Welcome to Our Lady of Sorrows
and St Bridget of Sweden

Monthly Maintenance Fund Appeal- Notice from the Finance Committee

Dear all,
The Finance Committee wrote a month ago about the current situation on the finances. We are making great progress thanks to your kindness, generosity and hard work. However, as you will know from the finance accounts we published, we are “just managing” and making any improvements to the buildings and its surroundings are currently not possible without further fundraising initiative.

One example is the altar to your right hand side of the church, where its been several months we have had to close off this area for health and safety reasons. The issue has been identified as being more than just the ceiling needing repair, but an issue which will require extensive work on the roof. We also have had to make necessary health and safety changes to the Presbytery as this is not only a place where the priests live, but it is a place of work and a place where meetings with the Parishioners take place, and so there is a duty of care to keep it safe. Again this has come with a cost.

We also have plans to rebuild the church wall (you will see it has been left as ruins for the past couple of years) and we would like to update the Parish Hall which has potential in the future to increase our income streams.

For a full list of these projects for this year, please take a leaflet we have produced which is available on the pews/at the back of the church.
We realise the financial burdens families have, so please rest assured we are only asking for you to help in whatever way you can, and we don’t want anyone to feel pressured. The Church is a place of love and operates as a family, and this community belongs to each of you, no matter what you contribute.

We also want to highlight that we have made lots of effort to reduce the financial burden on the Parishioners; we have successfully secured National Lottery funding which was granted for specifically to renovate the Parish Hall toilets and we are in the process of hearing back on a funding application we have made to the Cardinal’s Fund Appeals. All of these will help take the burden off the imminent projects we have to do, however it is still necessary for us to set up a monthly appeal in order to ensure we have a long term, sustainable fund to cover all the ad-hoc repairs and maintenance work to make the Church a safe and accessible environment for all.

This weekend we launch a monthly maintenance fund collection. This is going to be in the form of a retiring collection or you can access our Virgin Money giving page via the Parish Website. Using the Virgin Money website to donate is especially helpful if you are a tax payer as we can reclaim gift aid on your donation.

As we have already said, please give what you can afford, don’t feel pressured.

We thank you for your generosity, this Church operates today, thanks to your kindness, and we leave you with a quote by Amy Carmichael “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.”

See our appeal page