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The new week is a busy one for the SVP as we have our June meeting on Monday evening and then our Young People’s SVP have their June meeting on Friday afternoon. Our agendas are naturally curtailed by the COVID19 pandemic, nevertheless, we are still trying to ensure that the needy among us are getting all the help they need. Please say a prayer for the teams and also for our incredible team of ’temporary’ members who carry out collections of food from local stores and who perform shopping and home deliveries each Saturday.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has had to adapt to new ways of doing things and the SVP Team is no different. We have had to trim our sails in terms of the variety of active initiatives and our main workstreams at present are focused on the Foodbank, including home deliveries, and phone-buddying with our sisters and brothers who are suffering from loneliness and our brothers in detention. Our home and carehome visits are suspended at the moment and the team really misses meeting our friends at these places.

Our SVP Conference (the official word for ’team’) at St Gregory’s was formally founded on 26th April 2016. That means that we are in our fifth year already! The rules of the global SVP society say that every five years we need to have a change of leadership. For us, this means that by 25th April 2021 we need to have a new president in place. A change in leadership is a great opportunity for:

On Monday evening we held our second monthly meeting online - and the turnout was 13 members - amazing! On top of that, the previous Friday, 1st May, it was the turn of our Young People’s SVP Team and they had an online attendance of eight, which allowed for a very productive monthly meeting too!

We are really blessed to have such great parishioners in the community and please say a prayer that the fruits of their labours will really flourish once this present pandemic passes. Our main actions at present are the Foodbank and the associated home deliveries, including prescriptions pick-ups. The new team of ’temporary’ SVP members helping us with all of this are fabulous and are another example of the silver linings to this passing cloud.

The response of the parish to the recent Foodbank appeal has just been amazing, and a simple ‘Thank You’ just does not seem enough!

It just goes to prove that even the cloud of a pandemic can have a ‘Wonder’-ful and ‘Awe’-some silver lining. The Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit have been exhibited so strongly by the parish, and at such an appropriate time of the year too! Your ‘Kindness’, ‘Generosity’ and ‘Love’ means that our less fortunate sisters and brothers now have ‘Knowledge’, ‘Understanding’ and ‘Hope’ that they are not forgotten and that they are loved.