Dear Parishioner
I thought you might appreciate a progress report on the TOGETHER IN FAITH campaign.
You will remember that the Bishop has been asking people across the Diocese to consider financially supporting four identified needs:

*  guaranteeing retired priests a reasonable pension
*  supporting seminarians
*  putting in place a programme of lay formation
*  parish projects

Holy Family was one of the pilot parishes involved and we ran the campaign in autumn 2010.
We were set a goal of £110,000 (to be raised over 5 years).
I was assisted by a Parish Leadership Team and AMAZINGLY this wonderful parish pledged no less than £384,051!!!!!!

This means that already (a year later) Holy Family parish has contributed £91,895 to the campaign. Many, many congratulations.

What about the Diocese as a whole?
The campaign has been rolled out gradually to all of our 70 parishes and the last of them are now involved. All the parishes in our own Pastoral Area (St. Ethelbert's, St. Anthony's, Holy Redeemer and Datchet) have done extremely well and now it is the turn of Our Lady of Peace, Burnham.

The amount pledged across Diocese now stands at £8,404,851!!!!!!

Across the Diocese 4,354 people have made a gift to the campaign. Needless to say, this means that the Diocese can look forward to being much more financially stable.

What can our own parish look forward to?
Because of the way that the money will be distributed across the four aims of the campaign Holy Family parish (as well as significantly supporting the Diocesan objectives) can look forward to receiving something in the region of £200,000 over five years.
We are committed to spending that money in two ways:

1. New Stations of the Cross
We have commissioned Stephen Foster, who carved the wonderful image of Christ risen which hangs in our sanctuary, to create new Stations of the Cross for the church. They will be in place by Ash Wednesday 2012.

2. Lay Chaplaincy
Our Pastoral Area has had a strong experience of people being trained and employed as pastoral assistants. Kieran is employed in that role in our own parish. Furthermore, St. Bernard's School has a full-time lay chaplain and Sister Nora ministers in the hospital on behalf of us all.
We have committed Together in Faith money to further training and employment of lay ministers, especially in the knowledge that there will be less priests serving in our parishes over the next few years.
The first project will be to employ a lay chaplain at St. Joseph's Catholic High School from the beginning of the school year 2013. But other projects will be considered.

Last week Holy Family parish received two certificates from Bishop Peter,

One was to congratulate the parish on recruiting one of the largest Parish Leadership Teams across the Diocese and the other to mark the fact that 40% of parishioners responded positively and generously to Together in Faith, one of the highest participation levels across the Diocese.