“Only a week ago we opened the parish 24 hours a day, and the results are already astonishing”: so says Father Miguel Ángel Vives, parish priest of the church of the Nativity of Our Lord, the first parish to be open day and night in Spain. It’s situated at Burjassot, in the province of Valencia. Father Miguel is enthusiastic about the venture: “Volunteers spontaneously organised themselves: people are arriving from many other areas, even priests and faithful from other parishes, and working in 8-hour shifts”, explains Father Miguel, who organised another successful pastoral project in 2000, the continuous reading of the Bible in which 26,000 people took part. “What’s so wonderful about the parish open uninterruptedly he explains is that some people come to be listened to and end up by asking to serve their own shift: the same people who come to church to be helped end up by becoming helpers themselves”. A visitors’ book has been opened in the parish, “a jewel”, according to Father Miguel. Elsewhere in Europe there are parishes open 24 hours a day in Prague, Paris, Vienna and Lisbon.
