The Anam Cara group would like to welcome everyone to our covenant Mass at the Shrine on Friday 18th May 2012 at 7.30pm .The theme of our Mass is:  ‘The Covenant of Love – The Roots and Foundation of our Family Life’ In our families, our parents and grandparents are our role models, our teachers, our guides and our security as we grow from children and mature into adulthood. Most importantly, they pass on to us the gift of faith. In our Schoenstatt family, we are blessed with a spiritual parent in the person of Mary, our Blessed Mother who  challenges us to live this faith every day in our own lives. (more…)

Born in Rome in 540; he became a civil servant, and eventually was Prefect of the City. He entered the Abbey of Saint Andrew, and was ordained deacon in 578. On the death of Pope Pelagius II in 590 Gregory was elected Pope, showing marvellous pastoral care in preaching, writing, caring for the poor and working for the civil welfare of the City of Rome, then deserted and threatened. He is called the “Apostle of England” because it was he who sent Augustine, the prior of Saint Andrew’s to minister there, after encountering English slaves in the Forum. 

Margaret Middleton was born in York in 1556, lived there all her life, and died there on 25 March 1586. At 15 she married a butcher, John Clitherow, and three years later became a Catholic. Imprisoned for her non-attendance at church, she taught herself to read and later ran a small school for her own and neighbour’s children. Her husband remained Protestant, but allowed her to hide priests at their house. In 1586 the secret hiding places were discovered, and Margaret was put on trial. She refused to plead, for which the punishment was being crushed to death. Anne Heigham was born at Dunmow (Essex) around 1565, and was hanged at Tyburn on 27 February 1601. In her teens she became a Catholic and was disinherited, and in 1585 married Roger Line, also a disinherited convert, who was subsequently imprisoned and exiled for his faith, leaving her destitute. She taught and embroidered, and also kept house for priests. After a large number of people had been seen gathering at her house for Mass, she was arrested, tried and condemned to death. Margaret Ward was born at Congleton (Cheshire), but entered into the service of a family in London. She was arrested after assisting a priest escape from prison, but refused under severe torture to reveal his hiding place or to renounce her faith. She was tried at the Old Bailey, and executed on this day in 1588.