Welcome to Saint Edmund's, Horndean

Fr Jeremy Writes …….Ten-Year Plan: Phase One Concludes

Last November, 144 people from across the Pastoral Area, including parishes (Horndean, Hayling, Leigh Park, Havant, Waterlooville, Cosham and Paulsgrove), schools, QA hospital, plus the Polish, Syro-Malabar, and Neo-Catechumenal communities, came together in an open meeting to discuss the implications for us of Bishop Philip’s draft ten-year plan set out in the document You Will Be My Witnesses. Although reservations were expressed, the meeting felt that the plan presented a realistic response to the challenges we were facing as a Church, including falling attendances, an ageing population, diminishing numbers of clergy and an increasingly secular society, and we were given the mandate by those present to form a Pastoral Area Council and ‘get on with’ the job.

This involved exploring how we might form the existing six parishes into one large parish and what the implications of this might mean for the constituent communities and their pastoral, liturgical, spiritual, administrative and financial provision with a reduced number of clergy to serve them. We were asked in the document to present our findings, conclusions and recommendations in a report to the bishop in July 2023.

In response to the meeting’s request, the Havant Pastoral Area Council was formed to take the project forward. The Council was made up of the clergy of each parish plus two lay representatives chosen for the skills and commitment they would bring to the task. Representation was also provided from the schools, the young people of the area and the hospital. As reported earlier, these were formed into four teams to look at different aspects of proposed plan, namely Mass provision and clergy deployment, a new pastoral and administrative structure for the new parish, and how evangelisation might develop to revitalise the local Church and grow our communities in pursuit of our central guiding objective of bringing people to Jesus through his Church. A fourth team enquired into the feasibility of providing financial oversight and management to the new structure and the implications for property and plant. Teams also set a number of consultation questions for parishioners and six form students at Oaklands. These responses helped to influence the content and proposals set forth in our report to the bishop.

We have reported on the work and progress of the teams and the Council in previous updates. Since Easter, the task has been consolidating our work and bringing forward, in the form of a report to the bishop, what our research and exploration has found and how we might construct a cogent and coherent plan for the formation of a new Parish. This report is now complete and has been sent to Bishop Philip for his reflection and, hopefully, his approval. Once we have his response and his agreement in principle for what we propose, we will be able to share the ideas and recommendations in full with our parishes and discuss with all parishioners and other stakeholders how it might be possible to implement some of the recommendations with a view to realising the plan for our area. We would like this to begin to happen in September and look forward to shaping our future together.

Fr Jeremy Garratt, Dean, Pastoral Area Coordinator, Council Chair.