ST PATRICK'S CONVENT SCHOOL: May 2022

Friday, 27 May 2022

JOAN AND FRIENDS

I am so happy to see that Joan Reynolds Fogarty and her amazing group of school friends are still getting together. These ladies have been friends since Kindergarten and on 25 May they met for lunch at The Rooms. Bless you, ladies, and keep on celebrating friendship. It really is a precious gift.

THE BEAUTIFUL ST PATRICK'S SCHOOL FRIENDS

Thanks, Joan, for the picture and for keeping in touch. Please keep us up to date with your group. Stay safe.

ST PATRICK'S CHURCH

http://stpatrickschurch.ca/2.0/news/

HAVE A LOOK AT THE LATEST NEWS FROM ST PATRICK'S PARISH.

Tuesday, 17 May 2022

READ AND WEEP

OUR BELOVED ST PATRICK'S CHURCH, 1992

May 14/15, 2022

Dear Parishioners of St. Patrick’s and St. John Bosco Parishes:

As you are aware, the Basilica Heritage Foundation in partnership with St. Bonaventure’s School and Forum are planning to bid to re-purchase the Basilica Block. If this bid is successful, the Basilica will continue to operate as a parish and as the cathedral for our Archdiocese. We are grateful and relieved that the Basilica may be preserved as a place of worship, especially for the people of the central region of St. John’s. This, however, leaves several questions about the future of our parishes.

On June 2^nd, the bids for all churches in the St. John’s area are due and will be evaluated by the Trustees. Following this, we expect to know which churches have been purchased and which have not. Currently, we are not aware of anyone pursuing to bid on St. Patrick’s church. Since St. John Bosco is not up for sale, it will not be immediately affected by the results of June 2^nd; however, a decision will have to be reached at some point regarding its future as a parish.

From the results of our parish survey and parishioner feedback we have not yet seen sufficient financial commitment to consider a bid to preserve St. Patrick’s in addition to the Basilica. In our parish letter of March 26^th/27^th we also communicated the Archbishop’s points for consideration in this matter, which include:

It would seem one parish would be sufficient for the central region of St. John’s.
The Basilica seems to be the preferred home for this amalgamated parish.
The Archbishop would not stand in the way of any individual parish that wished to proceed with a separate bid to repurchase their parish church, but financial viability and the availability of clergy to staff the parish would need to be considered.
To bid on a church, an interested parish group would have to either form a separate corporation or make its bid through the Archdiocese’s new holding corporation.

While there are significant reasons in favour of keeping only the Basilica for the central region of St. John’s, if a group of dedicated parishioners wish to preserve St. Patrick’s, they are free to try to do so, keeping the above considerations in mind.

We expect that if St. Patrick’s remains unpurchased by June 2^nd, we may continue to use it as our parish church until some final arrangement of ownership is reached. However, this requires that we meet our ongoing financial costs (e.g. heat, light, insurance, salaries etc.). We encourage all of you to continue to generously support the upkeep of our parish. All your contributions go towards the usual weekly costs of the parish operation. We have been running a deficit each month since January and our parish accounts are getting very low; however, we are planning to begin a fund-raising effort to help meet these operating costs. St. John Bosco has been much closer to meeting its operating costs.

As we await the results of June 2^nd, we will try to continue as a parish, and we thank you for your ongoing support. If you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out to any of the members of our Parish Council, Finance Committee, or to our parish priest. To speak with any of us, please either approach one of us in church or leave a message at the parish office and we will get back to you.

Sincerely yours,

The Parish Council and Finance Committees of St. Patrick’s and St. John Bosco Parishes

(Rex Anthony, Jim Armstrong, Katrina McAlister, Allison Myler, Patricia Norman, Brenda Sheir, Kelly Skinner, Patricia Walsh-Warren, David Warford, Liam Warren)

with Fr. James Fleming

Monday, 16 May 2022

SCHOOL SOUVENIRS

Teri Healey Evans is sharing some lovely school souvenirs with us. They are little cards which were given to her late sister, Cindy, and kept by their mother. Teri came across them in a book belonging to her mother and thought we would like to see them. She and I both thought these might encourage others to share any such tokens on our School Blog. We think there are plenty of them still out there. I know that I have at least one tucked away somewhere. I am going to have a look for it and post it when I find it. Come on, all you St Patrick's Convent School grads, please turn out your souvenir boxes and see what you can find to share with us all.