“Everybody’s welcome” is the programme launched by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in response to “Listening 2004”, the report compiled on the basis of the interviews conducted with 15,000 faithful. From this 70-page document published last year it emerged that Catholic families in England sought support and assistance from the Church, but often feel its teaching to be too difficult a moral code to be followed and would prefer to belong to a more caring and warm-hearted community. “Everybody’s welcome” is the answer to that. It will last three years and will be funded with a budget of 1,636,000 pounds ( c.2,337,142 euros). Days dedicated to welcoming new arrivals in the parish, to the problems of the family, to the home as “sacred place”, and to the exploration of new methods of communicating the faith, are planned during the three-year programme. A conference on the family and on the way in which the parish may help it solve its difficulties is due to be held at High Leigh in Hertfordshire (Southern England) next weekend (21-22 January).
