The Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham has announced it has received a donation of £4 million for its building development fund. The shrine, which dates back to the 11th century, is seeking to raise £6 million to improve its facilities, with plans including the development of upgraded pilgrim accommodation, new accommodation for the disabled, a retreat centre and a wet weather cloister. Speaking on Monday at Walsingham’s Chapel of Reconciliation, Mgr John Armitage, the rector of the shrine, said the donation showed that “in a very short period of time great things can happen”.
“When I left on December 28 for my holidays I did not expect when I came back I would bring £4 million towards the building fund,” he said. “We have been greatly blessed that a donor has given to the building fund this remarkable sum of money. So let’s give thanks to this great generosity of this particular donor.”He added that the donation meant that there is £1.6 million left to raise towards the building fund. “It is a great blessing on the shrine and please pray for the donor who is very sick at the moment,” Mgr Armitage said.
The shrine is also seeking to raise a separate £4 million to develop its work. This would involve a live stream of daily Mass and other events through a media centre provisionally called Walsingham TV. Other parts of the plan include a national family pilgrimage and a pilgrimage for young people. Mgr Armitage is also hoping to commission a canvas for a series of artworks depicting the history of England through the saints, which would be hung in the cloister. Last summer, when Mgr Armitage made the initial appeal, he said he hoped to raise the money from across the globe.
He said: “This is a national shrine, and we’re seeing how we can fund it nationally. But we get groups from all over the world, and in the past week we’ve had Melkites from the Middle East and the ordinariate on the same day, a Punjabi group from the Midlands and a group from the Caribbean.” Mgr Armitage said the shrine had also received enquiries from the United States from people wishing to help. The shrine was suppressed during the Reformation and its disused chapel was used successively as a poor house, a forge, a barn and a cowshed.
Charlotte Pearson Boyd, a Catholic convert, bought the building from a farmer in 1897 and restored it. On August 15, 1934, Mass was celebrated publicly in the Slipper Chapel for the first time in 400 years. Shortly afterwards, Walsingham was named the Catholic National Shrine of Our Lady. The Dutch scholar Erasmus visited the shrine at the start of the 16th century. It was then the second most important pilgrimage destination in the country after Canterbury. “When you look in,” he wrote, “you would say it is the abode of saints, so brilliantly does it shine with gems, gold and silver. “Our Lady stands in the dark at the right side of the altar … a little image, remarkable neither for its size, material nor workmanship.”
New guidelines on marriage preparation are expected to be published in England and Wales after Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation in March following the final report by the family synod.The guidelines have been prepared by the bishops’ marriage and family life committee of the Department of Christian Responsibility and Citizenship. It is thought that they will recommend more extensive marriage preparation. The synod revealed a wide divide between bishops who want a more liberal approach from the Church to marriage and relationship issues, and those who believe that any liberalisation would be against the teachings of the Church.
Journalist Edward Pentin revealed last month that the apostolic exhortation is likely to be published on March 19, the feast of St Joseph and the third anniversary of Pope Francis’s inauguration Mass. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that the exhortation would be a “hymn to love, a love that wants to take care of the welfare of the young, to be close to wounded families to give them strength, a love that wants to be close to children as well as to all mankind in need”.
Meanwhile, the number of couples taking part in marriage preparation courses run by Accord, the Irish Catholic marriage advice service, is increasing, according to Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin. Last year 15,774 people attended Accord’s marriage preparation programme, delivered in its 55 centres across Ireland, compared with 14,232 in 2012.
Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton has called on Catholics to make full use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in his first pastoral letter for Lent since his installation last year, “The season of Lent during this Jubilee Year should also be lived more intensely as a privileged moment to celebrate and experience God’s mercy,” he said, adding that Confession was not just for ourselves as individuals.
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