Year in Review

FOR MANY CATHOLICS, their parish Church is the centre of their spiritual lives and attending Sunday Mass and weekday parish activities are a key part of their routines. When the first COVID-19 lockdown was brought in, and public communal worship banned for the first time in living memory, parish priests, staff, and volunteers worked quickly to get live streaming of the Mass up and running so the faithful could pray along at home. When churches were permitted to reopen, parishioners responded generously to the pleas for volunteers to clean the churches and steward public worship, creating some of the safest public spaces in Britain during the pandemic.

Westminster Cathedral reopens with Covid-secure measures in place for private prayer on 15 June 2020 after first lockdown.

When churches were allowed to re-open for congregational worship, additional measures were implemented to ensure the faithful could receive Holy Communion safely.

While priests continued to celebrate Mass on their own in their churches, the faithful could join them by livestream during the first lockdown.

THAT THEY WOULD be asked to deliver their entire curriculum remotely at very little notice is something few, if any, teachers had imagined would happen. The switch brought many challenges, but also shone a light on the commitment, creativity, and compassion of so many school staff and students. The return to in-person learning came with many restrictions, new ways of working, and uncertainty over exam assessment, not to mention a lot of cleaning and hand sanitiser. Despite the difficulties, however, the diocesan schools are a source of stories of students and teachers shining a light in the darkness, earning an A* in Pandemic Perseverance.

675 pupils from 14 schools around the diocese prepared 3,375 Vinnie Packs with essential items, for distribution to homeless people. Pupils at St Augustine’s Priory commemorate Armistice Day

THE PANDEMIC HAS taken a heavy toll on the economy, which means that more people than before have found themselves struggling to afford to feed themselves and their families. The number of people relying on foodbanks has risen sharply. In response to the clear and growing need, in April 2020 Caritas Westminster provided more than £30,000 in emergency food grants to be distributed through parishes and schools in the form of supermarket vouchers. Such was the success of the scheme that it was extended for a second round. This is in addition to the work of the food banks supported by the Diocese of Westminster, which not only provided, but where necessary delivered, food parcels and packed lunches to three times the number of persons who sought their assistance the prior year.

Parishes in Central London opened a refreshment station for homeless people in Trafalgar Square during the first lockdown with support from Caritas Westminster.

Local residents queue to receive food parcels at the Food Hub at English Martyrs, Wembley.

Begun in 2019 and one of the many projects of the Caritas Food Collective, the food stall at St John XXIII Primary School in White City distributes fresh food, donated by the Felix Project, that would have otherwise gone to the landfill.