Eternal World Television Network (EWTN) interviews the parish priest of St Patrick’s, Soho.
MP3 Length: 58:30
Download the MP3: from EWTN
Fr Alexander Sherbrooke is the parish priest of St Patrick’s Church in Soho Square, the heart of London’s West End. His parish encompasses some of London’s most iconic tourist destinations, like the British Museum and Piccadilly Circus, but also has all the problems of an inner-city parish: prostitution (about 250-300 work in the area), homelessness, drug addiction.
This is in an increasingly secular Britain: 4% of the British population practice their faith. Rome has the largest section of this percentage, followed not by Anglicans but by Muslims.
Fr Sherbrooke and his team at St Patrick’s aim to evangelise the culture and they do this in a great variety of ways: Fr Sherbrooke has exposition of Blessed Sacrament 12 hours a day, when people can come in to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
The parish has two big public processions of the Blessed Sacrament a year: on 8 December in honour of our Blessed Mother; the other in honour of Corpus Christi; a Cenacolo prayer group – offering a two-year course of prayer and formation for those coming out of drug addiction; a School of Evangelisation which gives young people a deeper knowledge of their faith and enabling them, for instance, every two weeks or so to take to streets, show icons of Our Lady, distribute Miraculous Medals, etc.
The parish supports Missions during the year, inviting people into the Church, where Priests are present to offer Confessions and family blessings. There’s the chance to go to the Blessed Sacrament to offer up an intention.
For a country with three centuries of outlawed Catholicism, St Patrick’s has an impressive Catholic history. It has had two great evangelists through its doors – St Columbiere, the confessor of St Margaret Mary Alacoque (the first person to hear of Christ’s desire for devotion to his Sacred Heart) and the American Catholic evangelist Archbishop Fulton Sheen – who is thought to have written his doctoral dissertation in the church’s tower.
It’s great to hear of a Catholic parish doing so much to evangelise – a model for all!
