Every second Saturday of the month, Divine Liturgy in English of Sunday - Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, Duke Street, London W1K 5BQ.
4pm Divine Liturgy. Next: 13th November 2021

Very sadly, the Divine Liturgy in English at 9-30 am on Sundays at the Holy Family Cathedral, Lower Church, have had to be put on hold. Until the practicalities we cannot use the Lower Church space. Hopefully this will be resolved very soon. Please keep checking in here for details.

Owing to public health guidance, masks should still be worn indoors and distance maintained. Sanitisers are available. Holy Communion is distributed in both kinds from the mixed and common chalice, by means of a separate Communion spoon for each individual communicant.

To purchase The Divine Liturgy: an Anthology for Worship (in English), order from the Sheptytsky Institute here, or the St Basil's Bookstore here.

To purchase the Divine Praises, the Divine Office of the Byzantine-Slav rite (in English), order from the Eparchy of Parma here.

The new catechism in English, Christ our Pascha, is available from the Eparchy of the Holy Family and the Society. Please email johnchrysostom@btinternet.com for details.

Tuesday 29 April 2014

BBC News - A tale of two Jesuits in Syria - Frans van der Lugt: A Dutch priest in Homs; Paolo dall'Oglio: an Italian in the monastic desert


Paolo dall Oglio
Fr Paolo dall'Oglio SJ lived as a Christian

and worshipped among Muslims within the indigenous

Syriac monastic tradition


26 April 2014, BBC Magazine

A Dutch Catholic priest was shot dead in the Syrian city of Homs earlier this month, but who was he, and what was he doing there? Bethlehem-based writer Daniel Silas Adamson pays tribute to a
Jesuit who practised yoga, ran a farm and welcomed people of all faiths on mountain hikes.




No-one who knew Frans van der Lugt, the Dutch Jesuit priest murdered in Syria, was surprised by his refusal to leave the besieged city of Homs. He had spent almost 50 years in Syria and had been in Homs since the siege began more
than two years ago.









The last European left inside the Old City, he was sought out by journalists and became a spokesman for the trapped and starving civilian population. "I have learned about the generosity of the Syrian people," he told a reporter earlier this year. "If these people are suffering now I want to be in solidarity with them. As I was with these people in their good times, I am with them in their pain."









Frans van der Lugt and helpers at Al Ard
Fr Frans also lived as a Christian and worshipped among Muslims:
among people with disabilities, providing a place
of meditation and encounter and through running a farm for all the
community, Christian and Muslim, able and disabled.
A few years ago, I met Frans at the residence in Homs where, on 7 April, he was taken into the garden by a masked gunman and shot in
the head. We were introduced by Paolo dall'Oglio, an Italian priest who also spent his life in Syria and has not been seen or heard of since he was kidnapped by Islamist rebels in Raqqa in July 2013.





In many ways the two men were similar. Both were Jesuits. Both spoke fluent Arabic and considered Syria home. Both had been shaped by the ideals of internationalism and social justice that influenced the Catholic Church in the 1960s. In Syria, far from the rigid hierarchies of the Vatican, Frans and Paolo each found the freedom to pursue an unorthodox vision of what it meant to be a Catholic priest.














Read the full article, with pictures and video here:

BBC News - Frans van der Lugt: A Dutch priest in Homs










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