FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 1st – 8th DECEMBER 2025
I attended a Safeguarding Conference recently in the University of Strathclyde Technology & Innovation Centre in George Street. It’s a good venue and has a very spacious atrium where people gather for registration and a coffee before heading for the auditorium where the main work of the conference takes place. It’s an annual conference and I often meet people there whom I have known from way back, and this is the only occasion on which we re-connect. Two such people would be former Passionist students who left back in the early 1970’s, just around the time I entered the Passionists. Each has remained highly committed and highly involved in the church and now each is making their contribution in the vital area of safeguarding. I would also have known each of their wives in days gone by, and it’s good to hear how people are doing who were once part of my story. Of course, we’re all getting older, and conversation can now centre on the ravages of aging.
I would also meet priests or safeguarding representatives from the diocese of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh whom I would have known back in the late 1990’s when I was parish priest at St. Gabriel’s in Prestonpans. I enjoyed over four very happy years there before being transferred to Dublin in 2001. It was a sad day when the Passionists had to leave Prestonpans altogether and, again, it’s good to catch up on how things are going there now. As with everywhere else, everything is so different now in a diocese that has greatly diminished resources, and parishes are combined, with one priest looking after two or more churches. This time around, I also met someone from the diocese of Galloway whom I knew in the days when, as a young layman, I was involved in retreat work at the Passionist Retreat Centre at Coodham in Ayrshire. I hadn’t met this person since 1975, the year I joined the Passionists, and 50 years on, each of us was easily recognisable to the other, and we had a real stroll down memory lane.
However, on that day, the first person I met as I entered the atrium, was Archbishop Nolan. He enquired after my health, being aware of the reasons I have had to step back from various responsibilities, and also asked how things were going with the house move. (As an aside, we have a target date of January 19th to make our move, presuming other things fall into place). The archbishop then asked if I was still writing my log. My honest answer was that I would keep it going until near Christmas and then see what happens from there. I was recalling to myself how it all began, in the autumn of 2001. I had recently been installed as rector and parish priest at Mount Argus in Dublin, when I had to go to the Netherlands for a meeting in my capacity as secretary to the North European Conference of Passionists. I was due back on a Sunday and should have been in plenty of time to celebrate the 4pm Mass in Mount Argus on that day. However, being in a rush the day I departed, I had completely forgotten where I had parked the car in the massive long term car park at Dublin Airport. I wandered aimlessly for a long time before deciding I had best phone some other Passionist priest to cover the Mass for me, which they kindly did. Eventually, I found the car, and the following week I wrote up an account of my travails in the parish newsletter, which was also posted on the parish website. There was so much feedback that it then became a regular feature. Fifteen years later, when I transferred to St Mungo’s, I, quite madly, started up again, just doing a weekly log for the parish website. Unbeknown to me, one log a month, selected by the editor, started being published in the Flourish, and so it has continued ever since. I have absolutely no idea what the appeal is. For me, it is quite cathartic, and an attempt the see the presence of God in the ordinary, everyday, mundane events of human life. But, as we constantly hear in this first part of Advent, the end may be nigh, and at a time we do not know.
As ever, protect yourself, your loved ones and others, and protect Christ in your lives.
I attended a Safeguarding Conference recently in the University of Strathclyde Technology & Innovation Centre in George Street. It’s a good venue and has a very spacious atrium where people gather for registration and a coffee before heading for the auditorium where the main work of the conference takes place. It’s an annual conference and I often meet people there whom I have known from way back, and this is the only occasion on which we re-connect. Two such people would be former Passionist students who left back in the early 1970’s, just around the time I entered the Passionists. Each has remained highly committed and highly involved in the church and now each is making their contribution in the vital area of safeguarding. I would also have known each of their wives in days gone by, and it’s good to hear how people are doing who were once part of my story. Of course, we’re all getting older, and conversation can now centre on the ravages of aging.
I would also meet priests or safeguarding representatives from the diocese of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh whom I would have known back in the late 1990’s when I was parish priest at St. Gabriel’s in Prestonpans. I enjoyed over four very happy years there before being transferred to Dublin in 2001. It was a sad day when the Passionists had to leave Prestonpans altogether and, again, it’s good to catch up on how things are going there now. As with everywhere else, everything is so different now in a diocese that has greatly diminished resources, and parishes are combined, with one priest looking after two or more churches. This time around, I also met someone from the diocese of Galloway whom I knew in the days when, as a young layman, I was involved in retreat work at the Passionist Retreat Centre at Coodham in Ayrshire. I hadn’t met this person since 1975, the year I joined the Passionists, and 50 years on, each of us was easily recognisable to the other, and we had a real stroll down memory lane.
However, on that day, the first person I met as I entered the atrium, was Archbishop Nolan. He enquired after my health, being aware of the reasons I have had to step back from various responsibilities, and also asked how things were going with the house move. (As an aside, we have a target date of January 19th to make our move, presuming other things fall into place). The archbishop then asked if I was still writing my log. My honest answer was that I would keep it going until near Christmas and then see what happens from there. I was recalling to myself how it all began, in the autumn of 2001. I had recently been installed as rector and parish priest at Mount Argus in Dublin, when I had to go to the Netherlands for a meeting in my capacity as secretary to the North European Conference of Passionists. I was due back on a Sunday and should have been in plenty of time to celebrate the 4pm Mass in Mount Argus on that day. However, being in a rush the day I departed, I had completely forgotten where I had parked the car in the massive long term car park at Dublin Airport. I wandered aimlessly for a long time before deciding I had best phone some other Passionist priest to cover the Mass for me, which they kindly did. Eventually, I found the car, and the following week I wrote up an account of my travails in the parish newsletter, which was also posted on the parish website. There was so much feedback that it then became a regular feature. Fifteen years later, when I transferred to St Mungo’s, I, quite madly, started up again, just doing a weekly log for the parish website. Unbeknown to me, one log a month, selected by the editor, started being published in the Flourish, and so it has continued ever since. I have absolutely no idea what the appeal is. For me, it is quite cathartic, and an attempt the see the presence of God in the ordinary, everyday, mundane events of human life. But, as we constantly hear in this first part of Advent, the end may be nigh, and at a time we do not know.
As ever, protect yourself, your loved ones and others, and protect Christ in your lives.
RSS Feed