I was first assigned to the Cathedral church in Nottingham as an assistant priest, and then to the four-parish cluster in south Leicester, before being assigned by the Bishop to Saint Joseph’s as parish administrator in March, 2020. Before my arrival in the parish, the first great nationwide lock-down had already fallen into place. Nevertheless, I restarted the daily Masses immediately (albeit offered privately, behind closed doors at the church). The church has been opened again since September 2020, subjected to restrictions and there are two parish Masses on Sunday morning and a divine liturgy according to the Syro-Malabar rite on Sunday afternoons. From July 2021, there has been a fourth Mass added as a vigil of the Sunday on Saturday evenings at 18.00.
I began an offsite blog on my arrival in March 2020, to make regular entries from the church and presbytery, in case parishioners were curious about what was going on at the parish property during lockdown. Please click the link below to access that blog, which is now semi-active, since I’ve begun posting directly to this website.
As stated on the blog, my weekly prayer intentions are the following. In the absence of requested intentions for the daily Masses, these function as default intentions for Mass on the respective weekdays:
- Sundays: our Parishioners in general
- Mondays: the Holy Father and the Bishop
- Tuesdays: our deceased Parishioners (++)
- Wednesdays: the sick and the dying
- Thursdays: vocations to the priesthood and Religious life
- Fridays: persecuted Christians (currently central Africa, China and Pakistan)
- Saturdays: medical staff, especially considering the current health situation
As this is a private page on the parish website, I’m also adding a short list of books I’m navigating through at the moment.
- 1984, G. Orwell (this one has to be read to be believed)
- Apologetics and Catholic doctrine, M. J. Sheehan (a comprehensive catechesis)
- A Doctor at Calvary, P. Barbet (medical commentary on the Passion of Christ)
- A Rabbi looks at Jesus of Nazareth, J. Bernis (just that)
- Chess fundamentals, J. Capablanca (a primer from one of the historical greats)
- Clarkson on cars, J. Clarkson (cars and everything else, of course)
- Classical music, J. Stanley (a comprehensive survey of the genre)
- Divina Commedia, Dante Alighieri (a classic of Italian literature)
- How to paint landscapes quickly and beautifully in watercolour and gouache, N. Fowkes (its all in the title, really.)
- Introductory Chaldean, Y. S. Jammo (language primer for eastern Syriac)
- Jerusalem, a biography, S. S. Montefiore (a colossal history of the holy City)
- Jesuits of the Goa province, Fr. G. Naik (an historical overview of the Jesuits in Goa)
- Life in Colour, M. Stevens (colour in the animal world)
- Marking the Hours: English people and their prayers, E. Duffy (on the daily prayer of the English in late medieval England)
- Marvelocity, A. Ross (the comics art of the famous watercolourist Alex Ross for the house of Marvel)
- Pope Leo XIII: his life and work, J. de Narfon (a biography of the pope)
- Reading Greek, by the Joint Association of classical teachers (a primer of classical Greek)
- Retreat for priests, R. Knox (a very useful book of advice for the Roman priest)
- Secrets of the Middle Ages, J. Harpur (short essays on the medieval period)
- Silence, E. Shusaku (novelised historical fiction about the persecution of the Japanese Church at the beginning of the seventeenth century)
- Summa contra Gentiles, S. Thomas Aquinas (a shorter treatise on the Catholic Faith)
- Tactical chess endings, by J. Nunn (a survey of game endings by the English GM)
- The book of a hundred hands, G. B. Bridgman (essays on the illustration of the human hand)
- The Book of Enoch, trans. R. H. Charles (a translation of an apocryphal work of the pre-Christian centuries)
- The book of letters, L. Kushner (a mystical Hebrew alphabet, handwritten and nicely produced)
- The complete Jewish study Bible, Barry Rubin (ed., a Jewish commentary on sacred Scripture)
- The complete visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich (an autobiographical classic of devotion)
- The illustrated Summoned by Bells (an excellent verse autobiography of the poet John Betjeman)
- The kings of chess: a history of chess, traced through the lives of its greatest players, W. Hartston (an older book, printed at the end of the last century, but intriguing)
- The memoirs of Louis Bouyer, L. Bouyer (an autobiography of one of the most impressive 20th-century liturgical scholars)
- The path to Rome, by H. Belloc (an autobiography of his conversion)
- The Queen of Katwe, T. Crothers (biographical work about a young African girl’s journey from slum life to becoming a chess grandmaster)
- The Reformation and the English people, by J. J. Scarisbrick (various essays on the destruction of the medieval English Church)
- The secret lives of the Elements, K. Harkup (interesting journey through the periodic table of elements)
- The words of Jesus in the original Aramaic, S. A. Missick (biblical theology wrt. the Aramaic language)
- Vita communis, Fr. J. Bertram (a history of the priestly college)
Also, since this is a private page on the parish website, let me introduce my latest object of devotion: a tiny little black cat with a white collar, called Laetitia (or Letty). The name, of course, means Joy.