St Anthony's Carol Service

This year’s St Anthony’s Carol Service will be held in St Antony’s Church on Tuesday 14th December at 2.00pm. The High School are sadly unable to be with us due to the restrictions and end of year workloads.

All are welcome to share in this short Service and to enjoy refreshments afterwards in the Centre.

We will be remembering all our supporters and Friends at the Service and praying you all enjoy a very happy and safe Christmas with your families.

The service will be Covid safe so please bring a mask.

Visit To Sandbach YCW Group

Last month the YCW National Training and Development Worker, Marc Besford, went along to visit the Sandbach YCW Group to catch up in person about what the young leaders had been working on. Over the pandemic, most catch ups were being done virtually so it was a nice change and gave Marc the opportunity to see some of the work being done and be part of the discussions.

On the agenda was planning for the upcoming afternoon tea fundraiser, which was raising money and awareness of the “plastic free” campaign. This campaign is all about reducing unnecessary plastic use, especially items called “single use plastics” that are often discarded into landfill or our oceans and are non-recyclable. The young leaders coordinated together and worked out how the event would be advertised and ran.

Sandbach YCW has previously ran several high profile campaigns, including on refugee sponsorship and prior to the pandemic had gone through the SEE-JUDGE-ACT Method to highlight new areas of work. With the chance to get together in person and parish activity starting to open back up, this was a perfect opportunity to get back down to business.

Marc congratulated the group saying: “This was a fantastic visit and the young leaders were really impressive in how they took on the role of planning this event. I’m sure it will be a superb day and raise a lot towards their campaign. Getting young people interested and engaged in topics that matter to them, supporting them with inspiration from the Gospel and developing them into leaders is what the YCW is all about.”

Guardian Angels IMPACT! Group Visit

During a recent visit to the Guardian Angels IMPACT! Group, YCW National President Marc Besford heard from the young leaders about what they had been doing in the wake of the pandemic and how they were planning to step up their work in the coming months.

The group had just finished a project around Remembrance Sunday and worked together with the parish community to design some commemorative displays outside the parish church. These displays were made by decorating recycled plastic bottles to design poppies. These displays were welcomed by the local community and gave the young leaders a good sense of how to engage others in their work.

The young leaders also outlined how they put together an environmental service for the parish, as part of the Greater Manchester Churches Together Week of Prayer for Creation, in the run to COP26. This service included prayers, reflections, hymns and readings centered around our role as stewards of creation and gave the young leaders an opportunity to connect their faith with action on the issue of the environment.

Previously, the group had been involved in other environmental projects, like the Bugingham Palace idea, and it was great to see them building on this work and growing in confidence.

Marc Besford said: “It was excellent to be back out visiting groups and especially the IMPACT! one at Guardian Angels, who have always been an impressive group of young leaders. They are growing in numbers as well, which should give us confidence as we start rebuilding our Movement across England and Wales in the wake of the pandemic. A big thanks to Fr Paul and Sharon for their amazing support of the work being done here too.”

You can watch the service here: http://www.faithstream.co.uk/olgcga/1185

Pope Francis Speaks To Popular Movements

Last month, Pope Francis addressed the Fouth World Meeting of Popular Movements to give a message of support and encouragement for all those involved. An initiative of Pope Francis, the World Meeting of Popular Movements’ (WMPM) purpose is to create an “encounter” between Church leadership and grassroots organizations working to address the “economy of exclusion and inequality” (Joy of the Gospel, nos. 53-54) by working for structural changes that promote social, economic and racial justice.

Popular movements are grassroots organizations and social movements established around the world by people whose  inalienable rights to decent work, decent housing, and fertile land and food are undermined, threatened or denied outright. These movements primarily represent three increasingly excluded social sectors:

• workers who are at risk or lack job security;

• landless farmers, family farmers, indigenous people and those at risk of being driven off the land by large agribusiness corporations and violence; and

• the marginalized and forgotten, including persons who are homeless and persons living in communities without adequate infrastructure.

