Introducing myself
Hello! I’m Fr Michael Cusack, Priest of the International English-speaking Community, part of the city-centre parish of Luxembourg Notre Dame.

Our Parish community
Since July 2013 our community has been based in the Redemptorist church of St Alphonse at the heart of the city. Our community has grown rapidly: numbers attending Masses (an additional Sunday Mass has been added, to accommodate the numerous Mass-goers) continue to increase apace; a glance at the rotas on this site indicates the number of parishioners involved in our various activities, though the rota list is by no means exhaustive; we have popular catechetical programmes: Children’s Liturgy, First Holy Communion classes, a Confirmation course, adult catechesis, Baptism Preparation and Marriage Preparation.

We have the constant challenge of serving our  richly diverse community (from over 50 countries) and at the same time being an integral part of the wider Church in Luxembourg, part of the newly erected parish of Luxembourg Notre-Dame. All our Masses and celebrations are in English, but church administration is mainly in French and Luxembourgish.

Growing Pains
Our rapid growth in recent years has put our existing structures increasingly under strain — finding rooms for meetings, for storing our books and other resources has not been easy during the 3-year refurbishment of the couvent (the Redemptorist house). Our rotas have been expanding constantly, we have too many altar servers (a happy problem to have, but it takes organisation). Since July 2018 our community has an Administrative Assistant, and the parish office is staffed from 8am-12 noon, Monday to Friday. After much hard work by many, we have a full Safeguarding policy, and are in the implementation stage. Our Music Ministry does so much to enhance the liturgy, and our commissioned Mass-settings provide an established common musical repertoire that makes us less reliant on hymns, which vary so much from country to country.

The Future
We are very much aware of the blessing our community is, to ourselves, to the wider Church in Luxembourg, and to the many tourists and visitors we host. To be a believing, witnessing, welcoming community, at the service of others, is indeed a privilege and one we can never take for granted. We are missionary-minded, working for the growing of God’s kingdom and the service of our neighbours, near and far. The increasing lay-involvement at every level of parish life is both good in itself and essential to the functioning of our community, helping also to make the community less priest-reliant at a time when priests are less numerous than previously.

Ultimately, the future of our community is in the hands of God, who called us together and continues to call us together — and as such, as a community of hope, we plan as far as we can and trust the rest to the Lord, confident of God’s goodness and love.

Contact
All enquiries can be directed to the parish office in the first instance: by email or phone (+352) 661 127 962