Mosaic Lent 2024

Lent 2024

Your acts of kindness are like pieces in God’s mosaic of hope in action around the Diocese

Responding with love... Richard Harries, the new Director of Caritas Westminster, sets out his hopes for social action in the diocese over the next decade. Looking back, I consider it an intriguing coincidence that my personal epiphany should have occurred around the same time that Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict, posed his simple question to the Bishops of England and Wales, “Where is Caritas?” The author of Deus Caritas Est, fully aware of the excellent work of CAFOD and the myriad other Catholic charities in this country, was surprised to find no expression of social action at the diocesan level. In this, he was surely prophetic. Since then, we’ve had a decade of austerity; a nation torn apar t by Brexit; communities traumatised by Covid; families struggling to make ends meet through a cost-of-living crisis Continued on page 2 Richard Harries, the new Director of Caritas Westminster

I will never forget the first time I stepped inside Westminster Cathedral. Finding myself in Victoria with some free time between meetings, and having taken the first tentative steps toward my eventual reception into the Catholic Church, I thought I might just pop my head in and have a look around. What I saw swept me away.

In between the penitents queuing for confession and the tourists wandering aimlessly, I found myself drawn to the many and varied mosaics which seem to shine out from ever y direction. The fish scale ceiling of the Chapel of St Andrew, the glorious image of the Holy Family in the Chapel of St Joseph. That it was the beauty of the place that caught my eye should have come as no surprise. As Pope Francis says in Evangelii Gaudium, “Ever y form of catechesis would do well to attend to the ‘way of beauty.’”

Contents 2

Responding with love continued

3

Celebrating Volunteers

4-5

The Cardinal’s Appeal changing lives

6

The next generation: exploring the presence of God

7

Bakhita House: Rose’s story

8

Father Dominic’s legacy