : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQHUZqBQyj0YATWuE-ke-eFJpo4xQ2EB/view?usp=sharing
The Alliance will shortly start a new listening exercise to find out what concerns and unites members now most in this city.
Tuesday evening series – Discussion and Learning
Thursday morning: Bible timeline and meet a monk
Thursday mornings at 10am click https://zoom.us/j/92452001507
Meeting ID: 924 5200 1507
YOUR OFFERING
With restrictions on how many people can attend mass, and on how we give, it has been more difficult to support the costs of running the parish and taking our mission forward. For the moment we are running at some significant loss. There are a number of ways you can give relatively easily, and anyone not signed up to the government gift aid scheme could help us even more by signing the simple form that enables us to get a further pound from the government for every £4 given.
Our New Resource Page
In particular look out for our resources pages, providing links to good things to watch, listen to, or read. Also the Prayers of the Faithful are now published weekly on the newsletter page. We would encourage all parishioners to submit potential prayers by email to the office, so that increasingly these do become the prayers of all the faithful.
Great external courses and events
There are great online worship and events coming up. See our section Upcoming Courses and Events at the top of the Resources page.
Remembrance Book
As we cannot access the remembrance books in the churches this November, we have set up an online remembrance book here. On this page you can view our remembrance book with all the names submitted throughout November.