Weekly Newsletter

Canon Tanner, Canon Post and I would like to try our best to maintain your Sacramental life here at our Shrines in Preston during this unprecedented crisis. 

His Eminence Cardinal Nichols, together with the Bishops Conference of England and Wales have accordingly decreed that all public Masses in our country be suspended from 8pm on Friday 20^th March until further notice. 

Our community needs to cooperate in avoiding mass gatherings, which spread the virus, but our priority is to preserve and continue fostering the spiritual life and access to the Sacraments.

Therefore, there will be no public Masses or other services until further notice. Your priests will continue to celebrate Mass in private. One Mass per day will be live streamed on the ICKSP Preston Facebook page for you to watch (you do not need a Facebook account). https://www.facebook.com/icksp.preston/

The Church’s precept to attend Mass on Sundays has been suspended by the CBEW, to whom canon law gives this possibility for a serious reason. The Divine commandment to sanctify the Lord’s Day cannot, of course, be abrogated or suspended, and must be fulfilled.

We strongly recommend that you make a daily spiritual communion, with your families if possible, and that you receive the Sacrament of Confession at least as often as you usually do. Feel free to contact us to arrange confession at any time.

Given the current legal and diocesan restrictions, it is evident that it will not be possible for everyone to receive Holy Communion on a regular basis. We shall nevertheless do our best to accommodate individual requests. It is heart-breaking for a priest to have to write such words to his flock, but the root of our sorrow is the loss of the public celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, which should never be divorced in the minds of the faithful from Sacramental Communion.

On a more material note, the bills for the church still have to be paid and your priests still have to eat! We depend entirely on donations. Please continue to fill in your weekly Gift Aid envelopes and bringing them around from time to time at your convenience. You could also alternatively send us what you would normally put in the collection via bank transfer. Our bank details are:

Account Name: ICKSP / St Walburge
Account Number: 5234 7733
Sort Code: 40-10-22

Apart from any notice to the contrary, the church will be open for prayer daily from 7.30 am to 7.30 pm.

Sincerely Yours in Christ the King,
Canon Cristofoli

PS: The schedule for the coming days will be:

Saturday 21^st March: St Benedict
11am – 6pm:               St Walburge’s open
12 noon:                      Live Streamed Mass from EM (closed doors)

Sunday 22^nd March
10 am – 5.15pm          St Walburge’s open
10.30 am                     Live Streamed Mass from EM (closed doors)

Weekly Schedule from Monday 23^rd March
7.30 am – 7.30 pm      St Walburge’s open
9.30 am                       Live Streamed Mass from a private oratory (closed doors)
Confessions as usual