The World Meeting of Popular Movements (WMPM) is designed to bring these communities together with faith leaders from across the world.

Amongst the Pope’s remarks were a series of questions and requests. He said:

I ask all the great pharmaceutical laboratories to release the patents. Make a gesture of humanity and allow every country, every people, every human being, to have access to the vaccines. There are countries where only three or four per cent of the inhabitants have been vaccinated.

In the name of God, I ask financial groups and international credit institutions to allow poor countries to assure “the basic needs of their people” and to cancel those debts that so often are contracted against the interests of those same peoples.

In the name of God, I ask the great extractive industries -- mining, oil, forestry, real estate, agribusiness -- to stop destroying forests, wetlands and mountains, to stop polluting rivers and seas, to stop poisoning food and people.

In the name of God, I ask the great food corporations to stop imposing monopolistic systems of production and distribution that inflate prices and end up withholding bread from the hungry.

In the name of God, I ask arms manufacturers and dealers to completely stop their activity, because it foments violence and war, it contributes to those awful geopolitical games which cost millions of lives displaced and millions dead.

In the name of God, I ask the technology giants to stop exploiting human weakness, people’s vulnerability, for the sake of profits without caring about the spread of hate speech, grooming, fake news, conspiracy theories, and political manipulation.

In the name of God, I ask the telecommunications giants to ease access to educational material and connectivity for teachers via the internet so that poor children can be educated even under quarantine.

In the name of God, I ask the media to stop the logic of post-truth, disinformation, defamation, slander and the unhealthy attraction to dirt and scandal, and to contribute to human fraternity and empathy with those who are most deeply damaged.

In the name of God, I call on powerful countries to stop aggression, blockades and unilateral sanctions against any country anywhere on earth. No to neo-colonialism. Conflicts must be resolved in multilateral fora such as the United Nations. We have already seen how unilateral interventions, invasions and occupations end up; even if they are justified by noble motives and fine words.

Pope Francis also spoke about important issues within the world of work and set out some essentials to ensure there is always dignity throughn work. He said:

A basic income (the UBI) or salary so that everyone in the world may have access to the most basic necessities of life. It is right to fight for a humane distribution of these resources, and it is up to governments to establish tax and redistribution schemes so that the wealth of one part of society is shared fairly, but without imposing an unbearable burden, especially upon the middle class. Generally, when conflicts arise in this matter, it is the middle class that suffers most. Let us not forget that today’s huge fortunes are the fruit of the work, scientific research and technical innovation of thousands of men and women over generations.

Shortening the workday is another possibility: the minimum income is one, the reduction of the working day is another possibility, and one that needs seriously to be explored. In the 19th century, workers laboured twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. When they achieved the eight-hour day, nothing collapsed, contrary to what some sectors had predicted. So, I insist, “working fewer hours so that more people can have access to the labour market is something we need to explore with some urgency”. There must not be so many people overwhelmed by overwork and so many others overwhelmed by lack of work.

I believe these measures are necessary, but of course not sufficient. They do not solve the root problem, nor do they guarantee access to land, housing and work in the quantity and quality that landless farmers, families without secure shelter and precarious workers deserve. Nor will they solve the enormous environmental challenges we face. But I wanted to mention them because they are possible measures and would point us in the right direction.

YCW National Council - THIS SATURDAY

Remember that this Saturday we will be hosting the YCW’s National Council for 2021.

This will be done virtually, so please email marc@ycwimpact.com for details on how to join.

There will be several important positions being voted on, including National President, National Secretary and National Treasurer. Click on each of these for a helpful guide to what each role involves. To apply, you can fill out your form here. These forms will need to be in by close of play on Friday 26th.

To participate in the voting at National Council you will need to be paid member of the Movement. This involves paying the annual membership of £15 waged or £5 unwaged. This can be paid on the day or before Council. Our membership form for those who want to join or renew their membership ahead of the National Council can be found here.

We hope to see as many members there to discuss some key issues and set the direction for the next year.