Residential Retreat
Buckfast Abbey
7th – 9th April 2014
A group from the Parish spent three days at Buckfast Abbey studying the Apostolic Exhortation ‘The Joy of the Gospel’. It’s an inspiring document, and the first written wholly by the present Pope, Francis I. In the introduction, which we studied on the first day, Pope Francis sets out his desire for a the dawn of a new era of evangelisation, since ‘Christians have the duty to procaim the Gospel without exluding anyone’.
The time has come when we can no longer wait passively and calmly in our church buildings, with an agenda of conservation – it is time to move towards ‘a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry’(14).