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local community has started to regain some of its former confidence.

In 1997, Liverpool Hope University College took over the ownership of the buildings formerly occupied by St Francis Xavier’s College and by the parish schools, helping the process of regeneration and injecting new life into the district by creating a cultural centre for drama, music and fine arts. St Francis Xavier’s Church was re-roofed at this time at a cost of £980,000. Once this work was completed, the church reopened on 8 December 2001 with a service to mark the amalgamation of two local parishes –StJoseph’s and St Mary of the Angels – with St Francis Xavier’s to form a new parish. Onthis occasion, the Sodality Chapel of 1887 was renamed and a new chapter of parish lifebegan.

Almost six years later, on 2 December 2007, the 300th anniversary of the arrival in Liverpool of Father William Gillibrand SJ (1716-1779), the first Catholic priest to take up residence in the town after the Reformation, was duly commemorated. The tercentenary was marked by the unveiling in the Sodality Chapel of a newly designed shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This was dedicated under the medieval title of St Mary del Quay, the name of Liverpool’s first chapel, situated on the banks of the Mersey in the early Middle Ages, close to the present-day Liverpool Parish Church of Our Lady and StNicholas with St Anne.

Considerable work remains to be done to restore St Francis Xavier’s Church to its full former splendour. The heating and electrical wiring systems were completely renewed in the spring of 2008.The powerful four-manual organ of 1907, by the noted organ builder, Hill of London, the largest such instrument in any Liverpool parish church, at present lies silent, awaiting restoration. Yet the fine peal of eight bells – a rarity in English Catholic churches – installed in the church tower in 1870, is again in full working order, following its restoration in 2005 at a cost of £19,000. This money was raised by the Liverpool Universities’ Society of Change Ringers who enjoy regular use of the belfry, now their home tower.

Today working in close association with its neighbour, Liverpool Hope University, the only ecumenical university in Europe, and continuing to develop the close link with Stonyhurst College first established in 1840, St Francis Xavier’s, Liverpool, with the support of the British Province of the Society of Jesus, continues its long tradition of missionary, educational and cultural outreach into the community.

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THE WEST FRONT, STONYHURST COLLEGE

Photograph by Roger Fenton

Albumen silver print, 1858

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