Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Sunday evening Mass at 17:00 (5pm) is cancelled this Sunday, 8th January. Sincere apologies for inconvenience caused. Mass will resume as normal on Sunday 15th January.

Again, apologies.

Fr Ed.

I received this email today. Can anyone offer advice? If you can, contact me and I will forward your email to Sean’s father. Thank you,

Fr Ed

“My eldest son, Sean, is undertaking a 6 month work placement with KPMG in Luxembourg as part of his degree level studies in global business and French. He has spent the last semester in Reims. He’s a regular attendee at Mass and a practicing Catholic having being educated at Catholic schools in England and Ireland. He’s moving to Luxembourg next Friday and will no doubt be in regular attendance at your church. At the moment he hasn’t secured accommodation for January. Is there any advice or guidance you could provide please?

Any information you can share will be greatly appreciated.”

I received the following message from Philippa Seymour regarding the Environmental Footprint Group, which has included members of our own community along with those from the Anglican parish:

“Steve McCarthy suggested that you might be interested to know that our EFG will be taking a new direction in future. Below is a message I sent today to everyone on the mailing list. If anyone in your parish would like to be on the mailing list they just need to let me know.
Thank you to those who sent their thoughts on the direction the EFG should take in the future. There were lots of different ideas but the common theme was that the group is doing a useful job and should continue, which was very gratifying, thank you. This reflection on our future happily coincided with Anglican church plans for a more coordinated approach to awareness-raising and action on current issues. We think we have come up with a good solution, as follows.
The Environmental Footprint Group will merge with the Human Rights group to form one Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) group, to be run by Evelyn Sweerts, Simon Norcross and Philippa Seymour, reporting directly to the Anglican Church Council. This group will widen the EFG’s already wide sphere of interest to include human rights issues. It will continue to meet at irregular intervals when there is a speaker with something to say, on a day to suit the speaker, rather than trying to find a speaker for a particular day each month. Members of other churches and none will continue to be encouraged to attend. Although this will be a think-tank rather than an action committee, it will actively seek to make connections with groups in Luxembourg that are taking action, such as CELL, Greenpeace, ACAT, Stëmm vun der Strooss, etc, and will invite people from such groups as speakers from time to time. And it will work closely with the Anglican Church Charities Committee to propose causes that should be supported financially.
Venues will vary; some meetings will still be held at Philippa’s house; for larger meetings or presentations that require powerpoint or other technology we could meet in the Centre Jean XXIII (behind the new hemicycle on Kirchberg). We have three speakers already lined up for the first half of next year: Marc Bichler, Luxembourg’s Climate Change Ambassador; Campbell Thomson who will talk about Tourism and the Environment, (dates to be arranged) and Evelyn Sweerts who will talk on 10 May about Anglican attitudes to social action.
I will continue to send group e-mails not only about our group’s activities but other meetings, conferences etc that may be of interest. In future these will be labelled ‘JPIC’ rather than ‘EFG’ so please don’t delete them without looking first. If you would prefer not to be included in this mailing list any more, please let me know.
Best wishes
Philippa Seymour”

If you wish to know more, I will happily forward your messages to Philippa. Fr Ed

Archbishop Hollerich is leading a youth pilgrimage to Thailand from 3-19 August this year; part of the trip will be assisting in the construction of a college. Further details may be found on the flyer below:

and on the dedicated web page (FR).

Fr Ed

Friday 30th December: Feast of the Holy Family: Mass (in English) 11:00
The beautiful statues of the Holy Family, hidden away in December 1939 just 6 months before the invasion of Luxembourg by the Nazis in May 1940 and rediscovered 2 years ago, will be on display in St Alphonse until 12:30 on this day. Also on display will be a beautiful, richly embroidered banner of the Holy Family, recently rediscovered. Come along to pray for our own families, and see these wonderful devotional pieces of church art.

Fr Ed