highlights

Church Ablaze: 
A day to discover our charisms, gifts and talents and discern how these can best be put to use to serve our local parish communities and the wider Church family. With interactive talks on discovering and using your gifts, the event featured a market place filled with different Catholic organisations aiming to help young people to find agencies who could help them with furthering their skills and experiences in areas which they feel called to serve in. Our 56 young people who attended the day were accompanied throughout the day by experienced lay people and religious who also formed part of the days listening hub. At the listening hub, young people could speak about what they felt their role in the Church is, how they are being called to serve, how this makes them feel and reassuring them that the Church is always listening to the voice of young people. 




Murder Mystery: On a dark and stormy evening in Alton, a gruesome murder took place. Thankfully, once the murder was solved, the victim picked himself up and joined in with the rest of the evening’s festivities. A brilliant fundraiser and social evening in a perfect setting for this night of whodunnit! This was a great opportunity for young people to come together, get to know each other, explore the Castle site and unwind at the end of the week together. 




Mission@Home: Mission projects happened across the diocese in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Oxford, Coventry and Walsall aiming to involve young people in mission projects on a local level. Take a look below at some short explanations as the what happened over the weekend. 


Birmingham: A group of students from Painsley in North Staffordshire, travelled down to St. Chad’s sanctuary in Birmingham to hear about the work undertaken there, meet some amazing users to and also to help out with some practical jobs.


Coventry: On Saturday afternoon young adults opened the doors of St. Mary and Benedict’s Catholic Church to serve the homeless and refugee families. Free lunches, haircuts, health checks and care packages donated by students from all of the Catholic Primary schools in Coventry and collated by students from Cardinal Newman secondary school and Bishop Ullathorne secondary school. 


On Sunday afternoon, young adults cooked and served lunch and chatted with 60 elderly guests from parishes in Coventry at St Mary & Benedict’s. These young people and a team of adult volunteers  provided great food, music, singing & games. A great afternoon serving the church!


Oxford: Over the weekend a team of young bakers and waiters at Greyfriars, Oxford hosted afternoon tea accompanied by live music for senior parishioners. 

Walsall: A team of young parishioners from St. Mary’s the Mount in Walsall organised and took part in a litter pick around the town centre parish. All of this is part of an ongoing project to get young people more actively involved with their parish community in this area. 


Wolverhampton: Young people spent the day reflecting on social isolation and the desire of the human heart to be in relationship with others and with God. We invited guests from local parishes to join us for an afternoon tea with entertainment all served by our wonderful young people. We had a wonderful afternoon of laughter, sharing and service and our guests can’t wait for the next opportunity to join us! 

​