Church is to help families from Syria
TWO SYRIAN FAMILIES IN ITS PARISH
A CHURCH has pledged to settle at least two Syrian refugee families in its parish and has encouraged the congregation to help them integrate and make friends.
The Church of Our Lady and St Christopher in Romiley, Stockport, is working with the government on the project, which aims to settle around 20,000 refugees from camps along the Syrian border.
It will make it the first in the Diocese of Shrewsbury, which covers the church in Stockport, to take part.
The initiative will involve members of the congregation at Our Lady and St Christopher befriending at least two families and helping them to integrate into society over a two-year period.
It follows the success at St Monica’s Church in Flixton, part of the Diocese of Salford, which has welcomed a family from the war torn country into its parish.
The project also represents part of ‘a new focus on social justice and action in the Diocese of Shrewsbury,’ which follows the launch of the local Caritas agency – a crisis intervention organisation based in the Catholic church – last year. Canon Michael Gannon, parish priest at the Romiley church, said he hoped other parishes in the Diocese would follow suit.
“The whole concept is about creating missionary parishes and responding to the call of Pope Francis to have that missionary call,” he said. “We are very much up for it.
“It is very much a response to Pope Francis’ call. I am determined to see this through and I know that I am supported here.” In his monthly prayer intention for September, Pope Francis said of parishes: “That they not be simple offices, but that animated by a missionary spirit, may be places where faith is communicated and charity is seen.” The project will be paid for with money from the Diocese’s fundraising initiative Our Mission Together.
Each parish that takes part allocates 30 per cent of funds donated by parishioners.
A new project for refugees and asylum seekers has also been started up in Wythenshawe, which is being run by Caritas Diocese of Shrewsbury in partnership with the Diocese of Salford and the Ivy Evangelical Church, called The Well Project.