Over the last three to four years, we have been discussing the future of the Diocese and our ten-year mission plan You Will Be My Witnesses. The mission plan revolves around two priorities: (1) Putting Christ at the Centre – which means renewing the prayer and spiritual life of the Diocese, renewing our parish and diocesan Liturgy, making our parishes and schools more welcoming and inclusive, creating opportunities for formation of laity and clergy, and how to engage our youth. In other words, over the next ten years, we need first, to work at deepening our faith and love. The second priority is (2) Building outward-looking Missionary Communities – that is, parishes and communities of faithful focused on mission and evangelisation, on service of the poor and needy in the neighbourhood, on collaborating ecumenically and interreligiously, on responding to Laudato Si’ and on the good stewardship of resources. To enable this to happen and to release the necessary resources, our 87 parishes (totalling 140 churches) will be united into 24 Pastoral Areas, similar to what we have now, although some are new or amended. Over the next ten years, these 24 Pastoral Areas will organically become single canonical parishes: some soon, over the next two or three years, others medium term, say in five years’ time, and the rest over the long term.
Here is the list of the new Pastoral Areas:
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