Fr Sam Randall says farewell to Radio Maria England
August 11, 2021
Notre Dame students put feelings into clay figurines
August 16, 2021
A major celebration is taking place this year to mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Bradburne, the Norfolk schoolboy who was martyred in Zimbabwe.
John attended Greshams School in north Norfolk, and after many years of wandering in England, Italy and the Middle East, finally found his calling as a lay Franciscan missionary at the Mutemwa Leprosy Settlement. He refused to leave the settlement during the Zimbabwean civil war and was abducted and shot dead on September 5, 1979.
Since his death the settlement has become a major pilgrimage centre, with thousands gathering for Mass each year on the anniversary of his death. In 2019, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome formally began the cause of his beatification.
The centenary celebrations will take place at the Holy Name of Jesus Church, Oxford Road, Manchester, from 2pm on Saturday September 25. John’s poems are being put to music by world-class composers to be performed at the event, while poems commissioned for his birthday will also be read. There will be performances by the Bury Choral Society, Zimbabwean Community Choir England and Wales and the Band of the Brigade of Gurkhas.
Admission will be by ticket only. For more details, please visit www.johnbradburne.com
The organisation easyfundraising is inviting people to a free lunchtime webinar explaining how parishes can receive funds through its free online software. It provides an option for giving with minimal set up and no cost. It is already used by more than 6000 churches across the UK.
The session is on Tuesday August 17 at 12.30pm and will last up to 45 minutes.
The musician Gila Margolin is performing a seventieth birthday Concert for Peace and Reconciliation.
This will be the fourteenth concert in the series which was started in 2004 in Clare College Chapel. It will be the second one in St Ives in Cambridgeshire, and the Mayor of St Ives, Councillor Pasco Hussain, will attend.
Gila is the co-Founder of The Little Sisters of Joy, an international Foundation of Prayer, Peace and Reconciliation, which came into being ten years after Gila was received into the Catholic Church in 1989. The Foundation, which has 700 Friends in 30 countries of all religions and cultures, has been building Bridges of Peace between Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and Christians and other religious groups through the Love of God, Music and Friendship.
Gila will sing a selection of her favourite songs from her repertoire of Hebrew music (learned in her childhood), songs of the 60’s and Scottish music.
For details of the concert, please go to www.littlesistersofjoy.com/forthcoming-events
Pictured above is John Bradburne and, below, Gila Margolin
